/

Is everybody suddenly trans? You'd think so judging from media attention. But that's like saying, is Donald Trump the only one running for President? Still, it's more than a passing media storm, it's important. Trans not Trump.

Not facing the issue personally -- and if I were it'd be a little late in my game -- or within my family, I don't feel an existential urge to address it. Yes, I will admit it feels a little weird, but that, I'm pretty sure, is part of the problem and is my problem. Once upon a time I also thought queer was queer. Any otherness was queer. With passing life, layers of resistance to otherness peel away. Not that I'm virtuous. It just happens. 

Understanding that it's otherness that's at the core of the queerness of trans and queer leads me to think of how I may think that I'm not Other because I'm normal. But no, no, no, that just won't do. I know I'm not normal, whatever that means. And that's what makes trans trangressively important. It challenges normalcy. Challenges it at a core, at that slash that Roland Barthes put betwee S and Z in his deconstruction of the Balzac novella Sarrasine.

The story, beautifully narrated, tells of a "normal" young man who falls in love with a very "feminine" woman, only to find out she was a he. More recently it was the story in the movie The Crying Game, where the appearance of a penis turns everything upside down. Is the penis that important? Is a man someone who has cojones? Balls!, said the Queen/If I had two I'd be King.

Are we defined by our genitalia? How about by our hormones? Oh, I know something about that. Look in this website for a book-size text titled "Pretty to Think So" if you want to know what I think about it, which is not all that pretty.

No, everyone is not suddenly trans. But we're all thinking and talking about it. We're trying to figure out what it means to be a man; to be a woman; to be either but not play the straight game; to be both, one day one, next day the other; to be neither; to be slipping and sliding on that slash. And that's a good thing.