I argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.

As trans advocacy has institutionalized and developed, the context of the undemocratic nature of US non-profits and the ways that white, wealthy individuals can intensely influence the directions of advocacy have increasingly come to the surface for trans activists.

The point for me is to create relationships based on deeper and more real notions of trust. So that love becomes defined not by sexual exclusivity, but by actual respect, concern, commitment to act with kind intentions, accountability for our actions, and a desire for mutual growth.

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.

I am often talking about the ideas collected in Normal Life in contexts that are not academic, or that are full of people who are not primarily engaging as theorists or theory-readers. Being able to make ideas visual, especially critical ideas about movements that can be difficult to hear because of attachments we have to certain national narratives, or because of ways that we see ourselves, is especially useful.

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.