Double Issue Zine Made Accessible

We have uploaded the pages from our double issue Zine onto the blog. Feel free to have a look at what interests you, share your favourite pieces or read the whole thing all together.

You can also view both complete zines by clicking here Double Issue (Still under our old name Anti-Speciesist Women): 1 Feminism + Speciesism: Making the Connection / 2 Human Impacts.

Click on the content below the image to reach the parts of the zine you want to look at.

Double Issue Cover

Support the Blackmail 3

Feminism and Speciesism: Making the Connection Zine 1

Definitions

Untitled – lex

The Exploited Women – kaya

‘Respect’, ‘Womxn are not Your Objects’ and ‘The World that Changed the Quotes’- casey

Quotes

5 Womxn Who (Don’t) Give a Shit – aga

Lessons from a Society that Is… – elecia

Pro-Choice – amy

The interconnectedness of all – andy

Human Impacts: Zine 2

The ‘Human’: More than White Able Masculinity? – aga

Human Impacts Film – noreen

Cut the Crap – amy

Liberate your Language – elecia

‘War in Vietnam’ and ‘One Rat’s Tale’ – lex

Thoughts on Human Impacts – caitlin

‘Porkies’ – sammi

Almeria, Spain – esther

Human Milk for Human Babies – kaya

Poison – casey

Mother Earth – Net Worth? – andy

Acknowledgements

 

DIY: Copy, Assemble, Spread our Double Issue Zine

You can Find both issues of our zine (still under the name anti-speciesist women – not collective) here:

anti speciesist women zine 1 and 2 double issue feminism and speciesim making the connection and human impacts (anti speciesist collective)

Send it to people, print it out and assemble it, share it as a present or just leave it somewhere in public, on a bus, on a bench or in someone’s post box. Have fun with it!

This is how it looks once it is printed and stapled together:

 

 

Thank You for Making the Zine Possible!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to both issues. Thank you to the readers and to our discussion group members. We are overwhelmed by the support, solidarity and passion the presence of a unifying anti-speciesist women’s group has sparked and cannot thank each and every one of you enough.

 

We are always looking for people to get involved and share their writing or artistic skills or organise outreach events, demos, vigils and protests.

 

If you are a womxn and/or you experience misogyny as a non-binary person and would like to organise for a better world, this is your platform!

 

Thank you to the brilliant people at the Footprint Workers Cooperative for printin this zine and for all their hard work.

Art: Mother Earth Net Worth? Zine Contribution by Andy

Thank you Andy for this photograph of your beautiful sculpture.

Poison – Zine Contribution by Casey

This poem was published in the second issue of our zine. Thank you Casey ❤

Lauren now goes by the name Casey.

This is the transcript of poem:

Poison

What is it that poisons you?

is it the words you were told when you were growing up, trying to put you in a

corrupt confined catergory

a tick box, decisions had to be made on the spot

you were 13 you didn’t know the meaning of the word sexuality

you didn’t know, when you grow up you’ll be sexualized objectified and

oppressed. You didn’t know you’d be told that the beauty that nature holds

doesn’t hold itself upon you until the hairs are no more. You didn’t know that one

night you’d try with all your might yet the word no still didn’t stop it occurring.

Re-occuring the nightmares and dark visions you have, your outfit of more

importance than the crime you never asked for.

They want you to hide your nature to hide your body to hide the things that

distracts men most.

Well my body is mine, you have to deal with that. Deal with your mind don’t

become a corrupted twat

What is it that poisons you?

You being the oppresser

You were told that eating meat, spreading violence and dominanting was what

defined your gender. You’re lied to, we all are. This corrupt system trying to

cover up the scars, the dead bodies in the ground that this economy is built on. It

disgusts me that people still think we are equal. How dare you? I got asked one

day. They looked me up and down and here I’m thinking I want to shrink into the

ground

Shrink no more I will do. Shout out loud more for you, for the younger

generations this worlds going down and don’t let it take you too.

Human Milk for Human Babies – Zine Contribution by Kaya

This is a copy of Kaya’s written contribution to our zine on Human Impacts (transcript below). Thank you Kaya ❤

Transcript:

Trigger Warning: Discussion of discrimination against breastfeeders and descriptions of violence towards animals.

Having been vegan and an animal rights activist for 3 years there was never any doubt in my mind that if I were to have a child, they would be brought up vegan and animal conscious also. When I became pregnant at the end of last year I went through a transformative process so unexpected and beautiful; I was suddenly rooted to the ground in a way I hadn’t imagined. This little life inside me was to inherit so much; so much opportunity to make a difference and so much magic the universe has to offer. But also she was to inherit all of the terrible impacts we humans have on our surroundings and the beings we share them with. I promised her I’d do my best to show her the truth of the food, clothing, research and sporting industries and teach her to look through the barrage of lies and propaganda spilling out of a capitalist world that thinks nothing of abusing and destroying for a profit and thinks everything of promoting a brainwashed population that doesn’t realise the monumental violence and suffering in almost every aspect of their consumption.

One of the best gifts I could give this child would be the gift of veganism. To not have been hoodwinked and tricked by society into eating and wearing animals as a child is something that I expect every vegan wishes had been their story. The ‘choice’ that non-vegan parents claim to be promoting is nothing of the sort. By feeding unknowing children and babies animal products we are actually removing all ‘choice’ from the matter. If I had been fully aware and informed as a youngster, I would never have chosen to hurt animals through my diet or fashion or entertainment. But I did, and I regret every mouthful, every leather shoe, every sip of cows’ milk, every ride on a horse’s back. So I promised my unborn child that I would never put her in that position. I would feed her healthy, kind food that had not come from violence. Food that would nourish her body as well as her soul. And that all starts with milk from me, her mum.

When Ivy came into this world, a screaming, magical, hungry friend was delivered to me. We were instantly inseparable and my devotion to her is on a whole new level of carnal depth. The moment she first fed from my breast was unforgettable. It felt so simple and right. My body was producing just what she needed and the joy and love involved in that symbiotic act of feeding kept me on cloud 9. But as instantly as I felt joy I felt an intense sense of pain, fear and guilt. The dairy cows. Women of another species who are forcibly impregnated and their babies taken away from them soon after birth or at most just weeks after their little lives have begun. If male, the babies are either brutally killed or kept chained to a pen and artificially fed to make ‘veal’ (body parts from baby cattle). If female they are subjected to the same sad fate as their mothers – enslaved in the dairy industry. As I looked at little Ivy and felt the intense emotion that connects a parent and their child in an indescribable way, I thought how it would feel to have her forcibly taken away from me. How I would scream and fight and cry, broken at losing the most precious and vulnerable part of me. If anybody has heard the howling bellows of a screaming mother cow who’s just had her baby taken away they will not be in any doubt at the level of terrible despair of these women. Footage of cows trying desperately to reach their missing babies and lunging desperately at enclosure gates is commonplace. That most farmers are men makes it even more chilling. Sexism and patriarchy transcends species.

Ivy and I have had a few bumps in the road when it comes to breastfeeding. She was born with a tongue tie that wasn’t diagnosed until she was a month old, by which time my milk supply had almost disappeared due to her not being able to take enough milk and my body not producing enough in response. I had no idea about any of this and had thought that 6 hour long feeding stretches and constant screaming was normal for a newborn. Eventually she was admitted to hospital and the paediatric team there said she was putting on weight ‘dangerously slowly’ and she needed supplementing with formula milk. I explained that we were vegan and I didn’t want her to have cow’s milk, but they insisted there was no other option as soy was ‘not safe’ for young babies and human milk was not available unless she was in intensive care. I burst into tears. Delirious with exhaustion and with a team of Doctors standing over me telling me how important this was, I agreed. The feeling of hopelessness and disgust at watching the nurse bottle feeding my baby with cows milk formula was almost unbearable. When it came to my being shown how to hold the bottle I couldn’t connect to what my own hands were doing. This beautiful innocent young baby sucked trusting and contentedly at the teat, her big blue eyes looking up into mine, and all I could think was how much I had betrayed her and the mother cows this milk was stolen from. And their killed babies it was intended for. I cried so much that night on the ward, feeling like a failure and apologising in my heart to Ivy and to the cows who suffer unheard. I’m sure to a non-vegan this sounds ridiculous, hilarious even. But that’s just because they are so disconnected and have no grasp on the reality of dairy products. It’s simply breast milk stolen from a grieving mother, who will year after year suffer the unimaginable heartbreak of forcible impregnation, having her baby taken away and having her breast milk sucked out of her body by machines for human consumption.

Ivy did not react well to the formula. While on it, she projectile vomited, was constipated and was in a lot of gas pain, writhing and crying through the night. Amazingly this is not the case now. I found there is a fantastic network of people who share their milk to guardians unable to breastfeed. As soon as we were discharged I started looking for another way, and I managed to connect with a local donor who gives bags of their frozen breast milk so I could supplement Ivy in a natural and nourishing way. Her tongue tie has been sorted and I’ve been working hard to build up my own supply so thankfully we are a good breastfeeding team now and she’s getting about half of her nourishment from my body, with the donated breast milk making up the other half.

I am so disappointed that the medical team are working within such an oppressive framework where guardians are being pushed into making choices so damaging to them and to the cows and their babies.

The negative health impact of dairy consumption is only just being seriously recognised by the science community leading to a British Medical Journal labelling human consumption of cows milk a ‘myth’. We know that incidences of hip fractures, a key indicator of osteoporosis or ‘brittle bones’ in humans, is highest in demographics that consume the most dairy, and lowest in areas which consume no dairy. We know that dairy and other animal derived products actually sap the calcium and phosphate from our bones due to them putting our bodies into a state of acidosis. We know that dairy cows are one of the most abused and tortured group of beings on the planet – and the very nature of forced pregnancy, baby snatching and leeching breast milk from grieving mothers sits very uncomfortably to those who dwell on the reality of it. We know humans only need breast milk for the very beginnings of life, and that human breast milk is the only acceptable source. The dairy industry has long enjoyed dominance, quietly and secretly enslaving cattle to be used as milk machines and disposing of their babies, mere ‘spare parts’. Commercial formula milk companies have been pushing bottle feeding onto women for decades, and the result is a brainwashed flow of guardians who don’t question why.

I believe it’s time for that to stop. Time for guardians to help each other if breast milk is needed but not immediately available instead of perpetuating an already critical level of abuse and oppression of cows by reaching for the formula bottle. We have the power to change this!

Photography: Almeria, Spain – by Esther

This is a copy of Esther’s contribution to our zine’s second issue on human impacts (Below the original images and the text transcript). Thank you Esther ❤

The text reads:

26.000 hectares of greenhouses. Most of them are poorly constructed with toxic plastic tarp. The area reeks of toxic pesticides. Those who harvest the fruit and vegetables are not provided with protective masks and they are so severely poor that they live in shelter made from trash. The ocean and its inhabitants are also being poisoned.

 

Image Descriptions:

Top Left: View onto the valley of greenhouses next to the ocean. This is where more than half of Europe’s supply of tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and peppers comes from.

Top Right: Billboards advertising the produce in the region.

Bottom Left: One of the many huts constructed out of trash, tucked between rows of greenhouses. A hut like this often houses families with children.

Here are the original images:

 

 

Porkies

This is Sammi’s contribution to the second issue of our zine (transcript below). Thank you, Sammi ❤

 

Transcript:

‘Porkies’

Speciesist slang for Lies

Lies = Pork Pies = Porkies

If we didn’t milk cows they would have too much milk and it would be really painful for them.

If we didn’t milk cows they wouldn’t produce more milk then they need for their children.

Humans need cow’s milk to keep their bones and teeth strong and healthy.

Calves need cow’s milk to grow strong and healthy.

Cows constantly produce milk with no human intervention.

Cows produce milk for the same reason humans do, to feed their offspring. Humans do intervene; they forcibly inseminate cows without their consent. Rape.

Animals don’t have emotions.

Animals are sentient beings just like humans, they feel emotion just as humans do.

If we didn’t eat animals then they would just roam around and wouldn’t be able to survive.

If we didn’t eat animals then they wouldn’t be forcibly bred and in turn would live natural self-sufficient lives in their natural numbers.

Animals don’t feel pain.

Animals and humans share similar mechanisms of pain detection, have similar areas of the brain involved in processing pain and show similar pain behaviours.

Free range eggs are made by happy chickens.

Chickens kept on ‘free range farms’ are exploited, many kept in horrendous conditions and all eventually share the same fate once they are seen as having no more value to humans – death.

If you stop consuming animal products you’re just letting animals die in vain.

If you stop consuming animal products you are no longer voting with your money to continue the cycle of pain and torture inflicted on animals.

Horses love being ridden, I love my horse.

Many horses suffer from mental and physical health problems caused by humans riding them. No animal should be owned.

Thoughts on Human Impacts – Zine Contribution by Caitlin

This is a copy of a written piece that was contributed by Caitlin to the second issue of our zine (transcript below). Thank you ❤

 

CW: Mention of sexual violence; author’s edit:  The word ‘rape’ from the original essay is replaced by ‘exploit’.

 

Human impacts

We live in a world of excess. We look up to those who have it all, big cars, posh houses, fancy food and lavish parties. We have all been brainwashed into the idea that to be happy we must be rich, successful and beautiful. Essentially we have all become victims of our own aspiration, slaving away at our desks day and night to pay for the next great expenditure, a new car to match our neighbours new BMW and other status symbols so we can appear like we have it all. These are perfect symptoms of a society which is lost and doesn’t know where it is headed. We have lost touch: with nature, as we spend our time inside, our friends as we never leave our desks to pay for the next TV and even ourselves, as we try and portray to our neighbours that we are successful and our ‘friends’ that we are perfect on social media.

This is the aim of the rich and powerful the top as this keeps them in pocket and keeping us forever miserable and wanting more. What is being conveniently hidden from us is the impact this is having on the planet, other people and the animals. As we get richer we consume more, we get even greedier and our taste gets crueller. We demand cheap clothing which is the result of child labour in poor countries, we demand more materials as we buy more and we exploit the oceans, land and animals to satisfy our taste buds. We have all fallen victim to the idea that we need this amazing thing, whatever it may be and when we have it all, all of our problems will; be solved, we will finally be happy. But we won’t, we never will. For as long as we base our self-worth on material objects and shallow appearances, we will never be truly happy. We will carry on raping mother earth and all of her beauty for the sake of selfishness and greed.

However as vegans, environmentalists, feminists, anti-speciesists or however you chose to identify, we have the power to change this. We have the power to end this pointless greed. This chaos that has ensued, we can take power away from the major cooperation’s and take back who we truly are. We can take back mother earth and work with her to bring back our rainforests and finally find peace; we can stop pointless discrimination against each other and live a peaceful existence with the animals we can liberate. We can take our world back and our lives and then, and only then will we be truly happy.

Film: Human Impacts

Noreen shared this beautiful piece with us, dealing with identity, speciesism, cruelty and love. You can also find Noreen’s poem, published in the second issue of our zine here.

The film is in German, but still worth watching for those who don’t understand the language.

Content warning: images of circus horses, a chicken farm and a meat aisle in the supermarket (not graphic/gory).