Missive

[missivejournal-blog]

Submission deadline: imminent!

We’re extending our submission window! Submissions to the journal will now be accepted through January 20, 2014. So send us your essays, your literature, your poetry, and your art!

Don’t know about us? Check our About Us page and our Call For Submissions!

Want to write for Missive but don’t know what to write? Check out our list of potential prompts!

[missivejournal-blog]

The submission deadline for Missive is at 11:59 p.m. EST on January 20th! If you were planning on submitting, now's the time for those finishing touches.

[missivejournal-blog]

Good News From Missive Journal!

We're extending our submission window! Submissions to the journal will now be accepted through January 20, 2014. So send us your essays, your literature, your poetry, and your art!

Don't know about us? Check our About Us page and our Call For Submissions!

Want to write for missive but don't know what to write? Check out our list of potential prompts!

[missivejournal-blog]

Missive: a Transfeminist Journal. Call for Submissions!

Missive Journal, a new publication of original transfeminist thought, is calling for submissions for it’s first issue! We’re looking for essays, poetry, short fiction, visual art, and memoir written by trans women. Most of the discourse surrounding trans women has almost nothing to do with our lived experiences, or is perpetually stuck in a state of Trans 101. The transfeminist writings which have most inspired us are ephemeral and scattered, situated as they are in various internet communities. And far too often, these conversations are derailed by an interloper almost as soon as they begin. Our aim in starting Missive is to foster a different type of conversation about our bodies and our lives. It is a place to move beyond the politics of apologism; it is a place to collect and record transfeminist works. We plan on distributing Missive as a digital file on a pay-what-you-can model, with proceeds split evenly amongst contributors. Please send submissions to [email protected] by December 31st, 2013.

[missivejournal-blog]

One week until submissions are due! Still stuck on what to write? Check out our list of prompts!

[missivejournal-blog]

what does Transmisogynistic mean? thanks! (: awsome blog btw

One of the reasons Missive was originally conceived was because there is an absence of spaces where trans women can talk about their experiences and thoughts without being asked basic trans 101 questions, questions that can be easily answered with a simple Google search.

For general trans 101 information, Tranarchism has a decent enough page. For information specifically dealing with the concept of transmisogyny, Julia Serano’s book Whipping Girl serves as one of many quality primers on the topic.

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Want to make something for Missive, but you can't think of what to make?

If you are a trans woman interested in submitting to Missive, but aren’t sure what to write, draw, photograph, or generally make art about, we’ve written some prompts. This is a non-exhaustive, non-mandatory list. Feel free to combine several of the prompts, or feel free to ignore them entirely and do your own thing! You could write about being a trans woman and how that interacts with: Class. Alienation. Race. Dis/ability. Culture. Passing culture. Respectability culture. ‘The queer community’. A/sexuality. Music by/for trans women. Appropriation of trans women. Appropriation by trans women. Appropriation of some trans women by other trans women. Nihilism and trans women. The unique relationship trans women have with the concept of the void. ‘Trans woman’ as verb, not noun. ‘Trans woman’ as noun, not verb. Whether 'trans woman' is a coherent identity term. Trans womanhood as a site / place. Trans women and critical theory. Trans women and veganism. Sex work. Trans women and/in community. The concept / execution of sex (as in “sex and gender”). The concept / execution of sex (as in “fucking”). Trans women and religion/spirituality. Trans women and magic. Are you afraid of the dark in a particularly trans womanly way? Trans women and abuse. Trans women and violence. Your feelings about the asterisk in ‘trans*’. COGIATI-based humor. Cis lesbian separatism and trans women. Trans dyke separatism. Trans women and feminism (the movement). Trans women and feminism (the ideology). Heterosexuality. The urban, the rural, the suburban, and trans women. Identifying as genderqueer before you identify as a trans woman: what's up with that? Heterosexuality and Marxism. Meditations on your experience as a TWOC. Meditations on / reactions to the term ‘TWOC’. Trans history. The role of TWOC in trans history. The role of TWOC in trans present. Whiteness and trans womanhood. Racist white trans women. Racist “anti-racist” white trans women. Transmisogynistic cis men. Transmisogynistic trans men. Transmisogynistic cis women. Transmisogynistic non-binary people. Transmisogynistic trans women. Anti-identitarian politics and trans womanhood. Women’s spaces. Womyn’s spaces. Queer and trans spaces. Trans women fighting TERFs in space (this journal accepts genre fiction!).Trans dykes in spacesuits trying to figure out how to hook up, given their alienated relationships to their own bodies, and also the fact that it is hard to hook up with someone when you are each wearing a spacesuit. Literally anything from this list from Imogen Binnie. Nationality and trans women. Just some ideas!

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Does it matter how long or short a submission is?

We're aiming for submissions under 5,000 words in length. We recognize that everyone has different writing styles, some more concise, some more meandering, but anything over 5,000 words, while we'll certainly consider it, threatens to monopolize space within the publication. On the lower end it really depends on the type of submission; a collection of poems or visual art might only take up one or two pages, but in general for something like an essay or short story, we would probably want something a bit meatier.

If you want any further clarifications, you can also always email us at [email protected]

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Hey just looking for clarification regarding whether or not submissions should have content obviously related to our gendered experiences or just anything produced by trans women? I do a lot of black and white landscape photography for example, a few examples of which I'd be happy to submit.

Thanks for asking, this is an important question.

Our impetus in creating Missive is the relative lack of platforms / venues / mediums for transfeminist thought. We’re totally exhausted with having our dialogues constantly derailed and diminished, or stuck at the 101 level of “but we really are actually women”.

There are a lot of smart trans women out there on the wilds of the internet saying a lot of smart things about being trans women, and we’d like to package some of those smart things up so that they can get more exposure.

So, yes, we are looking specifically for submissions relating to gendered experiences and/or to your understanding of transfeminism. We do not have a party line on transfeminism, and do not think a party line would be a good thing. Such a construction of transfeminism would probably serve to advance only the needs of the most privileged. We do not want to repeat the mistakes of the second-wave. We’re more interested in transfeminisms than we are in transfeminism.

This is not to say that everything submitted needs to be literary or even written. The connection to your experience as a trans woman can absolutely be an abstract one. If you have landscape photography that you feel communicates something powerful / funny / sad / smart / introspective about your experience as a trans woman, by all means, submit away (perhaps with an artist’s statement, perhaps not).

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How do we know this is legit? I don't think you've made enough information available at all

We're not sure exactly what you mean by 'not legit'; this is a small-scale operation, so, in a way, it isn't. Think less 'staff-with-funding', more 'two trans girls with experience making journals and zines, and some free time to dedicate to trying to get an audience for some talented/smart/insightful trans women'; less so academic journal, more so e-zine. To folks in general: if there is specific information that you need or want, please feel free to ask. You can either shoot us an ask here or email us at [email protected]. Also, more general information will be posted in the coming days. We'll be rolling out an About page soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

[missivejournal-blog]

Missive: a Transfeminist Journal. Call for Submissions!

Missive Journal, a new publication of original transfeminist thought, is calling for submissions for it’s first issue! We’re looking for essays, poetry, short fiction, visual art, and memoir written by trans women. Most of the discourse surrounding trans women has almost nothing to do with our lived experiences, or is perpetually stuck in a state of Trans 101. The transfeminist writings which have most inspired us are ephemeral and scattered, situated as they are in various internet communities. And far too often, these conversations are derailed by an interloper almost as soon as they begin. Our aim in starting Missive is to foster a different type of conversation about our bodies and our lives. It is a place to move beyond the politics of apologism; it is a place to collect and record transfeminist works. We plan on distributing Missive as a digital file on a pay-what-you-can model, with proceeds split evenly amongst contributors. Please send submissions to [email protected] by December 31st, 2013.