Transfeminist Transhumanism

What is our nature? How ought we go about living a human life? Existentialism is the philosophy that rejects fixed, universal answers to these questions, locating fundamental humanity in our self-authorship. While contemporary science does offer insight into some essential human nature, technology increasingly offers means of reshaping our lives, even our biology. Indeed, technologically transcending human limitations is outright desirable, according to the transhumanist movement. They're not exactly wrong—but in 2025, a vision of liberation through tech sounds almost childish, a liberal-individualist delusion.

Must it be so? In her RMS talk, Reina will offer a reappraisal of transhumanism through the lens of her own transition experience. What if we took trans thriving philosophically seriously? We might then view modifying one's embodied sex not merely as individual self-actualization, but as expressing a better orientation toward technology: a transfeminist transhumanism, existentialist and politically generative, aimed at collective liberatory horizons.

Reina Magistro Nadler is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia's Allard School of Law, having completed her law degree at Stanford and her undergraduate philosophy studies at Harvard. Her dissertation research focuses on neuroscience and neurotechnology in legal systems, with an emphasis on democratic values. Reina’s studies have been supported by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship and by the Donald N. Byers Memorial Prize for Killam Doctoral Scholars. Her writing increasingly offers a transgender perspective on brain science, feminist philosophy, and technology ethics.