Course:GRSJ 224 Zines as Feminist Tools for Resistance and Story Telling

Definition

Zines are self-published or independently published ‘Do It Yourself' low budget-booklets that “are created, and that circulate, within DIY sub-cultural contexts.” Although originally paper-based and reproduced via black and white photo-copying, zine culture has expanded to include digital media, intended for electronic distribution.

Aesthetic

Zines are widely known for their crude “cut and paste” aesthetic, with the author or authors communicating through a combination of handwriting, typewriter text and/or cutting out letters or phrases from magazines. Text can be accompanied by drawings and collage. The unpolished DIY look, with text that often includes spelling and grammatical errors uncorrected or scratched out, is an intentional reclamation of media production, and resistance to the high-gloss, overly edited full colour production value saturating mainstream media.

Origins

Zines are commonly associated with Riot Grrrl Culture of the mid–late 1990s. Zines have a long but erratically documented and often disputed history, with roots much earlier than Riot Grrl, stemming from the punk rock scene in the 70’s. Zine culture of this time was heavily focused on fanzines, or zines written about bands, by fans of that band. Some media and cultural historians have linked the origin of the zine back to science fiction fans in the 1930, who started self-publishing their booklets as a reaction to the mainstream media of the time.

Zine popularity appears to come in waves, perhaps linked to surges in counter culture movements often happening in reaction to the politics of the time and geography of the author.

Topics

Zines often focus on socio-political realities under the umbrella of feminism and outside of it. Feminist zines cover such topics as: activism, body image and eating disorders, sex, reproductive justice, illness, music, labour, mental health, sexual assault and violence, motherhood, and sex work. A sub-genre of zine culture is perzines, which are auto-biographical in nature, consisting of writings about an individual’s own personal experiences or thoughts, rather than focused on social commentary.

Intersectionality

The political commentary captured in zines is often authored by people with lived realities of systemic oppression, due to things like gender or gender expression, race, socio-economic position, sexuality and / or ability. Within zine culture there are a variety of genres and authors including queer and trans focused zines, zines by racialized folks, zines exploring disabilty, as well as zines produced by people who are incarcerated. Fly Over Distro is an example of a zine publisher that produces almost exclusive Queer, and/or POC zines that challenge the politics of the Southern United States. Flor y Canto is annual self-published femzine, released by Mujeres de Maíz (MdM), an East LA Chicana collective, which has been released since 1997.

Zines as Tools for Feminist Resistance and Storytelling

The materiality of zines, regardless of content can be seen as a counter narrative to mainstream media and mass cultural production. In the act of self-publishing small run, intentionally aesthetically crude media stands in direct opposition to high gloss populist media and also positions the authors as unexpected cultural producers and controllers, creating a counter narrative to media and pop culture.

The counter culture / counter narrative nature of zines is further compounded by the often political content published through zine culture. Feminist zines provide the authors with the opportunity to challenge dominant ideas fed to them about femininity, gender, sexuality that main stream media forces viewers to consume.In providing girls and other marginalized genders and identities with a platform to share their stories and while having full control of how it is told, zines stand in resistance to academia, which inherently posits scholars and researchers as feminist knowledge holders and producers and marginalize people as subjects.

Zines also make use of culture jamming, and in doing so become a means to rebel against popular and dominant culture and subvert dominant imagery and messaging taken from magazines and photographs.

Criticisms of Zine Culture

Zine culture is not without critique. The DIY production and limited reach of zines lends to them being overlooked or not taken seriously as tools of political or social culture change.

Zine publishing, although often considered an underground culture, appears to be most popular in the United States and Europe. This has created a somewhat hegemonic authorship within it, that is primarily white and middle class and cis-gendered female. It should be noted that this is also a critique of Riot Grrrl culture, a cultural movement within recent history through which zines again experienced a wave of popularity.

Some academics (see the work of Poletti, 2008 and Sinor, 2003)argue that zine culture and production is less an act of intentional resistance and perhaps more an act of representation or art practise that seeks to “creatively (re)construct and represent the self on the page.”

Zines today

The influence of zine culture is noticeable in many popular media producers today, an example being Rookie. Rookie magazine, was an online magazine started by a teenage fashion blogger that embraced the zine aesthetic, while exploring many topics related to 3rd wave feminism.

Some examples of active zine distributors include Fight Boredom (Canadian), AK Press (United States), and Fight Pen (UK).