Download a PDF version of this call at https://speaktruth.llc/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CFP-42-percent-project...

I propose a collection of personal essays, autoethnographies, poems, calls to action, manifestos, testimonios, short stories, and other original written works by transgender people personally affected by suicide. Let’s give voice to the oft-cited statistics about the epidemic of suicidality within trans communities, particularly two-spirit, trans, non-binary, intersex, and genderfluid youth and Indigenous and multiracial trans folx. This collection is neither a naïve promise that “It Gets Better” (without radical social change) nor a space for “trauma porn” to glorify suicide, death, and suffering.

Over a decade ago, health and social science researchers provided the first estimates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts among trans people in the US. The statistic of 40-42% of trans adults who reported attempting suicide at least once in their lives has since inched toward 50% (and 80% who have considered it) in the last couple of years. And yet, the statistics no longer feel significant in terms of trans consciousness raising and empowerment, for mobilizing our cis allies to keep fighting cissexism, nor in informing policy change.

Truthfully, It Got Worse for trans people since the “Trans Tipping Point” declared on a Laverne Cox-donned Time magazine cover in 2014. Transphobia became one of the Right’s favorite political tools. Perhaps worst of all, online trolls have created memes mocking the trans suicide statistics, even weaponizing them to “invite” trans people to unalive themselves.

The statistics are somewhat detached from human experience… and perhaps are even dehumanizing to trans people, flattening a great deal of diversity in our communities. And, yet, skeptical cisnormative gatekeepers allowing accessing to gender affirming care on the condition that we are Happy Trans People leaves no room, politically speaking, to experience our full humanity as people who sometimes despair.

What if we move shame-filled private confessions of personal struggles with suicide to loved ones and therapists and criminal justice officials to a collective forum on a pervasive feature of the trans experience under cissexism? What if we shift exclusive emphasis from mental illness among trans individuals to the dehumanizing conditions of the society in which we live?

During this global spread of cissexist genocidal fantasies, we will go on record with our side of the story. The 42 Percent Project anthology will be a cultural artifact to include in ongoing efforts to record trans history as it unfolds. Trans people were here. We will not be erased.

SUGGESTIONS FOR TOPICS

This project is an experiment in many ways -- so, this is a pretty wide open call in terms of topics and format. I would like to offer a few prompts that may serve as inspiration, if desired:

•    Write to or about a loved one or stranger (e.g., Blake Brockington, Corei Hall, Leelah Alcorn, Eden Knight) who died by suicide.
•    What is lost when we assume trans, non-binary, genderfluid, two-spirt, intersex, and agender people experience suicidality because of their gender identity or (exclusively) because of cissexist rejection and violence?
•    Reflect on suicidality through an intersectional lens, bringing in white supremacy, femmephobia, classism, mass incarceration, being unhoused, fatphobia, misogynoir, sexual violence, nationalism, ageism, Islamophobia, ableism, and other systems and manifestations of violence.
•    Is suicidal ideation a (statistically) normal milestone for trans youth?  
•    What do we stand to learn from suicidality as a shared cultural experience?
•    What can our individual stories tell us about transness/gender, transness/gender and mental illness, transness/gender and family, rage, grief, hate, love, etc.
•    Can we find trans community, kinship, and self-determination through shared experiences with suicidality? Have we already found chosen family and friends via suicide and mental illness, our numbers overrepresented among those institutionalized in psych wards, partial hospitalization programs, jail cells, and shelters?
•    Reflect on suicidality as a possible site for activism or consciousness-raising, or suicide prevention as a trans justice issue.
•    Write about your experiences with suicide hotlines, hospitals, criminal justice system, therapists, pharmacists, social workers, educators, related to experience of suicidality. How are these systems failing us? How should they be transformed – or, if abolished, what should be take their places?
•    Offer a narrative that shifts suicidality as a failure of a trans person’s mind to one of a failure (or success?) of cisnormative institutions (including the cishet family) and social norms.
•    Reflect on the failures (or successes) of cis-dominated LGBTQ communities, movements, and organizations, and/or those of trans, two-spirit, and intersex organizations, movements, and communities, to support trans people affected by suicide.

SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT

First, submit an abstract to propose your written contribution to the 42 Percent Project anthology. Note what type of original written work you intend to submit (e.g., personal essay, poems, autoethnography for accessible audience, short story). And, briefly describe what readers may take away, what you may get or experience from publishing your proposed piece, how it contributes to a broader storytelling project of trans folx affected by suicide, etc. Submit abstracts using the following Google form: https://forms.gle/Rbnp15LykNvxVQHp6

Contributors must be two-spirit, trans, non-binary, intersex, agender, and/or genderfluid. I invite those who have been personally affected by suicide in some self-defined way (e.g., own or others’ attempts, suicide advocacy work, suicide as a trans community-wide concern).

No prior writing experience is necessary, and I will provide feedback along the way.

Multi-authored, anonymous and pseudonymous (using a pen name) piece will be considered. (Again, this precludes cisgender authors.)

TIMELINE

(This is subject to changes – if any, usually extended deadlines)

• Deadline for abstracts: Monday, September 30, 2024
• Anticipated decision date: Friday, November 1, 2024
• Anticipated deadline for first draft: Friday, January 31, 2025

SELECTION PROCESS

At the initial stage, I’ll review submitted abstracts to assess the following:

1)    Has the author proposed a coherent, original written work that relates to a collective discussion of suicide within trans communities?
2)    Would at least some parts of the trans population be interested in reading this proposed work if published?
3)    Does the proposed work have potential resonance with other possible selections for the anthology? Or, would the author benefit from considering publishing their piece elsewhere?

I will respond to each submission with a decision and explanation, which could include an invitation to revise the proposed work to better fit the scope of the 42 Percent Project.

The possible themes or sections of the final book will be informed by the selected piece. I also plan to consult with trans-focused suicide prevention advocates and other trans advocacy organizations, trans-serving mental health providers, and researchers of trans suicidality and mental health to frame the overall project.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Denise! Denise! (they/she) is a “neuronasty” multiracial fat queer non-binary femme suicide attempt survivor. They have lived with chronic mental illness and occasional suicidal ideation since the childhood. Denise is a former sociology & gender + sexuality studies professor, having co-authored anthologies Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability, and Resistance and recently Conditionally Accepted: Navigating Higher Education from the Margins. It took a suicide attempt in 2021 to finally leave a deeply cissexist, white supremacist liberal arts college in Richmond, Virginia. She is now a full-time soloproneur as an academic justice consultant and anti-racist trans liberation consultant. Email: denise@thehouseofdenise.com

Source: https://speaktruth.llc/42percent/

Submit abstracts using the following Google form: https://forms.gle/Rbnp15LykNvxVQHp6