Trans women are building their own publishing world, and it’s under threat
By Talia BhattOct 15, 2025, 8:39 PM GMT+1LinkFacebookThreadsWhile 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. “Our stories simply don’t get published,” says M Zakharuk, a fellow author of lesbian fiction, of discussions she’s had with acquiring editors. “It’s quite common…
