Chapter IX of Susan Stryker’s Changing Gender should be read and studied by students and scholars for generations to come; without exaggeration, it makes this book one of the most important texts ever written about how to define gender.

In it, Styker, a retired professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona and a distinguished visiting professor at Stanford’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, goes on a literal and figurative trip while at Joshua Tree National Park in California. She takes LSD and has an experience that fixates her “with chemical intensity on what it means that I am here now, unable to turn away from all the pasts, vast and intimate, that have carried me to this moment.”

Stryker, who is trans, speaks to the significance of psychedelics in the history of gender and transness, and how “spiritual transsexualism,” achieved when psychedelics are used, is “not about changing the body alone…It aimed at an ongoing transformation of consciousness through practices that might involve shamanism, meditation, magic mushrooms, astral projection, out-of-body experiences, and deep, dark dives into the K-hole.”

Her statements may sound hippy-dippy, but the chapter is far from it. Real emotions are felt, and she claims a true connection with the Earth and all its beings, while also facing a reckoning of identity that includes a firmer understanding of gender. As she explains, gender is ancestral, ambiguous, and arbitrary, yet it has flesh and blood, is systemic, and is part of a global conversation constrained by oppressive Eurocentric norms. It is both judged by and connected to all faiths and cultures.

Stryker wanders through the park like a modern-day Thoreau, connecting with the land, the animals, her ancestors, and Native peoples while ruminating on gender. She recognizes that the issue is not as simple as sports, unisex bathrooms, and drag storytime. Gender is rooted in psychology, linguistics, biology, and sociology — it is rooted in the I, the we, the us, and the they/them. It is objective and subjective, personal and communal. It is enjoyed and it is mourned. And, most importantly, gender, like everything else, is “radiantly beautiful,” though tainted by our trespasses.

Again, this all unfolds in a single chapter. But the rest of Changing Gender is equally enlightening and educational. The book functions as both a chronicle of one woman’s transition and a pedagogically sound textbook that offers a comprehensive understanding of gender as a term and as a tangible aspect of our existence. It is also a fervent counterargument to the Matt Walshes and Donald Trumps of the world who can’t grasp the complexities of gender and would rather cling to their pedantic biases, fear of the unknown, and archaic notions of masculinity and femininity.

Yet Changing Gender is advocacy without adversarial language. In Stryker’s hands, the issues surrounding gender are discussed, debated, and deconstructed to ensure that all readers — even transphobic ones — enjoy a well-researched immersion in the subject.

By the end of the book, Stryker seems free, but Changing Gender isn’t just an expression of that freedom — it’s a call to action for us to experience what she has. We are all living organisms on a living planet. We are all connected. Ours is a complex world, but it’s one in which we have the ability to determine who we are, who we will be, and how we identify. And that truth is, indeed, what makes it all radiantly beautiful.

Dr. Douglas C. MacLeod Jr. is a professor of composition and communication at SUNY Cobleskill Ag & Tech. He is also a freelance book reviewer who has worked for both peer-reviewed journals and periodicals. He writes regularly for Rain Taxi, the Feathered Quill, Kirkus, On the Seawall, and ArtsFuse, and his work can be read in a variety of other online and print publications. He lives in New York with his wife, Patty, and his dog, Fifi.