Detransition, Baby

The novel’s structure frequently jumps between the past and the present, with chapters that alternate between following Reese and Ames in the present and exploring their lives and relationship in the past. What effect does this narrative structure have on the reader? How does it contribute to the novel’s overall themes?

In Chapter One, Peters writes about “the Sex and the City Problem,” a theory that Reese has that attempts to explain how women relate to societal structures of femininity. How does the Sex and the City Problem impact the characters in Detransition, Baby? In what ways do they strive to reinvent womanhood for themselves?

In what ways does the novel present cis gender as involving the same kind of performative actions as trans gender?