Read on Twitter
One day of a twitter poll is not scientifically conclusive, but I was able to make some observations about my polls yesterday.
One is that the discussion of transfem publishing professionals was all centered on very small, usually new, indie presses.
One is that the discussion of transfem publishing professionals was all centered on very small, usually new, indie presses.
Some—most? All?—of these were made specifically to create a place FOR trans women and transfeminine people in publishing because there has not already been a place.
Another observation was that almost none of the presses I heard about are romance presses and often didn’t seem to have romance as a major part of their lists. This isn’t a criticism of those presses.
Another observation was that a there were at least a few false positives on the poll, maybe more than I know, because some cis editors found it remarkable to have worked with a trans woman author and so they pushed “yes.”
That’s not what I asked but it still tells me something.
That’s not what I asked but it still tells me something.
It also seems that most people who saw the polls and who were non-transfeminine authors who had trade published books with transfem characters were not offered sensitivity readers because of those characters.
To my knowledge, it remains true that there are almost no trans female/transfeminine authors of mainstream adult romance, but many of “fringe” romance or who are still struggling to find publication or an audience.
Just as important, to my knowledge there are no trans female in-house editors/department heads in Big 5 or major small presses, no trans female literary agents I’ve been able to find, and few if any staff in companies not specifically designed to include than women from the start
Nearly every published adult romance with one or more trans female leads I can think of is written by a cis person or non-transfeminine trans person. YA romance in this regard is still not notable in its presence, though bigger.
When you take all this in mind with the general lack of effort for both general trans inclusion in romance I and others have noted, the specific lack of understanding of and fight against transmisogyny in romance communities, and the socioeconomic barriers against trans women—
—it’s not hard to see why there’s a dearth. And it’s not hard to see that there is a systemic problem, even relative to trans representation in the romance industry on the whole. And that problem of systemic transmisogyny continues to go unaddressed.
A majority of people on, for example, romance-centric social media don’t even seem to know what the word transmisogyny means.
I also really notice the general silence that arises whenever I talk about these problems. I don’t say that with hatred, I also understand my account is pretty small, I’m a debut author, etc. But I often feel almost completely alone in this.
Romance as an industry and a genre has many problems within it, and one of them is a distinctive transmisogyny problem that goes largely unrecognized.
I hope some of my colleagues and friends in the romance genre and industry will take a look at this thread and other observations I’ve made about this because I’m hoping that this will become better understood over time.
If you found this thread informative or useful, especially if you are cis and a romance author, please RT!
