I made a directory of transfeminist writing for a transfeminist group I was in. Seeing the texts and questions travel was amazing, but some things felt bare. Of the texts by trans women we compiled, very few of the texts labelled themselves as transfeminist. Personal essays were common, but I felt some bite their tongue. Personal writing is of feminist importance, but this description of trans female writing is so regular that it reads almost as a refusal of her ability to form politics from personal experience. These texts were most often published in precarious forms: magazines first-person and blogs. Others were published under the heading of ‘trans’ but fitted some parts of that word uncomfortably; there’s only so much you can say when you must also speak for a man. Those texts that were nominally transfeminist focused on the body and bodily autonomy.

Why bodily autonomy, rather than simply autonomy? All women need all forms of autonomy. All sex is socially constructed. Why was I asked to describe myself as subjected specifically at the site of the body? And it is always ‘the’ body and not my body? What other kind of autonomy is being ignored? Freedom to think?

Transfeminine people are not allowed to talk about our own experiences in our terms: trans women are important to almost everyone for their identity claims. Men and women of all sorts have some vested interest in what we think about our experiences. Speaking frankly and directly about transfeminine life gets abuse. Transfeminine responses to the world are swatted down. Without a degree of intra-transfeminine discussion and privacy, the chance to think together is slim.

It welcomes submissions of any length for annual publication. The first submission deadline is Hogmanay, December 31st 2024, for publication on spring equinox, 20th March 2025. It accepts submissions in any textual form (essay, letter, poetry, dialogue, prose, etc. both fiction and non-fiction) and of any length. There is no requirement to be particularly academic or formal, and tentative thoughts-towards style essays are welcome. It encourages form bending, breaking, and remaking. Dialogue (think After Trans Studies, Chu 2019, or don’t), anecdote (Anecdotal Theory, Jane Gallop 2002, or don’t), and speculative history (Jules Gill-Peterson 2023, or don’t) are especially invited. Make your own questions, but here are some jumping-board topics to get you started: 

What are you doing, as a transfeminist? Tell us ways to be in support of each other. Materially?  I’ll republish anything you think needs posterity. What does a feminist radical therapy programme look like for girlslikeus? Read the books, and tell me how you can apply it in your community.

Is there a transfeminine way of looking? Engaging with space? Can you identify a transfeminine lens or subjectivity in the work of other trans women? Is there a transfeminine art? If so, what does it mean? Here’s some names: Ada Patterson, Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, Lulu Sainsbury, Tourmaline, Juliana Huxtable, biogal, Willow Killeen.

Do you have readings, reviews or criticism of work by transfeminine people? (Susan Stryker has an anthology coming out this year, or Nat Raha on trans femme futures) Or of interest to? (Feminism against Cisness is just about to come out too). Read something recently that claims to speak to you but doesn’t? Tell me what’s wrong with it. Is there writing nominally about trans womanhood that is really about something else? (I’m thinking here about Nevada and Tell Me I’m Worthless and their respective national projects, but have your own ideas). Can you situate an aspect of transmisogyny in the colonial project?

Do you have writing about your life that would be rejected elsewhere? Because it reifies a transfeminine subjectivity? I’ve written transmisogyny and transfeminism in this text, but feel free to write to me with texts simply and directly about life as a woman, and your work as a feminist.

Can you write something that gives an avenue, a route, to care and be cared for as a transgender woman?

Can you critique and expand on the conception of transfeminisation given by Jules Gills-Peterson in a short history of transmisogyny (2023)? JGP frames trans womanhood as a colonial project put over the lives of colonised transfeminised peoples. What does this mean for how we tell ’trans history’? How can we tell transfeminist history as race traitors and abolitionists? Do we have obligations against trans-ing history?

*Our society, in the past 10 to 100 years or so, depending on how you ask the question, has become the first to consistently call, very crudely speaking, a man who turns into a woman, and a woman who turns into a man by the same name - trans. With the importance placed on trans now, how can we think about its historical exceptionality? What does it signify? What are the actual shared material interests and where do they diverge? What are the limits of trans as a political marriage? As a theoretical one? Can we situate the formation of trans in the colonial project?  Misogyny? What about aspects of trans studies? Do you have an example of bad transgender activism? How is it bad? What bad transgender activism shows an assumed male default in transgender discourse? Can you elaborate on where white traitors and race abolitionists have obligations against some formulations of trans as a political project (binaohan in decolonizing trans/gender 101 (2014))? *

*Got a queer theory ax to grind? Is Butler’s account of violence against trans women too centred in what men say about violence against trans women? What could a transfeminist close reading of Halberstam achieve? Does Sedgewick have it all backwards? Queering phenomenology? Queer time and geography? Queer futurity? Can you give a transfeminist response to the staple lens of queerness developed in the past decades? *

We often ask the question What does trans mean for us as feminists? What can we say as trans women, behind closed doors, in response to this question, that we cannot say elsewhere? Why is transgender activism like that? How is transgender activism failing? What are the limits, again, of that political union? Can you talk about sexism in transgender social reproduction? In DIY culture?

Is there something going on in culture right now that tells us something about transmisogyny? Can you rant? Can you pick apart the transmisogyny of something? Do you have an anecdote that elucidates life as a trans woman? If you’ve been around the block or came out a while ago, tell us some stories. Can you give an oral history?  People got double comfortable with staring and asking questions at some point. How has the surveillance of gender changed? Can you do us-centred history?

What are white trans women (+etc.) doing in (trans) activism that is really a reification of their whiteness?

Julia Serano: what’s with her conception of transmisogyny? What’s wrong with it and why? What role does a misogynistic account of the transfeminine body play in her transmisogyny take-downs?

Have you done any lay-research on trans female health? What about history? Anecdata? Again, posterity.

*The annexing of trans women is part of how misogyny operates. Can we flesh this out further? What missed opportunities to think about a role of trans female life are there? How have changes to transness (think how sex changed, the tipping point, or changes to pathologisation rendered by Sedgwick in how to bring your kids up gay) changed that relationship? Do you set the lowest wage that a woman may be given? *

*Do you have something to say? Can you say it with fewer university-words than me? What have I written above that you think is BS?  What am I not asking? Do you have something you cannot explain? Will you toss it under a few different lights for me? Will you write that down and send it to me? *

Upon submission, you will be paired with a thoughtful editor with interests relevant to your submission, who will work with you to develop your piece. All (copy)editors involved are trans women. Authors are paid a percentage of sales in arrears and may submit simultaneously or previously published work. Percentage-of-sales-in-arrears sucks as a payment model, but for now, this is how I’ve ensured at least some money is getting to writers at some point at least. The use of pseudonyms is encouraged: we are especially prone to having to take down work after a few years, and I’d love your writing to last longer than that.

One to five years after publication, an edition is archived online and physically. This is to give authors a sense that they are writing for trans women solely. The delay signifies that we invite others into this conversation as guests. In taking this project offline, we aim to protect our safety and encourage thoughtfulness. Anyone may submit writing and purchase copies, but this is for transgender women.

To submit or stock, electronic mail to: editor[at]badly.press. 

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