Zines and postcards for International Women’s Day

Forget giving flowers or jewellery on Women’s Day! It’s a day to celebrate, remember, and plot feminist struggles after all! It’s a day to go on strike, organise, and educate yourself and others. And why not a day to read feminist zines and send postcards?

By the way, for March 8th I have some news to share about my solo music project Lost Luna too… Read on:

Article – Feminism and self-publishing

For Same Heartbeats #3 zine:

SELF-PUBLISHING & FEMINISM

This text deals with paper media such as zines and their link with feminism. I’m going to try to mix examples from different countries and avoid focussing only on American feminism and American zines because they already get covered a lot in research and alternative press.

Feminist media such as zines didn’t come from nowhere, appearing all of the sudden from a void. Feminists have always written down their ideas and published their writings. If they couldn’t find a publishing company they did it themselves. In the second wave of feminism which took place between the 1960s and the 1980s, feminists even started their own publishing companies and edited their own books, magazines and pamphlets. Examples of Dutch-speaking publishing companies were De Bonte Was and Feministische Uitgeverij Sarah. A section of the left-feminist group Dolle Mina made their own “Red Booklet” Of The Woman/Women and cheaply self-published magazines called De Grote Kuis around 1970 (it’s remarkable how much they’re alike today’s zines!). Also feminist book shops started to flourish, but unfortunately most of them are gone today. Some examples of contemporary feminist magazines include Scum Grrrls (Belgium), Emma (Germany), Bitch (US) and Lover (Netherlands). Often, feminist organisations publish their own newsletter or magazine, such as the Belgian organisations Gynaika (magazine under the same name), De Madam (newsletter under the same name), RoSa (magazine called Uitgelezen, RoSa is a feminist archive and library with lots of feminist magazines and other publications), De Vrouwenraad (Vrouwenraad) and Vie Féminine (Axelle). A Dutch publishing company run by women that’s been active for a few decades is Atalanta. They focus on anarchist, philosophical and ecological books and booklets and have also published some feminist publications. There are others as well such as Virago Press.