The Female Species #5 / :20 / Free / 28M / 2692 Madison Rd Ste N1, PMB 220, Cincinnati, OH 45209 / http://www.geocities.com/yoshomon / [email protected] /
I got this zine over at AMC from presumably the editor, who was incredibly nice and talked to me at great length, more so than when I received issue three from eir off of the livejournal zine_scene community. This time though, even though ey promised me that issue three was horrible and this was miles above anything ey ever had done, I still feel that there are some glaring problems. First, the editor puts in a list of various questions trying to stoke questions in the reader about the fucked-up gender system, but what about those people, like me, who have already came to the conclusion that the gender system is a tool of one group to oppress another? Anyways, The Female Species is a zine that is completely about overthrowing the capitalist system, and beyond that, I’m not really sure. This issue has an interview with the Red and Anarchist Action Network that actually goes in depth enough to explain the history of the crew, but really doesn’t have an ancillary piece describing why Leninism is so gosh-darned bad. I understand from contextual clues that Leninism is bad due to the stratification of society, but it would have been a killer aid to have maybe a few definitions, a sidebar piece, anything to explain it better. The writing is still thought provoking and solid, but I really have to pose a question to the editor : isn’t the use of incredibly dense words in a piece trying to stoke up all groups of people exclusionary – what if someone has not had a college education, or even a high school or junior high one, and has no clue what words like “ameliorated†or “praxis†means? I’m not for Strunk & White / Newspeak reductionism of terms, but there are common-place enough words to boil the blood of all individuals equally. The world needs more zines like this one, as it truly does make someone think outside of the box.
Rating: 8.0/10