Greetings from Reality Girl Zine Headquarters! I decided to take this whole Substack thing more seriously, instead of blasting all my precious thoughts all over twitter all day. I’ll still do that too though. As you can see from the photo, I have plans to come out more publicly in the near future. I am obviously afraid of losing my job because of this, so … I thought maybe it would be smart to try to monetize this content a bit so maybe I can still afford to eat. Maybe nothing will happen, who knows? It’s all a big fun, anxiety ridden experiment.
I’m keeping all the content free for all, but offering stuff in the mail for paid subscribers. So, if you decide to become a paid subscriber, I’ll send you stuff in the mail. You can decide if you want stickers or a copy of the zine, or both. Or how about a paper copy of the highly collectible “Maddy the Half Weasel Girl?”
I’m working on a T-Shirt too but I think it would take balls or tits of steel (pardon) to wear a reality girl zine t-shirt out in public. If anyone is willing to try it, I’m making an iron on design that is supposed to last for at least 30 washes.
Now, about this zine. If you’ve never heard the word zine before, like most people who aren’t “Gen X”, it refers to the self-published magazines that we used to make before social media existed. We made them with paper and tape and made copies at Kinkos. I made one when I was a teenager called “Labium” and brought it to my local record store where they maybe sold one copy. I still have the original in a box somewhere.
The idea with Reality Girl Zine is to send them to people who are in positions of influence over this horrible situation we find ourselves in. School committee members, clinicians, social workers, local and state reps, etc… I use the Socratic Method, that is, asking questions… why this? Could it be that? So that even if they only glance at it quickly before casting it aside, they will realize that some people are allowing themselves to ask the question, and that they too are allowed to ask the question; WHY ARE SO MANY GIRLS DECIDING THEY’D RATHER BE BOYS?
I heard something about the brain being like a computer, and if you ask it a question, it will go about trying to supply answers, almost like a program running in the background. So, let’s get the question into people’s brains.
There are some days when I think the battle is almost won. A news article or documentary will come out that so clearly illuminates the quackery, that I can’t believe anyone is still hanging onto the idea that children can be born in wrong bodies, and need operations to fix them. But, then they dig their feet in even harder.
So this zine is my non-confrontational, safe, anonymous way to ask the questions directly to the people who are in positions of authority or influence in these young people’s lives. Please consider joining my mail campaign, by buying a pack of 25 or 50 and mailing them to influential people in your area. In a 6x9 envelope, they weigh exactly 1 ounce and cost one 60 cent postage stamp to mail.
Please DO NOT buy that many unless you are definitely going to mail them out, because they cost me quite a bit to produce. Toner cartridges are expensive. I don’t want to print up 50 copies and have them sitting on your shelf somewhere. I tried to do the math one day, and it costs me about $2 to produce each paper copy of the zine, so I priced individual copies at $3.60 to cover postage and a little something for me to buy more supplies with.
I think $2.50 each (plus shipping) for bulk orders is fair, that’ll cover my costs anyway. I’ll include the 6x9” envelopes so you don’t have to make a special trip to the store. If you want to pay more or less, we can work something out, I just want more copies of these out in the world.
here’s a link to buy 25:
P.S. I think mailing them directly to people’s homes is more effective and safer than handing them out on the street. Doctors and nurses are not going to open this up and read it at work, so I don’t think mailing to offices is a good idea. You can find people’s addresses by looking them up on whitepages.com. You get a certain amount of free lookups a month. I look up so many that I ended up needing a paid account.
I hate asking for help, but this is kind of a fun way to help the cause. I always feel good after sending out a big batch of these. So join the fun. If you read all of that, Thank you!
P.P.S. if you’d rather sticker, here’s that link Buy 10 Stickers
P.P.P.S. if you signed up to be a paid subscriber before, you may find you got a refund because I freaked out and almost deleted this entire site. Please re-subscribe if you feel like it.
I think this is a great idea!