In 2025, broad legislative and cultural backlash is focused on eliminating even the idea of trans people from public space. When public space is inaccessible, online communities have, for more than the past twenty years, been a place where trans people can still find one another, self-represent, and build their own publics. Now the walled world of the app economy, organized personal attacks, discriminatory social media algorithms, ID verification laws, and government intervention are changing the internet too. At such a moment, understanding the ways that trans people navigate their digital worlds is more important than ever.

Yet this crisis also reveals a deeper truth: trans people are at the heart of the internet. From the history of trans involvement with the very invention and proliferation of our digital media technologies, to commentary on meme and cancel culture, to digital re-mediations of the body, to understanding anti-trans radicalization, understanding how trans people live, and thrive, online has much to teach us about gender and about our digital systems themselves.

This volume invites essays from practitioners of transgender, feminist, media, and digital studies to provide an analytical and insightful snapshot of trans life online at the current, watershed moment. Unlike existing scholarship that treats transgender identity and digital culture as separate domains, Dispatches from the Trans Internet insists that understanding contemporary trans life is inseparable from understanding how digital platforms shape identity, community, and political struggle.

We welcome chapters that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• Trans histories of the internet

• Digital surveillance and the state, internet ID laws, privacy & security

• Social media use, misuse, algorithms, policies, & platforms

• AI, LLMs & machine learning 

• Anti-trans rhetoric & radicalization, political persecution, doxxing

• Online activism, support communities, transition-related information networks

• Trans games & VR, digital videos, performances, memes, fan communities

• Pornography, sex work, & sexualization

• Digital affects and approaches

Full articles should be new works of 5,000-7,000 words (including references) and be formatted according to the Chicago Manual of Style 18. We particularly encourage submissions with interdisciplinary approaches or mixed methodologies, submissions from trans, two-spirit, and gender-nonconforming scholars, BIPOC scholars, disabled scholars, and early-career researchers.

Dispatches from the Trans Internet is the inaugural publication of B1NARY Press, edited by Eliot Dunn, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California. The volume is scheduled for publication in late 2026. 

About B1NARY Press

B1NARY Press examines how digital tools, platforms, algorithms, and systems of surveillances are constantly and rapidly reshaping our bodies, our communities, our activist practices and our affective experiences. As critical scholarship in feminist, queer, trans, and masculinity studies faces increasing institutional pressure and public contestation, B1NARY Press seeks to open new space for precisely the kinds of critical and creative work which help us understand the ways we live online.  

Founded with the support of with np: Press, B1NARY’s mission is to facilitate an expanding web of transdisciplinary feminist, queer, and trans scholars and artists, embrace hybridized and experimental writing, and make room for digital innovation on the book form from interactive texts to multimedia publications. As digital platforms increasingly police and suppress marginalized voices, B1NARY stands as a committed space for radical ideas that can shape more equitable technological and social futures. Learn more at b1narypress.com

Submission Guidelines

Abstract Submission:

• Length: 300-500 words

• Include proposed title, author name(s), affiliation(s), email address, and a brief bio. Please also identify 3-5 relevant keywords.

• Deadline: December 15, 2025

Please submit your abstract (or any questions) to Eliot Dunn at dunnej [at] usc [dot] edu with the subject line "Dispatches CFP Submission.”