Queering Sexual and Gender Citizenship in (Anarcho-)Feminist Zines in Post-Socialist Poland

Abstract

The article analyzes concepts of sexual and gender citizenship emerging in feminist, lesbian, and queer zines in post-socialist Poland. It focuses on oral history interviews and discourses manifested in the following zines: Łechtaczka (Clitoris), girlz get united! ( ggu!) and Lesbijki i Geje Międzynarodowa wymiana Przyjaźni ( Lesbian & Gay Hospitality Exchange International, L/GHEI). After contextualizing the Polish anarcho-feminist zine scene, this article analyses how post-socialist transnational discourses developed within underground publications. By focusing on ggu! and L/GHEI, it argues that feminist and queer zines reconceptualized sexual and gender citizenship while disrupting binary divisions (such as national/foreign, Eastern post-socialist/Western never-socialist geographies)—from both the anarchist and assimilationist perspectives. The article focuses then on a locally distributed zine: the lesbian-queer Łechtaczka. This publication shows how grassroots concepts of sexual and gender citizenship challenged those imposed by the Polish church–state system, as well as those harbored by misogynistic and homophobic groups of the punk scene. This article ends by highlighting how the analysis of ggu!, L/GHEI, and Łechtaczka allows us to see the complexity of identities and networks emerging in grassroots feminist communities and understand the complicated nature of discourses concerning the local and global reconceptualization of sexual and gender citizenship.