One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who "pass" more should be the ones who are represented. A recent advocacy guide focused on advocating around trans health care access produced by the largest trans advocacy organization in the US instructs readers that advocacy will be more successful if the message is delivered by people who pass as non-trans men and women.

'Normal Life' looks at the current moment in trans politics, understanding that it is often assumed that trans resistance strategies should mimic the lesbian and gay legal rights frameworks that have become so visible in recent decades.

In recent years I have become more interested in making the critical ideas that I love teaching and talking about available in more forms, because many people prefer to engage with ideas in films, infographics, comics and other forms that are not traditional books or articles.

More conservative advocacy work often encourages portrayals of trans people as people who deserve rights. Deservingness, of course, corresponds to national racial, gender and ability norms.

Law reforms in the US, ostensibly enacted to prohibit racism, have proven ineffective because they focus on bad intentions of individuals and fail to comprehend population-level conditions.

Military inclusion has never been a central demand from trans populations, who consistently name criminalization, immigration enforcement, poverty and joblessness as top priorities.

Trans activism in the US has most frequently been grassroots, centered on poverty and criminalization, and often oppositional to the exclusionary "mainstreaming" threads in gay and lesbian politics and feminist politics.