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We live in a fast-moving culture. Memes rise and fall in the space of days, and often hours; new words become cliched almost as instantly as they’re formed. And in the same way that long-held assumptions about language (“his or her”) get abandoned in favor of other approaches (“their”), so do cultural institutions. Only a few years ago, same-sex marriage was a pipe dream; now, it's on its way to normalization. Marijuana, until recently the stuff of black-market subculture, is quickly developing into a full-blown industry.

The shifts can feel, to those of us who are living within them, whiplashing. Cultural conventions haven’t yet caught up to cultural realities. Etiquette and language, the discursive products of quandaries that have been hashed out over time, can be slow to catch up with the fast-moving realities of the culture. And so, in an America that still often elides “sex” and “gender,” a bit of awkwardness when it comes to talking about Caitlyn Jenner is pretty much inevitable. The vocabulary is, to many people, unfamiliar. The lines between “transgender” and “transexual” are murky. People, generally, mean well; people are also, to a certain extent, confused. Culture is fast; convention is slow.

In Jenner’s case, what we're seeing, essentially, is a subculture—in this case, the trans community—becoming, gradually but also sort of suddenly, mainstream. The trans community, of course, already has set conventions and mores, precise words and phrases that are the product of dialogue and trial and error. The challenge is figuring out how those translate to the level of the mass culture, as paradigm shifts are shifting, suddenly, beneath our feet.

There’s something that happens in that shift, as convention catches up to culture. Call it a paradigm lag. It's the nebulousness that sets in, temporarily, as subcultures seep into the mass culture. It's the process of education and explanation that was on display, for example, in Jenner's recent interview with Diane Sawyer, which seemed aimed as much at educating the American public about transgenderism as it was about telling Jenner's particular story. It's the time required to figure out whether “transgender” or “transsexual” or “trans” is the appropriate adjective to describe a particular person. It's the learning curve of culture.

It’s the revealing imperative of the cover line of Jenner’s Vanity Fair issue: “Call Me Caitlyn.”

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In Jenner's case, much of the language that will be used to describe her comes from a similarly imperative place: There are guidelines that exist; it is up to people simply to follow them. The murkier aspects of legislation, though, will likely take place in the form of questions about the lines between appreciation and objectification when it comes to someone in Caitlyn’s position. How should we talk about Caitlyn’s new appearance—which she has fought for, and which is so much a part of her identity—without objectifying her? How do we avoid the kind of casual misogyny that is so deeply ingrained in our conversations about women’s bodies?