Houston, Houston, Do You Read As Trans?

For my Gender and Speculative Fiction course (which has been quite enjoyable thus far), this week's assigned reading was Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by Alice Sheldon, under the pen name James Tiptree Jr. All we had to do was read it (and read/listen to a short NPR news story on Sheldon/Tiptree); we were not given any kind of annotation or writing assignment.

This is too bad, because it turned out I had a lot to say, and I don't imagine I'll get to say it all in class tomorrow morning, as presumably other people will want to speak too. (This is also too bad because it meant I wrote all this instead of doing other readings/assignments and I wasn't even assigned to do so.)

Warnings: rape mentions, slurs, discussion of a person who presents as male being outed as biologically female and violent reaction to this

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Wrote that a few hours ago on Discord, then realized hey, I wrote a thousand words, I might as well preserve it somewhere a bit less ephemeral. Now I just have to... turn my focus to other classes. Sigh.