Part 1 of 2

I made my first zine when I was in high-school and I’ve been wrestling with margins and photocopiers ever since. For the Transgender Studies Archive, I created a fanzine about the podcast Gender Reveal. Gender Reveal first aired in January 2018 and is created and hosted by Molly Woodstock, a non-binary journalist and educator living in Portland, OR. Gender Reveal centers non-binary experiences and interviews LGBTQIA+ artists, activists, and educators. This podcast offers a unique opportunity to listen to conversations between queer folks, specifically genderqueer, nonbinary and trans folks, talking about transgender issues. These interviews address topics including transgender vocabulary, non-binary identities, homelessness, activism, body feelings, difficulties with government documentation, and media representation. 

My goal with my zine is to promote and highlight the work of Gender Reveal. I think the podcast is doing valuable work by creating a wealth of interviews and situated knowledge of LGBTQIA+ folks, and this content is free to access on the internet. I think this way of creating knowledge and media is an important complement to the more rigid forms of knowledge creation we see in higher education and I wanted to celebrate that by creating a piece of DIY media. I’ve covered four podcast episodes in the zine but Gender Reveal has over 30 episodes available. You should really give it a listen!

You can find the Gender Reveal podcast online in a few places including here and here. You can read more about Molly Woodstock on their website and support their work by visiting the Gender Reveal podcast page on Patreon.

I chose to create a Trans Manifesto in the likes of Carl Wittman’s Gay Manifesto. I wanted to create a poster made by trans individuals, for trans individuals. My hope for this contribution is that it will be empowering to trans people. I also hope that it fosters some form of resistance for us trans folks living in a cis-normative society. I chose several people in my life to contribute to this project and come up with revolutionary or empowering statements to create a sense of unity amongst our community.

Unfortunately, being an umbrella term community means that we are only grouped together under the basis of a common identity. This can make collective liberation difficult because not everyone has equal access to resources, time, or monetary contributions to a revolution.

I hope our community can be reminded of the strength it took for us to get to where we are. The trans sisters who came before us tirelessly fought for our rights, and we are direct descendants of that work today. We are powerful, we are resilient, and we are the revolution.

-Finn Johnson- trans masc queer at Portland State University- 2018