Sex acts

Poor Eddie Redmayne. Just because he looks quite like a girl, he finds himself a spokesperson for the burgeoning trans movement. Recently, he was forced to explain to those of us watching BBC News that ‘the notion of gender being binary’ is now considered ‘antiquated’.

People are very excited about being trans at the moment. Countless TV shows and films depict it, Mark Zuckerberg has just called his daughter Max, and a man called Hilary has just talked us into another war. Being trans is clearly catching: hermaphrodite whelks on the undersides of fishing boats are growing penises, and vast swaths of young people, unable to buy a home or get a job, now realise they are trapped in the wrong body. Well, great. Previously you only noticed trans people when you used a phone booth on the Tottenham Court Road — now they’re on the cover of Time magazine.

It’s appropriate that it took an actor to explain to everyone that gender identity is not binary but on a spectrum. Actors, who have no real sense of who they are or what they want, have long known that not just their gender but every aspect of their identity is on a spectrum. They can be anything they are asked to be. They aspire to a protean state, shape-shifting like high summer clouds.

In reality, they sell their bodies and emotional lives for money. They don’t need to use phone booths; they get their pictures in magazines. And they learn early that in order to make their way in the world, it’s best to leave questions of identity to others. If that’s what you think I am, then I’m happy to oblige. (Would you like me in the doublet and hose or the french maid’s outfit?) I like to consider myself a blank cheque on which people are free to ascribe whatever value they feel appropriate.