Non-Binary Web Magazine.

[ativan]

The discussion in another topic turned to the possibility of making a Non-Binary Web Magazine.

Is it possible?
How would you do it?
Does anyone have experience with something like this?
What would it consist of?


Has the time come to carve out a niche on the web for us?
Ativan

[Lo]

There are ways to do it, definitely. If we can say that there's a spectrum, and on one end is Bitch magazine and on the other is the cut n' pasted copy shop zine, that's a lot of wiggle room.

I like Bitch's model because they're mostly digital (they lose money on their printed mags, but they're useful for getting the title visible), and each issue is a series of submitted journalistic pieces that are centered around a theme. This past issue was "The Gray Issue", and the pieces talked about everything from sugar dating, to rape, to whitewashing. I think a format like that would probably serve best. If people want poetry, there's a jillion zines for that already. News? That's all pretty well-covered.

Digital distribution is easy, whether the magazine is free or pay-fer.

I think the real problem, as always, comes down to commitment.

[Natkat]

I may start doing graphic on a new queer magazine who are to be publish before 2014 so yeah I would say its posible.

I do not have a big knowlegde about magazines but in general I belive you can make a magazine about anything as long you got a theame many people can relate to and know how to catch the readers.

[Taka]

anything is possible on the internet. it's possible to make something interesting all for free and then build it up with volunteers at first, then start with subscription options when there are some people actually reading it. the problem will probably be to find the volunteers to start it, i doubt anyone has the money to go commercial from the start.

[Lo]

So I bought Nobody Passes the other day, and man just the intro and the first essay are some of the most powerful things I've read. Makes me think... what about a nonbinary book club, lol?

[Taka]

how would you organize that?

[Kendall]

Having discussed it once somewhere, lead to a few sparks of interest. One can assume that a core group would have to make up the primary article/art/submission collectors, editors, or writers.

The medium is another challenge. Paper, internet, website, forum?

The mode of such thing, besides print, could be even a page here (maybe an occasional post). How could that be possible?

A challenge if it was posted here, is how would it be different than other topic posts? How would it supplement the site and be beneficial to potential readers? And If here it also would have to follow the rules outlined in the forum rules.

One possible way if posted here could be a post titled. "-Name_ volume_ issue _," followed by a long post containing the content, then viewers can reply to different articles.

Or maybe if a certain post becomes extremely popular one can write and summarize to key points or observations. This would be especially helpful for a post that has like 20 pages of replies.

I have found that by moving writings off of this site, does lead to a drop in viewers and participation. And moving things to blog only can also lead to drop in viewing or participation.
Ken

[Lo]

Susan's is only one website in an entire online network of trans* groups. It's the tip of the iceberg, I'd say; or at least a drop in the bucket in the world of non-binary resources. Nonbinaries don't have a lot of presence here to begin with-- I don't think we'd lose much by posting elsewhere. Much stronger networks exist for us.

As for medium, it would have to be digital, but a paper version would be good too. It doesn't take very long to take a blog post and turn it into a duplex booklet xeroxed at a neighborhood print shop. (There are also all sorts of ways to print booklets on a single side from folding and cutting the paper in just the right way too. My current favorite gets 8 pages out of a single computer sheet, though it comes out to be the size of an index card.)

A core group of contributors would have to be the way we go for sure, with guests coming and going as they pleased I'm sure.

I think I might do a little research and find out just how many nonbinary "magazine"-like publications/blogs there are out there already...

[suzifrommd]

My random thoughts:

I would expect such a mag would have a small dedicated readership (as opposed to a huge readership that stops by now and then).

Therefore an email subscription would probably work better than a pure web presence.

Also a contributory format - where many of the readers contribute material and help out with the editorial duties is likely to be more successful than an advertising supported or subscription supported format with paid staff.

[Taka]

i mentioned it to padma, she might have place for a magazine at a server where she has a non-binary forum.

all that will require are some writers who are up to the challenge.


i don't think a magazine needs to release articles too often. news are one thing that can be mentioned, but... there's also this thing about sharing experiences and displaying diversity. as some people have started to mistake non-binary identities for a political statement.

[ativan]

as some people have started to mistake non-binary identities for a political statement.

?

[Padma]

One suggestion I made when we were batting this idea around on our non-binary forum is to (for example) set up the magazine as a wordpress blog with multiple editors. This is an easy (and free) way to start with an already professional-looking layout, and unless/until it grew huge, wordpress hosting is free, so the only outlay would be time spent writing for it and maintaining it (and responding to interaction from the punters).

So it could start as a simple collection of articles, added as and when they appear - which would be a lot more flexible than trying to produce a regular issue to a deadline. Once people know about it, they just Follow it, and then every time something new is published, they'll be notified. We could (heh, "we" - yes, I'd like to get involved in this) still have themed "issues" by having several people write about related subjects and then publish them to the blog at the same time, and you can collect articles to a separate page so people can find them easily, and and - like I say, it's a pretty flexible format.

Also, being entirely separate from any other setup or forum means we get to decide our own ground rules and TOS, and not be worrying about treading on anyone else's toes (or being constrained by anyone else's house rules).

I'd be very happy to devote some time to pulling this together, if people are genuinely interested in making it happen.

[Padma]

?

This refers, I think, to the recent (pretty good) article on non-binary gender in DIVA (a UK glossy lesbian lifestyle magazine), and a rather appalling response to it on Lesbilicious, which sparked something of a flame war, and in which certain parties denigrated non-binary gender identities as being a "choice" people were making simply as a political statement (as opposed to some people with non-binary gender identities choosing to *express* their identities in political ways). It got resolved fairly well, at least in so far as Lesbilicious didn't stand behind the opinions of their writer.

Sorry, 4 am here and can't add links to all this brouhaha, but if someone else doesn't by later today, I'll add them myself.

[Padma]

I'm feeling quite fired up about this now (uh-oh).

So there are folk here, and folk at our non-binary forum, who'd be interested in this happening. I'd like to get us all talking about it together. How does a yahoo group sound to you? Skype group IM? (as suggested by Lo). Seems the easiest way to all chat together without (for the moment) having to share email addresses - or all be signed up to the same forum . What do you think? Who would be genuinely interested in getting involved in this, either as a contributor, or editorially?

[Lo]

I would love to be involved in some on-going capacity. I blog a lot on wordpress already and do a lot of writing in my spare moments.

Personally, I can't stand yahoo groups, tbh... they're such a pain to log into if you don't use the site regularly. Can't think of anything else that's similar without using another forum, though. What about a skype chatroom?

[Padma]

Oh, I didn't know you can do group IM on skype - that sounds like a much better plan, if everyone is skype-registered.

[Taka]

i'm interested.
i personally don't like skype too much. i lag too much every time old logs are loaded, and the skype chat groups i've been in have always had miles of logs. sure, it's good to be able to read conversations from when i wansn't on, but that thing eats bandwidth. i'll use it anyway if that's the best solution for us.

if possible, i'd like to have an irc chat instead. i can set it up easily so that it's protected against strangers, and people can log in from their browser if they don't want to install an irc client. only thing about this is that it would be a little bit more tricky to log all conversations unless someone here already is good at writing log bots.


and here's the link to that rather aggravating response to an article that people say is good, but unfortunately isn't available online:
http://www.lesbilicious.co.uk/non-binary-gender-identities-how-helpful-are-they-for-challenging-gender-rules/
don't read if you can't handle invalidation of your identity too well.

many good responses have already been written, in addition to the comments on the article.

[suzifrommd]

I'm interested.

I don't know if I'm the ideal candidate for contribution, since I'm kind of a reluctant non-binary. I really want to be a woman (and have transitioned to living as one) but there's a stubborn man part of me that seems to be sticking around.

[Padma]

Personally, I think it's very important to make clear that non-binary is primarily an adjective covering a huge array of gender experiences. My own working definition of non-binary is if simply "woman" and/or "man" doesn't tell the whole story of your gender identity, and there's scope in there for people who are agender, and people who are mostly-but-not-entirely-one-gender, and so on.

I would not want to participate in any magazine project that wants to encourage a "hierarchy" of "non-binariness" (the non-binary version of trans-elitism, which I've already run into out there a few times). I'm not assuming anyone else here wants that either, I just wanted to say where my own goalposts stand on this.

[Padma]

Oh, I've managed to photograph the original 2-page DIVA article. Sorry the lighting is bad here, so this is the best I can manage, but they are big and high-def, so I hope you can read these.

http://www.yoxi.net/anitya/DIVA-nb1.jpg 0.98 Mb
http://www.yoxi.net/anitya/DIVA-nb2.jpg 1.5 Mb

I think, given that they're trying to explain non-binary gender identities in a 2-page non-academic article, they did a pretty bloody good job. There are a few wonky things, but mostly I was very impressed with this.