My Feminist Manifesta (2009)

a zine by molasses.

Attachment	Size
My Feminist Manifesta.pdf	4.14 MB

From the Introduction:
"This zine is a short compilation of my internal and external reactions to a few situations that I found myself in during the month following Sali's Murder. For those who don't know, Sali Grace was a friend of mine and a beautiful person and a strong and sexy woman who was brutally raped and murdered in September 2008. When I heard the news, I was staying in a house with four guys, all of whom seemed to have little interest in identity politics, gender dynamics or woman's issues (although they had all had exposure to these subjects and were by no way underprivileged in their access to theory and ideology.)
While I don't often expect much from the people around me, I was surprised to receive almost no emotional support and shocked at the lack of perspective they had on the issue. The general reaction of my housemates to the news was to state their condolences and then go on being the same (blindly or stubbornly?) sexist men they've grown into, either oblivious or indifferent to the shocking play of gendered violence that was undoubtedly built upon the dynamics which they themselves were so comfortably upholding.
......
This is a call-out to all the men in my life and to all the women:
If you're a man and you're not ready to radically change, then I don't want or need you in my life any more. If you're a woman. any woman, then I'm ready to call you a sister and to support you and fight for you...
So, here it is... a carefully edited and anxiously fretted-over pile of my written emotions. i tried desperately to ride some imaginary line between not blowing away the men who might be ready to listen and not silencing myself. I'm getting more and more fed up at my own silencing and my own gendered fears and reactions and Im trying to turn them around. My hope is that the women in my life are feeling the same and are ready to fight back and that the men in my life are so fucking sick of the world the way it is that they are ready to change.
I don't want to be silenced anymore. I don't want to censor myself. I don't want to tailor my actions because I'm afraid that I might lose friends or attention or affection or interest or support or my status in it all. I don't want to see my friends raped and murdered, sexually assaulted and sexually harassed, afraid to travel and scared to walk home alone at night. I want to see change. Radical change. I want to see it in my lifetime, however long or short it may be. I hope this zine is a start..."