The Transfeminine Review

Hey y’all, Happy Thanksgiving. I hope all of my American followers are having a restful vacation and get the chance to take their mind off of current events for a few days. That being said! There’s a lot going on right now and lots to be done to rise to the current political moment, so I’ve got a couple quick suggestions that I wanted to share with you today. All three of these things (well, definitely the first and third) are quick and easy ways that you can take action against the escalating censorship threat facing transliterary communities right now. Only the second one is time-sensitive, so take it at your own pace ❤

1. #1 – Download a Printable Zine Edition of The Trans Literature Preservation Project
2. #2 – Join Julia Serano’s #LGBTQNotGoingBack Action on Dec. 3rd
3. #3 – Add Three Pieces of Trans Media to Your Microlibrary

#1 – Download a Printable Zine Edition of The Trans Literature Preservation Project

After I published “The Trans Literature Preservation Project: A Practical Guide to Resisting Censorship,” I had a lot of people ask me if there would be a print edition that people could reproduce as a zine and pass around. Well, I’m pleased to say, there now is! Huge shout-out to E.T. for putting this together, it’s a gorgeous little booklet and was typeset using Atkinson Hyperlegible for maximum accessibility.

Here’s a list of instructions for how to print this out and make/distribute your own in-person paper copies of the zine:

1. The TLPP Zine is designed to be printed on standard printer paper in black and white! All you need is a printer, black ink/toner, and 22 sheets of 8.5×11 printer paper of any variety. Remember that I give some advice about safe printing practices in this section of the article – I would strongly recommend reading that before you try to print a lot of copies.
2. Make sure that you use the following settings when you print: Landscape orientation, double-sided, flip on the short end. You may have to futz with your settings a bit to make sure you get all of that. For reasons outlined in the section I just mentioned, I would recommend using a black-and-white laser printer for this, though ultimately whatever you have will work.
3. The biggest challenge you’ll probably have, as I did, is binding it together. Your average stapler won’t be able to reach the middle of the page, and 44 sheets is too wide for an average staple to get through if you fold it in half. If you’re only printing one copy, whatever you find most convenient should be fine; but if you’re trying to print in bulk, I would recommend looking for a longer stapler like this one.

You can check out the cover image for this article to see what a printed copy of the zine looks like!

Please feel free to distribute as many copies of this as you want. This is my gift and resource to the community – no payment or permission needed whatsoever. If you’re the sort of person (like me) who feels awkward about doing things without express and explicit permission, consider it given. You’re welcome to sell paper copies of the zine if you print them.

Some quick math for anyone considering printing this zine out in bulk (if you’re a bookstore, bookseller, have a lot of friends, etc.): 500 sheets of printer paper typically costs about $8 as of November 2024, which means you should be able to print 22 copies on a single ream. A high-yield black & white toner cartridge costs about $90 and can print ~3000 pages – ink and toner costs are obviously variable, but that’s what the model I recommend in the article uses. 3000 sheets of paper would be about $50; toss in supplementary supplies and tax and whatnot, and you could probably print about 125 copies of the zine around $150, maybe a little more. If you don’t have a laser printer, you can get a cheap one for about $150, which would bump the overhead up to around $300. Taken as a baseline, that means that it would cost about $2.50/zine to print the zine in bulk (of over 100 units) at best efficiency, and about $1.25/zine if you already have a usable printer. If you get thrify, you could almost certainly do it for less. Feel free to take that into consideration if you’re thinking about putting copies in your bookstore or convention table or whatever.

If you didn’t click the button earlier, you can download the zine right here:

#2 – Join Julia Serano’s #LGBTQNotGoingBack Action on Dec. 3rd

Two days ago, esteemed transfeminine author Julia Serano (Whipping Girl, 99 Erics) put out an open call to action for all LGBTQ+ people and their allies on December 3rd, 2024. If you haven’t read the call, I would recommend checking out the full article here.

Serano does a great job at laying out why this proposed action has the power to make a meaningful difference:

Given Democrats recent reluctance on this issue, we must remind them that they *need* us. LGBTQ+ people represented 8% of all U.S. voters and voted for Harris at 86% according to 2024 exit polls. Democrats cannot win future nationwide elections without us. And if they won’t defend our basic rights to participate freely in society, then they do not deserve our votes!

I was canvassing on the ground in Philadelphia during this election cycle for the Democrats, and I am far from alone in my disappointment and rage with the way that liberal politicians have been acting in the context of both the McBride bathroom controversy and trans issues more broadly. Their silence speaks volumes, and if they won’t stand up for me, then I certainly won’t be campaigning for them in 2026 or beyond. My article on December 3rd will clearly and directly communicate this, and I want to invite anybody else who’s been dismayed, outraged, or quietly resigned in the wave of the recent news cycles and anti-trans action to add their voices to the choir and stand together with us in support of trans rights and trans liberation.

Here’s what December 3rd will look like in more detail:

I propose that on Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024 (the first day that both the House and Senate are back in session), all of us who are invested in this issue and have a platform (whether it be a blog, newsletter, column, podcast, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) publish a piece with the shared title: “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.” Yes, I know, it’s a cheesy title, but it holds Democrats accountable to their own talking points and makes it clear that backsliding on LGBTQ+ rights is nonnegotiable for us.

What you write or say or express in your op-ed or article or video or podcast etcetera is up to you. I encourage you to make it personal and feel free to tailor it to your audience. My only request (other than all of us using the same title) is that you implore people to contact their Congressperson and Senators (and perhaps even local politicians) and tell them that 1) you will not tolerate any backpedaling on LGBTQ+ rights whatsoever, and 2) if they fail to strongly stand up against these attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, then you will take your vote elsewhere next election.

I’ll be publishing an article titled “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back” on December 3rd, and I would urge you to do so too. Some additional considerations:

You don’t need to wait until December to contact your representatives. Start now. Call them every day. Get your friends and family involved. Be annoying about it. You can find your representatives here. If anyone has and/or wants to make call scripts, I am happy to include them here.

Involve your friends and family. Make sure anyone in your life who might supports LGBT rights knows this is happening! Even if they only repost the article or use the hashtag, their support still matters.

Ask your favorite LGBTQ+ creators to participate. If you’re a fan or follower of a queer content creator with a platform, you can reach out to them and ask them to publish their own #LGBTQNotGoingBack article on Dec. 3rd.

Here’s my call to action – let’s make sure that we talk about censorship and free speech on December 3rd! This is a crucial issue that affects everyone, and a Republican criminalization of trans speech under Project 2025 will have repercussions far beyond the trans publishing industry. I’ll be talking about it in my article, and I hope that you will too.

If you haven’t yet, you can read the call-to-action here:

#3 – Add Three Pieces of Trans Media to Your Microlibrary

No time like the present!

As I outlined in my article about how to build your microlibrary, building a steady preservation habit is the most effective way to safeguard trans media from censorship.

If you can preserve three pieces of trans media every day (books, articles, videos, or anything else), your microlibrary can make a big difference!

So let’s make it fun! Here are a bunch of ideas for how you can add your three pieces of the day:

• Comment your favorite genre or style of trans media down below, then go add three pieces in that genre/style to your library! You don’t have to have read them before. Add them now, and you’ll be glad to have it later :))
• Take advantage of itch.io’s Black Friday sale to get DRM-free e-books! On Friday, November 29th, 100% of profits will go to the creators, so now is a better time than ever!
• Do you like reading fanfiction? You can download entire fics through Archives of Our Own, so if you’ve got any trans favorites, now’s a great time to save them to your computer.
• Choose your own adventure! Everything counts ❤

Have you added your three pieces for the day already? Then get some good sleep, have a restful holidays if you’re in the US, and then wake up tomorrow and add three more!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Beth

LAST WEDNESDAY: #8 – Observing Trans Day of Remembrance

NEXT WEDNESDAY: #10 – Trans Literature Doesn’t Require Big Tech to Organize