Last week, I published a children's novel in which the two protagonists are trans. An unpretentious novel, whose story has nothing to do with the transitude of the characters, and which does not revolve around their transition at all. The story does not seek to titillate the voyeurism of cisgender people, and does not contain dramatic coming out or transphobic harassment.
And in itself, perhaps that is the revolution. Having real characters who are trans and queer for no reason, just because we have the right to live thrilling adventures too, which have nothing to do with our transitude and who do not seek to satisfy the curiosity of a public cis.
One of the two main characters uses alternating gender agreements. In a children's novel. And there are no big tragic stories related to that. In one sentence we gender in the masculine, in the other we gender it in the feminine. And the character is simply celebrated and integrated into the rest of the story. It's not the big tearful drama full of painful heartbreaks that the cishets would love, but this is exactly where I wanted to go.
I don't see it as being the same as a "normalization" process. The point is not to fit into the norm or re-explain what it is to be trans to cis people. It is even a little the opposite: I explicitly refuse to do it, and I force them to be witnesses of our brilliance unconditionally and to have to accept us as is. A voyeuristic and objectifying documentary seeks to normalize. I want to deconstruct, atomize the standard. This is the process behind the wacky story and comedic cartoons of "Am Stram Gram": writing a story by and for trans and queer people, without apologizing for our existence.
