Women’s Resource Centre releases feminist-focused zine Alternative Waves
When the volunteers at the Student Federation of University of Ottawa (SFUO) and Graduate Students’ Association (GSAÉD)-run Women’s Resource Centre (WRC) were trying to figure out what project to do this semester, they wanted to find something creative, informative, and fun to make.
This is how Alternative Waves was born, a feminist-centric zine which the WRC released on Nov. 27 at a launch party at Café Alt.
Alternative Waves features contributions from many of the WRC’s volunteers this semester. The zine has different forms of content, from a list concerning “Consent Culture at Clubs & Parties”, to an essay entitled “Gender and Transformation in Woolf’s To the Lighthouse”.
Although the different contributions may seem like they have very little in common, Stephanie Meunier, a third-year women’s studies and communications student at the U of O and the volunteer coordinator of the WRC, assures that they all have one collective theme—alternativism.
“When we tried to find a theme, we couldn’t find something super specific, like one central issue or a thing to focus on, but we found that everyone was … being critical of something, or looking at alternatives,” says Meunier.
She says that the “waves” portion of the title is related to the different waves of feminism throughout its history.
“(There’s) first wave, second wave… now we’re kind of like in a weird “who knows what?” wave, fourth wave, no wave, who knows,” she says. “So we’re suggesting that we might be in an alternative wave.”
Holly Dominato, a second-year nursing student and volunteer at the centre, wrote a piece entitled “Sex Ed in a New World” about the new sexual education curriculum that was introduced in Ontario this year. Dominato believed that this topic fit well with the alternative theme as the new curriculum is “a change we’ve been seeing in society towards better, comprehensive education.”
Dominato is hoping that her piece, as well as the others in the zine, will allow readers to see important issues like sexual education, racism, and consent culture from different points of view.
“It kind of talks about different issues that are happening now in the world, and kind of how those perspectives affect different people, and so I hope it kind of encourages people to consider things from other people’s perspective.”
Meunier is hoping that the centre can continue to release zines in the future, and that the new batch of volunteers next semester will have their hands at sharing their feminist knowledge in a unique and fun way.
Alternative Waves is available for free at the WRC, which is located at UCU220. The centre is open Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
