The lives of transgender people are best documented in a new academic journal from Northwestern University.
The researchers say the lives of trans people have not been well represented in existing journals. The Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies(BATS) plans to change that. It launches the first academic journal to have an entirely trans editorial board.
Gender studies are in a time of massive growth, but past research does not adequately represent trans lives, said Billiards, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern, as well as the journal’s editor. For a long time, trans people have been considered objects of study for medical providers, they added.
“It’s only more recently that trans lives have really been centered as important in their own right,” Billard said.
The journal aims to go beyond typical health and medicine and instead look at the material realities of trans life: the social lives, politics and activism people participate in and believe in, they said.
The journal is open access, meaning people don’t have to pay to read or submit articles. This is in the hope that presenting the reality of trans life can combat misinformation circulating in public discourse and policy-making, Billard said.
“We hope that – to the extent that anyone engages in academic research in their spare time – that this can be a tool for people in both their personal and professional abilities to speak to trans people such as they are and approach trans experiences as they actually happen,” Billard said.