Disability, acceptance and amazine activism

A new zine is launching examining disability, acceptance and activism.

At comic cons, craft shows, festivals, workshops and activists zines are going through a renaissance. The raw authenticity to zines helps give the creator and the audience a sense of empowerment. There’s none of the clean sophistication of a magazine. Zines are designed to be powerful, to strike at the heart of whatever they tackle. They’re not mini magazines but products in their own right. They can be cute, fun and playful but at their core, the best are starting conversations that mainstream media is too scared to.

Charlie Willis is a disabled campaigner and activist based in Brighton who is creating a zine around disability and, perhaps more importantly, around acceptance. It’s rare to hear about acceptance and disability from disabled campaigners. The dialogues around disability focus upon ableism rather than self-reflection. It’s understandable, focusing on practicalities and outside forces means that disabled activists can’t be forcibly subjected to the tedious victim narrative. This zine though, is by disabled people and for disabled people. It’s a chance for people to reflect and connect over their disability.

Why did you decide to create a zine about disability?

Vicky, from Pen Fight Distro, and I decided to create a zine about disability because there are so few zines that focus on the topic, which offered different points of view in one place. It is important to encourage others to share their views and feelings on being disabled, or having an impairment, because disabled people are seldom heard. Zines enable people to do that. When I have been to zine fairs in the past, I’ve been unable to find zines about disability that I wanted to read, so Vicky suggested we team up and make one together.

It’s interesting that you also made acceptance a core element of the zine. Why did you choose to focus on acceptance?

While acceptance is something that is encouraged in body positive movements and identity movements, acceptance as a facet of disability, is seldom talked about. We (disabled people) by default see disability as something to be mourned, at least this was true for me. Disability is often seen as a burden on society and the responsibility of the disabled individual, who should be fixed by professionals and intervention. This view promotes segregation, separation, and makes disabled people feel like we are the problem. Having acceptance as a core element of the zine encourages others to see disability not as something that has to be overcome, but something that can be embraced. Disability is a topic that is so broad, versatile and personal, that we thought that the topic of acceptance was a good starting point.

How is creating the zine going?

Creating the zine has been going well. The submissions we have recieved so far have pushed the boundaries of themes we set out with. Hopefully we will get a lot more submissions, and then the job of collating it all begins. I am hoping that we can have the zine created in time for a protest march that is happening in Brussels in September, organised by the European Network of Independent Living.

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Zines have really taken off in popularity in recent years, why do you think that is?

Zines have always existed, there just seems to be cycles of different generations getting into them. Perhaps the popularity is more obvious because people can share things more easily, on many different platforms. Zines are not so much an underground culture now, as it is easier to find zines and shared communities online, which you wouldn’t have been able to do before.

What do you hope the zine achieves?

With this zine we wanted to include practical tips on encouraging and fostering a sense of identity or pride around having a disability. We hope that this zine becomes a resource for disabled people, and organisations that work with disabled people. We want to broaden the understanding that society creates barriers for disabled people, and encourage personal experiences that create a sense of pride in spite of this.

Pen Fight is a little zine and DIY art distro based in Manchester. You can contribute to the Disability and Acceptance zine here

You can also order issue 1 of Stand Up magazine here