Demi Trans Lesbian
A downloadable zine
It's a cute little 8 page zine about demisexuality, mainly how I figured out how I was demisexual, and what it means to me. You might like it!
It was drawn in the style of npckc's spring trilogy games, because one of those games helped me figure some of this out! and they're so cute. and made with clip studio paint and electric zine maker
it's pay what you want and comes with a screen-readable pdf, two printable zine formats (letter and a4), and a readme file :D
I hope you enjoy it!!
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bro cringe💀
Thank you 💕
good zine :) i like the art and speaking about ourselves is something not easy that's for sure
I felt so validated reading this, and knowing I wasn't alone as well. Most of the obstacles I faced back in middle school when figuring out if I liked girls, revolved around demisexuality. When I discovered the term, and found a label for how I was feeling, it felt liberating.
Thank you for sharing your experiences! <3
Thank you for sharing this! And yeah it's so hard to work out what's going on - it feels like something's wrong until you find out that you're not alone :3
Love to see a zine about demisexuality! Cuz hey, that's me too! The way I feel it is slightly different, but that's what's great about any identity, it's kinda different for everyone. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading it!
This totally hit me in the feels because I feel...I think, the exact same. Transitioning turned my sexuality inside out, and it wasn't just who I was attracted to but how I was attracted. When I identified as AMAB I always had a difficult time relating to the instant-hit-it-off-let's-go-jump-in-bed-use-too-many-hyphens school of relationships, and wrote it off as me being, well...just uptight.
But becoming myself, if it's the hormones or the reflection, it's...been so much clearer that I'm hugely romantic and I absolutely need that emotional connection, and it's not being a prude, and it's not something to be ashamed of. It's just hard as even talking about demi, or ace, or just acespec identities in general is something that makes most people's heads go 'bork?'.
Still...thank you for putting this out there. It means a lot. Thanks.
I've had a few weird conversations with cis people about demisexuality where they've been like, "isn't that normal?". And I'm like, hahaha no. But...
I think it's a good thing to discover about yourself. Until I did I really beat myself up about why I couldn't seem to just, get out there, and why I didn't really like being touched and why overtly sexual stuff made me feel weird. For a while I thought I was ace (which is fine!) but when I fell for my girlfriend I realised something was up and put it all together. I really do need romance for anything to work sexually. I'm not sure I have to love the person but I'm certain I'd need to feel a really strong emotional connection.
Anyway thank you for reading my little zine and your nice comment! I'm glad it connected with you. I think there's a few of us out here and it's interested to know that not only can transitioning change your sexual orientation it can also change you from allo to ace, or maybe the other way round too? Who knows haha
Yeah I uh, not to derail and air a whole pile of TMI but, well. Prior to transition I didn't have a huge sex drive, didn't really partner up at all and just 'dealt with it' when it became a nuisance. One of the things I actually felt really divorced from masculinity about was the relentless pursuit of sex, I never understood why people put so much effort into chasing it, at all. So, months into HRT and between the E and the Spiro the limited sex drive I had really went away and, oddly, I found I didn't really miss it. Which started me wondering if there was a piece I was missing?
Then as my E levels climbed, and I started crying at everything, and blah blah, I found things kicked back in, not so much sexually but I turned into a completely shameless sponge for gooey romance. Discovered via a sudden need to consume slow-burn/fluff fanfic, and any interest in being erotic suddenly turned into a yearning for emotional connection. That this also dovetailed with my orientation doing 360 burnouts in the parking lot, well it didn't help, as it would be 'hella lesbian' on Tuesday followed by 'Okay pretty bi' by Friday, and back again.
I think nuking away the masculinity that I really struggled with also let me peel away the expectation of being capable of sex without significant emotional attachments, I mean, the few partners I had (as an ostensibly gay AMAB) tended to tell me I was 'clingy' when in retrospect, I feel I wanted more emotional availability that I was capable of getting from them.
So now everything seems to hinge on my ability to connect with someone before any real sense of wanting to go further kicks in, and it's been hard to stand by that when so often there's this expectation of hookup first, lovey-dovey later when I seem primed to run the opposite direction, as in, cuddle-me-until-I-cry and then I might jump your bones.
Then doing this all in middle age (43 now) is just, icing on the cake. Somedays...oy.
But to the point, really after this long winded spiel, is maybe I wasn't allo to begin with and finding more comfort with my existence seemed to let me see what I really wanted. I honestly wonder, too, if walking away from performative masculinity also let me open up to the idea that I didn't need to be 'capable' of completely allosexual performance because while men are expected to be romantic, it's within a somewhat, to me, narrow range of performances. Men lust, women pine, is sort of how I would characterize it, at least, what I internalized.
Then even within queer spaces, there's sometimes such an undercurrent of sex-as-liberation or as a transgressive performance or what-have-you, and that's not to say I'm not sex-positive, I'm just, positive it doesn't actually matter if you do or don't and sometimes I wish that there would be more inclusive in queer discussions where ace/demi voices are too often either sidelined as 'well you're just repressed' or worse, just ignored as one more roadbump on the highway to aspirational normativity.
Anyway it's been a freakin' weird mix of learning and un-learning.
Christ sorry for the essay, thanks for responding and, yeah, again, thanks for putting that piece out there because it is super, super relatable. and vulnerable and just really nice to see.
Hi Sammy, I enjoyed reading this! It was cute, short, and sweet; I read it as a diary entry of sorts. My discovery of my demisexuality was pretty similar, a bit more fraught but also during lockdown. :) I too have spent most of my transition indoors, came-out-during-lockdown gang!
oh wow hey! I'm glad you liked it!
I think i got like 9 months into medical transition before the first lockdown hit and that was such a total kick in the ass lol. It made figuring anything about sexuality tough but demisexuality was particularly hard to nail down. I guess we both got there in the end! I think reading about others' experiences helps so this is my small way of letting people they might not be alone and that people like us exist :)
I hope everything's going well for ya! And thanks again !
We did get there in the end!
Yeah that's exactly why I wanted to come leave this comment. <3 Thank you.
Bigest plus is the art style, but with how granular the endresult (PDF) looks on the screen (please use vector art for anything scaleable) and as it sadly isn't your own style, i'm not even sure if that can count as a big plus (still a plus though). Don't get me wrong, I love the style, but adapting it a bit would have been nicer, after all it is a zine about your personal experiences and completely using another artists style for it, feels somewhat impersonal too me, on the other hand one could argue it is an homage on a series of VN you like, that's kinda personal too. After taking a look (haven't read them yet, only quickly looked at the pictures provided) at your other zines and game books i'm not sure, it seems you haven't found your unique style yet? Or should the pink haired person wearing normal clothing and presenting them (her? i guess it's a representation of yourself after all) in different other styles be considered your style? One could argue that would be kinda a personal style too.
Sadly there is very little useful information in this zine too (at least if you are more interested in the general topics and less into a specific person), links to the mentioned websites and the npckc games would have done about as much. And don't get me wrong on this either, it may help some people to see positive experiences are being made too, and the possibility to connect to a seemingly (as far as i can tell from the zine) likeable and supportive person can be a huge thing too, it's just I expected at least some more (non personal) information in the zine, i mean the biggest topic is demisexuality but after reading I still only have a gist of an image what that means in general. Even only adding a definition for the terms used, for example at the end in a kinda glossar would help, there are many out there who still have no idea what exactly is meant by asexual for example (and sadly the majority seems to not believe they exist at all), sure you can get the same infos just by googling the terms but 1) someone without any knowledge on the issues might not be able to see which of the many definitions and articles found are corrcet and which are, bluntly said, fundamentalist propaganda bullshit (usually religion tinted) and 2) the found definitions might not be exactly fitting to the zine and confusing for a reader that had no contact to the topics before.
After all this, that some might consider devasting critique but isn't meant to be like that, let me say I like the zines art (getting another persons art style right is hard too), I'm thankful for sharing the experience and it seems there could be a discord I might enjoy, therefore it definitely wasn't a waste of time (I just think you could do it better).
Hiya! Thanks for the critique! I will definitely take everything on board!
I think with the images, they're only supposed to be viewed at an A7 size (or 1/8th the size of a folded piece of paper). These were made with Electric Zine Maker with the intention for printing, though I get that since I don't actually expect people to do that I should primarily aim them at computer viewers and work on scalable images. In the future I will figure out how to do this and try my best!
I do have my own style though! In this one it is a deliberate copy of the Hot Springs games, mainly because I wanted to learn how to draw like that (it's cute and i often incorporate techniques other artists use into my own style). Also my visual novel club was playing that game at the time so I wanted to create a zine that sort of followed on from that experience. My own style is more obvious in my other zines, I do a few different things depending on mood but most commonly I draw like "Tomorrow Will Not Be The Same" especially if I'm trying to relay emotions relatively quickly.
I also get what you said about useful information, and considered it at the time too. I don't really *do* informative, especially in zines. I like to concentrate on feeling and tone when I can. But also, when it's a topic like this, that doesn't come up too often, and is under attack from all kinds of weirdos, maybe I need to do better. In fact, I will! Now that I've felt this way for a while I'll make a more useful version with some teeth.
If you're interested in the discord (and you're non-binary and/or trans coz it's an nb/trans space) please send me a message (we're doing some other game this month I don't think we decided which yet).
Thank you so much again for your in depth critique, i will use it to make better things in the future :)