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!


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