{"id":42757,"date":"2025-05-26T16:10:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T13:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feministeerium.ee\/?p=42757"},"modified":"2025-05-27T10:37:46","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T07:37:46","slug":"perspectives-zine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/perspectives-zine\/","title":{"rendered":"All of Us Together: A Zine Exploring what Fascism in the United States Means Beyond Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

As another Pride Month dawns, we find ourselves in strange quarters. Our ways of living and loving and being are under threat.<\/h2>\n

How do Queer people across borders unite in solidarity? And what can our art teach us about what we share with and can learn from each other?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

The Rise of the Right<\/h2>\n

In the wake of the reelection of Donald Trump to the United States (henceforth US) presidency, I felt a chasm of powerlessness open within my body.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even before Trump took office on 20 January, 2025, his administration swiftly laid groundwork to roll back rights Queer people in the US had formerly enjoyed, erase us from federal websites and national monuments, and continue ostracizing us within the broader.<\/span><\/p>\n

The impact of these actions, though, are not confined by US borders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of the US\u2019s unfortunate preeminence in global politics and power dynamics, any assault by our government in turn affects the lives and liberties of Queer people in all nations beholden to its bullying influence.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is especially true for Queer people living in Europe, where US economic and military power works to sway governments toward its ideology du jour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as the US consolidated their turn rightward, we watched European governments attack Queer people and other marginalized communities, consolidating their threats to us in a pre-Pride Month frenzy. Poland, France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, England and others have hastened their shuffle to the right in these last months, leaving Queer people grappling in the wake.<\/p>\n

Similarly, this year, the other two parties in the Estonian governing coalition ousted the Social Democrats, who\u2019d formerly built relationships with marginalized groups, organizations working for Queer and Trans liberation among them. Right-wing bureaucrats who display marked hostility toward the interests of these groups have taken their place<\/span><\/p>\n

Paths Forward<\/h2>\n

In these moments, Pride celebrations feels both defeating and more necessary than ever. But, it is hard to find my celebratory spirit in the midst of all this existential dread.<\/p>\n

So, I met my grief, seeking to exorcise this Queer sorrow, in order to claim my Queer joy.<\/p>\n

In this effort, I created a zine: PERSPECTIVES: Queer Writings and Art on US Fascism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zines (short for magazines) are independently created and distributed publications long used as a cornerstone of Queer communication and organizing efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though the art form is less widely used in Estonia, it\u2019s enjoying a resurgence due to its particular usefulness in distributing information, ideas, and art among traditionally silenced communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most beautiful thing about a zine is that anyone can make one, about anything, and it can be distributed by hand or over the web to get anywhere it needs to go.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This zine<\/span><\/a> is an anthology of Queer voices. Compiling poetry, art, musings, mournings, and calls to action from inside the US, as well as in Estonia and Finland, it provides space for Queer people to give voice to this new chapter in the long story of US facism, and what it means to us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h2>\n

Sorrow as the Stuff of Art<\/h2>\n

Even as I feel lost in that peculiar powerlessness I have become so familiar with as a political refugee and, at the same time, a lover of my homeland, I knew I had to create something with that sorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pivotal tool fascism uses to divest Queer power of our power is erasure. They erase us from legal protections, from activist movements, from history, from public life. They erase us because, most simply: our very existence is a threat to their social control.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I look back at other, similar movements in history, I see that we have so little to draw upon in reconstructing the Queer history that\u2019s lost through this process of erasure. As such, I felt it was important to collect and archive voices of those directly impacted by this new wave of censure.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I wrote in the zine\u2019s Editor\u2019s Note: \u201cI believe it is our duty and honor to keep our stories however we can.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I created this zine as an invitation to step out from the chaos\u2013 to create stillness in the storm, to archive what this moment holds for those of us inside and outside the US, as an act of care, and as an act of posterity for our future.<\/span><\/p>\n

The chaos is intentional, but so is this opportunity to make art and, in so doing, to resist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Keys to Understanding<\/h2>\n

One of the most meaningful parts of this project were the things it taught me about Queer identity, hope, and resistance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout the process, I found a wealth of common threads uniting Queer people across these seemingly disparate places and experiences.<\/span><\/p>\n

We share the same fears: lack of acceptance, loss of our way of life, isolation, death, encampment, grief.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we also share the same hopes: solidarity, stronger communities, new connections, technology and agriculture and art as tools of resistance, and the growth of something new from what once was.<\/span><\/p>\n

The pieces in the first and second half of this zine, I found, are in rapt conversation with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Queers in the US ask, \u201cWhat do we do next?\u201d Queers in Europe say, \u201cWe survive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As Queers in Europe ask, \u201cHow do I find the path to myself?\u201d Queers in the US say: \u201cCommunity is your compass.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s Next for Us?<\/h2>\n

This zine holds a dual promise in its pages: an archive and a roadmap, for all of us, together.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, we talk to each other across different cultures, different continents. We find our way to each other and treat each others\u2019 wounds with the medicine of our hard-won wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, I leave you at the beginning, with my opening comments in the <\/span>zine\u2019s <\/span><\/a>first pages:<\/span><\/p>\n

Find here a collection of poems, rants, musings, and art from Queer people, taken together to represent a singular moment in our shared history of sorrow and struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those interested in reading other zines I\u2019ve made, you can find them <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For those interested in zines and zine-making, I suggest taking a look at the collections of <\/span>Queer Zine Archive Project<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> Sherwood Forest Zine Library<\/span><\/a>, or attending the upcoming <\/span>Helsinki Zine Fest<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As another Pride Month dawns, we find ourselves in strange quarters. Our ways of living and loving and being are under threat. How do Queer people across borders unite in solidarity? And what can our art teach us about what we share with and can learn from each other? The Rise of the Right In the wake of the reelection of Donald Trump to the United States (henceforth US) presidency, I felt a chasm of powerlessness open within my body.\u00a0 Even before Trump took office on 20 January, 2025, his administration swiftly laid groundwork to roll back rights Queer people\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":42764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1673],"tags":[2216,1420,2215,2217,2204,2214],"class_list":["post-42757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-helsinki-zine-fest","tag-pride-en","tag-queer-resistance","tag-trump-en","tag-us","tag-zine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42757"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42779,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42757\/revisions\/42779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.feministeerium.ee\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}