“It’s never-ending,” he says, eyes shining. “Everything leads to everything else, everything connects. The more you look, the more you learn.”



This enthusiastic lecture is taking place in an unlikely venue: a Nando’s restaurant in the country town of Shepparton, Australia. It’s cold and wet outside, but the chicken chain is bustling: families sharing platters, teenagers drifting in and out clutching Cokes, and Oscar, waxing lyrical in the corner.

Oscar’s own biology is of some interest to him. In precisely 14 days, he tells me, he will turn 18 and start taking testosterone, which will prompt the development of facial hair, shift around fat and muscle, and deepen his voice. But his mind immediately snaps to other things when I ask what, in politics, concerns him most.

“I don’t really keep up with the news,” he says, pausing for a second. “But there are some things... like superbugs.”

“Superbugs?”

“I think about how everyone is taking antibiotics all the time when they don’t need to be,” he explains. “That’s going to lead to an advance in superbugs that we’re not going to be able to cure. Unless kids start focusing on biology.”

It’s an unexpected answer from a member of a generation marked as self-absorbed. But Oscar had to defeat biology, and its social baggage, before he could plan to devote his life to it. He was prompted to come out as transgender in mid-2015, because living in the closet was affecting his health, his happiness, and his grades.



“I had to transition in the last two years, because I wanted to go to university,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I knew it would help me with my grades, so I came out.”