Be Trans: Read “Nearly Roadkill”

5 min readApr 4, 2019

This is the nineteenth entry in a series I’m writing on gender. Equal parts personal narrative and transgender studies I hope to explore topics that have, by-and-large, been nagging at me for some time, but that I haven’t taken the time to write about. Who gets to define what transgender means and what does transgender mean? What do Tumblr, lexicographers, and transtrenders have in common? Why should anyone care about the personal stories of a girl from small town rural Georgia? This series hopes to cover all of this and more. Have a topic you’d like me to write about? Leave a comment or tweet me @JessieRaeFisher.

Finally, the first entry in the “Be Trans” series for a fictional work! I read this work while working on my thesis. It filled a role I had imagined a year or two ago that the Ghost In the Shell manga’s would fill.

I firmly believe that whatever other type of writing someone is doing, it should be informed to some degree by fiction. This becomes all the more true for academic writing, which has a reputation for its inaccessibility. Fiction, with exceptions, is the opposite, it is often seen as a more accessible genre.

I really enjoyed reading Nearly Roadkill, and I do recommend it. It earns its subtitle, “An Infobahn Erotic Adventure,” — there is a fair amount of sex in it. All of it happens in chat rooms and private chats, but it does happen, and some of it is graphic.

My goal here isn’t to provide an in-depth plot synopsis, or even, probably, to provide a traditional book review — instead, I’m interested in writing about why this book is important for transgender audiences.

There are a lot of great conversations about gender in this novel, and, as Bornstein is wont to do, her and her co-author, Caitlin Sullivan, try their best not to answer the questions they ask.

The protagonists are not perfect. If a reader is hoping to see their ideal 2019 self reflected in these protagonists, they will end up disappointed. However, the one way that the protagonists are relatable is in their self-consciousness. They are persons unsure of themselves. They are not young people, fumbling through their genders, as young people should, instead, they seem, though their exact ages are never given, to be in their 30’s or 40’s (and Kate may laugh at this attempt to confine these characters in this way, as she is wont to do), and still unsure of themselves, still trying to figure gender out, still pushing at its boundaries, still trying to have fun with it, still trying to take it seriously, still trying to subvert it and finding themselves bouncing back into it, around inside of it.

Another interesting point about age, the point where maybe age is most important throughout the novel, is in different character’s interactions with Toobe, a teenager. In fact this cautiousness may have foreshadowed the way that teenagers get treated online now, especially by queer adults, namely, the way that there is a demarcation between those who are 18 or older and those who are 17 and younger, to the point where those who are 18 and older seem to opt for, at times, not interacting with those who are younger than 18 at all seemingly to “protect” those who are younger teenagers, from “adult content,” but also, seemingly to avoid any claims of impropriety on their own part. The ways in which the characters in Nearly Roadkill interact with Toobe and vice versa in the novel would seem almost absurd by today’s standards.

Published in 1996 Nearly Roadkill has lines such as, “Cyberspace is real. The feelings are real. We don’t want to lose what has become valuable . . .,” stated so matter-of-factly that it’s hard to believe that 23 years later, the reality of cyberspace is still in contention.

One of my favorite passages from the book references the teachings of Chuang Tzu, which the characters refer to as “Zen stuff,” and goes as follows, “He further taught that words exist for the sake of their meaning: Once the meaning has been grasped, you can forget the words. From his lessons, I’ve learned that identities exist for the sake of relationships: Once the relationships has been established, you can forget the identities. I find myself looking for one who has forgotten identity, so that we might be together in a relationship.”

Now, I must qualify the above. Not being a student of Chuang Tzu myself, I’m not sure if this is a good reading of his teachings, furthermore, I’m not sure I’m in agreement with the interpretation anyway, but I find it interesting to chew on, especially given my position as being interested in etymology and being interested in identity formation.

“Forgetting identity” seemed to be one of the ways that Bornstein and Sullivan attempted to embrace gender abolition, especially insofar that gender and sexual orientation identities were barriers to relationships, the author’s were interested in removing those barriers.

As if a novel about identity and trying to be true to one’s self isn’t enough, Nearly Roadkill also addresses topics of free speech and surveillance, especially as those thing played out online, it’s a cautionary tale, and one wonders if the authors could’ve ever suspected the realities of the internet (let alone the realities of free speech and surveillance) that exist now.

Nearly Roadkill is a necessary read for all Bornsteinian gender outlaws out there, and may be of interest to transgender folks broadly, to those interested in the internet and internet studies, and to those who like a bit of mystery and intrigue.

Find Nearly Roadkill here.

This title is a play on the popular “Be gay, do crimes!” and is not in any way meant to suggest that if one doesn’t read ‘Nearly Roadkill’ that they aren’t transgender or that they’re less trans. This “Be Trans, read — ” series-in-a-series will return.

Have questions? Don’t be afraid to leave them in the comments below! Questions asked may turn into pieces written in the future!

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