Being Trans in Philosophy

@being.transinphilosophy.org

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APA Pacific Free Online Zine Reading + Launch Party: Apr 11, 2026 Trans people & our loved ones are not okay—in, with, and because of academic philosophy. #beingtransinphilosophy tells these stories firsthand. https://being.transinphilosophy.org

For Zoom info visit LIVE.TRANSINPHILOSOPHY.ORG

Passcode: APAP2026

Meeting ID: 86219912139

Public Sessions
The 2026 APA Pacific Division meeting will include four sessions that are
free and open to the public without registration. Descriptions, dates, and
direct Zoom links for these sessions appear below. All meeting times are in
Pacific Time.
Zoom Meeting Password: APAP2026
INVITED SYMPOSIUM: THE ETHICS OF ONLINE CONFERENCING: A TRIBUTE
TO HELEN DE CRUZ (5A)
Thursday, April 9, 4:00–5:50 p.m.
https://us06web.zoom.us/s/81834872823
PHILOSOPHERS FOR SUSTAINABILITY, SESSION 1 (G6A)
Friday, April 10, 8:00–9:50 a.m.
https://us06web.zoom.us/s/86300660500
TASKFORCE ON CONTINGENT FACULTY REPORT (8F)
Friday, April 10, Noon–1:50 p.m.
https://us06web.zoom.us/s/83840568597
INVITED SYMPOSIUM: BEING TRANS IN PHILOSOPHY ZINE (13D)
Saturday, April 11, Noon–1:50 p.m.
https://us06web.zoom.us/s/86219912139

April 11, 2026: 12-1:50 PDT / 3-4:50 EDT / 7-8:50 UTC. Being Trans in Philosophy, a zine for and by trans people in the discipline, brings you a live reading and launch party at the 2026 virtual meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division. Free online! Public access Zoom link to be posted on https://being.transinphilosophy.org. Readings by: Imogen Sullivan, Ding, Erin Beeghly, Alex Adamson, Emmie Malone, Amy Marvin, Willow Starr, Roshni Truax, and Perry Zurn.

April 11, 2026: 12-1:50 PDT / 3-4:50 EDT / 7-8:50 UST. Being Trans in Philosophy, a zine for and by trans people in the discipline, brings you a live reading and launch party at the 2026 virtual meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division. Free online! Public access Zoom link to be posted on https://being.transinphilosophy.org. Readings by: Imogen Sullivan, Ding,
Erin Beeghly, Alex Adamson, Emmie Malone, Amy Marvin, Willow Starr, Roshni Truax, and Perry Zurn.

QT (queer, trans, & fellow feminists, allies, underlings) Smoker, dm for location. Fri 1/9/26, 9pm-??. Eastern APA, Baltimore. Brought to you by Being Trans in Philosophy.

call for pitches & questions! For the spring 2026 edition of being trans in philosophy called “#1 issue: the job market”. Submit pitches & questions by Dec 20th to our website: https://being.transinphilosophy.org.

Phot of the Trans in Philosophy zine spotted on a table at the Diversity Reading List 10th Anniversary conference, under the conference program booklet.

Photo of a page from the Being Trans in Philosophy zine, showing a “grammar lesson” under a gender-neutral sign and the text “they (singular)”: ‘They’ is versatile! In its singular use, it can be used to refer to a person (or thing) without the needless trappings of grammatical gender. For example: “I saw someone at the march. They had a sign that said ‘All my homies hate ICE.’” BUT, when it’s in the mood, ‘they’ can switch to a plural meaning, for example: “I saw two women kissing at the march. They had shirts on that said ‘I love it when girls.’” This latest example also illustrates the distinction between grammatical gender and social gender: ‘they’ refers to two women (social gender) but is gender-neutral (grammatical gender). Some novices in gender and language make the mistake of believing that grammatical gender refers to some Real Gender or even... SEX. But all my homies know that’s silly.

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 black background reads: “Philosophical conversations about trans people do not happen in a vacuum. They happen in a political context where trans people are relentlessly attacked and a material context where trans lives are particularly vulnerable. These contexts make it impossible to "just ask questions" about trans people. And trans people and our loved ones are not okay -- in, with, and because of our discipline.” Below the text are pictures of melting smiley faces, chain links, and socrates looking at to masculine queer people embracing.

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.

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."

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: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A picture of black text set in typewriter font on white background:

What is it like to be a table in a discipline that has been busy writing table-burning instructions?

Being Trans in Philosophy, issue #0, tells stories from eighteen (18!) trans philosophers and philosopher-parents of trans kids in our own words, aided and abetted ("edited") by two of your darling trans women still in philosophy.

We are delighted to share that the zine is on track for a MID-JUNE LAUNCH. We'll post more sneak peeks in the coming weeks, hand out copies at conferences, and make PDFs and printing instructions freely available online. We are also exploring the feasibility of mailing a limited number of copies.

Sign up for email updates: being.transinphilosophy.org.

With love,
Ding and Willow Starr

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.

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