Issue 001: IDENTITY

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Composition (Playful)

By Maja Hastings

Letter from the Editor

Decolonizing Gender by Robyn George

Disco

By Sophie Rewey

Tainted Tyriads Target the Queer Experience

How narratives around queer expression and gender fuel culture wars.

it’s ok!

By Margaret Fassbender

La fertilidad de generaciónes

By Claudia Delgado

What’re You Lookin’ At? A Commentary by Filip Jawdosiuk

Pose

By Sophie Rewey

The Ever-Fading Glimmer of Reactionary Activism

By Djamal Lylecyrus

Finding Identity in Performance

A Look into Madison’s drag community and it’s impact on queer identity By Quintynn Vaughn

UW-Madison QTPOC

At the Intersections of Race, Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation.

Fruity

By Zack Zens

Contributor Profiles

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CONTENT WARNING: The Issue 001 contains content that relfects or references sexual assault, racism, anti-semitism, police brutality, hate crimes, homophobia and other sensisitve content.

Please read at your own descretion.

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Valetines advice from our resident sweethearts.

Sheeza Herr

Wynter Da Bratt

“Love yourself first! “You have to enjoy your own life, find your own hobbies, do your thing, and you’ll attract people eventually.”

Follow your intuition.

“What’s meant for you will come. You don’t have to rush it."

Adelaide + Freya Feenix Freya’s hot take on Valentine’s Day is that you dont need a healthy relatioship to celebrate.

“You can do whatever you want with Valentine’s Day!”, Adelaide’s advice for hopeful singles this Valentine’s Day is to “get out of your house! Go out. Be confident.

Latina Envy

Draco Knight

“Communication is everything.”

Their celebrity crush is Instagram influencer @pena.consulting.

“Keep it personal! Get crafty and make a personalized gift for your valentine or take them on a unique date. ”

Fruity

by Zack Zens

There is a side effect to this sole secretive suffering that emanates from silence: self-hatred.

“He’s a little fruity, like a basket of fruit, Oh shoot I don't mean fruit but ya know, light in the loafers. The kind of kid who likes embroidery and not football. Do you get what I’m saying” says a family friend to my parents.

It was as if my body was a vessel burgeoning on bursting with the pressure of guilt, mixed with the heat of doubt tantalizingly teetering me on the edge of implosion.

I was six, standing at crisp attention and tapping my shoes on the floor to the beat of some familiar yet indistinct jazz song scatting fervently in the background so that I synced my racing mind to the bumping cello and my skipping heart to the high tracing tinge of trumpets.

Phrases doused in perfume so as to pass them off as nice and though the adults saying them cup their hands as if they are cunningly concealing something and keeping their little sneering side comments out of earshot, As if a cunningly cupped hand can keep an old and obsequious eye from darting to that little boy, in a vest, on the couch, smiling bashfully.

As if saying fruity somehow softens the edges of hate.

It’s more proper, more palatable. Perhaps the actual word is too hard to swallow, not sweet enough for them, so they ripen it up, sugar coat it and call it fruity.

Day after day the dreary dirge of “don’t ask, don’t tell” rings in my ears so loudly that my mind is carelessly compressed into a surly and seditious self-loathing.

Of course that simple solution has always worked well. If you want something to go away, just don't think about it.

But you see, ignoring something has never made it go away.

Yet you resolve not to say anything.

You make up your mind to just push it down, let it fade and degrade or get obscured like some ancient ruin under the jungle brush in the remote enclaves of your mind.

As if my body was a vessel and the simple phrase “I’m bi” was slowly eating me alive from the inside, like a cliff eroded by the petious sea or a castaway drowned by the merciless tide.

It took a long time to find myself, and it was never helped by that mind splitting phrase “Oh, you like guys, so you must be gay” rolling off the tounges of friends so easily it must have been fact, But that is not true, and the moment I realized I don’t owe anyone an explanation, That whatever I was, was mine, and whoever I felt like sharing it with, was my choice.

You see, when we start equating a person's love to a mere fruit, that person begins to wonder whether their love is real.

Whether who they are is real.

And on a planet where fruity people are always in danger of being plucked from their trees, And in a world where leaders cloak bemoaning bigotry with covertly generic phrases like “protecting our children” we need to stick together.

We, people who lay ourselves bare to the world, We, people who know what it is to suffer, to love, to breakdown and build up, We, people who despite receiving hate, still find it in our hearts to bring safe harbor to compassion and kindness, And we, people who are willing to stand up and reclaim those far overripened and overused phrases of hate.

So next time, when I see that little boy on the couch, I’m a vest, standing stiff, I'll be sure to say, “Hey, who wants to be a vegetable anyway.”