Zine, Erin Oh, [email protected]
When Erin posed the question to her Facebook friends, ”should cis males be given space to speak at events that commemorate female victims of male violence?” I cringed in advance at the hornet’s nest that might ensue. Even the most forward thinking, fair-minded folk can turn into reactionary bullies on the internet. Should Men Speak is simply the transcript of the comment thread following that question, where Erin’s friends grapple with issues of privilege, identity and violence. Soon we learn that an astonishing number of them believe that cisgendered males should speak at events that commemorate, for example, the 1989 École Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal. I think about what it means to transpose an internet discussion thread into a zine as opposed to actually conducting interviews in person. For one thing, you do not have the phenomenon of individuals reacting to one another in an interview series. However, knowing it is a discussion on a social networking site means that the contributors are people who had three minutes to spare and a keyboard. That said, a number of the comments are quite thoughtful. Ultimately, it holds together fairly well for what it is, but I would have liked to see more editorializing, in an afterword for instance, to deliver us from the internet, put it in context, and let us know what Erin is thinking about it all. (Chris Landry)