BABY GAY: a manifesto and collection volume 1 is available for download.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Zine is dedicated to the brave brave fucking BRAVE people who have faced themselves and their own desires. Who have worked through stigma and social ostracization and harm and self loathing in order to find a place in this world where they could truly breathe, dance, eat, sig, fuck, cry and love with light hearts and desire in their lives.

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The term BABY GAY has no correlation to age or numbers but rather finds itself in the stretch of time, often self-determined, where the person finds themselves to be but a small toddler in the large world and consideration of queerness. Maybe it is seventh grad. maybe it is 45. BABY GAY has no relationship to "coming out" for as queer people, we come out endlessly, usually at least two or three times a day and one can feel young and uncouth in their queerness years after one "comes out" in the traditional sense. ("We come out of the closet only to realize there are more closets")

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BABY GAY has no relation to milestone or faux-liberatory public-ness or dyadic coupling. BABY GAY detests rainbows because they are just refractions of white light (Dark Matter Collective). BABY GAY is a mindset. A way of being. BABY GAY, for me, is an undulation. Today, I do not feel like BABY GAY but perhaps tomorrow I will again. BABY GAY is returning to visit my family and being ill-equipped for the deluge of erasure and subsequent queer mourning that experiences like that bring. BABY GAY is everyone acting normal while your soul burns hot amber. BABY GAY is pain at the gap: the gap with straight normalized society, the gap between how a person's life looks and how that person's parents wanted their life to look, it is the gap between the person and their straight siblings who have gone on to work professional or financially secure jobs with wives and children in uptown apartments. It is the gap of mismatched expectations, being unable to "fit in" to be wild with desires unshared or deemed "immature". BABY GAY is confused middle school longing and also webs and traps and suffocations. BABY GAY is being in love with your best friend and not knowing how to say "hello" in the mornings. BABY GAY is intimacy, is childish goof, is covers pulled tight, is journaled fear, is locker room anxiety, is "IM STRAIGHT I PROMISE", is lying, is surviving, is what we all go through, one way or another, on our own long looping journeys of queerness and actualization. Whether you identify as "queer" or "straight," everyone lives, however they want to deny it, at least briefly, as a BABY GAY.

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This zine is presented to you by hannah rubin and Influx Collectiv. We had every intention of bringing it to you in print but due to unforeseen issues we are now only offering it digitally. 

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Are you interested in creating/publishing a zine with us?! We would love to work with you on that. Send us your idea at influxcollectiv@gmail.com