MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS
Photo by JESSI LLOYD MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS was launched in Lent term 2015 as CUSU LGBT+’s Trans Campaign. We aim to work together towards the end of the oppression and othering of marginalised people based on the assumptions people make about us every day. This zine is the product of the collective voice of people from many axes of marginalisation, denouncing the systems that box us without knowing, understanding, or respecting us. This zine has a general trigger warning for discussions of transphobia/cissexism and other oppressive systems. Specific trigger warnings are at the top of each page. CONTRIBUTORS: Rowland Goodbody
Sarah Gibson
MJ Black
Dinosaurs for All
Attic Party
Sarah Caulfield
Charlie Otter
Mel Berrill
Tabitha Kane
Jessi Lloyd
Em Travis
MNA Crafts Team
ROWLAND GOODBODY
TW: misgendering, cissexism, sexism
CHARLIE OTTER
TW: biological essentialism, violent body imagery
From ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein’ by Susan Stryker
TW: underwear, facial hair, implied transphobia
JESSI LLOYD
TW: transphobia, violence
ATTIC PARTY
CHARLIE OTTER
TW: institutionalised classism, bullying, self-worth
MEL BERRILL
MJ BLACK & SARAH CAULFIELD
TABITHA KANE
TW: coercive gender assignment, violent body imagery, misgendering, cissexism, transmisogynistic slurs, transphobia, tone policing, suffocation imagery, violence “perhaps if I move furiously enough, I can deform [the Law] in my passing to leave a trace of my rage.” i am angry because the first words ever to be spoken over me were a lie. i am angry because you – they – the Law, and we who do not question it – made me a liar, too. the air is thick with unspoken assumptions and we wade through it gasping. when honesty is oxygen, when authenticity gives us the impetus for survival, we have nowhere to breathe. i am angry because no matter what i embody i am a lie to you. i can tattoo my transness in glitter across my forehead and you will still call me Miss. but when we change we are also liars, tricks, traps, dupes. i am angry because i cannot reconcile my lies to the world with its lies to me. i am angry because i cannot reconcile my lies to the world with my lies to myself. “incoherence is resistance in a world where your representation is regarded more seriously than your reality.” my anger is silence because it cannot be spoken. when it comes out in screams and choking sobs you only tell me to calm down, that i am not helping my Cause, that you will only accept my fury when i spell it out and package it up for you to consume. yet without anger i am nothing. i am invisible. i move through the world as a phantom with an oxygen tank and soon i will run out of air. how dare you expect me to live like this. “may you discover the enlivening power of darkness within yourself. may it nourish your rage. may your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to transform your world.” i am angry because you tell me to be meek. i am bitter because you tell me to be palatable. you cannot swallow my sorrow and digest my disgust without burning your insides; it does not work that way. the truth rips its way out with teeth and claws and if you are still the same person after watching it disembowel the lies you live by then you have not been listening. i am angry because it is the only way i have left to be honest. i refuse to accept that my rage is not enough to raze this world to the ground.
EM TRAVIS Quotes from Darkmatter & Susan Stryker
JESSI LLOYD
TW: cissexism
TW: coercive gendering
TW: cissexism, erasure, classism
TW: disease imagery
EM TRAVIS adapted from ‘punk is not a fashion statement’, anon
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