About GenZine

A huge hello to whoever’s stumbled across this issue of GenZine! Welcome!

GenZine is a Melbourne-based zine exploring gender equity through art and conversation. We think that living self-reflective lives means examining the structures and ideas that we inherit, including ideas around gender and sexuality. GenZine delves into the struggles, joys and questions stirred up by living in a gendered world. We believe that young creatives taking an imaginative approach to these issues can open up new ways of being and connecting to each other in these divided times.

This issue’s theme is POWER. Our contributors have done a stellar job capturing the versatility of this theme through poetry, paintings, a comic, a collage, photography and digital illustrations. The giving, taking and recognition of power are all considered with incredible nuance and sensitivity in the pieces submitted to this issue.

Hannah (she/her), Emily (she/they) and Charlotte (she/her) are the three musketeers behind GenZine. After joining forces in the middle of 2021, we signed up for a social change program run by youth organisation YouthCAN, in partnership with Victoria University and supported by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The brief was to create a project that challenged polarisation and promoted inclusivity in our local communities. Over the rest of 2021, we busied ourselves with a number of workshops and meetings in order to bring this vision to life. The zine you’re holding in your hands (or looking at on a screen) is the culmination of months of zoom calls, countless google docs and a genuine love and devotion on the part of its editors.

Something like GenZine doesn’t come about without many helping hands along the way. Huge thanks to YouthCAN and Vic Uni, whose program provided the invaluable training and funding necessary to bring GenZine Issue 2 into being. Our deepest gratitude to Jas, Chris and Alison for their abiding support - you folks are something else. Shoutout to the One Woman Project for the juicy collabs and general big-sis-organisation advice. A massive thank-you as well to Aleisha Earp (@aleisha.earp), the lovely (& astoundingly talented) graphic designer for this issue.

And finally, a dedication. To our community of contributors - Lily, Parminder, Maya, Tanya, Mara, Jena, Hannah, Tara, Sylvia, Moana, and Karina - we salute you. You’ve inspired us with your honesty, humour, imagination and vulnerability. Thank you for so bravely and skillfully stepping into the tangle of your own experiences so that we might all question why things are the way they are. This is for you.

Yours in resistance, equity and love,