Toward a Trans[]crip Theory

1.It is early September 2024, in a laughably inaccessible classroom at Northwestern University, where Slava and Logan have gathered with a dozen other trans, disabled scholars for the Disability Caucus at the Second International Trans Studies Conference.What our group discussed during that hour was less interesting than the fact that we were discussing as a group, that there was a group with whom to discuss.It was emotional for both of us, being in that cavernous room with too many stairs hidden away in a labyrinth of a building because it was among the first times that either of us had been in physical proximity to others like us.Several attendees found their way into that room through trans, disabled interdependence, offering directions and holding open doors and clearing paths through clutter.It was not easy for any of us to be there, but there we were: undutifully spaced out, fully masked, and giddy about togetherness.It was a beautiful, emotional, and hopeful hour that left us feeling encouraged about the anti-ableist potential of trans studies.Yet the day after that meeting, as Logan noted in remarks at the conference's closing ceremony, "There were so many people for whom this conference remained inaccessible.For all the warm intimacy felt here, there was pain and longing too."For every face present at the caucus gathering, there were many more who were absent, whether owing to the cost of the conference, the inaccessibility of the space, the barriers to entering academia, or to the tension between the language of disability and other ways of naming embodyminded difference.We cannot separate the joy and relief some of us felt from the range of bad feelings necessarily absented from the room.2. Several months earlier, when Slava and Logan first shared the call for papers for this special issue, we received an outpouring of interest from scholars, organizers,