TRANS (Transgender Resiliency Affirming News Source) wants trans storytellers who can cover our trans community underrepresented by mainstream media outlets. Journalism, communications and English majors alike as well as anyone else who love to write are welcome to submit ideas! Your by-line for published pieces can be a pseudonym, your chosen name or legal name. We reserve the right to prioritize pitches and submissions by undergrad, grad, post-grad and law students, differently-abled individuals and BIPOC. Most importantly, you must be trans or gender nonbinary. The keyword here is "underrepresented" because Laverne Cox, Eliot Page, Rachel Levine and Sarah McBride, etc. are all beloved but overcovered by the entertainment and news media. Pitch us your ideas, send us links to your published pieces (if any and even unrelated to trans issues) and then share this form with other trans and gender nonbinary folx in your social circle.

TRANS creates a long-due space for original content, including news, features, commentary, video interviews, photo essays and opinions written/ produced by trans and gender nonbinary individuals. TRANS fills the void in telling our stories (about us, ordinary trans people) underreprented by the mainstream media outlets that most often give us news coverage when some of us get murdered or have to take legal action to protect our rights. We also aim to put an end to news coverage on trans issues with quotes from sources who are not trans, but rather advocates for pay, "experts," talking heads and politicians as such misrepresentation can cause additional harm to trans community. Mainstream media's excessive coverage of some trans issues without inclusion of trans voices dehumanizes trans people by normalizing public debates about trans bodies and making trans people's private matters (bathroom and surgery, etc.) public discourse, disregards trans autonomy and provokes backlash from both the right and left political aisles.

TRANS seeks and trains the next generation of journalists, as young as 18-year-old students, to arm them with empathy, sensitivity, knowledge and practices applicable to accurate and ethical media representation of trans community. TRANS definitely will call out media outlets that print a trans person's deadname, misgender murdered trans people who cannot speak for themselves and sensationalize trans people's suffering for the industry's advertisement revenue. We aim to cure transphobia in the media and society at large, using one prose at a time. To heal our collective traumas, we must first acknowledge them. TRANS spreads the positive message that we are strong because of, not despite of, our struggles. With our plight comes our pride.

Currently, we are very interested in publishing human-interest stories, profiles of ordinary trans people who accomplish extraordinary things and otherwise uplifting narratives about trans people in DC and MD. Perhaps a trans person rose from homelessness and now owns their business, goes to grad school or volunteers at COVID vaccine distribution site, etc. With that person's permission, the person could be your subject. See some of the text content we posted on TRANS. Will you instead be submitting your original work of photography or photo essay? We also are open to other ideas so tell us about them!

NOTE: We do not publish anything developed purely for advertising and promoting products, services or political activities. We reserve the right to reject or remove from TRANS site anything that incites microagression, prejudice, violence and hate against marginalized communities, including racism, xenophobia, ableism, sexism, misogyny, classism, heteronormativity, homophobia, biphobia, (needless to say) cisnormativity, transmisogyny and transphobia.

This is the form for submission of your ideas for developing them as written or digital media pieces. To get involved as an editorial collective member, by volunteering to do fact-checking, proofreading, editing and web design/ admin, please fill out a Trans Comrades Wanted! form at the link: https://forms.gle/11fjDu1vHH9xJBtc9