Dee Allum's new Edinburgh Fringe show Raumdeuter takes on the World Cup and transgender surgery in the same hour, because for Dee both are happening in the same year. It is comedy about genitals and belonging, about whether England deserves her support, and about getting on with your life regardless of the noise around it.

I read this interview and felt something I have not felt enough recently: straightforward delight. Not because the story is dramatic, but because it is not. Dee Allum is a comedian planning her surgery, watching football, writing jokes about genitals, suffering pre-show anxiety, drinking vanilla vodka and root beer, and heading back to Edinburgh because she loves it there. That is it. That is the whole story. And right now, that kind of ordinariness is its own radical act.

A show about two things, happening at once

When Shay asked Dee what the show is about, she said it plainly: the World Cup and transgender surgery. "Turns out it's a year for both," she added. I love that. Not "turns out these two enormous things are colliding in my life in a way I am still processing," just the dry acknowledgement that yes, both are on this year, so both went in the show.

The question underneath the football strand is a real one, and she is honest about it. She wants England to succeed, and she wonders whether that feeling is mutual. Whether a country that has not always been welcoming to people like her still gets to have her support. I think a lot of trans people will recognise that question, the complicated loyalty to a place or a culture that does not always seem to know you exist, or would rather you did not. Dee does not resolve it neatly, which is exactly right. Some things do not resolve neatly.

Trans people do not pause for the political weather

This is the thing I keep wanting to say to people who ask me how trans people are coping right now. They are coping the way everyone copes: by getting on with it. Surgery gets scheduled. Shows get written. Work in progress gigs happen in Oxford and Birmingham and London before the big run in Edinburgh. The world keeps arguing and trans people keep living, because what else would you do?

Dee describes her writing process with a self-deprecating honesty that I suspect every creative person will recognise. She cannot see how anyone ever does it. She sits down to write and struggles to be certain she is having good ideas. The work in progress audiences have been kind, and she is grateful for that, because the audience is always right. Nothing there about being trans. Nothing there about the political climate. Just the universal terror of making something from nothing and hoping it is good enough.

The ordinary life inside the story

Her comedy icons are Stewart Lee, Marcus Brigstocke, and a sketch group called Sheeps, whose bit about an on-location reporter with a studio delay "fundamentally altered her brain chemistry" in 2011. She shakes her arms, legs, and jaw before shows to remind herself they are there. She does tongue twisters in a mirror because she stutters when she is nervous. She gets horrifically anxious, which she names as a debilitating mental health condition and then moves briskly on from, because it is one thing and not the only thing.

None of this is performed vulnerability. It is just someone talking about their life. And that, for me, is what makes Dee's story worth writing about. The show is about surgery and football, yes. But it is also about a person who is curious, funny, self-aware, anxious, excited about Edinburgh, and currently figuring out whether vanilla vodka and root beer is a genius combination or a terrible one. (Her verdict: surprisingly sweet, could have been much worse.)

Why joy matters as much as justice

There is a version of advocacy that focuses entirely on what is being taken away from trans people, and the list is long and the harms are real and I am not dismissing any of it. But if that is the only story we tell, we end up with a picture of trans life as nothing but suffering and resistance, and that is not the whole truth.

The whole truth includes Dee Allum going back to Edinburgh because she loves it there and always leaves feeling joy. It includes the jokes about genitals, and the drama student tongue twisters, and the bitumen joke from Marcus Brigstocke's 2009 Live at the Apollo set that apparently also ruined someone else's brain in the best possible way. It includes surgery and football in the same year, both just things that are happening, taken together because that is how life works.

Trans people deserve to have their full humanity reflected back at them, including the parts that are funny, and mundane, and indistinguishable from anyone else's life. Dee is doing that work, and she is doing it with a show that sounds genuinely good.

I hope Edinburgh is wonderful for her. I hope the surgery goes well. I hope England give her at least some reason to keep backing them. And I hope audiences fill that room at the Pleasance Courtyard and leave thinking, as I did reading this: yes, of course. Of course football could also be transgender. What took us so long?

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives at the centre of both.