Trans Comedy as Trans Care

ABSTRACT

Malatino compares two billboards, one declaring "Trans lives are sacred," found in Detroit in July 2019, and one stating "Trans people deserve health care, support, justice, safety, love," stationed near the border of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms in November 2018 (2020, 25–26 and 30–31). (Nothing works for staving off isolation, illness, and routine workplace discrimination like stabbing your friends dressed as a neon cartoon alien with funky accessories, am I right?) Play, laughter, and jokes—collective endeavors, done with others, whether real or imaginary, present or distant (Freud 1905, Bergson 1912)—are key to trans care via media2. Playing together, via media, including the comedy of our own making, on the other hand, can take on a form of care, and we in turn keep each other alive. The newest iteration of the decades-long irony wherein cis/straight people reveal themselves as relying on the very healthcare they would deny trans and queer folks but with a new toxic twist, a spoof image of the cover of trans theorist Paul B. Preciado's Testo Junkies with Rogan photoshopped on the cover was soon circulating through the trans internet.