I'm writing this post 1/14/19, but it will be posted on 1/16 because that's the day that I'm actually presenting this work to the whole faculty and I didn't want any spoilers (Hi Mr. B). So I've been one of the officers of the GSA (Gender Sexuality Alliance, or Gay Straight Alliance) at school this year, and another club was created called the Student Equity Leadership Team. I've worked a lot with the latter this year, and that has lead up to what I'm about to do in two days: present to the entire school faculty about respecting transgender student's pronouns. As a semi-closeted trans/nonbinary kid who is only closeted because they're too scared to come out (ie not because of any danger, just fear of judgement) it's a little terrifying to know that in less than 48 hours, I will have spoken to over 100 people about respecting trans kids. However, it's also incredibly exciting to know that I'll (hopefully) be impacting future trans students at school, hopefully for the better. Anyways, in order to do this, I also made a handout in the form of a zine (a small booklet), and it was a lot like making infographics, so I'm counting it as art/graphic design for the purposes of this post. We wanted to have a handout that wasn't just another piece of paper, but that was still something that teachers could keep for future reference. It was kind of scary to make, because whenever you speak on behalf of a community, you don't want to get things wrong. The artistic aspects were fun to make though, and I think that they make the document much more interesting, especially now that it's in small booklet form on lavender paper. I want to open this post up to the larger description of activism in art though. While DSA is a very liberal school, there are definitely places where this zine - and any art with an activism undertone - could be considered propaganda, and that's another reason that it's so scary to create in this way: I don't want to be seen as some extremist who is too serious about politics. This project has really helped me learn that you can create without coming off that way: sharing your opinion, even in a biased way, doesn't mean you're extreme, it just means that you have an opinion, something that you're totally allowed to have. Respecting trans people is something near and dear to my heart that affects me and my friends, I should be able to make art about it, and express my opinions about it without feeling overly political. I can't keep being so ashamed of who I am that I hide it from my creative work. Anyways, here's a digital copy of the zine.
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
February 2020
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