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Issue #0 of Being Trans in Philosophy zine is out now! “We Are Not Trans in a Theoretical Way”. Download & print ur own 🖨️. being.transinphilosophy.org

#beingtransinphilosophy #trans #philosophy #gender #feminism #zine #diy
Being Trans in Philosophy issue #0 release. Subtitle: download, make your own. Url: https://being.transinphilosophy.org. Image of 5 zines arranged in the trans pride colors, stacked on top of well-known trans books. Title: ‘welcome to the WTF.” Image of a biohazard symbol overlayed on a world map with lines radiating from the center of the symbol, and the spires of the biohazard symbol are impinging on two scared trans symbols. A very long list of anti-trans events since 2021 portraying the looming threats to trans life from violence, media, and governmental disenfranchisement. Footer text: https://being.transinphilosophy.org. Text header: issue #0, june 2025, https://being.transinphilosophy.org, our stories, “we are not trans in a theoretical way”. A list of contributors with each name on a black badge over a purple splatter. The names are: Imogen Sullivan, Erin Beeghly, Ray Briggs, Anonymous, autogyniphiles_anonymous, Emmie Malone, Kelly Potter, Elin McCready, Penny Haulotte, Amy Marvin, Alex Adamson, Perry Zurn, Emil Eva Rosina, and Maximiliana Rifkin. Text header: issue #0, june 2025, https://being.transinphilosophy.org, our stories, “we are not trans in a theoretical way”. A block of white text on a stippled purple star background reads: “being trans i not a controversial idea. it’s a lived reality.” Under the text appears a black and white image of a feminine eye.
June 17, 2025 at 1:06 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
We printed the first batch of the zine today! And of course we made the cover in 13 different colors 🌈 #beingtransinphilosophy
Photo of six copies of the Being Trans in Philosophy zine spread out to show the differently colored covers. The cover says "our stories" and "we are not trans in a theoretical way." The photo also says in captions "Issue no. 0 release date: Tuesday, June 17, 2025."
June 11, 2025 at 2:40 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“When trans people say that philosophy isn't done in a vacuum, this is what we mean.” [3/3] @not.dingherself.com #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: To me, the threat of gunshots pales next to the delight and privilege of a lifetime of getting to know students who fall hopelessly in love with philosophy, who talk arguments and ideas from the class with their families, roommates, friends, partners all day every day, who cannot get nearly enough of spending time thinking, puzzling, processing, sharing, arguing with me, and who even look up to me as a role model and a living example of whom they can grow to be. The day-to-day of diminished autonomy, unfree expression, normalized surveil-lance, relentless objectification, and permanent disposability that have come to characterize non-academic working conditions accentuates the liberating pleasure of getting to work on issues interesting and important to me on my own terms at a department that not only tolerates me but cares about me and thinks highly of my scholarship and teaching. Text continues: And nothing even begins to do justice to what and how much it means to get to build bridges and forge relationships, to understand and treasure each other, to bond together as a community and 100k after one another, to conspire to take over and shake up a troubled literature, to geek out over an esoteric enthusiasm at a trashy dive bar two layovers and twelve hours from home, to see how many philosophers it takes to light a birthday candle on a windy NorCal beach (fourteen, It turns out), and to laugh and dance and play and think and speak and be heard in the same spacetime with my favorite dolls and weirdos in the world. It is with them that I get to believe that we not only survive and blossom but have each other. Trans people have always been and will always be in philosophy. But too few of us get to make it long enough, which too many from our discipline have now made all the more difficult. Text continues: There is a reason that trans people are drawn to and then driven out of philosophy. There is a reason that trans-antagonism self-identifies as "gender critical" and is most readily accepted as such in philosophy. And there is a reason that cis feminist philosophers are preoccupied with "trans inclusion" as an empty "problem" of "inclusive language" generated by a cis-centric concept of "gender identity" while trans feminist philosophers continue to be puzzled by how anyone can spell the word 'gender' without starting and ending with the actual material survival and social definitions of lived trans lives on the ground. Text continues: It is the same reason that philosophers would rather bury our heads in the deceptive, deadly comfort of a seminar room which we pretend exists nowhere and affects nothing, because of academic freedom, raw intuitions, obvious counterexamples, argumentative burden, professional etiquette, or something --or nothing at all. (written by Ding) Being Trans in Philosophy is a zine edited by two trans women collecting first-personal accounts of what it's actually like to be trans or to have trans kids as a phi-losopher, with a focus on the material, on-the-ground consequences of academic philosophy's role as perhaps the main discipline providing intellectual cover for a global transmisogynistic and transphobic moral panic. Sign up for email updates as we launch the zine this month at being.transinphilosophy.org
June 10, 2025 at 12:58 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“When trans people say that philosophy isn't done in a vacuum, this is what we mean.” [2/3] @not.dingherself.com #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: Three months later, a brash male student in my feminist philosophy course -- who had just a week ago sticked around after class and waited until the room emptied to pose a disquieting question, couched in a transphobic dogwhistle, about his sibling's transition - abruptly alluded to carrying a gun during a class discussion of structural sexism. After coming up to confront me at the end of the session, he stormed out of the classroom, only to wait again until all other students cleared out to burst back in. As he raised his voice aggressively and intimidatingly to me, the flight instinct sometimes I wish I didn't know as well kicked in. I have a hard time remembering what happened next. Somehow I found myself in the safety of my office, terrified at what I'd just experienced, unsure of how to talk with anybody about any-thing, and convinced that I was clearly, definitely, most certainly overreacting. Text continues: If my student meant to scare me for the rest of my life, it has worked. But was he after something more? How lucky am I to get to sit here, wondering about what-ifs? Three months later, a kitchen knife tore through a philosophy of gender classroom at the University of Waterloo, badly injuring a feminist philosopher and two of her students. To be absolutely certain that his blade would meet its intended targets, the attacker had twice asked and confirmed that it was a class on gender indeed. The next morning, the most upvoted Daily Nous comment dismissed as "complete-ly unsubstantiated, if not absurd" the suggestion that trans-antagonistic philosophy has blood on its hands. In fact, "what's the point of saying that these ideas lead to violence?" another philosopher was just asking questions. "I don't know what the takeaway is supposed to be. Any and all ideas/rhetoric might lead to violence." Text continues: Another three months later, timely hate mail informed me of my debut on the front page of the infamous Professor Watchlist maintained by Turning Point USA -- a diehard MAGA activism group whose leader had called people like me "so against our senses, so against the natural law" as to embody "a throbbing middle finger to God" and whose ghouls were busy harassing a faculty member at a neighboring institution for his involvement in Drag story Hour Arizona. They eventually cornered him on his way back from teaching, shoved him facedown onto the pavement, and filmed and published the assault on Twitter. My institution's public safety office, newly established in the wake of the administration's catastrophic failure to take seriously death threats culminating in the murder of a faculty member on campus, advised a "longitudinal" or "wait and see what happens" approach. Text continues: My dean, apologetic about targeted harassment being above a grad student's pay grade, offered to have a keyword filter set up on my emails (it makes you wonder which words would've been included, or if my office, class, and department locations and hours weren't publicly accessible). She then poceeded to slash graduate student funding to foot the bill for the university's $200-million-accounting-mistake-turned-budget-crisis. Yet, somehow, despite 1t all, I can't help but feel like the luckiest girl in the entire universe to get to introduce my sweet, sweet eager beaver students to a captivating world of ideas, issues, struggles, and experiences rarely reflected in the classes they take, to get to pass on a legacy gifted to me by all the beautiful misfits who have come before me, who have fought to make space in the profession for people like me to stay.
June 10, 2025 at 12:58 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“When trans people say that philosophy isn't done in a vacuum, this is what we mean.” [1/3] @not.dingherself.com #beingtransinphilosophy
Picture of black text set in typewriter font on white background: I was in Colorado Springs on a field trip with my students the weekend before a rifle thirsting for trans blood -- loaded with rounds after rounds of trans abjection, dehumanization, and demonization long fueled and sanitized by our discipline -- sunk its many jagged teeth into the dance floor of a local drag queen's birthday show, in a notoriously hostile city's safe harbor of queer joy, minutes before the clock struck midnight on the eve of Trans Day of Remembrance. The cruel symbolism of a massacre commencing the annual vigil mourning trans lives taken by a transmisogynistic and transphobic world -- made all the more palpable, all the more overpowering, all the more suffocating by the rainbow-colored shooting target at the assailant's home -- was not some mere coincidence. It was the whole point. When trans people say that philosophy isn't done in a vacuum, this is what we mean.
June 10, 2025 at 12:58 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Being a trans PhD candidate in a philosophy department means that the best day I can imagine having is one where I feel a little hope.” [5/5] @autoanon.bsky.social #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: Being a trans PhD candidate in a philosophy department means that the best day I can imagine having is one where I feel a little hope. -- Autogyniphiles_Anonymous. Being Trans in Philosophy is a zine edited by two trans women collecting first-personal accounts of what it's actually like to be trans or to have trans kids as a philosopher, with a focus on the material, on-the-ground consequences of academic philosophy’s role as perhaps the main discipline providing intellectual cover for a global transmisogynistic and transphobic moral panic. Sign up for email updates as we launch the zine this month at being.transinphilosophy.org.
June 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
#beingtransinphilosophy “means losing productivity because you let a trans friend stay on your couch for a month so she wouldn’t end up homeless again—because somehow, despite making 13k USD/yr, you are considerably more financially secure & more stably housed than most of the trans community.” 4/5
Text continues: It means rewatching Schindler’s List and knowing on a painfully practical level that he was the exception. It means rereading Sara Ahmed’s Complaint!, again, because somehow that book has become your comfort item. It means crying so hard that you cannot work. It means losing productivity because you let a trans friend stay on your couch for a month so she wouldn’t end up homeless again—because somehow, despite making 13,000 USD a year, you are considerably more financially secure and more stably housed than most of the trans community. It means feeling like the “perish” in “publish or perish” isn’t a metaphor.
June 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
#beingtransinphilosophy “means scratching off the United Kingdom, and then the United States, as a possibility when you start your job market search. It means googling where else has English-language universities where you might have human rights.” [3/5] @autoanon.bsky.social
Text continues: It means witnessing your union abandon their trans policy, your university its DEI policy. It means scratching off the United Kingdom, and then the United States, as a possibility when you start your job market search. It means googling where else has English-language universities where you might have human rights. It means cancelling conference talks where it is just too big a risk to travel. It means wishing colleagues well as they leave for opportunities you did not apply for because you cannot go there. It means taking calculated risks and going when your wife, your father, and your mother all begged you to stay home. It means watching your own “safe” country slide towards your annihilation while knowing deep down no one is going to offer you a job here anyways—a job that could save your life.
June 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“[Being a trans philosophy grad student] means listening to your trans colleague discuss the finer points of dumpster diving for dinner as your department votes to fund AI research rather than marginalized grad students.” [2/5] @autoanon.bsky.social #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: It means that there is no help finding mentors. It means watching “ally” professors promote the work of your cis colleagues while your publications remain unmentioned, and probably unread. It means watching as they dismiss each complaint brought to them. It means standing in the distance while you watch the department’s latest golden boy (more like golden calf) is loudly applauded and lauded with money and support while you shrivel like a raisin, unattended and uncared-for on the vine. It means listening to your trans colleague discuss the finer points of dumpster diving for dinner as your department votes to fund AI research rather than marginalized grad students.
June 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Being a trans grad student philosopher means being ignored -- by your department, by your supervisors. It means constantly wanting to beg and scream and fight and cry, but having to maintain a professional tone.” [1/5] @autoanon.bsky.social #beingtransinphilosophy
Picture of black text set in typewriter front on white background: Being a trans grad student philosopher means being ignored—by your department, by your supervisors. It means constantly wanting to beg and scream and fight and cry, but having to maintain a professional tone. It means not knowing who is safe to cry in front of, or which professor, if any, you can go to for support. It means dropping classes when the professor begins to brag about his decades’ long friendship with noted transphobes. It means being kept at arm's length while other female students get hugs from their supervisor after a hard day. It means becoming the department bitch, the killjoy, when all you want is their acceptance. It means watching the room get silent and awkward when you show up to a departmental event.
June 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Once philosophy benefits from relentlessly heckling its hack practitioners, the discipline can thank trans philosophers by throwing us a banquet at the APA.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [6/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: Once philosophy benefits from relentlessly heckling its hack practitioners, the discipline can thank trans philosophers by throwing us a banquet at the APA. -- Amy Marvin Being Trans in Philosophy is a zine edited by two trans women collecting first-personal accounts of what it's actually like to be trans or to have trans kids as a philosopher. Sign up for email updates at being.transinphilosophy.org
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Philosophy as a discipline should abandon the many ways it has coddled transphobic philosophers and equalize the role of gadfly rather than create a one-sided trial that trans people can never satisfy.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [5/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: When the comedian points you out to the rest of the room as a source of laughter, they also open themselves up to be heckled. It is only fair. Likewise, philosophy as a discipline should abandon the many ways it has coddled transphobic philosophers and equalize the role of gadfly rather than create a one-sided trial that trans people can never satisfy.
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“If we want better philosophy spaces, we should aim to support trans philosophy as a kind of anti-hack philosophy.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [4/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: The best response to hack comedy is to create communities of comedy practice that foster artistic growth and experimentation. Likewise, if we want better philosophy spaces, we should aim to support trans philosophy as a kind of anti-hack philosophy. We should also view transphobic philosophy like we would view crowd work.
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Transphobic philosophy is hack philosophy when it has been reduced from a form of inquiry to a mere tool of reactionary governance where the conclusions lead to premises and the argument is about justifying arbitrary state power.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [3/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: Second, transphobic philosophy is hack philosophy because it is frequently an outgrowth from gamified engagements with social media (I think many of them are simply lonely and want attention). Third, transphobic philosophy is hack philosophy when it has been reduced from a form of inquiry to a mere tool of reactionary governance where the conclusions lead to premises and the argument is about justifying arbitrary state power.
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Transphobic philosophers frequently appeal to an aesthetics of clarity that disguises crank statements as a kind of culturally beautiful series of intuitions that may or may not reflect reality.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [2/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Text continues: First, it is hack because transphobic philosophers are merely following the inertia of the culture they were raised in and moralizing in favor of the social groups they are comfortable with. Transphobic philosophers frequently appeal to an aesthetics of clarity that disguises crank statements as a kind of culturally beautiful series of intuitions that may or may not reflect reality.
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“In comedy spaces, I think we would call transphobic philosophy a kind of hack philosophy.” @amymarvin.bsky.social [1/6] #beingtransinphilosophy
Picture of black text set in typewriter font on white background: I've always felt like a fly on the wall in philosophy spaces, both as someone watching and listening and as someone who is frequently conceived of as a disgusting interloper to be swatted. Transphobic philosophy, which consists of many different approaches and styles, can be a helpful way to understand the meaning and limits of contemporary philosophy as a social practice. In comedy spaces, I think we would call transphobic philosophy a kind of hack philosophy.
June 4, 2025 at 8:07 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“Philosophy will only be truly accessible when junior trans people are able to build careers free of harassment and discrimination, and when out trans academics stop being held to higher standards than their cis peers.” -- Ray Briggs #beingtransinphilosophy
A picture of black text set in typewriter font on white background: I've seen multiple trans friends quit philosophy because they didn't feel valued or respected. I am doing okay professionally and personally, but that's not evidence that the discipline is generally habitable for trans people. I have tenure and a great support network. I built a lot of resources before coming out, which probably helped. No one should have to wait until tenure to come out, and not everyone can. Philosophy will only be truly accessible when junior trans people are able to build careers free of harassment and discrimination, and when out trans academics stop being held to higher standards than their cis peers. The text continues: Sometimes, it feels like my existence in the discipline is taken as evidence that all of the trans people complaining about and repelled by the discipline are wrong. I've had people approach me to say awful things about trans women in particular, based on the assumption that I am one of the nice, rational trans people, while this or that trans woman is hysterical and emotional. I hate this. It feels like I am being offered an insultingly small bribe to sell out people I love.  Ray Briggs I had days where I was spat at in the streets, then had to go to class and listen to discussions about whether or not trans people should be considered ... The text continues: ... part of the gender they identify with. I developed a habit of arriving late so I could use the restroom while everyone else was already in class -- only to be scolded for being late. My body internalized the hatred and developed chronic bladder infections, which eventually made it impossible for me to work -- right after I had fought my way to a degree as the only openly trans person in philosophy in the city where I lived at the time. I watched from the sidelines as things unfolded, only to see support grow for those targeting trans people. I've only recently reentered philosophy, but I now live with a constant fear: that if I say the wrong thing, I'll be pushed out of the network again and left with no real job prospects. The text continues: To be fair, I'm not alone anymore -- there are other trans philosophers now, and some non-trans philosophers who are genuinely trying to make a difference. But I fear it's not enough. Anonymous Being Trans in Philosophy is a zine edited by two trans women collecting first-personal accounts of what it's actually like to be trans or to have trans kids as a philosopher, with a focus on the material, on-the-ground consequences of academic philosophy's role as perhaps the main discipline providing intellectual cover for a global transmisogynistic and transphobic moral panic. Sign up for email updates at being.transinphilosophy.org.
June 4, 2025 at 12:12 AM
being.transinphilosophy.org
“When [my tween] socially transitioned in the second grade, years ago now, other kids in the class didn’t blink an eye. Zero bullying. Now bullies run the show—in dominant online spaces in our discipline, in our state legislature, in the U.S. government.” @beegs1.bsky.social #beingtransinphilosophy
black text in typewriter font on white background, as a sneak peek of the Being Trans in Philosophy zine, forthcoming in June 2025: Talia Mae Bettcher talks about the WTF of existence—where up becomes down and down becomes up. I can't begin to say how much this captures my experience as a parent of a trans kid right now. My tween is kind, funny, talented, ambitious. He is a shining light that cheers me up every single day. I don't know how anyone could find fault with him, could look into his eyes and see him as anything but authentic, as deserving of love and respect for who he really is. text continues: When he socially transitioned in the second grade, years ago now, other kids in the class didn't blink an eye. Zero bullying. Now bullies run the show—in dominant online spaces in our discipline, in our state legislature, in the U.S. government. State law bars kids like him from playing sports. It is illegal for him to use the bathroom associated with his gender identity at school. Just last month, my kid lost access to gender-affirming healthcare at our local hospital. text continues: Still, my child is thriving. Our community is there for us. Each morning that we wake up, go about our day, feels like an act of resistance. Increasingly I find myself staring out the window of my office in the philosophy department, gorgeous mountains rising in the background, crying. It's a lot: sitting with the cruelty, the uncertainty of how far persecution will go, what to do.
May 24, 2025 at 3:47 PM
being.transinphilosophy.org
Instagram permanently deleted our account after one short day and two vague suspensions because of free speech or something
Screenshot of an email under Instagram's logo: We disabled your account, beingtransinphilosophy Hi beingtransinphilosophy, We reviewed your account and found that it still doesn’t follow our Community Standards. As a result, your account has been permanently disabled. Learn how our Community Standards help keep the Instagram community an authentic and respectful place for people to express themselves. from Meta
May 24, 2025 at 1:30 AM
being.transinphilosophy.org
Trans people and our loved ones are not okay -- in, with, and because of academic philosophy. #beingtransinphilosophy tells these stories firsthand.
Picture with three paragraphs of black text on white background in typewriter font: Being Trans in Philosophy is a zine collecting first-personal accounts of what it's actually like to be trans or to have trans kids as a philosopher. Our stories highlight the material, on-the-ground consequences of academic philosophy's role as perhaps the main discipline providing intellectual cover for a global transmisogynistic and transphobic moral panic -- one that has been increasingly institutionalized into laws and policies. Forthcoming June 2025
May 23, 2025 at 11:42 PM
willow-starr.bsky.social
#beingtransinphilosophy
being.transinphilosophy.org Being Trans in Philosophy @being.transinphilosophy.org · Jun 16
“Because even if philosophy is always too late, when the owl of
Minerva flies at dusk she knows, ‘One is not born, but rather
becomes, woman.’ And sometimes you don't become one.” WE LAUNCH TOMORROW ⚡️
June 16, 2025 at 9:13 PM