theory & a nail {press & distro}

Theory & A Nail will be distro-ing cheapo queer zines at the Providence Anarchist Bookfair this weekend. Mostly theory & history & insurrectionary stuff, per usual See you there!

kidbijou:

Providence Anarchist Book Fair — August 11-12 2012

image: so i heard that this years PVD anarchist bookfair is gonna be two days! like, what is up with that?!? what moron would wanna go both SAT 8/11 @ Foo Fest and SUN 8/12 @ Libertalia? I i don’t dig workshops, y’know? screw folks from AK press, RIASL, wild child, lucy parsons center, PM press, just seeds, and others! why are they coming to this one horse town? if you really wanna go to this event from hell, the address is 280 b’way, PVD.

who made this nice flyer???

anyway, “some queers” will be there selling & giving away zines and stuff, Saturday afternoon at Foo Fest on (smash the) Empire Street. it’s $7 to get in to the fest & bookfair; approx. 12hrs of music. Big Freedia & The Divas are headlining, Humanbeast plays here for the first time in forever, be there, duh.

How We Kiss: privilege on the dance floor is a mini-zine on cis- and hetero privilege, written & distributed by Providence RI-based queers at the “queer animal future” dance party in Summer 2011.

We’ve got free copies of this zine for you! Find us in person or contact theoryandanail@riseupWithoutTheseWords.net for more info — or you can get downloadable + printable files on the f.i.e.r.c.e.n.e.s.s. tumblr.

Here’s an excerpt. You can find the full text here.

    It’s not just what you know — it’s what you never have to know. It’s happening every day, at that party or park or potluck, when you can look like what you really are and touch who you really want to touch without feeling like you’re violating others’ expectations. It’s never being forced to examine accepted ideas of gender and sexuality, despite their arbitrary nature. It’s never having to realize that people are seeing you as something you know you are not.

    Privilege is about safety and belonging. It lies hidden in identities and desires that don’t need to be justified or defended or even spoken of, because they reaffirm the identities and desires of most of the people around you. Privilege is assuming, before you even get there, that your gender and your sexuality are welcome and expected wherever you might want to go. [ ➫ READ MORE ➫ ]

Here’s our version* of Dean Spade’s short & crucial manifesto “Dress to Kill, Fight to Win”, originally printed in LTTR #1 in 2002, then made into a tiny zine with a nice cover image by Not Yr Cister Press in 2010, and now slightly redesigned & made more compact by us. 

Downloads:

• THIS ONE is a 209kB PDF file designed for 2-sided printing (cut each sheet in half to get two 2-sided mini-zines; or you can just print it on 1 side, then fold in half), and 
• THAT ONE is a 205kB PDF, for looking at on the computer.

Contact us if you’d like another format or layout: theoryandanail@omitthesefourwords-riseup.net.

Read More

We’ve just finished throwing together a zine version of the first chapter from the incredible Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, published in late 2011 by AK Press. It’s by Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee, and Dean Spade, and it’s called “Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement with Everything We’ve Got”. We can claim no credit for this work — we even stole the book’s cover image of burning police cars! — but we think it’s such an important call to action that we’ll do anything to get more queers & trans folks & others to read it.

You can download the PDFs at zinelibrary.info, or if that’s not working [have you also noticed it being down/broken at certain times recently?], try these alternate direct links:

• abolition-final-read.pdf, 9.4MB, 28 pages
  ideal for reading on your computer or printing 1-sided, with no fancy folding
• abolition-final-imposed.pdf, 9.4MB, 14 pages 
  imposed to be printed on 7 double-side sheets and then folded into a zine or booklet

ATTENTION EVERYONE: If you like this chapter, please go out and buy the book to support the authors, editors, and publisher! You can buy it online from AK Press, or try a radical bookseller near you.