In her collection “Stag Dance,” Torrey Peters continues the fearless exploration of trans identity that made her debut novel “Detransition, Baby” a literary phenomenon. This new work showcases Peters’ remarkable ability to deploy genre as a vehicle for examining the uncomfortable edges of gender, desire, and community. The collection—comprising one novel and three novellas—ventures into territory both familiar and utterly foreign, using speculative fiction, western tall tales, teen romance, and horror to dismantle our assumptions about gender’s boundaries.
A Fierce and Unsettling Vision
Peters’ collection opens with “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” a dystopian revenge tale set in a future where all humans must choose their gender, following the deliberate release of a contagion that prevents natural hormone production. The narrative alternates between a post-apocalyptic world and the events leading to its creation, centered on two frenemies-turned-lovers whose relationship embodies the complicated politics of trans community. When one injects the other with the contagion against her will, the personal violation expands to global proportions.
What’s striking about this novella isn’t just its premise but Peters’ refusal to deliver comfortable moral conclusions. The apocalypse that forces everyone to confront gender choice is simultaneously a catastrophe and a perverse utopia. As the narrator observes: “Now it’s different. I’m t4t for you in the abstract. Trans girls loving trans girls. And you’re trans, so you’re included.” This complicated solidarity through forced commonality raises uncomfortable questions about marginalization and revenge.
The collection’s centerpiece, “Stag Dance,” unfolds in an illegal logging camp where winter isolation drives the men to host a dance where some volunteer to play the role of women. Our narrator—a Paul Bunyan-like figure whose enormous, ugly physicality has always been his defining trait—pins a “bush” (a triangular piece of fabric) to his crotch, volunteering as a “skooch” for the dance. What follows is a surreal tall tale of obsession, jealousy, and transformation.
Peters writes with startling originality about bodies and their constraints:
“When Daglish stroked my triangle bush, I discovered that it had joined with me, as me. An appendage that had been missing from my person my whole life, without my realizing it, and which my mind and soul had incorporated into my whole to assuage a hunger that, until sated, had been so ever-present for so long that I had never truly grown mindful of it.”
In “The Chaser,” Peters shifts to boarding school fiction, recounting a secret relationship between roommates that spirals into betrayal and violence. The novella’s power comes from its unflinching examination of how desire and shame become entangled with cruelty. The narrator’s connection with his effeminate roommate Robbie moves from reluctant attraction to possession to rejection, culminating in an act of violence against a helpless animal that stands in for their impossible tenderness.
The collection concludes with “The Masker,” perhaps the most psychologically disturbing story of the four. A young cross-dresser navigates a Las Vegas party weekend torn between two figures: Felix, a handsome Argentina doctor who fetishizes her while recognizing her desires with uncomfortable precision, and Sally, an older trans woman offering sisterhood laced with controlling behaviors. When the protagonist discovers Felix is actually a “masker”—someone who wears a full-body silicone female suit—the boundaries between identity and fetish collapse entirely.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Peters’ greatest strength is her willingness to wade into discomfort. These stories refuse easy moralizing about gender and sexuality, instead portraying characters who make destructive choices while being perfectly lucid about their motivations. The result is fiction that feels thrillingly alive and unburdened by didacticism.
The prose itself alternates between raw vulnerability and startling beauty. In “Stag Dance,” the narrator’s descriptions of the winter logging camp evoke both danger and wonder:
“I picked up our hurricane lamp to see better, but the glare of my own flame blinded me to the dark beyond the throw of lantern light. A gust whipped a fine snow to sting my face and whistled serpentine wherever the snow lay open.”
However, this collection isn’t without flaws. At times, particularly in “The Masker,” the plotting feels manipulated to serve thematic ends rather than character development. Some readers may find the persistent brutality—both emotional and physical—overwhelming, as few characters escape without inflicting or suffering violence. There’s also occasionally a tendency toward melodrama, particularly in the conclusions of the novellas.
Breaking New Ground in Trans Literature
What makes “Stag Dance” significant is Peters’ willingness to challenge the emerging conventions of trans literature. Rather than portraying transition as liberation or trans identity as inherently virtuous, Peters explores how gender can be a site of manipulation, jealousy, and power struggles—even among trans people themselves.
The characters in these stories aren’t simply navigating external transphobia; they’re wrestling with internal contradictions and interpersonal conflicts specific to trans experience. When the narrator in “Stag Dance” observes Lisen’s jealousy over his dance with Daglish, he thinks: “There in front of the whole camp, I pumped hips with the man who’d tossed her down and swollen her eye. She crowned me by making her jealousy so visible. Who could have imagined? Lisen, jealous of the Babe.”
This complexity represents an evolution from Peters’ acclaimed debut novel “Detransition, Baby,” which examined the messy intersections of transition, detransition, and parenthood. While that novel brought trans literature into the mainstream, “Stag Dance” pushes further into experimental territory, using genre fiction to excavate the contradictions of embodiment and desire.
Comparison to Other Works
Readers might find connections between Peters’ work and other gender-exploratory fiction like Carmen Maria Machado’s “Her Body and Other Parties” or Imogen Binnie’s “Nevada,” but Peters distinguishes herself through her unflinching focus on the darker aspects of desire and her willingness to portray morally complex trans characters.
Unlike many contemporary LGBTQ+ novels that emphasize resilience and community-building, Peters’ stories often end with isolation and ambiguity. This tonal distinction places her work closer to the transgressive tradition of writers like Dennis Cooper or Mary Gaitskill, who similarly examine the intersection of sexuality and power without moral cushioning.
Who Should Read This Collection?
“Stag Dance” will most reward readers who:
- Appreciate challenging literary fiction that doesn’t offer easy moral resolutions
- Are interested in innovative explorations of gender, desire, and embodiment
- Enjoy genre-bending narratives that blend elements of speculative fiction, horror, and literary realism
- Don’t mind considerable emotional and physical brutality in their fiction
While readers seeking traditional narratives of trans empowerment may be unsettled by Peters’ complex portrayals, those willing to engage with her uncompromising vision will find a collection that expands our understanding of how fiction can address gender and identity.
Final Verdict: Bold, Unsettling, and Essential
Torrey Peters has created a collection that defies easy categorization, much like gender itself. Through four distinct narrative experiments, she examines how gender shapes our relationships, communities, and sense of self—not with comforting affirmations but with messy, sometimes disturbing truths.
“Stag Dance” isn’t always an easy read, but it’s a necessary one for those seeking fiction that pushes beyond contemporary conversations about gender into more ambiguous territory. Peters reminds us that even as we create new language and frameworks for understanding gender, the lived experience remains complicated by desire, fear, and the fundamental mystery of embodiment.
In a literary landscape often reluctant to portray the full complexity of trans experience, Peters’ willingness to face the uncomfortable makes “Stag Dance” not just good fiction but important fiction—a collection that will likely influence how we talk about gender in literature for years to come.
