Tag: 1993

Someone please tell me how to feel about sexual liberation

Zine of the Gay

LESBIAN & GAY FREEDOM MOVEMENTIllustration of a woman having sex with a dolphin LGFM SUPPORTS DOLPHINS WHO WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH HUMANS LGFM, BM BOX 207, LONDON, WCIN 3XX. 40p
LGFM newsletter, issue #5

This week, I’m looking at four issues of the newsletter for the UK group “Lesbian And Gay Freedom Movement”, which is unfortunately very difficult to find more information on due to their pretty generic name. The content of the newsletters, however, is… definitely not generic!

QZAP holds four issues of the Lesbian And Gay Freedom Movement newsletter: #5 (Summer 1991), #6 (Summer 1992), #8 (Winter 1993), and #10 (Spring 1995). The newsletters came to QZAP via the Emma Centre, a Minneapolis infoshop that I wrote more about last week.

LGFM described themselves as “a movement to bring anarchist ideas and ideals to lesbians, gays and bisexuals, and to make sexuality and the overthrow of patriarchy major campaigning issues for all anarchists.”

The newsletter fought the respectability politics that had crept into lesbian and gay movements, criticizing a focus on legal rights rather than liberation.

In the early 90s, when these zines came out, the age of consent in England was 16 for heterosexual sex, and 21 for homosexual sex. The age of consent for gay sex was lowered to 18 in 1994, between issues #8 and #10 of this newsletter. The age of consent was only equalized across all combinations of genders in 2000. These newsletters reflect a time when debate was raging in the UK more broadly, and also within queer communities, about the role of the state in sexual ethics. As these newsletters show, queer sexual mores were a wide-open question, and some of the positions staked were pretty far outside of the current mainstream.

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HOW YOU CAN HELP END OPPRESSION OF FAT DYKES1) Stop assuming that being fat is a matter of choice for most fat wonyn. 2) Stop assuming I should lose weight one of the oppressive assumptions that thin womyn make is that all fat womyn want to lose weight. - 3) Stop assuming or believing that I'm killing myself by being fat uppression kills! 4) I have lots of feelings when I eat. So do thin people. Don't attribute pain, despair, low self-esteem, or other mental symptons to we just because I'm fat. 5) Don't always assume that fat people are jolly and funny. 6) Don't ignore fat people. Fat people are easily ignored because we often try hard to be inconspicuous. 7) Don't point to the exceptional weight loser. Weight loss is statistically atypical. 8) Don't expect Fat Liberation to become a major political movement before YOU start to change. 9) Remember, 1 am me. I am not your dictatorial fat father, I am not your nurturing Aunt Clara, I am not your seductive fat mother. 10)Get rid of your terror of being fat. Get rid of your fear of fat people. It is hurting all of us. II)Don't leave it to Eat dykes/womyn to do all your consciousness raising for you. 12) Don't treat fat people like we're uncool. Just because we are not allowed to wear the latest styles doesn't mean we don't know what's going on. 13) Let yourself be attracted to a fat dyke/womyn. It's not an accident if you've 'never' been attracted to a fat lesbian. 14) ilave sex fantasies about fat womyn/lesbians without turning us into earth mothers and comforters. 15) Whenever you fantasise, draw or otherwise image lasbians/womyn, see us as we really are. all shapes and sizes and colours. It is the responsibility of artists and graphics womyn, etc to show fat images in a positive way. 16)Invite us to go swimming or to the sports club. Take our pictures when you have your camera out (unless we ask you not to). Don't put your sheme of fat upon us. 17) Don't drink diet pop or in any other way support the diet industry. The patriarchy makes huge amounts of money though the diet industry by playing on womyn's fears of being fat of getting fatter. 18) Remember that fat oppression is a fat person's problem too. We are all taught to be afraid of being fat, or fatter. 19) Remember what Vivian Mayer says: "Fat is not a feminist issue, Fat LIBERATION is!!". 20)Stop dieting yourself! In summary, support me as a fat dyke by:...understanding my oppression...exposing fatophobia where you see and hear it (eg don't let your agency or organisation post netices about diets or groups that assume we need to lose weight)...letting and helping me love my body FAT without any overt or covert assumptions of having to lose it. Encourage fat lesbians and womyn you know to...stop dieting...join a support group or talk with other fat dykes about being fat...come out of our closets...build pride and rid ourselves of our self-hatred. HELP US THROW OUR WEIGHT AROUND! (10)
“HOW YOU CAN HELP END OPPRESSION OF FAT DYKES”, from LGFM #5

In Issue #8 of the newsletter, LGFM listed the groups they supported as:

  • “Oppressed sexualities including transexuals, girl/girl & boy/boy lovers, girl/woman & boy/man lovers, transvestites, S&Mers…
  • Children in their fight for liberation and freedom to choose their own sexuality.
  • Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in prison, ‘care’, and psychiatric institutions.
  • Isolated and lonely lesbians, gays and bisexuals, and those just ‘coming out’.”

In Issue #5, this list also includes “people with mental and physical disabilities, also those who are non-monogamous, like cottaging [cruising] or picking people up in public places, […] those of us who enjoy sex toys and pornography […] and sex with animals.” Issue #10 also includes fat people and “those who don’t define or identify themselves as anything” in the list of those whose sexual liberation they seek.

This makes me very very very very very uncomfortable! It is pretty intense to see some of your most deeply-held views (police abolition, bodily autonomy for sex between consenting adults, including people with disabilities, and including sex that includes power exchange) being placed alongside and in equivalence with… other stuff.

FUZZY BOXES!QUEER, DICK SUCKING, ARSE FUCKING, PISS LOVING, TONGUE KISSING, NIPPLE CHEWING, CUDDLE SNUGGLING SLUT. THE LIBERATION AND ENJOYMENT OF SEX AND SEXUALITY IS A PERSONAL STRUGGLE OF EACH PERSON. THE UPBRINGING AND SUPPRESSION OF OUR CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY CAN TAKE YEARS TO OVERCOME ALONG WITH THE SUFFOCATING DEFINITIONS AND BOXES WHICH WE ARE OBLIGED TO PICK UP IN TEEN AND LATER YEARS FROM SOCIETY. THOUGH HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE MERGING AND FUZZING OF THE EDGES OF THESE BOXES WE'RE PLACED IN? ARE DEFINITIONS JUST ANOTHER FORM OF OPPRESSION SET TO CONTROL US AND STOP US FROM RELEASING OUR TRUE POTENTIAL AND TRUE CAPACITY TO LOVE AND ENJOY OURSELVES? HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE FACT THAT I'M QUEER, ENJOY ALL KINDS OF SEX WITH ALL KINDS OF MEN, FALL IN LOVE WITH GUYS, HAVE AND WANT RELATIONSHIPS WITH GUYS, BUT EVERY NOW AND THEN WANT TO PUCK WITH A WOMAN. I'VE ENJOYED THE FEELING OF SLIPPING INTO A SOFT WARM VAGINA UNTIL I CUM. YET CONSIDER MYSELF QUEER AND COULD NEVER GO BEYOND FRIENDSHIP WITH A WOMAN.
From LGFM #8

Let’s look more closely at what’s in these newsletters:

Issue #5 takes up the cause of Ben Wilson, who was incarcerated for “having sex with boyfriends under 16”, sentenced to life in prison, and chemically castrated with estrogen. There’s also a letter from “an inmate in [the] New York State Prison System who has run afoul of the age of consent”, defending “consensual intergenerational sexual relationship[s]”.

Issue #6 shares several stories of people prosecuted for sex with animals, arguing that it’s inconsistent for factory farming to be permitted and bestiality not. There’s also an interesting essay where a writer talks about their experiences coming into BDSM as someone who had never been able to orgasm before having experiences as a bondage bottom. It also argues that gays and lesbians should, instead of fighting for inclusion in institutions like police and the military, instead look towards their abolition.

Issue #8 focuses on SM, including a report from an SM pride march in London, but also includes an essay by a queer teenager opposing age of consent laws, arguing that “abuse can’t be stopped by the law, neither can protection be given; but control, guilt, and fear can and will occur.”

From issue #6
From issue #10

In Issue #10, there’s an article about the role of anarchist women in the Spanish Civil War, a report on the raid on a London fetish club, Whiplash, from someone who was present, remarks on Irish liberation, and a report from a squat in Ljubljana. This issue also reports critically on the age of consent for sex between men in the UK being lowered from 21 to 18, and on the decriminalization of sex in the military, arguing that there should be no legal age of consent, and no military. There’s also a cool story encouraging people not to let ableism inform their assumptions around who has sex, and with whom:

“I was at a feminist event with a woman and she was with someone in a wheelchair who couldn’t speak (except after orgasm) and couldn’t lift their arms. Communication was by use of a board with printed letters and words on it which was pointed to with tongue or nose.

Two feminists I knew who were giving the lecture at the event came up to us. I introduced them to my friend and the person with disabilities. The feminists ignored the wheelchair user and addressed my friend. They asked if she was the facilitator for the day for the user. She replied, “No! This is my lover”.

The feminists had immediately assumed that an ‘attractive’ woman with a physically challenged person must be a carer – not a friend or lover. I think we have a long way to go….before the disabled are thought of as equal and as sexual people.”

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In a choice between a politics of liberation and of respectability, I would align myself strongly with liberation. I do not believe the world is made safer by policing and incarceration, including with regards to situations where someone harms another person in a way that involves sex.

Illustration of three horses, with text reading "Freedom is not a COMMODITY""Liberation is not a sports bra" "Resistance is not a grapefruit diet"
From LGFM #5

As someone who reads and talks and thinks a lot about queer history, this is not my first time running into these questions. Patrick Califia’s essay collection Public Sex is a fascinating collection of essays on sex, BDSM, leather culture, and censorship, from a writer who was at the centre of the 1970s-80s “lesbian sex wars”. Califia comes out swinging in favour of porn, weird sex, free expression, bi and trans inclusion, and an expansive big tent of queerness that refuses to exclude people based on the transgressiveness of their sexual interests, including sexual relationships between adults and minors. It’s a book I really recommend, both as a historical document and as a source of insight into the ongoing conflict between purity culture and freakiness that are still dividing queers to this day.

I feel like I’ve been ending each of these posts by saying, “Well, one thing I can say for certain is that I am grateful for archives.” But it’s always true. I’m not really sure what compels me to seek out the material in QZAP’s archive that most challenges me, but I really can’t seem to help it. I am sure they have many delightful light-hearted zines of which I agree with every word. But the ones that most draw me in are the ones that also most trouble me.

A comic book illustration of two people talking, with the captions replaced by:"My pleasure is nameless: those all too rare moments when I act for myself afford no handholds for the constraints of power!" and the other person replying, "But do we have pleasure sufficiently powerful to act) as a practical weapon?" In the background, a third person looks on sadly, thinking, "Everyone's a revolutionary sexual dissident- except me."
From LGFM #8

And one thing I am sure of in the case of every one of these zines, is that I am glad it’s archived. I want these materials to be available for people to struggle with. I don’t want archives to only be a home for work that I and nobody else object to. I want us to stay with the thorniest topics and the messiest and most troubling parts of our shared history.

Lee P is interning at QZAP in spring/summer 2024. Ze is a long-time zine maker, and hir current project is Sheer Spite Press, a small press and zine distro. Originally from unceded Algonquin land, Lee calls Tiohtià:ke // Mooniyang // Montreal home. Ze’s also a member of the organizing collective for Dick’s Lending Library, a community-run, local library of books by trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit authors.

Infected Faggot Perspectives & dark AIDS humour

Zine of the Gay

Cover of Infected Faggot Perspectives #12

The cover of Infected Faggot Perspectives #12, dated to December 1992/January 1993, and priced at “$3.00 or free to the infected”, confronts the reader with a caricature, signed to Rick Cole, of an emaciated figure in a hospital bed, strangled by IV lines, stuck full of needles, and dripping sweat. The zine’s tagline, which seems to have appeared on every issue, was:

“Dedicated to Keeping the Realities of Faggots Living with AIDS & HIV Disease IN YOUR FACE Until the Plague is Over!!!”

The zine dates from a time when AIDS was high in the U.S. public consciousness, following, for example, shortly after the death of Freddy Mercury, but a few years before the availability of the combination therapies that began to make HIV/AIDS more survivable for many of those able to access them.

I am about a generation younger than the generation of (Western, white, not necessarily street-involved, because we know now that the virus had been killing people for decades before it became known here) people most affected by AIDS. I was spared those traumas but grew up with a huge absence where my elders should have been. As far as I remember, I first learned about HIV/AIDS through saccharine, pitying, heterosexual representations like Philadelphia.

Image of a satirical American Express ad, where the credit card is labelled "AIDS Express", with text reading "BECAUSE MEMBERSHIPHAS ITS ITS PRIVILEGE ! ! ! ! !.!!! AIDS EXPRESS (DON'T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT, GIRL!!!) W. WAYNE WAYNE KARR, AKA THE FABULOUS VIEJA SIDOSA, CONCEPTUAL CONTROL QUEEN OF THE UNIVERSE, CO-CREATOR & CO-EDITOR INFECTED FAGGOT PERSPECTIVES; MEMBER SINCE AT LEAST 1983 (PROBABLY A LOT LONGER THAN THAT)"
From Infected Faggot Perspectives #12

The records that people who were actually living with AIDS left, as they fought for their friends’ lives are deeply precious to me. A crucial component of this cultural legacy is a dark, dark, dark gallows humour, suffused with rage at the abandonment of PWAs on both individual and cultural levels, the physical messiness of living and dying with AIDS, and the social messiness of organizing amidst mass sickness, death, and grief.

Directed outwards at a wider audience, AIDS gallows humour, alongside actions like the political funerals of ACT UP, aimed to force those not yet affected by the virus to confront the reality that people were dying young in excruciating pain, and nursing, burying, and mourning entire social circles in the face of public indifference and hostility.

Directed inwards at fellow community members also grappling with AIDS, dark humour offered a pressure release from those same realities. It’s not actually possible to live full-time as a tragic, saintly victim, sometimes you’ve got to laugh.

Line drawing of someone on their hands and knees simultaneously pissing, shitting, and vomiting, with the word "END" above it

IFP offers arch advice like, “let’s face [it,] an AIDS Queen isn’t Glamorous until she is way below 100 [t-cells]… sorry, girls, maybe next year… keep trying.” Its articles share useful resources, like “Around the World in AIDSy Days”, which gives travel advice for PWAs, including resources for DIY healthcare, and considerations of border restrictions for poz people, but also opens,

“Hey girlfriend… wanna take one last trip to a tropical paradise before kicking the bucket but you’re afraid ‘cause you’ve heard there’s a 50% or better chance you’ll get something other than fucked during your visit & then what would you do?”

Other articles vent anger at fairweather friends of PWAs, and the unique social dynamics of the AIDS crisis:

“People with AIDS are often abandoned… but the deathbed is well attended and there is plenty of loud crying at the memorial – Nice new outfit there.”

At times, the zine’s tone is more straightforwardly sincere, as with its long obituary for Cliff Diller, who was among the founders of the West Hollywood SM party Club Fuck!. IFP’s memorial for him includes beautifully specific and evocative moments like:

“A celebration of Cliff’s life took place in L.A. on Sunday Oct. 25, the highlight of which was a performance and ritual by Aztec fire dancers. Over 100 friends gathered, most wore green, ate lasagna, ceasar [sic] salad, and pulled together. Instead of feeling, I am over this, I left feeling that, yes, I can do this one more time.”

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Cover of Diseased Pariah News, a zine printed in black and white on green paper. Above a photo of two hands, there is a speech bubble reading "The blood of over 100,000 Americans who have died of AIDS, Mr. President? You're soaking in it!"
Diseased Pariah News #1 (reprint)

One of the most famous examples of dark AIDS humour is Diseased Pariah News, an influential AIDS zine published from 1990 to 1999. All eleven issues of it are available to read online at the Internet Archive, and it is well worth your time. It offered a similar combination of resource-sharing, irreverence, and political rage, with the first issue declaring its mission to “provide a forum for infected people to share their thoughts, feelings, art, writing, and brownie recipes in an atmosphere free of teddy bears, magic rocks, and seronegative guilt.”

Another example of grim AIDS humour in the QZAP archives is AIDS Kills Fags Dead, by Eric Deutsch, whose title references a shirt worn by the singer of metal band Skid Row (although misattributed to Axl Rose in the zine itself, for what it’s worth).

A collaged zine page, featuring an image of two people having sex outdoors, a statue of someone lying down, and a list of rules for safer sex in French.
from AIDS Kills Fags Dead

According to an academic article on “Counterpublicity and Corporeality in HIV/AIDS Zines,” Infected Faggot Perspectives ultimately ran to 14 known issues. There is at least one issue held in Duke University’s Bingham Center zine collection. There is a copy of issue 6 in the Columbia University Libraries and of issue 8 (April 1992) at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. Traces of it are also scattered online.

The writing in IFP is mostly under pseudonyms like La Vieja Sidosa, Pansy Ass Faggot, and Trixie Trash, but the zine appears to have been the work of W. Wayne Karr, who died in 1995 and was remembered for his advocacy around access to AIDS drugs, and Cory Roberts-Auli, who died in 1996, after writing a final essay about facing his death, which was published with a preface remembering him for the depths of his solidarity with the often-neglected population of women living with AIDS.

He wrote,

“When I think of what is ahead of me, I feel almost a sense of relief. I know I am capable of letting go and I look forward with a sense of adventure to what lies ahead. If all of you hearing or reading this could step outside of your own emotions for a moment and be happy for me and for my freedom, you would see just how ready I am for this to be over. I’ve been carrying this disease around for many years and I am elated to be free of it. Of course, I have little to no information about what lies ahead, after all, I have never died before. Still, I can’t help being excited and scared at the same time.”

Mia Mingus, the writer and activist in disability justice and transformative justice, writes a blog titled Leaving Evidence, with the description,

“We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live–past survival; past isolation.”

Zines like Infected Faggot Perspectives, Diseased Pariah News, and AIDS Kills Fags Dead, left evidence of their creators’ immense creativity, brilliance, and a mordant, furious, catty, grief-laden, exquisitely faggy sense of humour. I’m grateful to have these zines available to me, and to count those who made them as my elders and ancestors.

Lee P is interning at QZAP in spring/summer 2024. Ze is a long-time zine maker, and hir current project is Sheer Spite Press, a small press and zine distro. Originally from unceded Algonquin land, Lee calls Tiohtià:ke // Mooniyang // Montreal home. Ze’s also a member of the organizing collective for Dick’s Lending Library, a community-run, local library of books by trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit authors.

Militant prancing pagan homos: Queer zine parties in the ‘90s

Zine of the Gay

The zine BLOT #2, laying atop a pink mesh shirt, on a dirty black and white checkered floor. Printed on white paper, the half-letter size zine has an image of a child's face, with the word "ASEXUAL" across it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia as I spend time in the QZAP archive. My posts this week and next will be about items in the archive that relate to events with a queer zine focus. And it’s really hard to read these materials and not to feel envy those who got to attend them.

Issue #2 of the zine BLOT is held in QZAP’s archive, but not digitized. The zine documents two queer events that took place in Toronto in 1993. I grew up in rural Ontario, about 5 hours away from Toronto, and was 6 years old in 1993. The place I grew up in was pretty bad for weird little fruity kids, and it is bittersweet to read about events that were happening in my lifetime and in a place not too terribly far away, but that were nevertheless worlds apart from my own experience.

SPEW was a queer zine event that took place 3 times in the early ‘90s. The first edition was held May 25, 1991, in Chicago, the second, February 28 – March 1 in LA, and the third and as far as I know, final, version, took place May 15 and 16, 1993, at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto.

There’s a really cool little documentary about SPEW 1 that’s available online:

Steve LaFreniere, the organizer of SPEW1, was stabbed in the back by homophobic passers-by on the street after one of the SPEW events, but fortunately, he recovered. It’s always important to temper your nostalgia with a realism about ways that things were also more or differently fucked up in times past.

The SPEW 2 writeup that I linked above opens by quoting the words that appeared over the door of the event, which would definitely make me pretty darn hyped for what was to come:

“GAY TO QUEER- Begin to revel in your sexuality. Trained, disciplined, butt fucking, cunt spreading, militant prancing pagan homos. No apologies. No compromise.”

Text reads "“It’s accessible and cheap. Zines, videos, performances, weird shit, party with live bands. A homocore alternative-queer thing (this is not a “convention”)” There is a handwritten annotation, "Hey!" with an arrow.
From Queer Zine Explosion #7

SPEW 3 is previewed as follows in Queer Zine Explosion #7, an issue of the handout published by Larry-Bob Roberts alongside his zine Holy Titclamps:

“It’s accessible and cheap. Zines, videos, performances, weird shit, party with live bands. A homocore alternative-queer thing (this is not a “convention”)”

BLOT #2 describes SPEW 3 as including “an informal round table discussion on zine production, [including] distribution [and] low cost production,” including QZAP’s own Chris Wilde! There was a zine fair the second day with “close to 60 different zines”, and readings from Charlie from MATCH and Lydia Landstreet. I couldn’t find anything online about MATCH or Lydia Landstreet, but I’d be curious if anyone has info on them!

The evening event sounds like a lot of fun, with “a two-member noise group from Michigan called MATCH, and Toronto’s own Ignatz and Chicken Milk (now know as Venus Cures All)”, as well as “a snack table… with mostly vegetarian food”, “a slideshow of ‘50s lesbian trash novels and other queer media”, and TVs playing Bruce La Bruce’s No Skin Off My Ass and “videos about Toronto punk, Crash’n’Burn and Not Dead Yet”

From BLOT #2
From BLOT #2

BLOT #2 also documents a queercore party on Saturday August 15, 1993, also in Toronto, featuring screenings from GB Jones, and performances from Daddy Carbon (who I also couldn’t find anything out about) and, again, Ignatz. The author of BLOT notes that it was “really nice to see fags and dykes together having fun and to see a pretty equal split between girls and boys.”

The best answer to what to do about nostalgia is usually to try and identify what in particular you’re yearning for, and to figure out ways to bring that about in your present and future life. That’s a tall order for a messy, sweaty, sexy queer in-person gathering, from the perspective of 2024, year 4 of the forever pandemic. I’m sure there’s still lots of events of that description going on, but they’re less accessible than ever to my disabled friends and dates and comrades. How can we build events and gatherings that capture some of the feeling of events like these, but that are adapted to make space for as broad a swath of queers as possible, in an ongoing pandemic?

Next week, I’ll be writing about Queeruption, a radical queer gathering that’s taken place 12 times between 1998 and 2017. QZAP’s archives have materials from five of these, as far as I can tell. Let’s see what we feel nostalgic for, and what we’d like to leave in the past.

Lee P is interning at QZAP in spring 2024. Ze is a long-time zine maker, and hir current project is Sheer Spite Press, a small press and zine distro. Originally from unceded Algonquin land, Lee calls Tiohtià:ke // Mooniyang // Montreal home. Ze’s also a member of the organizing collective for Dick’s Lending Library, a community-run, local library of books by trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit authors.

Gender Trash from Hell

Zine of the Gay

A collage of black and white images of faces and bodies against a pinkish background, with collaged text reading "gendertrash FROM HELL"
Front cover of gendertrash #1

Walking into the physical QZAP archive as an intern and a long-time zine dork is overwhelming. There’s so much stuff. There are a lot of things I have read, or that are made by people I know, and seeing those items in the folders feels like running into a friend. There is also a lot of work in the archives by people I don’t know firsthand, but who are some of the people I look up to most, and regard as vital elders and ancestors. The first thing I saw in the archives that made me feel completely teary and overwhelmed was gendertrash (also known as Gender Trash or gendertrash from hell).

As someone who spends a lot of time in both Montreal and Toronto, I regard gendertrash and its authors as a vital part of the trans cultures of both of those cities. Published under the label of genderpress, which also sold some truly excellent buttons, gendertrash was produced primarily by Xanthra Phillippa, who was a fixture of Toronto’s trans communities until her death in 2014, and “Jeanne B,” aka the filmmaker and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, who was originally from Montreal.

(A note on names: I don’t usually use my full or legal name in my zines, and I deeply respect people’s right to remain anonymous or pseudonymous in their zines. Since Ross is widely acknowledged online as one of the zine’s authors, I’m erring here on the side of giving her credit for her work, rather than sticking with her pseudonym.)

There were four issues of gendertrash. The first issue, which is the one held in QZAP’s archives, was published in Toronto in the spring of 1993, 31 years ago. The other issues are also available online through the Arquives, which also, delightfully, holds many of the original paste-ups for the zines.

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Collaged text reading "We're just as queer as dykes and fags maybe even more so!"
Back cover of gendertrash #1

Like many zines, especially of its era, gendertrash contains a wide range of content and tone. (As someone who makes zines that tend to be more like a cohesive essay or book, I think it’s doing me a lot of good to look at this style of zine, and it makes me want to make something that’s a mishmash of personal anecdotes, opinions, resources, recipes, creative writing, etc. — that part of the messiness and imperfection of zines got away from me at some point.)

gendertrash places sex work and sex workers squarely at the centre of its focus, where it belongs. To talk about transness without talking about sex work would be to leave out a huge swath of the community, and many of its strongest pillars, including Ross, whose sex work and creative work have been closely intertwined.

Some parts of the zine are squarely pragmatic. It reproduces a brochure of safety guidelines for electrolysis practitioners, so that electrolysis clients can know what standards to hold their practitioners to. It has a section at the end of local resources for sex workers, people seeking healthcare, and for those experiencing sexual violence, noting which organizations “have no problems with TS’s” or are “aware of the problems of TS youth (esp with shelters & housing)”. It also notes local events like the queer zine gathering Spew 3 at the queer theatre Buddies In Bad Times, which is blessedly still with us.

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The zine also contains installments of TSe TSe TerroriSm, a serialized novel about “some members of Toronto’s gender described community,” by Phillips. When its protagonist is street-harassed by some men in a Jeep, she sets off,

“Two huge Catherine Wheels, one pink, one blue, as big as suns, rise up out of the fireball, lighting the street, buildings, stores & all the people rushing out onto balconies & pouring out of the restaurants & nearby shops to stare, laugh, applaud, cheer & give deliberately misleading or useless information to the cops, now beginning to arrive in a parade of sirens & lights, to investigate the blackened & smoking carcass that once was a Jeep.”

After escaping, she’s comforted by a friend or lover, sharing her rage and sorrow that passers-by were,

“celebrating like it’s something wonderful & exciting & like i-did-it-all-for-them, instead of the nightmare it really was. it’s not a game or a party. i mean, where the fuck were they, when i was being attacked? hiding inside their safe closets, shaking & shivering, but as soon as they see & hear the fireworks, out they come with fucking bells on. those creeps nearly killed, would have killed me for certain – it was that dangerous & here they are, out celebrating. i kill four creeps by setting them on fire because it was necessary. i’d do it again if necessary, but it’s nothing to cheer about”

In its combination of magic realism with a clear-eyed look at the emotional and physical toll of transmisogny, it reminded me of the work of another Toronto-based writer: Kai Cheng Thom’s beautiful book Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars.

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TS Words and Phrases
“TS Words and Phrases”, from gendertrash #1

The first issue of gendertrash also includes a fascinating glossary of “TS Words & Phrases.” As my piece last week on the QZAP blog shows, I am deeply fascinated with the numerous ways that gender and sexual minority folks have described ourselves over the years, and our consistent vehemence that the current terms are the only correct ones.

gendertrash’s glossary, also reflected throughout the zine, uses the term “members of the gender communities,” instead of what they call “the clumsy-sounding transpersons.” The people I would refer to as cis, it defines as “genetics, genetically/chromosonally described/determined”. This distinction is also delightfully made in the zine’s usage instructions, which state that,

“material in gendertrash may be copied for personal use by any gender described person or for publication within any non-profit journal for gender described, as long as the proper credit is given. Material may be copied & used by genetics only upon prior written consent from genderpress.”

One of the most interesting glossary entries to me is their use of the term “gender oriented”, which is used to refer to “wimmin, men or people who attracted to TS’s”, whether those people are genetics or in the gender communities, or what I’d call trans or cis. Extending the umbrella out over people who date and/or fuck trans people isn’t usually part of the conversation in the circles I’ve travelled in, and I find it interesting to think about! This concept also comes out in the zine’s piece about the 1992 movie The Crying Game, which trans people in my life have felt a lot of ways about:

“This man is spontaneously and strongly attracted to Dil for her female or non-male attributes. not her cock and balls. In fact, the main character thinks she is a genetic womyn & is surprised & upset to find out that she is not. Gay men will have to realize & accept the fact that genetic men who are attracted to us (TV, TG or TS) are not gay, but gender-oriented & that their numbers are constantly growing. In other words. we’re having a party & genetic gay men are not invited.”

(The glossary also includes the delightfully punk “in the pit” as a replacement for “in the closet”, and the poignant entry “that’s the way it is is the phrase we use to describe how we survive in this society.”)

There is so much for a contemporary trans reader to enjoy and learn from in gendertrash. It’s a joy and a blessing to me that it’s been archived so that I can enjoy it 30+ years after it was published.

Lee P is interning at QZAP in spring 2024. Ze is a long-time zine maker, and hir current project is Sheer Spite Press, a small press and zine distro. Originally from unceded Algonquin land, Lee calls Tiohtià:ke // Mooniyang // Montreal home. Ze’s also a member of the organizing collective for Dick’s Lending Library, a community-run, local library of books by trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit authors.

Dykes and Bykes

Spring is here!!!!  Well, almost.  It’s still in the 40s here at QZAP HQ, but the daffodils have come up, the lilacs are starting to bud, and us pansies have started to ride our bykes on the regular.  Speaking of bykes, we’ve got a number of zines in the archive that are about queers and their bicycles.  Here are some to get started…

Finally, our newest addition to the archive is Raw Vulva #2.  It’s a fantastic snapshot of queer lady bike culture in San Francisco from 1993.

 

 

Boy Crazy Boy

It’s been a hot minute since we’ve been able to catch our breath and post a Queer Zine of The Day.  Lots has been going on with us. Chris went to the Lexington Zine Fest in September to do a presentation.  Milo is getting geared up for the Olympia Zine Fest next week where ze is participating on a panel.  We’ve also been busy with the planning of the Milwaukee Zine Fest, of which we’re part of the organizng committee.  That weekend, November 14, we’ll also be hosting our last zinester-in-residence for the season.  Last year’s Z-i-R program created the awesome “From the Punked Out Files of the Queer Zine Archive Project,” and we’re super excited to publish the work from this year’s residents.  Expect that to come out sometime at the beginning of 2016.

Moving on to the QZOTD, we are happy to present Sina Sparrow’s Boy Crazy Boy #1.  Sina has been a long-time QZAP pal and is an amazing and active comic artist.  In BCB #1 we can see the beginnings of his sweet style, and are treated to some delicious early 1990s pop humor.

Angst In Our Pants

SO, it’s not totally fair to say that Busy Bea’s Bush #3 is all teen angst.  There’s a little bit of that, but really it’s just a great zine of it’s time.  Nicole captures 1993 perfectly with rainbow taped backpacks and freedom rings acting as a hanky code for another queer girl in her school.  She writes about getting to meet G.B. Jones, has a current play list of stuff she’s listening to, participaing in Pittsburgh’s Riot Grrrl chapter, and getting a painful tattoo.

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