I wrote Normal Life using concepts that have been helpful to me, and hoping to offer those as accessible tools for thinking differently about the pitfalls trans resistance faces, in particular the temptation to focus on legal equality and the limitations of that approach, and the alternative approaches being taken by racial and economic justice focused trans activists.

Making my work more visual is something I am increasingly excited about. I am hopeful that it will broaden access to some of the ideas being engaged in activist and scholarly communities of which I am part.

There are sharply different, competing models of what trans advocacy looks like - those that seek to follow the path laid out by the most visible and well-funded lesbian and gay rights organizations in the US and those that seek to use grassroots strategies, center issues of race and poverty, and aim to dismantle harmful institutions and conditions to redistribute life chances.

Trans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.

One of the concepts I was having trouble illustrating was the concept that administrative systems create narrow categories of gender and force people into them in order to get their basic needs met - what I call "administrative violence." I had images of forms with gender boxes and ID cards with gender markers, but I also wanted an image that would capture how basic services like shelters are gender segregated.

We should interact with legal reform tactically, knowing that it will not meet our ultimate goals but asking whether there are ways that engaging with particular reforms might benefit our work and help reduce certain harms or dangers.

My work is heavily influenced by critiques that many critical intellectual traditions, especially Critical Race Theory, have made of reform projects focused on legal equality.