Do we still need zines in 2026?
As a young girl with big opinions, I’ve never found it easy to know where I belong.
Having moved to a new high school in a new city with no one who got it, I did what a lot of us do — I went looking at 3 am in Reddit rabbit holes for the people I couldn’t find in real life. And for a while it worked. I found people who thought like me. Conversations I couldn’t have at home or at school. A community, or at least something that felt like one.
But the internet has a way of reminding you that it isn’t as safe as you think. One minute, you’re bouncing ideas with a fellow feminist in the comments of an Abbie Chatfield video. The next, an incel rolls in, calling you woke bitches who should be reading recipes instead of feminist manifestos. This false sense of community cracks fast.
This isn’t just an internet problem. The suppression, censorship and attack of activism is as old as activism itself. Danger follows dissent like a shadow. To resist is to become visible, and visibility has its costs.
But safe spaces for collaborative activism do exist. They always have. 
That’s where zines come in.
Self-published, unfiltered, ungoverned by algorithms or advertisers, zines have long been the places where ideas, too radical, too queer, too loud for mainstream media, found a home. Where the ideas so often silenced elsewhere were laid bare on the page, free from rage-baiting comments and distortion.
Today, the communities, ideas and values that built the zine movement haven’t disappeared, they’ve evolved. The internet gave us reach, but it also gave us a hunger for something more tangible. Rosie is a part of a new wave of feminist activism that wants both the accessibility of online spaces and the realness of in-person community.
As queer zine maker Liz Egan of Melbourne’s Sticky Institute puts it, zines let you “connect with someone else’s lived experiences, learn from them, see yourself reflected.”
Can a screen really give you that? Or is there something about a zine you can self-publish, hold and pass between hands that online spaces just can’t replicate?
Where have zines come from?
A zine is a self-published mini magazine. Zines don’t need to be feminist, but this is a feminist article on zines, so we are going to look at some kick-ass feminist zines.
In 1894, an Iranian woman named Bibi Khanom Astarabadi was already doing something deeply zine-like. An anonymous Qajar prince had circulated a pamphlet called Ta’dib al-Niswan (“Disciplining Women”) — a smug little guide advising men on how to keep their wives obedient. Bibi Khanom was furious, so she did what any good zine-maker would do: she wrote back.
Her pamphlet Ma‘ayib al-rijal (“Vices of Men”) tore the original apart with biting satire and slang, addressed her readers directly as “my sisters,” and circulated hand-to-hand among literate Iranian women. It wasn’t formally published until 1992, nearly a century later, but manuscript copies survived in private collections, passed between women who understood exactly what it meant. A self-published feminist clapback, written in fury, shared in community: if that’s not a zine, what is?
The most unanimously agreed upon original zine comes from the black renaissance in Harlem in the 1920s, with many pointing to the pamphlet Fire!!, particularly the chapter Sweat, as the beginning of self-published alternative feminist writing in the zine format.
Between the 1970s and 1990s, with the rise of the punk scene, second wave feminism and innovations in printing, zines were refined, culminating at their peak with the Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s.
Many retellings of zine history focus solely on the Riot Grrrl movement, whitewashing the rich art of self-published cultural and political writing throughout history. Zines have been a central tool of dissent for marginalised people worldwide.
What ties all of these together isn’t staples or photocopiers. It’s purpose.
Zines are not just pages bound together in a makeshift fashion, zines embody space. Space to share ideas that have nowhere else to go. Space to build community outside of systems that weren’t built for you. Space to speak freely, loudly and on your own terms. Zines democratise discourse, one collage at a time.
Why do I need a zine when I have TikTok?
We live in an era of social media, Substack, comment sections and group chats. We are not exactly short on places to post our opinions. And unlike the women passing hand-copied manuscripts in 19th-century Tehran or the Riot Grrrls photocopying manifestos in basements, we are not facing the same walls of censorship they were. So what’s the point of a physical zine now?
Here’s the thing: censorship has not disappeared, it has just gotten sneakier. Algorithms quietly bury radical content. Platforms delete accounts. And feminist activism gets lost in the oversaturated sea of content online, particularly with the rise of red pill manosphere content.
The internet gave us reach, but it also handed control to the corporations that have absolutely no interest in protecting feminist discourse. Your post can go viral and get removed in the same afternoon.
A physical zine cannot be algorithmically suppressed. It does not require a platform’s approval. Once it is printed and in someone’s hands, it exists, full stop. That is radical.
But physical zines are not just a workaround for digital censorship. They are making a deliberate aesthetic and political statement. Picking up a zine is a tactile, intentional act in a way that doomscrolling simply is not. The cut-and-paste visuals, the smudged ink, and the slightly crooked staple down the middle are a direct line back to the punk and Riot Grrrl traditions. It is a refusal to be polished and palatable.
There is also something politically meaningful about the labour of it. Making and distributing a zine takes effort. You have to want it. And when someone picks one up at an event, reads it on the train or passes it to a friend, that is a chain of human connection that no algorithm can replicate or monetise.
In an age of digital noise, something you can hold in your hands and share with another person is quietly, radically powerful.
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What can we do about it?
Rosie exists for women, girls and gender diverse people who are done feeling isolated and ready to do something about it.
With events like Cut and Paste Protest!, we aim to keep the fiery feminist fury of Riot Grrrl alive.
So join Rosie’s events, write for us, and make your own zines. Bibi Khanoom Astarabadil didn’t write back so that you could bed-rot.
Cut Paste Protest! An evening of feminist convos and creativity. Create your own zine, meet like-minded young activists and grow your feminist community.
ALL. FOR. FREE.
Join our waitlist today.
📅 6-8 PM Thursday, 20 Aug 2026
📍That Paper Joint, 544 Sydney Rd, Brunswick VIC 3056
List of my favourite zines and online communities for feminist activism and where to find them:
- physical/in-person zines and community
- Online zines/community
About the author
Luella Geer
Luella is an Intern for the Victorian Women’s Trust, helping volunteer with Rosie programs and research assistance. Having recently graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Major in Anthropology, she is passionate about connecting with community and fostering an intersectional feminist future for all. Luella has great interest in connecting feminist issues with climate issues, particularly with the rise of AI’s impact on the planet and its people. When she’s not writing for Rosie, you will find Luella dancing barefoot on an outdoor dance floor, listening to music by a river or cooking up a new culinary creation.
