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Abstract

To relegate the question of gender and sexuality to a subgenre of contemporary dystopias is to dismiss an overdue analysis of an essential feature of utopias: the formation of the individual identity through the lens of gender and sexuality—and perhaps most prevalently, through family dynamics and the question of posterity. To articulate a history and analysis of queerness and sexuality in utopian fantasies, it is essential to approach this paradox. This chapter asks, how does one write a society in which the Other, the marginal individuality and its sexual ambiguity become the center of this radical thought-experiment? Does the situatedness of gender expression and sexuality forbid the formation of a utopian society?

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de Beauregard, Q. (2022). Sexualities. In: Marks, P., Wagner-Lawlor, J.A., Vieira, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88654-7_54

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