a zine about child sexual abuse, but more than that: a zine about a society that enables the logic of sexual violence, the ways that doctors, therapists, society, see survivors as usefully “broken” sexually marred, who need to be healed *before* they’re allowed autonomous decisions. a screaming zine that circles around the societal refrain of “we’re hurting you for your own good”

What does it mean to be both a man and a lesbian? How are these compatible? In this zine I explore what it means to have a "lesbian manhood" whose manhood, and masculinity, isn't outside of my lesbian attraction, but born of it: a queer manhood that only exists *because* I am gay for women. Most images in the zine are collaged from old magazines.

I wrote this zine after I saw a tweet from someone who talked about wanting testosterone but didn't think they were "enough of a man" to "justify it." This zine is for anyone who has ever wanted to go on testosterone, but was convinced there were gendered rules about how and why you could justify that desire: girls can start testoserone. Anyone can go on testosterone, if that's what they want.

When I was first acknowledging that I was abused, I didn't know how to be angry. I'd never been angry for myself, and no one had ever been angry for me. The first time friends expressed hurt and rage for what was done to me, I was suprised at how...good it felt. I finally understood that anger itself is morally neutral as a concept, and in the right context, anger is love. Isn't being angry on behalf of injustice, on behalf of the pain inflicting on others, a way we show how much we care?

So if you're a survivor, and you want someone to be angry for you, I've got a lot to spare. Take this zine, and with it, hold onto all the anger in my heart for what was done to you.

There was just a brief pocket of time where metoo felt like it was by and for survivors. And then our anger was too much, aimed not at our political enemies, but the people who hurt us on "our side." And the pushback came flooding back.

That's the landscape that I wrote this zine in. I am an ex-Evangelical Pentecostal. There are people who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious," there are people who describe themselves as "religious but not spiritual" and then there's me, who would describe myself as "Pentecostal but not Christian" "neither spiritual, nor religious, but still somehow a believer in the power of prayer."

I know the power of prayer, of chants, of repetition. The words that you sink into your head and your heart, the reassurances you give yourself that you need to be told over and over again. The power of rhyme and rhythm and song, the way it sinks into your body. Scripture and song, poetry and prayer, these were always tools for building yourself a place to stand.

So with that said, this zine has prayers of anger. Prayers of vengeance and fury, but also prayers of hope, prayers for life, prayers for autonomy. They're simple, and I hope, if you need some better words to counteract your abuser's voice, I hope these can override them, and get stuck in your head.

This is my series of zines about the things that abuse takes from you. The first issue is about relationship loss: loss of the family that hurt you, loss of the family that didn't but doesn't understand, loss of friends due to trauma, etc.

This issue is about gaslighting and fear. About the ways you doubt your own perceptions, your loved ones, your sense that you can trust that those you love now won't hurt you. How do you know, when you didn't know you were being abused while you were in it?