Visuality of Reproductive Rights in Polish Feminist Zines After 1989

Polish feminist zines constitute an artistic record of reproductive rights activism in Poland. Their history dates back to the beginnings of women’s anarcha-feminist movements, whose productive peak spanned roughly a ten-year period beginning in the mid-1990s, and coincided with the emergence of the first anarchist feminist groups and circles, such as the Warsaw-based group Kobiety przeciwko Dyskryminacji i Przemocy [Women Against Discrimination and Violence], which became Emancypunx¹ a year later, Wiedźma [Witch]² in the Podlasie region, Sister to Sister³ in Elbąg, and Dziewczyny w Akcji [Girls in Action] in Białystok.⁴ The decade following 1989 and the early 2000s was also a period in which women began to create their own zines,⁵ inspired by the increased availability and intensive distribution of independent foreign and Polish feminist periodicals.

From the very beginning, anarcha-feminist zines were created in opposition to the male-dominated punk and anarchist circles linked to the Anarchist Federation, and in opposition to mainstream feminism in Poland. Contrary to popular belief, these zines are not a sub-genre of the cultural output produced by the anarchist movement of the 1980s or the feminist movement in the 1990s, including its non-governmental and academic currents, as Jennifer Ramme points out in her essay on the origins of anarcha-feminist activism in Poland.⁶ Drawing on the work of Joanna Zwierkowska and Małgorzata Tarasiewicz, Ramme stresses that the Polish anarcha-feminism movement’s early cultural output shared more extensive ties with alter-globalist circles, notably Radykalna Akcja Antyfaszystowska [Radical Anti-Fascist Action] and Młodzież przeciwko Rasizmowi w Europie [Youth Against Racism in Europe], than it did with homegrown movements such as Federacja Anarchistyczna [Anarchist Federation].⁷

She also notes that anarcha-feminist collectives in the 1990s emerged in a decentralized fashion, independently of one another, and consequently adopted a patchwork of programs and internal rules.⁸ Another result of this, I believe, was the diversity of issues explored by feminist publications in their cultural work and activism, though after 1989 the majority of anarcha-feminist zines focused on topics surrounding alternative music, violence against women, reproduction, pacifism, environmentalism, and sexual identity. It is worth noting that, in the vast majority of zines, musical content such as concert and festival listings, interviews with bands, and album and cassette reviews often addressed issues of emancipation and equality, as exemplified by coverage of the crust-punk band Piekło Kobiet [Women’s Hell] from Łuków.⁹ While some zines concentrated on combating violence against women, and others worked to shore up resistance against sexual discrimination, the overwhelming majority of independent feminist publications after 1989 actively and directly engaged with the consequences of the 1993 law banning abortion,¹⁰ as well as subsequent legal and social developments impacting women’s reproductive health.¹¹

Zines as a feminist archive

Alongside their records of activism and a social movement that called for equality and emancipation, feminist zines published in the 90s and early 2000s featured memoirs, accounts, and biographical essays written in personal, expressive artistic styles. The socially and publicly resonant (yet private and intimate) historical and biographical accounts raise the possibility that these independent women’s publications should be regarded as a feminist archive focused on issues surrounding reproduction, violence, and sexuality. The clashing private and public, confidential and open, and material and immaterial dimensions of this collection seem to accentuate the problematic nature of a concept which Jacques Derrida explains in Archive Fever.¹² The many mysteries and secrets concealed in the muddled, troubling, spectral structure of the archive, Derrida claims, reveal the play between the public and private, between “the society, and the State, between the family and an intimacy even more private than the family, between oneself and oneself.”¹³The contradictory and problematic meanings of the archive, particularly in relation to the concept of the intimacy entangled in it, as emphasized by Derrida, is explored by Julietta Singh¹⁴ and Sara Ahmed,¹⁵ who propose that archives should be treated as spaces of ephemeral disruption. On the one hand, the scholars suggest, the feminist archive can reveal traces of bodily and emotional shattering and splattering, while on the other, it can contain records of vigilance, care, and the will to carry on struggle and resistance.¹⁶ The feminist archive, they write, is the site of a play of tensions between fragility and power, between our most personal experiences and our public existence – for example, during street protests. Both Singh and Ahmed therefore stress that the archive is a product of emotional and corporeal experience: it is the symbols that are etched into our bodies in the course of our daily struggles to overcome institutional obstacles, and as we experience social inequality, hate speech, misogyny, and homophobia. As Singh writes, “If the archive is a remnant, it is one that keeps whispering to me, insisting on its place in my everyday life.”¹⁷ The archive, in other words, is our daily companion: it is emotionally and physically palpable, or, as Singh would put it, after Derrida, it is present within us.

Our understanding of the semi-open nature of the zine archive in the context of women’s activism is broadened by a crucial observation from Ann Cvetkovich, who, citing Michael Moon, describes the feminist archive as a sort of “semipublic sphere,” due in large part to its grassroots, community-based character.¹⁸ As Cvetkovich notes, an archive created and maintained by the grassroots, material, and emotional labor of feminist activist communities calls for a particular research approach, one that employs alternative techniques of creating knowledge using activists’ memories and ephemeral artifacts.¹⁹ Cvetkovich suggests that, in the absence of official, institutional archives of alternative culture, the memoirs of the people who formed the counter-culture, as well as the personal objects and ephemera that belonged to feminist activists, provide an important replacement. Assuming a stance conceptually adjacent to Avery Gordon,²⁰ Cvetkovich stresses that the study of these ephemeral artifacts is a political action undertaken in the present: the past remains simultaneously present and obscured in material practices and peoples’ psyches, in spaces both visible and absent.²¹Building on the methodology proposed by Cvetkovich, and on Singh and Ahmed’s observations, I focus in this article on the visuality of the feminist zine archive as it relates to abortion rights activism. To this end, I interpret archival materials sourced from anarchist cultural centers in Poland and the private collections of the artists themselves; I also draw on over a dozen interviews with zine authors who were at the forefront of alternative feminist culture in the 1990s and early 2000s.²² Recognizing zines and their authors’ recollections as important historical sources in the absence of institutionalized anarcha-feminist documentation, in part one of this essay I examine the beginnings of the production and distribution of these publications in Poland. Using the example of independent women’s publications connected to the group Emancypunx, I discuss the conceptual origins of zines and the production techniques used during the period in question. Next, taking as examples Wiedźma and Matka Bolka, I explore the visibility of abortion rights activism in zines, specifically their use of motifs such as the witch, the uterus, and the crucifix, popular in the 1990s, as well as their caricatures of the authorities – who maintained strong ties to the Solidarity movement and the Roman Catholic Church – as visual strategies of resistance. I conclude my analysis of the symbolism of reproductive rights in independent women’s periodicals with a look at zines published by the collectives Girls to the Front and Podżegaczki, highlighting the transformations and continuation of anarcha-feminist visual traditions in the context of the struggle for safe and legal abortion in Poland after 2016.

Grassroots production and distribution

As Sylwia Chutnik emphasizes in her article on the typography of Polish feminist zines, an important source of ideological and stylistic inspiration for their creators during the transformation era was, without question, the concurrent Riot Grrrl movement in the United States, and the methods it used to produce and distribute its publications.²³ At the same time, as Polish zine authors pointed out in our interviews, equally important were the artistic efforts of feminist groups closer to home, in countries like Germany and Sweden, as well as those of Kurdish and Afghan anarcha-feminists, whose experiences contrasted with the dominant Anglo-American perspective.²⁴Many foreign publications covering the topics of radical gynecology and abortion mutual aid networks were brought back to Poland by polish feminists who traveled abroad to attend feminist camps and events, festivals, and punk concerts. Zines were also imported through the mail: one popular method was to order a particular issue by sending a letter with return postage enclosed. The replies often included additional booklets, flyers, and stickers.

Independent production and distribution, the completely grassroots and non-profit approach, and the lack of professionalization associated with the personal and non-institutional dimension of the movement were embraced by anarcha-feminist zine creators, who adopted the DIY ethos.²⁵ This principle guided their approach to making zines, which didn’t need to be professionally produced.²⁶ In fact, they didn’t even need to be finished: in the 1990s, it was common for zines that were just a few pages in length to be xeroxed and distributed among the community as photocopies, which, as Sylwia Chutnik recalls, “gave people the confidence to make their own zines. Hence the flood of independent publications in the 90s: everyone wanted to join the movement and try her hand at making a zine. Lots of zines ended up half-finished and obscure, but there were five-page master copies circulating around the world. But the very fact that people were experimenting was interesting, too.”²⁷

In the view of Chutnik, an Emancypunx member who, after 1989, began publishing her own articles under the pen name Derwisz and collaborating with other anarcha-feminist zine makers, the actual process of putting together publications in the 1990s was of crucial importance – perhaps even more so than their final form. Original, individual, manual labor was, to her, an asset in the eyes of the community, while also being an expression of emotional intimacy with the material in the zine and the anarcha-feminist collective. As Derwisz explains in our interview, zines were passed among a network of trusted individuals who shared bonds of friendship but were also connected by their public activism: “[we used to have] a network of trusted readers who knew where to look for it, and who had to make an effort to find it. This was something you had to be initiated into, a kind of analog version of interacting with your audience.”

The trust involved in the intimate dimension of the relationship between zine creators and readers – roles that frequently intertwined – was reflected in the specific techniques used to produce these publications, including zines categorized as pro-choice or which contextually addressed the subject of reproductive rights. In the 1990s and early 2000s, most independent women’s publications were hand-crafted in the form of layouts pasted onto sheets of paper, collages, or hand-written entries and drawings. A popular technique involved preparing sections of text on a typewriter or computer and then pasting them onto the zine’s “master copy.” The graphics were prepared in a similar fashion: by hand, or by gluing on clippings from newspapers, magazines, ad flyers, or specially printed illustrations.

Working alone with sheets of paper, glue, and scissors undoubtedly carried a different emotional and semantic charge for the authors than producing a zine using a computer would. The point was to emphasize the originality and individual character of a particular zine, which was often done on the inside cover, especially when the zine was distributed in a run of a dozen or so copies, all hand-made by a single artist. In the case of zines that were not completely hand-made by the author, the cover would feature hand-drawn illustrations, writing, and pasted clippings, and would be hand-numbered to underscore the fact that each copy had been made manually. As my interlocutor points out, zines clearly belonged to one of two categories: ones whose master copies were hand-made, and ones that were created using a computer:

Sure, there were plenty of zines that you could photocopy, but their covers were made by hand. What made them special was that you would receive them from a specific person who left her own unique imprint on it: it was a copy, but it was one that she had made, and so there were very few copies in existence. There was a certain duality to it: on the one hand they were photocopied, but on the other they were custom-made, hand-numbered zines. […] Even in the 90s, zines were always either printed, meaning they were designed on a computer, or hand-made: hand-written or typeset on a computer but hand-pasted.

Importantly, these categories carried over into relationships and communication within the anarcha-feminist community. These glimpses into the early days of Polish feminist zine culture reveal that the materiality of the production and distribution techniques reflected the way in which social norms and relationships were established inside the movement: its methods of operation, communication, and being together, as well as community hierarchies. At the same time, it casts into relief the differences in cultural and economic capital among zine creators in the 90s and later decades, both in terms of access to the necessary publishing equipment, such as computers, printers, and DTP software, and in terms of the ability to travel, at one’s own expense or with financial support from feminist NGOs, which undoubtedly facilitated the sharing of anarcha-feminist knowledge and made it easier to visit zine fairs and libraries in foreign countries.

Because these issues were raised by Derwisz in our interview, I would like to begin my analysis of particular zines by taking a look at the publication she authored, Obrzydzara [Disgusting], which was published during the period under discussion.²⁸ Like the newsletters Emancypunx and Śpiewnik Radykalnych Czirliderek [Radical Cheerleader Songbook],²⁹ Obrzydzara was distributed at events known as czad giełdy [punk markets], i.e. independent music fairs, popular in the 1990s, where, alongside zines, visitors could acquire t-shirts, posters, button badges, and records by punk, hardcore-punk, straight-edge, and crust-punk bands. Derwisz also handed out her zines to friends and members of the anarcha-feminist movement at various meetings, events, and conventions. She also distributed issues by mail; recipients would then photocopy and disseminate them among their local anarcha-feminist communities.

Like other publications created by Derwisz and her fellow Emancypunx members, Obrzydzara employed visual symbolism associated with reproductive rights. A particularly noteworthy example is her hand-crafted Śpiewnik Radykalnych Czirliderek, excerpts of which were also published in Obrzydzara and on posters, flyers, and stickers bearing the collective’s logo.

The image of the original master copy of the zine (fig. 4), taken from the author’s personal archive, the contents of which she kindly allowed me to photograph,³⁰ shows two pages featuring hand-made collages. The passages in verse, the printed essays, and the newspaper clippings are all accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations and jotted notes consisting of short phrases or more elaborate observations by the author on the legal and social status of abortion in Poland. Alongside pieces with titles like “PRO-CHOICE” and “NIEZADOWOLONA” [Disgruntled] we find slogans such as “Praised be free choice!” and “The criminalization of abortion is an indictment of free choice!”³¹ By pasting in clippings echoing themes of motherhood, the witch stereotype, and visual norms and canons, the author breaks with the conservative notion of femininity which, as Renata Hryciuk and Elżbieta Korolczuk observe, is grounded in the societal Catholic myth and monolithic cultural construct of the Matka Polka [Polish Mother].³²

The motifs featured in Derwisz’s zine/songbook are paralleled in the stickers, posters, and booklets mentioned above. In one example, the poem “PRO-CHOICE” is reprinted on a tiny black-and-white flyer along with pro-abortion slogans, hand-drawn by the author, details about upcoming actions, and contact information for the Radical Cheerleaders. The text was distributed in several different visual versions, including a flyer with a photo of a young pregnant woman used as the background (fig. 5) and a booklet with an image of a witches’ tea party – a popular motif depicting Welsh witches (fig. 6). These zine extensions of the songbook contain the key styles, techniques, and tropes associated with depictions of the issue of reproductive rights in the 90s and early 2000s. Significantly, the symbolism invoked in both the zine and the booklet points to the corporeal and emotional meanings associated with the experience of a pregnant person; in the examples discussed here, the bodies in question were primarily assumed to belong to cisgender women.³³ Derwisz, along with the other Emancypunx members and the Radical Cheerleaders, also depicted the visuality of reproduction using the motif of the uterus, frequently juxtaposing it with ecclesiastical or state symbols, thereby emphasizing the means of controlling reproduction and their historical contexts (e.g. the witch motif featured in the booklet, with its allusions to medieval witch-hunts).

It is worth noting that while the corporeal and emotional consequences of the experience of state and church control over reproduction in Poland applied to cis women, they were illustrated using the figures of both cisgender women and men, typically through visual references to the pope or a priest as a symbol of the patriarchy, which I discuss below.

Anarcha-feminist activism and witchcraft

Any discussion of the use of the witch motif in zine stylistics must mention Wiedźma, whose visual design addressed the issue of reproductive rights using such imagery as witches’ Sabbaths, herbal abortions, and medieval witch-hunts. Created by the eponymously named and longest-lived anarcha-feminist collective in east-central Poland,³⁴ Wiedźma was produced using methods similar to Obrzydzara and the Emancypunx newsletters. The bilingual (Polish and English) zine was relatively large by independent publishing standards (typically 40–50 A4 pages per issue). It was first published in 1996³⁵ as a continuation of the zines Dyskryminacja [Discrimination] and Modlishki [Praying Mantises].

From the first issue, Wiedźma telegraphed its intention to cover reproductive topics: the anarcha-feminist symbol prominently featured on its cover is inscribed with photos of abortion rights protests held in other countries (fig. 1). Subsequent issues carried on this tradition, within the bounds of the goth-punk aesthetic, through distinctive, high-contrast covers such as the maroon cover of issue no. 4, with a photo of the avant-garde performer and vocalist Diamanda Galás (fig.7), and the black-and-white illustration on the cover of the fifth issue, depicted a crowned woman crucified on a uterus (fig. 8). As one of Poland’s leading zines covering the subject of abortion, Wiedźma stressed the need for feminist solidarity across regional and national boundaries in the fight for reproductive rights. It also provided ongoing coverage of this type of cooperation, and urged its readers to get involved in activism.

Like Emancypunx, the Wiedźma collective contextualized its writings on reproductive rights with photographic coverage of feminist events in support of abortion rights, such as Women’s Day marches, protests, demonstrations, and educational meetings.

In issue no. 4 of Wiedźma, among drawings and articles about the history of mifepristone and surgical abortion methods, were captions and commemorative photos – arranged in the form of a timeline – of women who had participated in a series of feminist “awareness-building” events hosted by Wiedźma and Federacja na Rzecz Kobiet i Planowania Rodziny [the Federation for Women and Family Planning] in Podlasie, beginning in April 2001. Also prominently featured in Wiedźma are photographs depicting the collective’s collaboration with Women on Waves, an organization that works to provide medical and reproductive education, as well as safe access to abortion, to women in countries with legal restrictions on reproductive rights. Among the photos published in the zine are images of Women on Waves’s mobile abortion clinic and a picture of abortion medication being transported via the Langenort ship, which docked in Władysławowo in 2003.³⁶ The commemorative photographs printed in Wiedźma also include portraits of women awaiting the arrival of the abortion ship, photos of gynecologist and Women on Waves founder Rebecca Gomperts, and pictures of the crew welcoming the first guests onboard (figs. 9 and 10).³⁷

Wiedźma was certainly an outlier among the zines of the 1990s and early 2000s, as its stance in the fight for public access to abortion was one of confrontation rather than martyrdom. To this end, it frequently employed visual symbolism associated with witches and witchcraft, underscoring the historical origins of the abortion ban and reproductive control in the Christian tradition. The witch motif was presented in a grotesque and humorous way, but still within the zine’s confrontational style. Depicted torturing and boiling priests, politicians, and the pope in their cauldron, Wiedźma’s witches symbolized female agency by illustrating the act of reclaiming control over reproductive policies in Poland. To emphasize the historical and contemporary sources of systemic reproductive control, the illustrations and drawings of witches were paired with caricatures of state and ecclesiastical symbols. For example, the first issue of Wiedźma, published in 1996, contains a satirical image of Karol Wojtyła. The caricature was intended to serve as a sort of mocking commentary on the pope’s criticism of efforts by the Democratic Left Alliance to ease abortion restrictions in 1996. In the same issue of the zine, the artists also published hand-made collages that referenced the protests held in front of the Polish parliament building by anti-abortion activists³⁸ while the bill was being voted on. The layout comprised newspaper clippings of headlines (“In front of Parliament, insults against government and MPs heard amid Christian prayers, ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’”)³⁹ and scattered phrases (“Liberalization in Parliament” / “Pope’s prayer for abortion ban” / “Great papal contest” / “Main prize: pilgrimage to Rome”)⁴⁰ (fig. 11).

The confrontational style of Wiedźma, accompanying the zine’s visuality of reproductive rights in the transformation era, was also reflective of a broader political strategy. Though the context of the symbolism was ironic and facetious, Polish anarcha-feminist communities were in fact building strong and confrontational identities within the struggle for women’s reproductive rights, as emphasized by another of my interlocutors, Asia Bordowa, author of such zines as Chaos Grrlz, A-Fe!, and Siostra Jolanta [Sister Jolanta], and a member of numerous anarcha-feminist initiatives, including the Emancypunx group.⁴¹ Critiquing the lack of systemic recognition of the status of reproductive and care work in Poland, Bordowa explains how the Polish anarchist movement and, albeit to a much lesser extent, anarcha-feminist communities have internalized the capitalist, gender-based division of labor:

My impression was that we’d always talk about care work and reproductive work in all our feminist projects and groups, but we didn’t have the [right] words, we didn’t have the language for it, no narrative around us. We’d talk about it back then in our own clumsy way, but we didn’t have access to all the books, and there were thinkers like Silvia Federici already writing about it. After all, Caliban and the Witch⁴² is such an old book. And yet it truly articulates, in a systemic fashion, everything we used to think about in the context of our activist and anarchist groups. But I think we felt a lot of shame and encountered resistance whenever we wanted to broach those topics, so we felt uncomfortable doing it or just limited ourselves to very small-scale activism.

As my interlocutor notes, many anarcha-feminist communities in the 90s and early 2000s attempted to draw on feminist economic theories, including the social reproduction theory developed by scholars such as Nancy Fraser, Kathi Weeks, and Silvia Federici. The content of one special bilingual issue of Wiedźma titled Wiedźmy o wiedźmach [Witches on Witches], which I discussed with Bordowa, very closely paralleled the theoretical concepts developed by Federici. Examining the history of the transition from feudalism to capitalism through the lens of gender, the zine described the witch-hunt as a carefully planned tactic of control over biological reproduction, the aim of which was to increase the labor force population in an era wracked by medieval plagues, wars, and the crisis of feudalism.⁴³ The special issue called to mind the theories presented in the book Caliban and the Witch, in which Federici re-evaluates the Marxian narrative of primitive accumulation and points to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources of the devaluation of women’s care work and reproductive labor, drawing a connection between the phenomenon and witch-hunts.⁴⁴ The authors of the zine attempted to explain, in their discussion of this historical period, how abortion and birth control came to be associated with sin and crime in European culture. In doing so, they echoed the observations Federici made in her next book, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle, which casts policies restricting abortion as one means of regulating the capitalist supply of labor.⁴⁵Analyzing feminist zines published in the 1990s and early 2000s, it is difficult to disagree with the thoughts Bordowa articulated in our conversation. Some of the independent publications of the transformation era referenced feminist economics, but did so using a different vocabulary than the feminist zines of today. This is particularly true of the discourse that coalesced around the theory of social reproduction, though the writing in Wiedźma indicates a familiarity with significant theoretical contexts, including the Marxist feminist tradition developed by Federici. Observing the creative output of this period, it would be correct to conclude, after Nancy Fraser, that the notion of gender in post-1989 zines was based on a two-dimensional concept that combined socialist-feminist issues – focusing on labor and class – with cultural issues, that is, the issue of social status as understood in post-Marxian currents of feminist thought.⁴⁶ The zines did not employ an academic idiom, however, and often intentionally eschewed references to specific feminist theories – which can be regarded as a virtue, rather than a flaw, of the feminist discourse developed by their authors. This communication strategy made the circulation of anarcha-feminist ideas more egalitarian and accessible to readers outside the confines of academia, while paving the way for the future demands of Polish feminism and incorporating the socialist tradition. To cite Fraser once more, one could posit the claim that the problem of building a system of capital accumulation based on the exploitation of the unpaid labor of women was present in the zines’ discussions of reproduction in the transformation era, which combined the politics of recognition with redistributive policies.⁴⁷ At the same time, it should be noted that attempts to incorporate discussions of care work into anarcha-feminist political strategy were met with resistance from the Polish anarchist movement – as well as some anarchist feminist groups, though much less vocally.

Caricatures of power

Finding attempts in archival zines to redefine the private sphere as a sphere of labor relations, I noticed that these attempts were accompanied by critiques of the gender division of labor, including the exploitation of household and reproductive labor performed by women. In this sense, zines treated the individual experience of oppression as a class experience: as Monique Wittig argues, the category of “woman” was created as a class category and a cultural myth that was the product of a relationship of exploitation.⁴⁸ Following the ideas developed by Wittig, the creators of the these independent publications called for liberation from the societal notion of “natural” femininity and the imperative of motherhood with which it is associated, as can be observed both in Wiedźma and in the Emancypunx newsletters, particularly in the collages published in Śpiewnik Radykalnych Czirliderek. These collages, which bring to mind Wittig’s essay “The Straight Mind,” invoke reproduction as a fundamental and basic form of labor through which women’s labor is appropriated. In doing so, they depict reproductive labor as a form of exploitation which, to paraphrase Wittig, is carried out analogously to the appropriation of working-class labor by the ruling class.⁴⁹Similar demands were raised in the zines’ caricatures of the political and ecclesiastical authorities, highlighting the violent nature of the abortion ban passed in 1993. Calling for liberation from the gender differences underlying the system of exploitation upon which the institution of heterosexuality is based – a stance much closer to the thinking of Wittig than Fraser – the zines cast the system of heterosexual reproduction, demographics, and economics as a regime of political control over women.⁵⁰ They achieved this by using caricatures of men – continuing in the theoretical vein of radical Marxist feminism – to depict the oppressive and systemic control over reproductive rights in Poland.

A key example of such visual practices is the caricature of a church official portrayed with a grotesque, distended belly in a 1996 issue of Wiedźma; the image went on to enjoy extraordinary popularity and was reprinted in various anarcha-feminist zines throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The earliest instance of this image I found in an independent feminist publication was in Matka Bolka, created by Beata Kozak (later editor-in-chief of Zadra). Matka Bolka, which was only published twice in 1993, but was later occasionally included in Pełnym Głosem [With Full Voice] and Zadra [Splinter], was a sort of commentary on the absurdities of reality, designed in an art-zine style.⁵¹ This small black-and-white zine (approximately twenty A5-format pages) resembled a type-written booklet with page numbers and titles added in marker pen, and with caricatures and satirical comic strips depicting Polish cultural icons drawn in crayon and pencil. Published at a time when there were few official feminist groups or organizations, Matka Bolka was associated with the Fundacja Kobieca eFKa [eFKa Women’s Foundation] in Kraków, and contained – alongside caricatures, comic strips, and poems – quotations from current newspapers and books, as well as articles by such authors as Magdalena Środa, Ewa Tomiak, and Maria Ciechomska on contemporary reproductive politics and debates on abortion and feminism in Polish art.⁵²The first and second issues of Matka Bolka both addressed the abortion ban that had been passed that year by the Polish parliament, but it was the latter issue, published in the spring of 1993, that featured the illustration of the pregnant Karol Wojtyła (fig. 12).

The realistic drawing calls our attention to the patriarchal and sexist dimension of depriving women of reproductive rights, a point driven home by the hand-written caption: “If men could get pregnant, they would have made abortion a FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT long ago.”⁵³ Matka Bolka, whose title mockingly and critically alludes to Lech Wałęsa’s post-Solidarity government,⁵⁴ exploited state and ecclesiastical symbolism to critique, in both of its issues, the two political forces shaping reproductive rights in Poland: the Roman Catholic Church and Solidarity. Through drawings, comics, and caricatures of pregnant clergymen and politicians, Matka Bolka emphasized the anti-feminist trajectory of the shifts in culture and gender norms in the new, post-socialist state, which found visual representation in the motifs of the pregnant pope or Wałęsa: these symbolized the turn toward an anti-woman rhetoric that served to intensify economic exploitation and the tightening of restrictions on reproductive rights, with the ultimate goal being to take control over women’s corporeality by church and state authorities. The fact that in the 1990s women were deprived of the capacity to establish reproductive rights in the new, post-socialist state, and that control over their reproductive health was taken over by men connected to the Catholic Church and the Solidarity movement was also highlighted by Wiedźma, Emancypunx zines, and other independent feminist publications. In a nod to the illustration printed in Matka Bolka, the fourth issue of Wiedźma included a black-and-white A4 poster depicting men in suits, overlaid by the caption: “77% of abortion opponents are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.”⁵⁵ Emancypunx, meanwhile, printed various versions of the slogan “Give me back my body!” in black and white in their newsletters and flyers.

Matka Bolka, Wiedźma, Obrzydzara, Emancypunx, and other zines of the 1990s and early 2000s such as Chaos Grrlz and Vacula used symbols associated with corporeality, motherhood, the Catholic Church, and the Solidarity movement to address the radical shift toward anti-woman rhetoric, which was tied to the reinforcement of men’s positions as the key social actors responsible for establishing the new public and political order in transformation-era Poland.⁵⁶ Putting into practice the anti-violent ethic of “militant pacifism,”⁵⁷ the zines criticized the new type of church–state “gender regime” that had become a hallmark of the transition to post-socialism.⁵⁸

Moreover, anarcha-feminist zines drew on Judith Butler’s notion of an egalitarian imaginary encompassing the idea of reproductive justice.⁵⁹ Like Joanna Mishtal, Peggy Watson, Ann Snitow, and other scholars of the gender history of the systemic transitions in post-socialist countries, the authors of anarcha-feminist zines stressed that depriving women of control over their bodies through abortion bans, the withdrawal of subsidies for contraceptives, and the rolling back of sex education in schools marked a turn toward traditional gender roles in the public discourse, thereby erasing women from public and political space. As they observed and responded to the establishment of an anti-feminist state order after 1989, the zines underwent a stylistic transformation of their own: among the ironic and grotesque caricatures illustrating the social and political changes in the field of reproductive rights, they began printing visual representations of the corporeal and emotional experiences caused by the abortion ban. This was accomplished with means of expression that evoked feelings of fear, anger, and melancholy, conveying the funereal mood that accompanied the loss of reproductive rights in Poland after 1989 – for example, through martyrological symbolism in the form of a crucified woman.

Contemporary feminist zines and women’s reproductive rights

The transformation of abortion symbolism, along with the preservation of the anarcha-feminist tradition of “militant pacifism,” is particularly apparent in contemporary independent feminist publications. Following the clampdowns on reproductive rights in 1993 and 2016,⁶⁰ there occurred a consolidation of zine practices and a renaissance of the feminist culture of independent publishing. An example of this is the work of the Kraków collective Podżegaczki [“Instigatresses”], whose three zines, titled Wolność, aborcja, emancypacja [Freedom, Abortion, Emancipation], Piekło (nie tylko) kobiet [Hell (Not Only) for Women], and Radykalna troska [Radical Care], published in 2020 and 2021, are devoted to the subject of abortion. Piekło (nie tylko) kobiet looks at the “Black Protests” of 2016 and the abortion rights demonstrations that took place in October 2020.⁶¹ Like Matka Bolka and Wiedźma in previous decades, Podżegaczki document the current political situation in Poland, responding through visual means to the stripping of women’s reproductive rights. In its artistic aspect, Podżegaczki’s publishing work seems as significant as the output of the collectives at the turn of the century. Radykalna troska resembles a work of art: it contains numerous illustrations and drawings, but no page numbers. In Podżegaczki’s other zines – each numbering about 40 A5-format pages – illustrations, comics, and drawings come to the fore. By publishing articles and manifestos, Podżegaczki uphold the anarcha-feminist zine strategies of decades past while nurturing the exchange of socialist ideas with regard to public reproductive healthcare.

The poem “do matki polki” [To the Polish Mother], by Natalia Niewiadomska,⁶² and Daria Godyń’s illustration of a pregnant woman wearing a crown of thorns⁶³ (fig. 16), both printed in Piekło (nie tylko) kobiet, bring to mind the cover of Wiedźma no. 5, which featured a depiction of a woman splayed on a uterus-shaped cross. Elena Sobocińska’s article “Potrzebujemy socjalizmu, socjalizm potrzebuje nas” [We Need Socialism, Socialism Needs Us]⁶⁴ in turn recalls the collages created in the 1990s, portraying the socio-economic impact of the abortion ban, while “Kościół, który nas niszczy” [The Church That Destroys Us]⁶⁵ revisits criticisms of the post-Solidarity, church-aligned government expressed in the caricatures of Karol Wojtyła in Matka Bolka and the witch drawings in Wiedźma. Most importantly, the last page of Piekło (nie tylko) kobiet contains a list of contacts for those in need of an abortion, thanking the Abortion Dream Team and Fuegro for their support (fig. 17), echoing the publication of contact details for Women on Waves in nearly every issue of Wiedźma (“Women on Waves, P.O. Box 15683 1001ND, Amsterdam”). Opposite an illustration by Lena Kolasa depicting an abortion fairy whispering ADT’s phone number and web address, the artist asks: “Need an abortion? You’re not alone,” followed by the e-mail addresses of members of an “auntie network”: Ciocia Wienia (ciocia-wienia@riseup.net), Ciocia Basia (ciocia.basia@riseup.net), Ciocia Czesia (ciocia_czesia@riseup.net), and an emergency contraception provider (dzienpo@riseup.net). The zine’s final page thus becomes an illustration of international anarcha-feminist cooperation across regional and national borders to ensure access to safe and legal abortion.

The Warsaw-based initiative Girls to the Front, who have published their own zine since 2015, pursue similar activities. GTTF’s bilingual Polish-English zine usually numbers 100 A5 pages, though past issues have been both shorter and longer, from 40 to 160 pages. Like Podżegaczki, GTTF collaborates with Polish and foreign organizations, collectives, activists, academics, and artists to create the articles, manifestos, stories, drawings, and illustrations published in the zine. The 2021 issue Girls to the Front #10: Konflikt, collaboratively produced by 50 people, contains in its final section the names of all contributors, including translators, as the zine is published in two languages, with a format resembling that of Wiedźma (the second half of the issue is in English, containing translations of the Polish content along with pieces originally submitted in English).

Photographs of the 2020 abortion rights protests, meanwhile, bring to mind the photos published in Wiedźma of the demonstrations that accompanied the arrival of the Langenort in Władysławowo. Similarly, the drawings and illustrations printed in Girls to the Front resemble the collages published in the first issue of Wiedźma in response to attempts to loosen abortion restrictions in Poland in 1996. Despite the two decades separating the two zines, some of the visual content of Wiedźma and GTTF is extraordinarily similar, testifying to the continuing relevance of anarcha-feminist interpretations in the debate over reproductive issues. For example, the illustration by Magdalena Rzepecka depicting a banner with the words “PRO ABO”⁶⁶ (fig. 18), and Zuza Kamińska’s drawings, which cite the slogan “SEX IS NOT A CRIME / PREGNANCY IS NOT A PUNISHMENT / If I want an abortion / I’LL HAVE ONE,”⁶⁷ strongly echo similar visual content printed in Wiedźma in the 1990s.

Likewise, Kaja Kochnowicz’s drawing of a looped uterus entwined with the space surrounding the depicted figure⁶⁸ (fig. 20) brings to mind the artwork (and color palette!) of Wiedźma covers. Finally, carrying on the tradition of Matka Bolka, Zuza Kamińska illustrates the problem of the lack of separation of church and state with an image of burning land and the silhouette of a church amid the flames, inscribed with the words “NO MORE LIES! SEPARATE THE CHURCH AND STATE!”⁶⁹ (fig. 22). The zine’s visual layer thus becomes a tool of visual resistance against the abortion bans imposed by the church-affiliated post-Solidarity “gender regime.”

In Girls to the Front #10: Konflikt, the majority of the visual and written content addresses the feminist and queer protests of 2020 and 2021. Like the anarcha-feminist periodicals published during the transformation period, GTTF prints photos of abortion rights demonstrations⁷⁰ along with slogans that reference the “Women’s Strike” and provide inspiration for future protest banner designs. As Rebekah Buchanan⁷¹ and Jennifer Bleyer⁷² emphasize, in the practice of zines, theory and practice are inextricably linked, while the text and graphics provide the impetus for even more fleeting and ephemeral forms of distribution. Concepts associated with reproductive health and the right to legal abortion are thus subjected to visual and linguistic intensification, and transplanted onto smaller media formats.

One example of the spreading of zine content to more ephemeral cultural practices are the flyers, analyzed at the beginning of this article, handed out by Emancypunx at anarcha-feminist spaces in the 90s and the early 2000s. Similarly, the smaller-format copies of zines and zine supplements distributed at protests, Women’s Day marches, at squats and anarcha-feminist libraries, in feminist spaces and queer events, and at music festivals and private parties contain pro-choice slogans echoing those found in independent periodicals. They also address broader issues of emancipation and equal rights, frequently providing suggestions for slogans, rhyming chants, and song lyrics for use at future strikes and demonstrations. And, conversely, slogans heard at protests and street performances are transplanted onto the pages of zines, both as a form of documenting an event in a manner that is informative and motivating to action, and as artistic observations subject to visual interpretation and poetic augmentation.

An example of a strategy of resistance that upholds the anarcha-feminist traditions of previous decades while permeating spaces of activism, theory, protest, and zines is the issue of GTTF devoted to the topic of conflict. Echoing the slogans of the protests and demonstrations that swept Poland in 2020, an image by Małgorzata Mycek illustrates the message of solidarity, “YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE,”⁷³ which appeared at the strikes held in defense of reproductive rights and at demonstrations against anti-queer violence. A similar function is served by the illustration opening the zine, by Natalia Konca, which depicts a crowd of people in white, black, and red, holding a small sign that reads “CHOICE” and a large banner with the symbolic lightning bolt and eight red asterisks, and – most prominently – the slogan: “ALL GIRLS TO THE FRONT / ALL QUEERS TO THE FRONT / ALL ALLIES TO THE FRONT”⁷⁴ (fig. 23).

The visual designs by Mycek that accompany the interview with a feminist anti-repression collective emphasize the shared ideological dimension of the protests in support of queer people and women’s rights. For example, the theme of the red lightning bolt appears alongside symbols used by transgender people and visual reinterpretations of the gay pride flag, such as a Molotov cocktail with a rainbow fuse (fig. 24). Elsewhere, a drawing by dziewczynyzszafy_ depicting a rainbow cat frightened by red-and-white crocodiles (fig. 25) is used to illustrate short stories by Anna Maria Łozińska, which take the form of an intimate journal documenting the political situation in 2020. Paralleling the visual content of Wiedźma and Matka Bolka, contemporary feminist zines therefore emphasize that the fight for reproductive rights is not only a struggle to defend the right to safe and legal abortion, but also intended to provide a sense of emotional security, social healthcare, and access to public space for all.

The struggle (not only) for reproductive rights

Let’s summarize: by carrying on the strategy developed by anarcha-feminist zines, contemporary publications work to expand the tradition of international and intersectional collaboration with local and foreign feminist organizations, as a method of counteracting the social and economic impact of the abortion ban in Poland. At the same time, the zines document and creatively interpret the efforts of grassroots abortion rights activists. Using similar techniques of building resistance to counter the erasure of the emancipatory discourse on abortion, zines provide an artistic-activist tool in the fight against visual transformations in culture with regard to reproduction and, more broadly, emancipation. Like their 1990s counterparts, contemporary feminist zines stress that the fight for reproductive rights is not limited to the emancipation of women, and requires broader social justice activism.

Based on my interpretation of the visual depictions of issues related to reproductive rights in zines, I pose the thesis that, beginning in the early 1990s, independent feminist publications in Poland comprised a space that enabled socially marginalized groups – particularly women as a social class – to engage in resistance and document it in an emancipatory fashion. Through their use of anarcho-punk texts and graphics that challenged the establishment of gender and sexual norms in the post-socialist state, zines contributed to the creation of a feminist tradition of writing about and illustrating reproductive rights concepts, from which abortion mutual aid networks in Poland now borrow.⁷⁵ Using a spectrum of tones ranging from light-hearted, humorous, ironic, and irreverent, to judicious, serious, sad, and terrified, zines visualized the activist message that the fight for abortion is a fight for health and control over one’s own body – hence the prevalence, in zines published after 1989, of visual content featuring motifs such as the uterus, the woman, the pope, and the cross.

The visual symbol of the uterus, in its myriad interpretations, echoes the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, which Joanna Mishtal analyzes as a kind of unofficial moral-religious biopolitics imposed through state and church models of management and discipline in post-socialist Poland.⁷⁶ Through their multi-dimensionality and ambiguity, uterus motifs in circulation since the 1990s pointed to a double moral standard governing reproduction, manifested in the manner in which the official religious regime and “spiritual politics” operated (the official, public discourse and the private discourse of patients and doctors; the official illegality of abortion and the unofficial abortion procedures in private medical facilities). Paralleling their use of the uterus theme, anarcha-feminist zines reinterpreted the motif of the pregnant pope in order to expose the economic exploitation of the legislative capture of reproductive rights in Poland by the Catholic Church and post-Solidarity circles. Initially circulated in an irreverent and confrontationally humorous form in the early 1990s, it appeared as a stylistically light-hearted and humorous drawing (the realistic pope in Matka Bolka, or the grotesque pontiff stewing in a cauldron in Wiedźma) before shifting, over the years, into an illustration designed to evoke feelings of dread, sadness, fear, and anger. Similar transformations occurred in other themes that addressed the problem of the post-socialist inseparability of church and state – symbols such as the gallows-rosary, the uterus-crucifix, and the pregnant woman wearing a crown of thorns. Using these techniques, anarcha-feminist zines visualized the gradual restriction of reproductive rights and the abandonment of the notion of reproductive justice after 1989, as well as the corresponding appropriation of women’s care and reproductive labor. At the same time, they shed light on the problematic expansion of moral and religious biopolitics into other cultural fields related to emancipation, gender, and sexuality.

The visual motifs of the uterus, woman, pope, and cross were thus subjected to an intensification of style and color while spreading geographically in the public sphere: the red-and-black goth-punk colors of the 1990s can now be seen in the symbols of the Black Protests (black umbrellas and coat hangers) and the Polish Women’s Strike (red lightning bolt and asterisks). In contrast to the irony and humor associated with these symbols in decades past, today the motifs are more likely to evoke feelings of mourning and melancholy in response to the loss of reproductive rights, or dread and fear as emotional reactions to the trajectory of change followed by the state and church models of disciplining women and society at large.