The Erotic Worldmaking of Asexual and Aromantic Zines (original) (raw)

2021, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking

Abstract

In this article, we explore and discuss the role that zines play in asexual and aromantic community and worldmaking. Drawing on intersectional feminist zine studies and asexuality studies, we consider how zines, and in particular Taking the Cake, Brown and Gray, and An Aromantic Manifesto, have provided an important Do-It-Yourself (DIY) platform for asexual (ace) and aromantic (aro) people to navigate their identities, challenge compulsory sexuality, and reimagine ace and aro worlds. Adopting the framework of Lordean erotics, we focus in our analysis on how ace and aro zinesters navigate questions of queerness, gender, ability, race, and racism. We enter the little backroom in the stationary store where rows of zines are kept in place with twine. It's a queer little space but we might not find asexuality or aromanticism here, just as we didn't find it in the gay bookstore. Instead, we bring the a-zines with us-everywhere we go-in case the place needs them, in case someone needs them, in case someone doubting their own existence needs a voice to tell them that asexual and aromantic people do exist.

Figures (6)

Figure 4. Cover of An Aromantic Manifesto (2018) by yingchen and yingtong, featuring pink and orange pastel hues with a paintbrush mark in saturated orange hues on the left and the title of the zine in the top right corner.

Figure 4. Cover of An Aromantic Manifesto (2018) by yingchen and yingtong, featuring pink and orange pastel hues with a paintbrush mark in saturated orange hues on the left and the title of the zine in the top right corner.

features two quotes, one by José Esteban Mufoz in

features two quotes, one by José Esteban Mufoz in

readers to sit alone or virtually around a table with others and with any books, magazines, stickers, markers, glitters, glues, and scissors available. To reach out to touch the different materials, indulging in the tactile experience of what could soon become a zine. To work alone or with friends to build the worlds they hold within. For it is only through making our own worlds that we can envision the erotics we so need to nourish justice and anti-oppression, rather than the toxic- ity and abuse that is born of racist and sexist contexts.

readers to sit alone or virtually around a table with others and with any books, magazines, stickers, markers, glitters, glues, and scissors available. To reach out to touch the different materials, indulging in the tactile experience of what could soon become a zine. To work alone or with friends to build the worlds they hold within. For it is only through making our own worlds that we can envision the erotics we so need to nourish justice and anti-oppression, rather than the toxic- ity and abuse that is born of racist and sexist contexts.

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References (82)

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  82. Ela Przybylo is assistant professor in English and Core Faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University. She is the author of Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality (Ohio State University Press 2019), an editor of On the Politics of Ugliness (Palgrave 2018), and author