Carrying: The Substance meets Rosemary’s Baby in this trans body horror
Samantha Josephs discusses her debut novel Carrying, a comedic trans body horror work blending pregnancy narratives with speculative fiction and gender politics. The work deliberately subverts transphobic stereotypes by combining contradictory tropes—that trans women deceive men while simultaneously being identifiable as trans—to expose their logical incoherence. Josephs, who studied screenwriting and worked in game narrative, erotica, and drag performance, positions the novel within underrepresented trans fiction, framing it as ‘fertile ground’ for cultural intervention. Carrying follows Martha, a trans woman navigating motherhood, marriage secrecy, and the pressures of womanhood, deliberately foregrounding the protagonist’s interior perspective rather than external judgment. The work engages surrealist body horror aesthetics reminiscent of The Substance and Rosemary’s Baby while interrogating reproductive essentialism and the housewife archetype as both iconic aspiration and exploitative labour position within heteronormative structures.
Original article published on Dazed — AI-generated summary. Visit the website to read the full article at the source. Image via Dazed.
