The Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) printed and released their first zine on Feb. 27, distributing copies around school for students to read. The zine featured poems, drawings and short stories about the experience of being a transgender teen. English teacher Seth Leblanc is the sponsor of the GSA and largely supports the recent zine production.
“GSA has wanted a creative outlet that could reach out to the rest of the student body for a long time now,” Leblanc said. “I think [the zine] turned out well, and the most exciting part about it is where it could go forwards, and how it could become a new tradition for our school and for the GSA. I love the potential of that.”
Junior Marley DeRienzo, co-president of the GSA, was the main campaigner for the zine’s production and dedicated many days after school to its completion.
“I’m glad that we managed to finish it. We put it out on the racks and everything was gone within two days,” DeRienzo said. “It seems like people really enjoyed the zine.”
Junior Ezra Hashi was one of many students highly anticipating the zine’s release, excited for a published work to represent him as a transgender youth.
“[The zine] lets people know what the transgender community is truly about,” Hashi said. “That’s something that’s truly important.”
“One of my favorite works is the poem titled, ‘Some completely true facts about werewolves’,” Hashi said. “[The poem] compares werewolves to transgender people and how transgender people ‘transform’. [It also illustrates] how if they don’t transform, it makes them feel bad.”
The zine is themed around transgender youth in honor of Transgender Awareness Week which took place in November, and gave transgender students at McLean a voice to speak out on their view of life as a transgender individual.
“The current [zine] focuses only on transgender issues, because I think that’s most pertinent right now, especially with policies that could potentially affect students,” Leblanc said. “But, I like that [the zine will] be an open outlet in the future for students to talk about whatever the issue might be at the time.”
