New York Times dubs 2010 "the year of the transsexual"

Unexpectedly, The New York Times has declared 2010 to be "the year of the transsexual," and it turns out they've got a pretty compelling case on their hands. Citing both increased attention in the fashion world (James Franco on the cover of Candy, Givenchy's campaign featuring transsexual model Lea T) alongside more mainstream stories (the dialogue surrounding Barack Obama's "tranny nanny" from his childhood in Indonesia), William Van Meter concludes, "Not since the glam era of the 1970s has gender-bending so saturated the news media. The difference now is that mystery has been replaced with empowerment, even pride."

Still, the world of gender politics hasn't exactly reached a utopian state, and one LGBT activist warns, "it’s important to advocate for sustained media attention, not just celebrating people who attain a particular beauty standard that reinforces gender norms, which are a source of a lot of the difficulty for trans people in the first place.” Fair enough, but living in the Year of the Transsexual still sounds way better than the alternatives, which are, most likely,  the Year of Julian Assange or Year of Justin Bieber.