1. Intersectionality
[interviewing Inez Garcia]
Q: What did you say or do that would have given the police ample suggestion that you had been raped that night?G: I told them that they did something funny to me. And they knew the way I was. They saw my clothes. People in Soledad know how to dress. I mean, not that I dress very fine but I like to fix myself up because it's a habit we have. Spanish people, you know, are accustomed to always being dressed. If you go to an office you kind of look presentable, and stuff like that. ( "Interview with Inez Garcia" n/a, pg. 6)
Inez Garcia was a woman who had been raped and then shot one of her rapists as an act of self-defense after going to the police and yielding no response of protection. During her trial, Garcia received much support from feminist groups and introduced the idea of intersectionality between different groups of women. Here, Garcia mentions an aspect of her identity (being Spanish) and how its culture is important to the unspoken gender norm and regulation that would have shown the police how serious her position was. Also, the unspoken of sex, rape, sexual assault - all things dealing with sexuality and the power struggle between men and women during this time - limits Garcia's expression of what happened to her. Police is an institution that upholds white supremacy and sexist practices due to its largely white and male power structure, which brings into question who is believable to whom based on racial and gendered norms. This is highlighted too through Garcia being drug tested instead of examined for sexual assault first (pg. 8) as a way to immediately try to discredit Garcia if anything was found in her system regardless of what she had to say about her own drug usage.
The kinds of lesbians that were featured in this collection were women of all kinds of races, ethnicities, locations, etc. But their experiences blended into finding common ground in their politics and an aspect of their identities: the embracement of feminist practices to uplift all women, including queer women, women of color, etc.
2. Destigmitization
It [literary discussions] made one feel, Rebecca said to her cat, like one were part of a great global underground even though one didn't know any of the people personally. It made one feel, she exampled to the cat, alive ("The real thing" Francine Kranso, pg. 31)
This quote generalizes the zine's common thread of destigmatizing the experiences of queer women who are also politically informed. This short story by Francine Kranso introduces us to a main character named Rebecca who is an English student living in an apartment right above another queer woman who is an independent filmmaker. Both of these characters are deeply involved in making art that speaks on the political and lived experiences of people like them. This quote emphasizes the feeling that the community makes one feel more lively, more thoroughly involved in the world around them, and less alone in one's positionality.
As long as lesbians were seen as sexually perverted beings, then phsyically they must also be deviant. Therefore: Women are lesbians because they are too ugly to get a man. All lesbians look like men and by cultural standards are ugly ("Images of lesbains - breaking the myth" Phylane Norman, pg. 44)
This quote is introduced right before a photo series of different women who identify as lesbians. Some of them are feminine, some are masculine, and some are androgynous. Dressed in shadows and printed in black and white print, the viewer can't point out the exactness of these portraits, but the details of each person (eyes, freckles, etc.) are easily identifiable. Again emphasizes the point that those who exist outside of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy are not monolithic in their beliefs or their appearance. The white supremacist capitalist patriarchy perpetuates rigid, binary systems of thinking, which Norman mentions by comparing the stereotype of lesbians as "some truck-driving sexual being that went around seducing women in the same way that men are infamous for". If a lesbian does not fit this stereotype by being more feminine, less dirty, etc., "then she cannot be a lesbian" to broader society. (pg. 44). By including these photos in the zine, it grants queer women permission and includes them in the action of existing outside the stereotype and embracing their authentic self that includes their queerness and expression in their own form.