Trans women are building their own publishing world, and it's under threat

"While oceans of ink paint trans women as a monstrous threat or pitiable curiosity, trans women themselves have often remained locked out of the publishing world as both writers and presumptive readers - spoken of but not to. Traditional publishing can flatten the diversity of queer experience as a whole, homogenizing it for the benefit of presumptively cisheterosexual readers - the Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Survey 3.0 reveals that over two-thirds of the industry's workforce is cisheterosexual white women, and fewer than 1 percent are transgender."

"In the face of these institutional barriers, online communities of trans women have turned to a powerful workaround: self-publishing. Online marketplaces have streamlined the process of making a manuscript available for sale - with print-on-demand even allowing authors to sell paper copies - while fandom spaces and informal publishing platforms like Scribble Hub and AO3 enable authors to find their audience or their niche much more easily than in the past."

Trans women encounter systemic exclusion within traditional publishing, which often flattens queer diversity and centers presumptively cisheterosexual gatekeepers. Industry demographics skew heavily toward cisheterosexual white women, leaving transgender people vastly underrepresented. Editorial gatekeeping practices, including repeated revise-and-resubmit cycles, can pressure writers to abandon submissions. High rates of unemployment, poverty, and familial disownment compound barriers to publication for many trans women. Online marketplaces, print-on-demand, fandom communities, and platforms such as Scribble Hub and AO3 provide alternative routes for trans women to publish, cultivate audiences, and distribute both digital and physical copies of their work.

Read at The Verge