Outlawed
by Anna North
Fast paced and fabulous! I enjoyed the alternate history worldbuilding and the ways misogyny is founded on the same principles, but to fit the need (in this case, underpopulation) the details come out different.
I don't think I agree that this book is uninterested in gender except where it concerns cis women and their reproductive abilities. It just doesn't spoon-feed the reader characters who always have super-enlightened thoughts about their own positionality. Yeah, Ada is straight, weird kink but I guess that's allowed. The gang member who suggests sleeping with gay men I read as transmasculine for multiple reasons. The crossdressing festival definitely gets at something about how misogynist and transphobic societies have ways of letting off gendered steam while reinforcing the hierarchy (see also, British panto), but no, it's not an essay deconstructing the practice.