When we grow up, we are presented with all kinds of role models – the brave soldier, the loving housewife, the uncompromising businesswoman, the stubborn police commissioner who doesn’t always play by the rules. Depending on which gender you were assigned at birth, you have access to two of these four life goals.
We, the authors of this zine, never knew how to fit in there. And not just because we don’t like the military, patriarchy, capitalism, and cops.Because if I’m neither a man nor a woman, what’s to become of me? Who can I orient myself to if I don’t fit into a binary gender? How do non-binary people become happy?
Maybe you feel the same way and ask yourself similar questions. Then we have bad news for you: we don’t have a blueprint, no ready-made plan, or reliable life path here. We ourselves are only searching. And we accept that we maybe never arrive. That’s why many of the articles have a few questions that you can ask yourself before reading them.
We don’t want role models from whom we can simply copy everything. We don’t want to follow the beaten track, we want to find ourselves.
But on our journey we have always met people who have inspired us. People who have brought us a taste of the future, from their own path. For example, you will find some musicians who are neither men nor women on these pages. And some stories from our non-binary everyday life, some good, some bad.
All these ideas and experiences can be found in this zine. Together with some “travel logs”. And some rants about what should be different in this society, and in the leftist scene.
These texts do not represent a group opinion or identity, we don’t have a consensus on anything. We wanted to print all our opinions and positions next to each other, without discussing them. We are different people with different non-binary genders, so the texts may contradict each other.
Unfortunately, there are still many voices missing in this zine. We are all white, young, able-bodied, from educated middle-class backgrounds, and non-binary; we lack perspectives from Black, Indigenous & People of Color, the elderly, people who are disabled, and/or with various experiences of classism. Also, we can’t speak for all Enbies (non-binary people), just us. So if you have something to say about this topic, we would love to receive texts for the next issue! If you want to take part, just write us an email!