Interview with a Zinester: Ponyboy Violet!

i am genderqueer — though i was female-assigned at birth, i don’t fit into the female/male binary and don’t identify as female.  given this, i’ve had a complicated relationship to feminism — or, maybe more accurately, i’ve had a complicated relationship to some feminists and their expressions and definitions of feminism.  i don’t identify with an essentialist feminism, one that focuses on sussing out who the “real” women in the movement are, and in my zine i talk about the liberation i experienced when i discovered that i could call my body parts whatever i wanted, and when i realized that i didn’t have to let culture dictate what my body should look like/behave like.  all of that being said, i think feminism should be widened, not done away with, and i think a lot of good people are doing good work to widen feminism today — to make sure that it includes all kinds of bodies and identities, to make sure that it stays within a radical framework.  i would like to think of my zine as a contribution to this widening feminism, and think it’s crucial that any radical examination of eating disorders take place  through a feminist lens: eating disorders are rebellions against capitalism and patriarchy’s incursions on our bodies, and the state has always attempted to control the population by controlling female-assigned bodies first and foremost.