Tag: Zines

My 2nd Lesbian Coloring Book

Zine of the Gay

As many of the zines we have focused on for the last three Zine of the Gays have been mostly text-based, we wanted to highlight some zines that were more art-focused, and what is more cooperative, comforting, and artistically rule-breaking than a coloring book?

My Second Lesbian Coloring Book CoverMy 2nd Lesbian Colouring Book was created by Sacred Feminine and actually comes from Toronto like our last zine, Shame on Pride!, just a year later in 2006. There is very little text in this zine, but the writing we do have is a request by the creators for completed works from the zine. They say:

We feel that the spirit of art, much like the spirit of sisterhood, is a co-operative one.

Joan Jett Coloring PageIn exchange for the reader’s Sapphic graphics, they offer a “care package including herbal tea and a mix tape” which feels so perfectly lesbian it makes us all warm inside.

The coloring pages include queer women of the past and present who were famous across multiple fields, such as basketball player Sheryl Swoopes, musicians Madonna and Melissa Etheridge (who is pictured on the front cover), comedienne Lily Tomlin, writer Virgina Woolfe, and (actually genderqueer) activist Leslie Feinberg.

The zine ends with the statements “Sisterhood is Powerful!” and “Love is tender, knows no gender.” We hope that you carry these sentiments with you, and if you’re able to print the pages out, have fun coloring!

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

Shame on Pride!

Zine of the Gay

Shame On Pride coverEven though this Zine of the Gay project is inspired by Pride month, we at QZAP want to make sure we look at Pride critically. Today’s Zine of the Gay is Shame on Pride! created by Abuzar in 2005. The original zine was created as a part of Queer Diversity, a community focused on the relationship of radical queers to (at the time) modern day Pride in Toronto. Though this zine is specifically focused on Pride Toronto from almost twenty years ago, the messages are still applicable and we encourage you, dear reader, to keep an eye out for racist, transphobic, sexist, or classist behavior at any Pride celebration you go to this month.

Before even giving a table of contents, the zine starts with newspaper clippings from the New York Post and New York Times recounting the Stonewall riots, reconnecting readers with the reason we have pride in the first place. After the table of contents, Abuzar addresses their readership:

Calling all Radical Queers, Trans People, Youth, Sex Workers, Poly People, Anti-Poverty Activists, & Allies:

Sick and tired of the main streaming of the “Gay Movement”?

Frustrated at being pushed out of and excluded from queer spaces?

Angry at getting kicked out of a queer community we helped create?

… If you’re a pissed off and unapologetic hooker, tranny, gender queer, radical, lived/worked on the streets, or an ally, it’s time to fight back!

They then follow what happened after Stonewall, as white gay people began to push down other sexual and gender minorities in order to assimilate into mainstream culture. Abuzar says that in their pursuit for mainstream acceptance, “It doesn’t matter how many of us are murdered, go missing, or find ourselves excluded, bashed, or beaten. The band plays on like the single minded machine that it was always meant to be.” Pride has now become another part of this single minded machine, becoming a co-opted event “that perpetuates homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, social classism, economic classism, polyphobia, bodyphobia, binary-dominance, sex negativity, erotophobia, ableism, ageism, anti-sexwork sentiment, systemic exclusion … in short, all of those issues that it was meant to address and fight.”

There are also other pieces within the zine that address Stonewall’s origins, the internal oppression in gay culture, and how “more acceptable” queer people “sic cops on “less acceptable” queer people at Pride.” There is also a piece on how the fight for gay marriage “dismisses and ignores the decades-long struggle of feminist movements to abolish or establish progressive alternatives to the marriage system imposed by governments and churches over previous centuries of gendered exploitation, colonization and oppression. Instead, the debate encourages non-heterosexual partners to identify the legitimacy and “equality” of their relationships as the ability for those partnerships to be “permitted” by the same legal and religious authorities which have historically dominated, exploited and excluded women from participation and decisionmaking [sic] roles.” These argumentative pieces all support the majority of the body of the zine, which is focused on alternative queer spaces at 2005 Pride Toronto.

The main point of this zine is that rather than just creating alternative spaces for queer people, we need to also actively resist the co-opting of queer spaces. The body of the zine highlights organizations offering alternative spaces and resisting the co-opting of Pride, with events such as Resist! Rovolt! Celebrate! held by Limp Fist to stand against the corporate sponsors of Pride, Whores And Dykes Unite! organized by the Sex Professionals of Canada which is a march supporting trans people, sex workers, natives, and other POC within the greater Dyke March (a politicized, corporation-free, queer alternative to Pride), as well as the events held by Queer Diversity called the Renegade Community Fair and the Protest Against The Cooptation of Pride, both of which looking to dissent against Pride in the community fair and parade. Abuzar writes about these events, saying:

We refuse to participate in Pride in a manner complicit with their oppression. We refuse to be tokenized by Pride and dissent against it’s marginalization of the queer community.

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

Hot Rods

Zine of the Gay

Hot Rods zine coverFrom the femme herbal transition of The Transgender Herb Garden, we are now transitioning (hehe wink wink) towards Hot Rods, a zine of health resources for “For Folks assigned a Female sex at birth who have strayed from that path” in Oregon. The zine was made by Gender Machine Works, a direct action group serving “female assigned, gender-variant” (or FAGV) people based in Portland, Oregon, and was published in 2002. This is the only zine we have in our digital collection made by Gender Machine Works.

Despite being written with a very specific audience in mind (FAGV people in Portland in 2002), this zine has a lot of incredibly useful, effectively timeless, information. This includes the effects of hormonal testosterone on the body, their information on routine healthcare procedures for AFAB individuals, how to check for breast cancer and do hormone injections safely, safe sex tips, and a wealth of other important knowledge for not just physical, but mental female assigned, gender-variant health.

From a use standpoint, the only downside is that a lot of the information they give is very area-specific and probably outdated. However, looking at it from a historical lens, it gives a lot of information about doctors, groups, and resources that may not be well-documented, making this zine a really important record in Portland queer history. They are also supportive of a multitude of gender identities and are incredibly open to a multitude of viewpoints regarding transitioning.

In a world where transgender healthcare rights are being taken away right in front of us, we feel it’s incredibly important to come together as a community, and know that despite everything we can support each other and find the cracks in the systems restricting us from getting essential care. We feel that this zine is a great example of the queer community doing just that.

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

The Transgender Herb Garden

Zine of the Gay

Hello ! This summer we once again have a cohort of interns working on several projects, one of which includes a month-long research and blogging project called Queer Zine of the Gay. We will be posting just about every other day for ‘Pride Month’ 2023 on a zine within our holdings, which will hopefully be new to even the most experienced zinesters. So join us on this journey through QZAP’s holdings 3-4 times a week, (usually Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) here on the QZAP blog! The first Queer Zine of the Gay is…

The Transgender Herb Garden coverThe Transgender Herb Garden: an MtF guide to disconnecting oneself from big pharma by FlyingOtter is a cottagecore-anarchist zine focused on the use of herbs to help facilitate physical transition rather than relying on pharmaceutical companies. This zine was published in 2009 and upon some supplemental research seems to be one of the few zines made by FlyingOtter. This zine is a one-off, but is also held by other queer zine archives, so it must have circulated well.

FlyingOtter starts by addressing the fact that this is not medical advice, but is rather suggestions on herbs to eat for other MtF people that may help them appear more feminine as the herbs helped her. However, ze suggests that anyone can read this and get advice from it, as “trying different plants and foods will inform you about yourself”.

“As you take the time to sense how it makes you feel , how your body reacts, in its slightest movements and ways — as you come to know your own body, that is the key to transforming it, maintaining it, and healing it.”

Ze recommends eating the herbs raw, though teas also can be useful, as well as finding a good balance for how often you consume them. Ze also suggests switching up the herbs you’re eating, especially if you’re MtF, as “A bio-woman’s biology/hormones change throughout a month, no reason to not do the same.” Some of the herbs ze suggests include sage, fennel, and clover, which are all wonderful nonbinary names. FlyingOtter says that they won’t stimulate breast growth, but will help add fullness to the face and thighs, while helping create an hourglass figure.

Some other zines (page 8) cite this zine as purely anecdotal, which is true, but they also point out the information on transplanting the plants Ze does discuss is rather helpful. We also personally don’t mind how anecdotal the zine is. In reading it we get a much better sense of the person writing it, the environment and feeling that ze carries with zir than information on the plants ze suggests using. But that doesn’t mean we’re not learning anything from FlyingOtter. Ze very clearly has a lot of gardening knowledge, including information about the amount of nitrogen carried by certain seeds that will add to your soil, and where things should be planted depending upon use. Ze also advocates for community herb gardening with female bodied people, and breaking away from the machine of capitalism, which are easy to get behind.

One of the most interesting parts of the zine is where FlyingOtter discusses gender as a construct of capitalism, and looks forward to the day where there is no gender. Seeing this through their perspective we think is rather telling of where the queer community was in regards to nonbinary and agender genders in 2009, and we highly recommend reading it for yourself.

⚠️ ⚠️ Additional Advisory Note!!! If interested in using herbs similarly, lovely reader, you should consult with professional herbalists when embarking on using herbs in a medicinal or health-boosting capacity.

Kit Gorton is a current intern at QZAP and graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in library science and English, with focuses on archives and media studies. A rather queer Hobbit, Kit is most often seen collecting things (such as leaves, rocks, books and the like) or doting on their cat, Good Omens Written in Collaboration by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett.

photo of the zine Violet Tendencies. The cover shows the creator curling their arm with their hand in a fist. Black ink on pink paper.

Violet Tendencies

As 2022 draws to a close, we’re saying “we’ll see you soon!” to our intern Cedar. For their final zine project they made a 24 page perzine called Violet Tendencies #2. A combination of personal narrative, pop-culture influences, and an exaltation of all things butch, it’s a great addition to our archive, and shows a growth of their work in zines as both an artist and writer. While we’re sad to see them go, we’re super excited that this zine is out in the world, and we’re looking forward to collaborating with them in the near future.

One of the fun things that Cedar did with this issue is create a personality quiz. It’s very Autostradle-style, but also hearkens back to older queer zines, and even the long-departed Sassy. Click through to take the quiz and find out…  What Lesbian Earrings Are You?

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Sex Panic! At the Disco – World AIDS Day, 2022

Cover of the zine Sex Panic! circa 1997Today is World AIDS Day, and while we’re not “celebrating”, per se, we are acknowledging the day, and the incredible impact this stupid fucking virus has had on our lives, our friends, our communities, and the whole damn world. In this vein, we present Sex Panic! – The Zine by the fine activists of Sex Panic!

This 40 page, digest size zine from 1997 is a collection of essays about how the anti-sex policies and politics of the 1980s and 1990s (and into the current millennium) have had a huge negative impact on queer communities. While the zine’s focus, at least initially, is on New York City, it’s contents is applicable much more broadly.

This is an incredible document, up there with Diseased Pariah News and How to Have Sex in An Epidemic in terms of DIY community-based communication about AIDS. Essayists include Douglas Crimp*, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Allan Bérubé, Lisa Duggan, Alison Redick, and Jim Eigo, among others.

We’ll be bringing this, along with a bunch of other AIDS activist ephemera, to the panel talk that we’re participating in with our friends from Gerber/Hart and Chicago Public Library on Monday, Dec. 5th, 2022.

*Doug Crimp was also one of the authors of AIDS Demo Graphics, which documents the first couple of years of ACT UP visuals, and has been a huge influence on us and scores of queer zine makers around the world.

Not Gay as in boring vegetables but Queer as in Wild Fermentation!

Wild Fermentation coverToday is “Review a Zine” Day of International Zine Month, and the zine we’re talking about is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Whenever we get asked “what’s your favorite zine in the collection?” Wild Fermentation is always toward the top of the list.

Initially published in 2001, this zine has since spawned a series of books by Sandor Katz (also entitled Wild Fermentation), a website, and an ongoing series of workshops, knowledge shares, and a whole community of positively passionate pickle people.

The zine itself (at least our copy) is entirely text-based. It’s basically a cookzine, but focused on making all sorts of fermented foods. From sauerkraut to pickles to miso to sour dough bread, it’s all about harnessing microbes to make and preserve different things to eat.

Our copy came to us as part of the first large collection of zines that we got as a donation. Honza, a member of our queer punk community in the Bay Area, passed away, and when his chosen family was gathering his things, his zines were sent to us with the request that we would keep them together and honor his memory.

The thing that’s super special about our copy is that Honza used it to press wild flowers and small plants between the pages. From a preservation and archival standpoint, this is not so great, but we’ve kept them in place because to us this represents both him and how we see the zines in our collection as a whole. Important enough to preserve, with the ability to tell stories even when we’re not around, and both precious and non-permanent.

Philosophy aside, we also love Wild Fermentation because it’s a teaching zine. Zines are amazing ways to learn and spread knowledge, and this does that with total ease. I (milo) use his recipes all the time, especially when making kosher dill pickles, kraut, and my own version of asazuke, a spicy dikon, carrot, and hot pepper ferment that I use in vegan banh mi.

Wild Fermentation (the 2001 version) can be found in our digital archive, and Sandor’s books Wild Fermentation, The Art of Fermentation, and Fermentation as Metaphor can be purchased from shortmountaincultures.com.

Aborting Mission Should Be Your Volition

Rock for Choice ad from the back cover of Teen Fag #2, 1993Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began we were thinking about trying to write a thing about zines that talk abut using herbs and DIY abortion. Then came the pandemic, and in the U.S., the confirmation of another anti-abortion supreme court justice, who, it’s speculated, will work to overturn the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized pregnancy termination.

We kind of hate that we have to write this at all, but the ongoing attacks on reproductive freedom and healthcare across the world make this necessary. Everybody should have access to the healthcare they need, full stop. This means being able to make informed choices about reproductive options including different methods of contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, and the ability to end a pregnancy as desired.

A couple of notes:

  1. The following links were not digitized by us at QZAP. Abortion and reproductive healthcare are absolutely queer and trans issues, but these zines are maybe outside of our collection policy scope. As such, they are not necessarily up to our standards for digitization, nor can we assure that the original creators permissions were sought before these were put online.
  2. These zines are intended to be informational and not “how-to” manuals. If you need to get an abortion or know someone who might, try contacting Planned Parenthood (in the U.S.) or The International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion (global)
  3. A lot of the research for this (short) list came from Jenna Freedman’s article Unreproductive: Zines on Herbal Abortion and Menstrual Extraction at Zinelibraries.info, which is focused library holdings, and the Let’s Talk About DIY Sexuality Zines handout (PDF) by Emily Bee that was prepared for the 2015 Milwaukee Zine Fest.

The Zines

Queer Love Stories

QLS GRN blgIt seems like a lifetime ago, but it has really only been about two months since we partnered with our friends at the Milwaukee Zine Fest and The Milwaukee Rep to produce a zine from their Queer Love Stories event.  Just as things were ramping up here with the COVID-19 preperations and prior to the Safer At Home orders, we got copies of the community made QLS zine from our local.  That was three weeks ago (it’s 13 April, 2020, a Monday, as we post this.) Since the production of this was funded through the partnership and our initial intent was to make them available during the Milwaukee Zine Fest, we thought we’d do that minus the fest.

If you would like a copy, all you have to do is send us 3 First Class U.S. stamps.

Queer Love Stories c/o QZAP
2935 N. Fratney Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212

Please be sure to include your name and address.

If you are not in the U.S. and would like a copy, please contact us.

Please take care of each other.

Love,

QZAP

By Any Means Necessary

P-Form #23 coverIn 1992, the drag queen Joan Jett Blakk ran for presidential office with backing from Queer Nation. Using the slogan “Lick Bush in ‘92,” Blakk’s campaign brought national attention to issues impacting queer communities, particularly the AIDS epidemic that the federal government was completely ignoring1. In the midst of the campaign, Terence Smith, the activist who performs as Blakk, penned an article for the performance art zine P-Form. Smith writes that drag carries a politics of “invulnerability,” providing a means of protection for Smith on both the stage and the streets. “No one can ‘harm’ me in drag,” writes Smith, “Because part of me is hidden underneath a Maybelline shell.” The article is a beautiful illustration of drag as a queer political force—a form of gender-fuckery that according to Smith “stomps out” the signifiers of masculinity and femininity.

Smith’s article is one of many articles on drag performance in this special issue of P-Form. The Randolph Street Gallery ran the zine from 1986 to 1999 and covered the performance art scene in Chicago. (Note: Blakk also ran for mayor of Chicago in 1991.) P-Form regularly highlights the work of queer and feminist artists. In the case of this issue, the majority of the articles are written by the artists themselves, who describe their performance practice as well as the difficulty of surviving and sustaining life as a queer performer.

JJBPIn an article entitled “Every Breathing Moment,” Michael Palmer describes the institutional violence enacted against trans bodies. Palmer writes about endless visits to doctors who challenged his identity as a trans man and refused to provide top surgery. He writes that “listening” to doctors or family would have meant turning toward death. Palmer describes breathing as a radical act—an assertion of life in institutional spaces that negate trans lives.

P-Form also provides reviews of other artistic forms, including painting cinema. In accordance with the drag performance theme, this 1991 issue includes a brief review of Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning, which had been released the previous year. The review reads like a collage of interviews and pull-quotes, featuring press statements made by Livingston as well as iconic lines from drag performers such as Dorian Corey and Venus Extravaganza. “The balls used to be about what you could create,” says Corey, “Now they’re about what you could acquire.” Corey notes that theft was not uncommon among the economically struggling performers on the ball circuit. The statement is a strong illustration of how the Harlem ball circuit served as a space of queer of color fabulosity that also gestured toward the precarity of queer life. Performance is a means of sustaining queer life, and it depends on radical forms of resistance to institutional oppression.

1 Goodman, Elyssa. “The Drag Queen Who Ran For President in 1992.” Them, 20 Apr. 2018, https://www.them.us/story/joan-jett-blakk-drag-queen-president. Accessed 13 June 2019.

Jacob Carter graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2019 with a master’s degree in English. He is interested in queer cinema and performance art and plans to apply for a PhD in performance studies later this year. He has previously presented his research at the annual conference of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference.

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