This zine is about punk rock feminism. To
me, the basics of feminism mean rejecting and fighting
(whether with actions or in my head) any implication that
a girl is weak, or useless, or secondary to male etc. The
equation girl=dumb (which has been used by society to
calculate everything since the beginning of time) can
easily be both recognized and rejected by anyone. Male or
female. Both boys and girls can be feminists. To me, a
feminist is someone who rejects the said equation,
someone who believes and KNOWS that every girl and every
woman in this world is important. And I mean REAL
importance, not important in the sense of "females
are important to procreate" or "I want girls
cause I want a fuck".
Sadly, once people decide that they DO reject the
equation and say they are a FEMINIST (such a dirty word),
they get told (directly or indirectly) a whole bunch of
crap.
To be a Real Feminist
- you must not be a boy
- you must not shave your legs or underarms, or in fact
remove any hair from any part of your body.
- you must not wear makeup
- you must not wear dresses or skirts or associate
yourself with ANYTHING that society deems
"feminine"
- you must not fall in love with boys, sleep with boys,
or give boys any pleasure
- you must also be on-call at all times to anyone wishing
to know anything about feminism (after all, you ARE a
feminist aren't you); you must also be ready to explain
WHY you are a feminist to anyone who wants to know, to
explain (calmly and logically of course) WHY you are so
uptight (bitch) and give STATISTIC after STATISTIC to
make them understand, cause their minds work in numbers,
and they can't see you bleed if you're bleeding on the
inside.
Fuck the rules. I reserve my right as ME to do
whatever the fuck I want with my body. It makes
absolutely no difference whether I shave my legs and
underarms or not, or whether I wear makeup or not or
sleep with boys. IT'S BESIDE THE FUCKIN POINT. I'll
relate a little of my own experience here. When I first
got into feminism I felt guilty that I still wore
eyeliner, plucked my eyebrows etc. I thought other
feminists would think I was a sellout. Then after time I
realised I was allowing even MORE rules (my own rules
really) make me feel guilty and waste my time.
The only problem I see with makeup is that boys
don't have the freedom to wear it and girls feel as
though they HAVE to wear it (otherwise they're
"ugly"). Ditto with shaving your
legs/underarms. People seem to have this really fucked up
idea that hairy legs on girls is "masculine".
This is a very interesting subject to me. The terms
"masculine" and "feminine" are
basically both completely fucked up. "Feminine"
and "masculine" are supposed to go with
"girl" and "boy" respectively, but
basically they are the two words that fuck everything up,
that are used to keep us in our gender roles, and that
condone and encourage sexism. Consider this: hair grows
naturally on both males and females. So how can hair on
the legs of girls be "masculine"?? It is a
totally natural bodily function that is not
gender-specific! Hairy legs and underarms on girls are
treated in society as freak occurrences of nature. Well
FUCK YOU IT'S NORMAL SO GET FUCKIN USED TO IT.
And then, on the other hand, if a girls wants to
shave her legs, so what? It's up to her. She can do
whatever she wants with her body. It's like getting a
tatto or a haircut. And a boy can shave his legs if he
wants as well. The whole shave legs/don't shave legs
stems from like, a girl might never have seen the option
of not shaving and that it's not ugly, and then once she
has, it's up to her to decide. I personally think hairy
underarms on girls looks very sexy.
This zine is about punk rock feminism. I use the term
"punk rock" because I love punk, I like to play
it and listen to it and watch it, so obviously it's a gr8
part of my life. But I also use the term punk to describe
the method and thought process of my feminism. I wanna
talk about feminism here. To me, punk is about caring,
about doing things yourself and encouraging others to do
the same, and to take the responsibility to educate
themselves; it's about letting people know that anyone
can do it, whatever it might be. It's about knowing that
there's fucked up stuff going on in the world, and doing
something about it.
Too often the word "punk" is simply used
to describe a style of music or dress. But in my
definition of punk, if some rap kids got together and got
their gear together and made their own rap
7"/LP/whatever, I would call this punk. It is
punk. If a little girl went to a bookmaking class and
learnt how to make a book, then went home and made one
using things from home, rather than buying one for
way-expensive from the bookstore in town, I would call
this punk. It's about the method and process of things.
The method and process of ANYTHING. I love punk. I love
thinking about the meaning of it (my meaning
anyway) cause it makes me feel excited and inspired and
wanna jump up and down and run around town at night
spraypainting. Fuck the disillusioned pot-smoking
Generation X slacker that society and mainstream expect
me to be because I'm young. I've got stuff to DO, dammit!
back home
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