Menstruaciones No Binarias part 2: Interview with Rebeldia Menstrual and Eróticas Fluidas

Zine of the GayWhen I first came across Menstruaciones No Binarias, I was immediately struck by its depth, its urgency, and its commitment to dismantling the normative narratives surrounding menstruation. After writing about the zine in my last blog post, I knew I wanted to go further—to hear directly from the voices behind this work. In this post, I am honored to share an interview with Nachi of Rebeldía Menstrual and Andre of Eróticas Fluidas, the brilliant minds who collaborated to create this transformative text. Their insights shed light on the importance of reclaiming menstruation as a political act, the challenges of crafting inclusive language, and the ongoing fight for trans and nonbinary menstrual justice. Because language and accessibility are central to our shared mission, I have translated our conversation from Spanish to English while keeping both versions in this post. I hope that, through their words, you feel the same sense of empowerment, resistance, and possibility that this zine so powerfully conveys.

Menstruaciones no binarias

Valeria: Which key moment or experience motivated the creation of a zine that questions the binaries surrounding menstruation?

Nachi & Andre: The key experience that motivated us to create the zine was finding ourselves in the dilemma that the majority of the available materials about menstruation are made, thought of, and directed by and from ciswomen towards ciswomen, leading to aside all menstruating living experiences of sexual and gender dissidents. Finding ourselves with that profoundly essentialist, biologically deterministic, and cisheteronormative reality made us unite our projects and create this zine together.

V: Sexual health and menstrual experience are also mentioned as political acts in the zine. How do you both see this position’s impact on the fight for rights for trans and nonbinary people?

N & A: We think that the most significant impact is amplifying the vision that we understand for the rights of trans people beyond identity, together with the visualization that there are many possible experiences when we talk about menstruation and ovum-menstrual cycles. We say it is a political act due to permitting us to amplify the imagination about the possibilities of menstruation, particularly concerning people of different sexualities and/or genders.

V: The zine stands out for its inclusive and accessible language. How did you both confront the defiance to create material that could resonate with many identities and diverse experiences?

N & A: This was one of the purposes of creating the zine, amplifying the forms of access to the knowledge from our situated experience. That is how it converted itself to grand defiance with the language used since the exact intention is to amplify the experiences, not reduce them. Besides, we wrote the zine from our own sexual dissident voices, and this reveals a specific sensibility in the hour of investigation on how to choose to explain it and address the topics.

V: You talk of the pathologization of menstruation in medical and social discourse. What changes do you think are necessary in the health system to address menstruating experiences in a more inclusive manner?

N & A: Firstly, we think that the whole health system should be transformed, and that would implicate reformulating the notion of health/illness. If we specifically speak about the topic of menstruation, the topic of gender identities would be urgent. As such, in the professional health practices and the community actions of sexual health approach, but also in public politics that should repair within the lives of sexual and/or gender dissident people. If we dream of changes, we could talk about generating a vision of a comprehensive reality, not just bio-deterministic about people.

V: How do you both perceive the impact of international distribution networks in the diffusion of projects such as this zine? And what challenges or benefits do you consider that bring forth these global links?

N & A: In the case of distribution networks found in Chile, Mexico, and Argentina, having an impact that, through our own efforts, we couldn’t have achieved. There lies the importance of international networks to diffuse projects and trespassing borders. Part of the benefits has been having a larger impact on international communities, amplifying to readers the material and receiving feedback on contexts that aren’t our own, and then enriching the prior reflections of the publication.

V: The zine mixes with theory, personal experience, and practice. How did you balance these perspectives, and what role does each have in the final narrative of the zine?

N & A: We both made common contributions; we wanted to share information in an accessible form, which is typically in a very medical and academic language, and at the same time, share reflections on our own terms. We did the whole process of investigating, writing, and creating the zine together. Each of us indeed has expertise due to our professional and biographical journeys. Rebeldia Menstrual approaches the hormonal processes, the ovum-menstrual cycle, menstrual hygiene, and others from this project. Eróticas Fluidas approached the critical vision and the political position around sexual and affective education that we want to construct.

V: What are the origins of “Rebeldía Menstrual” and “Eróticas Fluidas”? From your experiences and perspectives, how did these personal projects surge? And what motivated you both to develop them?

eroticas fluidas rebeldia menstrualAndre: Eróticas Fluidas surged in 2020 as a self-managed project where I sold sex toys and articles for sexual pleasure. This is how the focus quickly shifted towards autonomous research, the publication of zines, participation in podcasts, and the creation of various workshops related to sexual and emotional education from a sexually dissident and critical perspective. The motivation for developing the project was and continues to be deeply rooted in a strong conviction that erotic and epistemic justice lies within ourselves, and that through these lived experiences, we can reduce the harm that most sexually and/or gender-dissident people are exposed to.

Nachi: Rebeldía Menstrual has its origins in 2017, the same year I discovered the menstrual cup and was in my fourth year of studying Obstetrics. Reaching that point in my life and discovering how the menstrual cup was transforming my menstrual experience and the way I understood my vulva, vagina, uterus, and menstruation was a revelation. I thought, more people need to know about the menstrual cup and deserve to know themselves in this way. So, I created a page and started distributing menstrual cups. Through the internet and by participating in various fairs, I began selling cups. Over the years, I expanded to selling menstrual underwear, cloth pads, menstrual discs, and in recent years, even zines. From the very beginning, my goal was always to make information accessible to people. Selling products was just the excuse and a way to bring a bit of economic sustainability to the project.

V: Could you share more about the methodologies you use when creating your zines, from conceptualization to the final design, and how you integrate artistic creativity into the process?

N & A: Our methodology is quite artisanal and improvised; we don’t follow formal investigative design processes. Instead, we focused on making a critical compilation of the available material and developing our own ideas about what we wanted to express. This process took us about two years (and was carried out remotely due to the pandemic) to finalize the design virtually. During this time, the illustrator Alineandome joined the project to handle the layout and illustrations for the final zine. Artistic creativity is contributed by everyone involved in the project.

V: In addition to “Menstruaciones No Binarias”, what other projects have you been developing recently, and how do they relate to or expand on the topics covered in this zine?

N & A: We have dreamed of transforming the zine into a workshop, where we can engage in lived, experiential dialogue with people and share the information in other formats, not just through reading. This is a pending project that we hope to bring to life in the future.

V: Finally, what hopes do you have for this zine in the future? How do you envision its impact on international communities, especially in queer and non-binary spaces?

N & A: Our hopes for the zine are that it continues to travel through sexually and/or gender-dissident communities across the world wherever it can reach. This is why the material is open for distribution and available to be sold and shared by anyone who gets in touch with us.

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Valeria: ¿Cuál fue el momento o experiencia clave que les motivó a crear un zine que cuestionara los binarismos en torno a la menstruación?

Nachi & Andre: La experiencia clave que nos motivó a crear el fanzine fue encontrarnos en la disyuntiva de que la mayoria de los materiales disponibles acerca de menstruación están hechos, pensados y dirigidos por y desde mujeres cis a mujeres cis, dejándo de lado toda la vivencia menstruante de las disidencias sexuales y de género. Encontrarnos con esta realidad profundamente esencialista, biologicista y heterocisnormada nos hizo unir nuestros proyectos y crear juntes este fanzine.

V: En el fanzine mencionan que la salud sexual y la experiencia menstruante son también actos políticos. ¿Cómo ven el impacto de este posicionamiento en la lucha por los derechos de personas trans y no binarias?

N & A: Creemos que el mayor impacto es ampliar la visión de lo que entendemos por los derechos de las personas trans y no binarias más allá de la identidad, junto con visibilizar que hay muchas experiencias posibles cuando hablamos de menstruación y ciclos óvulo-menstruales. Decimos que es un acto político ya que nos permite ampliar el imaginario acerca de las posibilidades de la menstruación, particularmente en relación a personas disidentes sexuales y/o de género.

V: El fanzine se destaca por su lenguaje inclusivo y accesible. ¿Cómo enfrentaron el desafío de crear un material que pudiera resonar con tantas identidades y experiencias diversas?

N & A: Este era uno de los propósitos al crear el fanzine, ampliar las formas de acceder al conocimiento desde nuestra experiencia situada. Así fue como se convirtió en un gran desafío lo del lenguaje usado, ya que justamente la intención es amplificar las experiencias, no reducirlas. Además, escribimos el fanzine desde nuestras propias voces disidentes sexuales y eso devela una sensibilidad específica a la hora de investigar y elegir cómo se explican y abordan los temas.

V: Hablan de la patologización de la menstruación en discursos médicos y sociales. ¿Qué cambios creen que son necesarios en los sistemas de salud para abordar de manera más inclusiva las experiencias menstruantes?

N & A: En principio creemos que todo el sistema de salud debería transformarse y eso implicaría reformular la noción de salud/enfermedad. Si hablamos específicamente del tema de la menstruación, serían urgentes los cambios en temáticas de identidades de género. Así como en las prácticas de los profesionales de salud, en las acciones comunitarias para el abordaje de la salud sexual, pero también en políticas públicas que reparen en las vidas de las personas disidentes sexuales y/o de género. Si soñamos con cambios, podríamos hablar de generar una visión que realmente sea integral y no sólo biologicista acerca de las personas.

V: ¿Cómo perciben el impacto de las redes de distribución internacionales en la difusión de proyectos como este zine, y qué retos o beneficios consideran que trae consigo este alcance global?

N & A: En este caso las redes de distribución se encuentran en Chile, México y Argentina, teniendo un impacto que por nuestro propio esfuerzo no lograríamos. Allí es donde radica la importancia de las redes internacionales para difundir los proyectos y que traspasen fronteras por sí solos. Parte de los beneficios ha sido tener impacto en comunidades internacionales, ampliar a les lectores del material y recibir retroalimentaciones de contextos que no son el nuestro y eso enriquece muchísimo las reflexiones posteriores a la publicación.

V: El zine mezcla teoría, experiencia personal y práctica. ¿Cómo equilibraron estas perspectivas y qué rol tuvo cada una en la narrativa final del fanzine?

N & A: Ambes hicimos aportaciones comunes, queríamos compartir información de una forma accesible, que normalmente está en un lenguaje muy médico y academicista y al mismo tiempo compartir reflexiones en nuestros propios términos. Si bien todo el proceso de investigación, escritura y creación del fanzine fue en conjunto, es cierto que cada une tiene su expertiz por su recorrido profesional y biográfico. Desde el proyecto Rebeldía Menstrual se aportó sobre los procesos hormonales, el ciclo óvulo-menstrual, la gestión menstrual, entre otros. Y desde el proyecto Eróticas Fluidas se aportó sobre la visión crítica y el posicionamiento político en torno a la educación sexual y afectiva que queremos construir.

V: ¿Cuáles son los orígenes de “Rebeldía Menstrual” y “Eróticas Fluidas”? ¿Cómo surgieron estos proyectos personales y qué los motivó a desarrollarlos desde sus experiencias y perspectivas?

Andre: Eróticas Fluidas surge en el 2020 como un proyecto autogestivo donde vendía juguetes sexuales y artículos para el placer sexual. Así fue como rápidamente el eje giró hacia la investigación autonóma, la publicación de fanzines, la participación en podcasts y la creación de diversos talleres relacionados a la educación sexual y afectiva con perspectiva disidente sexual y crítica. La motivación de desarrollar el proyecto tuvo y tiene que ver con una fuerte convicción de que la justicia erótica y epistémica está en nosotres mismes y que a través de esas vivencias podemos reducir el daño al que nos vemos expuestes la mayoría de personas disidentes sexuales y/o de género.

Nachi: Rebeldia Menstrual tiene sus inicios en el 2017, el mismo año en que descubrí la copa menstrual en mi vida y que estaba cursando 4 año de la carrera de Obstetricia, llegar a ese punto de mi vida y descubrir como la copa menstrual estaba transformando mi experiencia menstrual y la forma que tenía de conocer mi vulva, vagina, útero y menstruación fue una revelación, pensé que más personas tienen que conocer la copa y merecian conocerse así mismas, asi cree una página y comencé a distribuir copas menstruales, a través de internet o participando en distintas ferias comencé a vender copas, con los años llegué a vender calzones menstruales, toallas de tela, discos menstruales y también los fanzines estos últimos años. Mi objetivo desde un inicio siempre fue poder acercar la información a las personas, el vender productos era la excusa y la forma de poder darle un poco de sustentabilidad económica al proyecto.

V: ¿Podrían compartir más sobre las metodologías que emplean al crear sus fanzines, desde la conceptualización hasta el diseño final, y cómo integran la creatividad artística en el proceso?

N & A: Nuestra metodología es bastante artesanal e improvisada, no nos guíamos por diseños investigativos formales sino que fuimos más bien haciendo una recopilación crítica del material disponible y una elaboración propia acerca de lo que queríamos decir. Así fue como nos tomamos aproximadamente dos años (y a la distancia producto de la pandemia) en crear el diseño final de forma virtual y donde se sumó la ilustradora Alineandome para la diagramación e ilustraciones del fanzine final. La creatividad artística es propuesta por todas las personas involucradas en el proyecto.

V: Además de “Menstruaciones No Binarias”, ¿qué otros proyectos han estado desarrollando recientemente, y cómo se relacionan o expanden los temas tratados en este fanzine?

N & A: Hemos soñado en convertir el fanzine en un taller, donde podamos dialogar vivencialmente con las personas y abrir la información en otros formatos, no sólo de lectura. Este es un proyecto pendiente que esperamos llevar a cabo en el futuro.

V: Finalmente, ¿qué esperanzas tienen para este fanzine en el futuro? ¿Cómo visualizan su impacto en las comunidades internacionales, especialmente en espacios queer y no binarios?

N & A: Las esperanzas ligadas al fanzine es que siga viajando por comunidades disidentes sexuales y/o de género de todas las partes del mundo al que pueda llegar, es por esto que el material está abierto para distribución y disponible para ser vendido y difundido por cualquier persona que se ponga en contacto con nosotres.


Valeria is interning at QZAP this semester. She is in her senior year at University of Wisconsin-Madison studying Gender & Women’s Studies. She was born and raised in Valencia, Venezuela and now lives in Teejop land (Madison, WI).

Ephemeral Matters – QZAP at the Nasjonalmuseet

A selection of zines that are part of the exhibit Ephemeral Matters: Into the Fashion Archive We’re super excited to finally announce that we’re participating in an exhibition at the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) in Oslo, Norway. Ephemeral Matters – Into the Fashion Archive has been 18 months in the making, but it’s finally here. The long and short of it is that we’ve been collaborating with curator Marco Pecorari and other folks at the museum to be one of five archival collections that maintain materials connected to “the fashion industry.” OR, in our case, may stand in opposition to or interact critically with said industry.

At the beginning of 2024 we worked with Marco to choose items from the QZAP collections to send to display at the museum, focusing on themes of:

  • role of garments
  • vestimentary practices and DIY
  • Community and Subcultures through modelling/garments
  • the body transformation
  • zines that mock, play, refer to fashion magazines/fashion languages
  • nature of zine and zine archives
  • and t-shirts and other wearable ephemera

Photo of one of the exhibition drawers that shows Fatty Fatty 2x4 and Fat Girl #6

As a result, in March of this year we sent over 100 items, including lots of zines including copies of Sexy Magazine (1992), Dr Smith (1984), Blue Floral Gusset (2010), and Fat Girl (1996.) Also included were a selection of queer, punk, zine and library related buttons (badges), DIY printed punk patches, and a selection of similarly themed t-shirts. In turn, they sent their videographer Nicholas to us in Milwaukee. We spent a day in the QZAP archive space shooting a video interview, showing off a lot of our collections and listening to Pink Stëël.

After a summer of exchanged emails and tons of work on part of the museum, the exhibit finally opened on 18 October, 2024 and runs through 23 March, 2025. If you’re not able to make it to Oslo while the exhibit is up, the catalog is available through the Nasjonalmuseet web store for 399 NOK (~$36.50) plus shipping.

We want to shout out huge thank yous to Marco, Hanne, Nicholas, Stine, Maria, Hope and the rest of the museum staff, and also all of the other collectors, designers and archivists who have loaned their ephemeral materials to make the exhibit happen.

A selection of screen-printed punk patches.

 

 

 

QZAP Internship Zine: Making Friends With Zines

A white hand holding two zines: How to Find the Beauty Amidst All The Horrors, and Making Friends With ZinesI had the pleasure this summer of spending six weeks in Milwaukee as a QZAP intern. I got to help out with tasks like cataloging, peruse and research in their filing cabinets, get served a lot of lovely meals, and make some zines with Chris and Milo’s support.

QZAP interns are asked to make two zines: the first must be a zine that teaches someone something, on the principle that everyone has something they can teach others. Past interns have made instructional zines about screenprinting, making lemonade, doing dishes, and, my personal favourite, “how to bra-train your sugar glider.” Preoccupied by the current intensification of genocide in Palestine, and the ongoing task of keeping going in a world whose awfulness is even more than usually top of mind, I wrote my how-to zine on How to Find the Beauty Amidst All The Horrors.

The second internship zine is more free-form, from the principle that, as Milo puts it, “there’s not a ‘correct’ or wrong way to make zines, and we want folks who are newer to the medium and community to be inspired by all the shapes and sizes and possibilities that the collection entails,” but it’s supposed to be 20-40 pages. I completely overachieved and ended up with a 60-page beast: Making Friends With Zines.

It’s the third zine I’ve written that is entirely about friendship (the first two being PALS: The Radical Possibilities of Friendship and Five Friendship Fantasies), and I’m also working on a forthcoming book that’ll also be about friendship.

Making Friends With ZinesMaking Friends With Zines is tribute to all the ways people can find each other and make and sustain connections through zines: trading through the mail, at zine fairs, by running a zine distro, on Discord, through zine libraries and zine librarianship, and… by running a zine archive!

I talked to a lot of wonderful people for this zine, including some who I reached via QZAP sharing my call for submissions: Cindy Crabb, Amber Dearest, Jenna Freedman, Keet Geniza, Julia Gfrörer, Kelly McElroy, and my sibling, Clare, and also received contributions from LB, Ocean, Sage Pantony, Nat Pyper, Jen Twigg, Soph Warrick, Andi Vicente, and Alanna Why. I commissioned the beautiful cover art from my friend Veronika Dawydow.

And of course, I also talked to my internship hosts, QZAP’s own Chris and Milo! I wanted to share the version of my interview with them that appears in the zine, which was excerpted from a much longer and very fun conversation about their lives in zines.

One of my favourite things about this interview is how it captures the happenstanceness of building a life centred around zines. None of us expected when we made our first zine that it would end up being the way that we connected with many of our closest and most beloved people, as well as a wide constellation of acquaintances and peers and fellow-travelers. It’s such a funny, niche thing!

What has making friends through zines looked like for you?

Milo: At this point, 30 years in, zines are such an integral part of my life, and my deepest friendships are with other folks who make zines or doing zine librarianship.

Certainly I have found numerous lovers, people to this day who are a part of my heart: even if we’re not in bed together anymore, we have learned so much about how to build communities that we want to live in.

We host folks here at QZAP, obviously, whether it’s through our residencies or through friendships or, “hey, people are coming through for a zine fest, sure, you can crash in our space,” kind of thing. And I feel like maybe it’s not different from other subcultures, especially ones that coalesce around fandom, but I don’t know for sure because they’re not subcultures that I’m actively a participant in.

We’re getting together. We’re bonding. We’re making more community. In some cases, we’re making offspring who are now moving through the world and discovering that maybe they’re queer also, and also maybe they’re drawing, and they’re making zines also.

Could you say more about figuring out how to build the kind of community that you want to see in the world through zines?

Milo: I think that a lot of the ideas that we see shared in print in this smaller format, this less public format, this personal, handmade way, a lot of where that is coming from tends to be what I think of as more leftist on a political spectrum.

An emphasis on doing it yourself, but also going together, building things together, skillsharing, doing education for the greater good. And I feel like those are ideas we’ve gotten through zines. When you meet somebody who wrote about that, you start to have a connection.

And working with a collection like QZAP’s, which is so queer. It’s explicitly queer. It’s intentionally queer. But then getting ideas about polyamory, getting ideas about alternative families, how to build those ideas for real maker stuff that doesn’t have to be explicitly queer, but tends to show up more often in queer communities.

And all of those are building blocks to a world that we would like to see more of. So I mean, it sounds fucking cheesy, but in some ways it’s modeling good behavior. If you want the world to be a way, then you need to be that way yourself, and do the labor of it. It’s one thing to say, oh, I wish it were like this. And then [another to,] in ways big and ways small, actually work towards that.

When did the internship start being part of the archive?

Chris: That’s actually a great story. That wasn’t even a thought for us. And we got an inquiry from a woman named Drea, who was a student at Carroll College, and asked if we offered internships. And Milo and I had a conversation, kind of like, “Internship??? I hadn’t thought of that, but what would that look like and what would we have somebody do?”

That’s how I came into helping develop, along with Milo, the internship program. We’ll work with your department. We can do for-credit. We can do not-for-credit. So that is what Drea kind of stumbled into. We had her come and interview with us, and she was delightful and we all just clicked. And she spent a whole semester [here] and then stayed on through the summer.

What’s it like having people come in and visit the archive and do internships?

Chris: It’s great. The most important reason is seeing the archive through the experiences and the eyes of other people, because we have been in it and doing it for 20 years. And [making zines] for a decade before that. So we have one perspective, or two perspectives that intertwine.

And folks that come to us through internships really come from very different places, different socioeconomic backgrounds, racial backgrounds. So we get to also have people’s lived experiences inform what they’re doing here at the archive.

What kinds of things bring people here?

Chris: I think part of it is the phenomenon of seeing yourself. I think part of what drives people to come here is their connection to queerness, and how they see that representation in the materials here in the archive. And also for some folks, it is maybe even seeing themselves quite literally. And then other times, it’s interest-based. So folks are, I think, coming to us more because they know what queer culture is now, and they want to see what zines captured of all of that time before, and how it informs us.

How has running the archive changed your relationship with zine communities and the types of friendships and interactions that you have?

Chris: For myself, it’s weird. It’s professionalism. I’m clearly not a professional, but Milo and I have become sort of de facto experts, or professionals, or librarians, and…

Milo: Spokesmuppets.

Chris: My interest was always about making connections or finding interesting music or stories to read, and I never thought about the side of it where Milo and I often are asked to come and be keynote speakers or teach in a class or guest lecture. I also recently branched out into my first experience in academic writing, because I didn’t go to grad school. I’ve actually kind of punk-rocked into it by doing real-world experience, and without going into debt.

And I joke about this all the time. If I’d known that the [first] zine that I made back in the day was going to lead me to where I’m at, I would’ve done a better job!

Milo: There are some folks in the zine community who I interact with on a zine fest level. We might see each other at the same fest. We say hi. Sometimes I’ll pick up their work. Sometimes they’ll pick up mine, and it’s lovely.

And then I have this whole other level of friendships with folks who are at this point more than just zine makers, they’re also zine scholars, they’re also librarians or academics. We’ve met because of the labour that we put in personally and also the love that we put in. It’s not just a vocation, it’s an avocation, right? And so for those folks, I feel this super, super intense connection.

And some of them are folks that we share struggles with, very intense personal struggles. And I feel like my experience with zines has led me to this group of folks that I feel so charmed and blessed to be in community with.

I don’t know that I would’ve expected that from my 18-year-old self when I first started making zines. It was something silly and fun to do, but looking at this long chronology of essentially 32 years, in a lot of cases we’ve all become adults together in a way that is unexpected, I think.

And for me, I think it’s partially unexpected because being queer in the early nineties, it wasn’t totally a death sentence, but it also certainly wasn’t NOT, with the AIDS crisis.

I think we’ve been very blessed with how the amazing folks that we get to meet and welcome into our home, the amount of learning that we get to do, the discussions that we get to have about a world that we would like to live in as queer folks.

Chris: I think for me, there’s so much more that I’ve been able to achieve in life because I have this amazing love and support from makers in general.

It achieved the purpose that I set out to do 30 years ago, which is to make connections and meet people and find amazing things. I would not have contemplated that some shitty cut-and-paste thing that I put together [would be my] in. How fucking amazing is that you can throw something together and it gives you an in to this amazing community.

And [it could have just] been a thing I did back in the nineties or whatever, but it was always there. And it meant so much to me that, even in those few years where I wasn’t really making zines, I was still in the culture traveling and building off of those connections. 💜

Making Friends with Zines is on sale now in print and digital formats.

Lee P, interning at QZAP in summer 2024, is a long-time zine maker whose current project is Sheer Spite Press, a small press and zine distro. Originally from unceded Algonquin land, Lee calls Tiohtià:ke // Mooniyang // Montreal home. Lee is 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.

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