Monday, March 1st, 2010
A number of our models here on Cyber-dyke.net have transitioned to being men. We fully support trans people and other gender queers here, even though the Cyber-dyke network does not specifically focus on trans or gender queer porn.
I was, of course, very excited when I heard about a zine for transmen. There are so many resources and so much visibility for MTF transwomen. I suppose they probably start with some amount of male privilege and people think that drag queens are interesting. Transmen don’t have the same visibility and this is the first time I heard about media being created by transmen for transmen. Original Plumbing is a gorgeous photo heavy zine. Issue #1 features interviews and pictures of five transmen plus articles and stories. This is the “bedroom issue” where we get to know the guys in their own homes and their own skin. There are a few full color pictures and the cover is full color, as much as you can reasonably get printed at this price. I was particularly impressed with the diversity of folks, covering different races, ethnicities and social classes, but they also make sure to cover a diverse range of body sizes, shapes, surgeries and hormone use. The articles and stories seems to be written for transmen. One article is about the German health care system paying for surgeries for gender transition, and another about hookups on craigslist. The stories are lovely snippets of life stories, and there is no indication if they’re fictional or not. It’s half-sized, meaning it’s the size of a standard 8.5 x 12 sheet of paper folded in half. There are fifty pages, and they even have advertising, though it seems to be mostly ads for porn sites. Original Plumbing is published quarterly.
#2 is on order. I went ahead and bought a subscription.
Tags: anarchafeminism, gender queer, original plumbing, punk, queer, sexual health, transmen, zine
