Beyond Gender was formed (or rather, co-gestated) in 2018 by a group of researchers, activists and practitioners who wanted to move beyond endless demands for representation and into discussions of the joys of queer sf.

This group continues to grow: it now comprises sixteen members who have found in sf briny seas, alien desire, and a multiplicity of strange worlds.

Beyond Gender operates as an anarchic collective built on decentralised decision-making, shared labour, and collective care.

In our work, we endeavour to approach texts of many different kinds through a process we have called Collective Close Reading. CCR involves non-hierarchical knowledge production, based on the close reading of a plurality of texts in which the ideas of individuals develop and aggregate to form a collective understanding of text(s). Through CCR, we seek to de-centre and escape the damaging myth of individualized authorship, and to produce knowledge collectively, through a diversity of voice.

In the future, we want Beyond Gender to grow wider and deeper, learning along with us and becoming something strange and new. As Octavia Butler wrote: 'All that we touch, we change. And that we change, changes us.'