you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]whoamiwhowhowhowho 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I know you said you don't want opinions, but this needs saying: like you've said, publishing something non-affirming about trans people could be career suicide, but at least in most fields, it would also be a serious risk to your career to publish something that isn't rigorous. Your research-minded peers are not going to take anecdotal reports seriously, and using them in this way is a major risk to your credibility, even if your format is a non-peer-reviewed book. No matter how much analysis and theorizing you do about those reports, they are worthless unless you can demonstrate (statistically) that you haven't handpicked some anomalies from an otherwise normal community---especially since people are likely to suspect you are biased and possibly cherry-picking your examples since you were stalked yourself. I'm not aware of any research on that, so I can't pass any along; if you aren't able to find some yourself, you may need to do actually do that research yourself, and you're going to need funding and a longer timeframe than you're probably considering if that's the case. I mention all this because the way you've described your topic in this post does not sound rigorous enough for something you're billing as a publication by an academic. If you don't intend for it to be that way and are going for more of an exploration of anecdotes, the credentials you've mentioned will not be particularly relevant, and the book shouldn't be marketed based on them.

If you don't typically do research (as in the sort you'd publish in an academic journal), it would be wise to seek out someone in your field who is familiar with your topic and has lots of research experience who can give you feedback on your idea. If you do research regularly, send this around to sympathetic colleagues like you might with anything else to get opinions and make sure your argument is as airtight as possible. Trying to make something look academic (making it known that the author has the degrees you have, etc.) and falling short of the standards expected for something like that will probably make the hit to your reputation much worse, and it will reflect poorly on the non-affirming side of things in general.

Finally, consider that the outcome of this could be that you have very few sales, reach very few people, and still lose your job and standing in your field, especially if you have to self-publish. That might not be worth it, and you may find that doing other types of activism is more worthwhile.