Thank you for your submissions so far! They have made a few people very happy. We’re excited to share them with you, and until then, want to put names-to-faces, so to speak, following our invitation to submit. The hope is that this post helps you imagine more things to submit.

1. Letters of any type

Before Spare Rib and the rest, the early women’s liberation movement had open-access newsletters. Any woman could write in, regardless of her tone, form or education, and publicise an opinion, event, or respond to other letters.

WBM accepts letters of any form or tone. They may be previously published online or elsewhere. We won’t publish every letter, but it will likely be printed if it says something interesting, powerful, or for the first time. 

Letters are not eligible for payment, but the most interesting letter of the issue will receive a prize. 

Letters may contain opinions, thoughts, concerns, anecdotes, anecdata, folk healthcare knowledge, congratulations and praise for actions and activism, announcements, including announcements of events or groups, correspondence to the agony aunt (yes really), or short reviews of books and other media of transfeminist interest. 

There is no word limit per se, but we anticipate letters between 100 and 1000 words. 

Letters may be sent by email (editor[at]badly.press).

2. Essays

Two essays we have accepted for publication thus far, to give you some idea of what we’re looking for, have included: 

Transfeminist domesticities

In this essay, the author reapproaches feminist questions regarding the household with the trans woman in mind. She asks, among other things, How can we resist the spinster/bachelorisation of trans women? How can we live in greater community and solidarity with other trans women in the world as it stands? What is the role of the household in a transfeminist movement, and What would it mean to live as a household of one?

Towards a Transfeminist sex negativity

In this annotated dialogue, the authors recontextualise narratives of sexuality in the lives of transgender women. Drawing on recent writing by transgender women and personal experiences, they ask how we can better serve transgender women at risk.

Other essays to look forward to include topics such as notes towards a transfeminist dictionary, new networks of power and the British state, and decolonial transfeminisms. 

3. Methods

If you are doing transfeminist community work or similar, we would love to hear how. For example, the forthcoming issue will include a method on transfeminist consciousness-raising practices from activists in Scotland. 

We will include in the first issue any methods we have used towards the aim of low-cost, community publishing. 

4. Creative writing

We have described WBM as a new journal of letters on the subject of transmisogyny and transfeminism. However, do not read this in a strictly traditional, non-fiction sense. Creative writing is welcomed. The invitation to submit was very essay-forward, so this is underlined here. 

We will publish work by transgender women (&similar) and of transfeminist interest in which we can see critical, novel or well-refined approaches, literary merit, the development of the writer’s practice, and craftfulness. 

Additionally, we want to publish creative writing which is unlikely to be well-received by invitations to submit targeted at trans or queer writers due to its critical nature of trans and queer (and indeed trans female) writing or people. A published example of a text like this would be Amy Marvin’s enjambment bonanza poem Hey Guys, which draws a heavy line between myopic trans space organisers and the empire which enables their soft-and-tender politics. 

5. Relevant scholarly work of any sort

A woman is a good thing to be. We can say this without qualification. A woman is a good thing to become, as a statement too, requires no qualification. You would be hard-pressed, however, to find scholarly work which supposes it can speak for the lives of transgender women in which these are core premises.

WBM exists because trans female lives and subjectivities in their own right are worthwhile sites of thought and worthwhile origins for study. Women’s studies birthed feminist work in every field of study. When we are asking questions like Is there a transfeminine way of looking? or Do we have obligations against transing history? you are being asked to consider trans female life, transfeminism, and trans female subjectivities as fruitful and worthy of attention and defence.

Send us things that wouldn’t make it elsewhere, that would be butchered by most editors, yes. But also ask what an unflinchingly transfeminist response to some of the questions (or lack thereof) in your field of study is.

We have used the names magazine and journal interchangeably to indicate that we welcome academic work, but that we have no obligations to the academy, and intend to publish very readable work. WBM exists because we believe in an anti-institutional, decolonial transfeminism and its potential for a similar ’trans female studies.’ We must be always agents of our obligations against the university as the site of the production of whiteness.

6. Translations

If you are an able translator and want to share an extract of a transfeminist text not written in English, then let’s talk. We would be more than willing to do the leg work of writing to authors and publishers and obtaining the permissions. Similarly, book report-style essays on non-English language books are also welcomed. (What’s Pauline Clochec up to these days?)

7. Other forms

An annotated dialogue really isn’t an essay. If you have writing of any form not listed above, do consider submitting it. Form is no barrier, and we left the first part of the invitation to submit silent on a number of formal questions specifically to invite form-bending. 

There are no strict word limits to any form above and will approach each text individually. 

The deadline to receive first drafts remains the 31st of December, 2024, and all submissions received after this will be deferred until the next issue. Submitters are encouraged to (and will be loved and thanked greatly by editors if they) get submissions in early; the hard deadline for final drafts is not long after the final submission deadline of the 31st of December.

Remember that the use of pseudonyms is possible if desired. Submissions may be sent by email (editor[at]badly.press).

With love as always, 

Editor