Finally! A Review of greenzine 14!

So this is the (sort of) long awaited review of the zine I read a while back. It’s a zine published by Microcosm and written by Cristy C. Road. It’s hard to say exactly what it’s about because it’s basically a bunch of stories, real-life experiences that Cristy shares with the reader. My favorite thing about this zine was it is all over the place. She could have chosen stories that focused on her Cuban heritage and the troubles of living in Miami while it was being gentrified, she could have focused on stories about building community around surviving sexual assault, she could have focused on many other things, because it is apparent to me that she is a multi-faceted human being. But she didn’t, she in fact incorporated all of these elements into the various stories because they all fit. Even when she was not explicitly referring to something, she was still talking about it. I think it is a living example of how I cannot ignore any one oppression because they all intersect.

The thing I thought she articulated the best was when she spoke about sexual violence and healing from that violence. She outs herself as a survivor of sexual assault and states,

“Through the process of healing from abuse, more survivors invalidate themselves, rather than single-handedly believe that the assaulters actions were unquestionably criminal. The surface of a rapist often commits to the form of a nice, caring individual. This is our consistent mind-fuck. Im a woman and women are taught vulnerability. Women are taught compassion and compromise. And for almost a year I told myself that I was overreacting. And I remember the January where I reprimanded every moment I spent beside him. My anger was not irrational, and my anger was as valid as my emotional breakdown.” (8)

She later on she talks about her involvement toward “combating sexual assault” in Philadelphia, which she began by facilitating a workshop with two friends.

“We wanted to educate each other about rape – what we define as our boundaries, what to define as sexual assault, what to define as an abusive relationship, and what myths we yearned to demystify. That in itself is manipulated and rape is justified as okay violence – as oppose to a hate crime.” (57 ish)

“We don’t fucking ask for it – its not the way we dress that normalizes it, honey. What normalizes it is the socially ingrained practice of domination that consistently breathes life into almost every human dynamic.” (57 ish)

“I’ve had to witness artists and films romanticize and satirize rape and assault as just another fact of our culture that is tangible to their own discretion. Ive seen people applaud at the domination of another person’s body. And the truth is that violation is violation, despite the context. The conception of violation is ceaselessly triggering- no matter how desensitized our rape culture is. Deconstructing these norms was an initial step towards that justice we yearn for daily.” (page 57-ish? There aren’t page numbers.)

This is a righteous description, in my opinion. Yes, the tone is a little on the angry/violent side, but I think that anger is valid and real and stems from real and valid pain. And I see past it to the content.

Another thing I thought was awesome about this zine was how open she was in writing about questioning gender norms. Throughout her life, Cristy struggled with these norms and her gender identity.

“I was unaccepted and failed to pass as the girlfriend of a prominent boy. I, like others, was weak and submitted to the subculture’s demands. Ultimately, I didn’t want this, I wanted what I had always wanted – I wanted to be a boy. But I never identified with straight boys, and if I was going to play the part of a boy, I might as well play the part of a the hot femme queer boy in my postmodern fantasies.” (27 ish)

“This year, I made a t-shirt which read “gender is a construct, so fuck it” and I came to terms with the difference between sex and gender.” (27 ish)

Cristy ends up subscribing to post modern definitions and ideals of gender. According to this “postmodern homosexuality,” anyone regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation can have queer sex. She does so to avoid the construct of socially ingrained inequities she sees in mainstream media about heterosexual relationships (though not all, she shares, stating that “a coercive power structure could be evident in any relationship”).

There’s just so much in this zine it’s hard to capture it all. I’ll share one more part, because it really got me to stop and think.

“Goals toward idealism often painted portraits of abusing privilege and power. How can we change and learn from this abuse? Abuse that entails advocacy of quitting your job, when most members of the working class can’t afford to. Abuse where middle class white anarchists scoff at a family for consuming cheap products from large corporations as opposed to making their own. What was a commonality to one was often an economic pipe dream to another, nuzzled beneath dept and survival. Raising a family often overpowered conscious consumption – this wasn’t practicing ignorance – let’s start from there.” (28)

“Instigating an alliance to the people is like a vine mounting from a collection of seeds. Every seed represents a struggle, a movement, an oppression, and a bout of empathy. The will to educate one another about our rights and our choices, and the will to support others by the means they demand, not the actions we would choose.” (29)

“This is what I wanted from growing up – the understanding of others’ choices, the will to educate a community of my desires, and the will to understand why they might not have the capacity to want to learn. In retrospect, a mother doesn’t want to swallow banter about what corporations not to support when she had to prioritize the nourishing of her family. Although, if communication is equally exchanged, one can become more than willing to listen.” (29)

“But we still see that idealized rendition of being radical that could only be embraced by privilege and taught through tactlessness. And when someone chose to steal from the large corporation, they may have felt perpetuating that idea to a large community was compelling. We could never feed others with our excursions and insurgency without recognizing that we are privileged. Scamming bus passes and single-handed theft wasn’t a commodity- because, honey, unlike a middle class white anarchist – a poor person can’t get away with it most of the time. A middle class definition of being poor was sickeningly indoctrinated into radical culture when a writer once said, ‘If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right’“ (29)

“It must be fun to get away with theft when you physically play the part of a clean-cut respected consumer, Im sure. I can assure you theft would never be alleged by a homeless passerby or a person of color.” (29)

There is just so much substance in these words. This is the vision of anarchism in particular that I see played out in mainstream spaces as well as some anarchist subcultures themselves. Anarchism as violent, anarchism as white and male, anarchism as middle-class, anarchism as “fucking over the system” in ways most people can’t afford to. A good example of this is the popular movie Fight Club.

The “having fun” bit is something I have also seen in a lot of mainstream activist writing, most notably, in the book “The Lifelong Activist” by Hillary Rettig.

What really got me thinking, though, was the bit about tactlessness. I consider myself to be honest to a fault and I see this getting me into trouble sometimes. I’ve been told I am intimidating more than once, which is interesting to hear because I don’t really know what I would intimidate someone with. Empathy, maybe? Regardless, I’ve become worried recently that people won’t be willing to listen to what I have to say if they can’t get past my tone. This bothers me because I feel like I’m in a bind – sometimes my tone is going to seem frustrated or angry and sometimes I will have no intention of having a harsh tone, but will have the effect of one. I do not know how to push the conversation past a place of “tone” to a place of “content,” so we can actually discuss the topic at hand.

This also got me thinking because I do have a lot of privilege. I by no means deny that. And it is at times a struggle, I have found, to allow myself to focus on the areas where I have privilege. It is sometimes easy to get into a habit of looking only at the ways I am oppressed by my context. I think that’s a bit mistake.

So I hope I have shared enough of the zine’s content for others to want to read it too! There’s so much more, I promise. I didn’t even touch on the parts about mental health, Cristy’s role in the punk rock scene, nor her Cuban heritage. It’s all there. I recommend it.

PS. Congrats to fellow Carls at Happy Bodies! For being in the Recommended Reading on FWD.