The Gender Test is my personal ‘zine. The purpose of this ‘zine was to illustrate what feminism has taught me and how it has influenced my thinking about societal norms. These are questions that I myself have tried to answer with varying degrees of success (I still don’t know why there aren’t any female valets), and that have been brought up through various feminist texts. I like to think of this page as a brief summary of what I have learned since I began reading about feminism, and especially the 3rd wave.
I also wanted to touch upon some key issues from the 2nd and 3rd wave. These issues extend anywhere from career choice, to exercise choice. I included a mixture of classic 2nd wave and 3rd wave issues for two reasons. One, 2nd wave issues are still well and alive within the 3rd wave, and although we’ve made great progress in areas like education and career choice, we are not done yet. Secondly, I wanted to show the progress feminism has made in the past 60 years. By juxtaposing these popular feminist questions with Mr. Brett Williams’ blatantly incorrect remarks, I hope to make evident the incredible progress we have made. Women today, including myself, often take for granted the freedom women have gained. We forget that back in the 50s the choices for women were very limited compared to the freedom we enjoy today. Imagining that this 10 question test could possibly be accepted as correct in the way Mr. Brett Williams answers it is disturbing. Even if I took this short test 5 years ago I’d probably answer it a little differently then I would now, and it’s all due to feminism. Thank you feminism!


My take back the night ‘zine is my political page, but it also tackles an issue that is very personal to me. All my life I’ve been hearing horror stories about women who are raped and murdered, and how I can prevent this from happening to me as long as I don’t go out alone at night. Well the truth is sometimes you can’t help being out at night, and also I shouldn’t be afraid to go out at night! I have to thank the 3rd wave for bringing this latter point to the table. Previously I thought that being a little scared or anxious when out alone at night was just part of being a woman. I never really thought about how constraining this fear is, and the truth is I’m really sick and tired of being scared while walking home at night.
I created the female jogger article to provide a positive example of women going out at night alone. Although this article is fiction, I’m sure there are plenty of female joggers out there who do run at night with no complications. This article represents the many women out there who do live their lives at night and have not been raped and murdered. The media only promotes the bad news. I can’t count the number of plane crashes I’ve seen on the news, however it doesn’t prevent me from flying. On the other hand you hear about a few women being assaulted and now all women are bound by fear to stay inside. We don’t have a statistic of all the women who are perfectly fine at night, yet we always think the worst is about to happen.
I also added a bit of my own commentary on how I feel when I’m out alone at night, and tried to parallel it with the quotation from takebackthenight.org. Interestingly, I found this quote after I wrote my commentary, and it was scary how similar the two stories were. The purpose of this ‘zine was to inspire other women not to be bound by fear, as well as to inspire myself to