I'm reminded of how I felt when Vera Drew turned to the camera in The People's Joker, within the first few minutes, and said "Because yeah, I'm trans." It wasn't shocking, everyone knew it was a trans movie. But I realized that this was the first film I'd *ever* seen where any character actually said "I'm trans" on screen without it being hidden behind some level of clever obfuscation. Think about that. The first movie I saw where someone proclaimed themselves as being trans was given limited release in 2022, and even then, I would guess the proportion of cis to trans people who've seen it is like 1:1000 or worse. The trans representation I saw growing up was on Jerry Springer, in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Crocodile Dundee, in police procedurals. I didn't see it, but I understand Silence of the Lambs has a pretty terrible representation of a probably-trans person. The butt of jokes, the victims of murderers, unhinged lunatics. I'm so glad the world is different now. That we can have romance novels with openly trans main characters (and that I can contribute to that). We have movies with sympathetic trans main characters who are still alive at the end of the film. It's not all despair and tragedy.