Articles From Issue 16

The following are sample articles from Issue 16. Click here or contact fallopian.falafel@gmail.com to order the full zine.

Fight Quarantine! (By Hadass S. Ben-Ari)
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The rise of the infamous grunge scene in Seattle and Olympia in the early 90s spawned a lesser known scene of powerful, outspoken feminists who decided to ditch their role as the girls on the sideline at punk shows, who will sleep with the band members once they are done smashing their instruments – and instead decided to take the center stage with their own band, and voice their feminist views along with their own distorted guitars and angry drumbeats. This was the Riot Grrrl movement.
In 2010, a Canadian grrrl with red hair and piercings named Clementine Cannibal decided to take the Riot Grrrl movement a step further by appealing to those who may not identify with punk music, and who may want to express their feminist views with other forms of art. This initiative spread like a virus and reached grrrls from all over the world – US, UK, Europe, Australia, Scandinavia and yes, Israel too.
GrrrlVIRUS has no leaders or followers. Every member who identifies with the movement defines it according to what it means to her. We are grrrls who do not believe in the patriarchic capitalist order that strives to pit us against each other. We are not competitive, we do not believe in grrrl-hate, we do not believe in jealousy. We may not agree with each other all the time, but the grrrlVIRUS infection allows us to respect, encourage, and love our fellow sisters, regardless of who they are and what they choose to do.
We also refuse to hate ourselves and buy into the consumerist notion that we are never good enough. What society views as our imperfections, we view as our power. The Mother Goddess blessed us with the ability to survive despite all the harassment, the violence, the humiliation, the abuse and the hate that we endure. The grrrlVIRUS is the gift of empowerment and beauty, and we invite every grrrl to partake in the viral love that we spread.
This issue includes words of wisdom from some of the infected army of grrrls and womyn I’ve come to know and admire, some flyers for spreading the virus, links to some virus-worthy sites, and a special Riot Grrrl Corner about Cochlea, who took part in the recent Slutwalk event in Ontario, and who also contributed the cover art for this issue!
Sprinkling much grrrlVIRUS-infected confetti and pink skull kisses to all of you!
Enjoy!

Regretfully, this is the last issue of Fallopian Falafel Zine, at least for a while. I am taking a break from it so I can continue writing my book. But the grrrlVIRUS keeps spreading and the Riot Grrrl spirit lives on. So this is not the last you’ve heard of me.
Cheesy as it may be, I would like to extend my sincere and heartfelt thanks to all the grrrls who contributed/supported this zine since its inception, and all the readers who inspired me to keep it up even if sometimes it felt impossible, either emotionally or financially. Thank you for sharing with me in this incredible ride. I look forward to seeing you all in Berlin for the International grrrlVIRUS event this October.
Auf Wiedersehen!
The Badass.

A Slut Is Born - Interview with Clementine Cannibal
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Hopeless Romantic (art by Laura Wady)
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Lust Lost (By Phyllis K. Becker)
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My Mother's Thumb (By Sue Tourkin-Komet)
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Gray (By Ariel Pamela Blacher)
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As I contemplated life,
one Friday eve
I began to sift my hands
through my dark curls--
the curls that have darkened
as time passed
while covered by hats
by scarves,
by snoods,
and wigs.
To my surprise
a wiry curl
landed in my grasp
“What is that?”
I asked myself....
its strange texture---
harsh and stiff
scared me slightly--
Oh, but I knew then and there,
it was a simple gray strand.
Gray, wiry, and thick,
the curl’s pure white gravity
seemed strange in my palm
as I held it in awe--
a simple strand,
a ticket to my adulthood...
Nor children
Nor husband
could prepare me for the change
of a simple gray curl--
my right of passage
to a world of knowledge
of reflection
of awe--
all in a simple wisp
clasped in my hand
I relished the power of the strand
and welcomed many more.

PMS Spree (By Hadass S. Ben-Ari - orginially written on my blog a couple of month before my Aliyah to Israel)
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The heart is a tyrant. A dictator. A fascist absolute monarch. It will never cede its place to logic or good judgment. My heart will be the one to take over my entire body and make of it whatever it wants. Every desperate attempt my brain makes to try and control me is futile. It is my heart that will keep me from eating and sleeping every time I get nervous or excited or scared shitless. I will continue feeling like shit, looking like shit and experiencing excruciating pain in my whole body for lack of nutrients and my heart will take pleasure in seeing me under those circumstances. And if I do eat, my heart brings it all back up again just to teach me a lesson. “Don’t ever do that again.”
If two weeks ago, I was going through an intense gluttony spree, now I’m going through an intense anorexia spree that is quickly becoming a binging and purging one. I’m fucking sick of having my head in the fucking toilet every two fucking hours.
So basically the two kilos that I managed to gain in the past six months, I lost within a week. And my weight will most certainly continue to decrease unless my heart stops beating or by some miracle my brain finally manages to overpower that spasmodic wad of muscle and blood.
I think the fact that my aliyah began sinking in now is better than if it would have hit me like a ton of bricks on the plane or once I’m actually in Israel. But again, this is my brain speaking, and in my psycho-biological hierarchy, the brain is but a mere peasant. And my heart is saying, you feel like shit, then start acting like it and looking like it.
Whatever, fuck, maybe it’s just caused by the swelling of my tits and ovaries.
Hmmm, the tits and ovaries are tyrants.

Forbidden (byline withheld)
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Locked (By Alejandra Gorino)
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Flyers! (By Hadass S. Ben-Ari and Deborah Kadishelby)
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things i have wanted to say lately but haven’t b/c i didn’t feel like i wanted to school some fool (By Raedy)
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School Norms: Innocent Enough to Be Eaten Alive (By Hannah Greenberg)
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It's Fore-Timed (By Sue Tourkin-Komet)
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It’s fore-timed that my fore-bearers
Fore-ordained my fore-name, and now
My eye-glasses and frames
Are not to be found–on my
Fore-head.
It’s fore-timed that now I
Fore-think with heavy forethought
Fore-warning you and myself that maybe we cannot go
Forward anymore?
Let’s meet in my foreyard
Standing guard, with our fore-sweat and fore-shows
Forereaching and foreshadowing the foreshocks
Of your handsome forelocks...all still
You’ve never preferred to be the
Foreman
And I’m too old now, to produce
Fore-waters and foremilk and all its’ ilk
Let’s forestall the bittersweet
Fore-scent, with less
Fore-speech, and wonder if more or less
Foreplay, is what is called for?
I’m neither forewoman nor fore-mistress
But stress is what I guess
Is happening in the geology of
Our fractures and our fissures
Is your foreskin to be found – in the ground –
Where you buried it here in Jerusalem?
And is our fore-world—for now—to be–
Never...forever?

Delivering a Baby Without Giving Birth (By Darryl Egnal)
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House Sitting (By Phyllis K. Becker)
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I Could Have Been a Riot Grrrl (By Luna Wrangler)
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Sixth, seventh, eighth grade.
Summers spent in swimming pools, backyard golf courses, dressing like nerds.
We ate taffy and played Atari, read Tiger Beat and made tattoos with Sharpie markers.
She tried to teach me to play the drums and bass, played tricks on me with disappearing ink.
She fell in love with a boy named Alejandro. And a girl named Jennifer.
We played soccer and smoked candy cigarettes, tie-dyed t-shirts, drew comics and told stories on car lot typewriters.
We wrote letters to The Dead Milkmen. We listened to Depeche Mode, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees. Then later, Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead. We fell in love with Ani DiFranco.
Our toes wore holes in our Keds. Then Converse, Doc Martens, Birkenstocks. Then back to Doc Martens. And finally back to Converse.
My step-sister saw her holding hands with a girl at the candy kiosk in the mall. She passed me a note in English but I already knew. It didn’t matter. I didn’t understand why it would matter to anyone. I told her it shouldn’t matter.
I buried my head in paper and ink, hands sticky with rubber cement, while she wrote songs and learned new chords.
I drew pictures and told stories. I made zines in my bedroom, composed poems and wrote a 200 page novel.
She graduated early.
I watched her on stage. New fans mouthing the words to songs I had known for years.
Corndog fights in the mosh pit at the Wow Hall, angry punk teens at the McKenzie Theater, sweating walls at the Armory.
I stood in the back. I left early and didn’t say hi. I became shy.
L7, The Breeders, Shonen Knife, Bikini Kill. Adickdid and Team Dresch. She opened for Courtney Love. Kurt Cobain gave her his pajamas.
Twenty years later and she circles the globe, makes guest appearances on Portlandia, plays ping pong in Brazil and sings with an Indigo Girl.
She is still a riot grrrl.
And I am still a writer.

Devorah's Legacy (by Talia Bat Pessi)
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Before There Was a Book (By Mindy Aber Barad)
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The Things We Do for Beauty (By Hadass S. Ben-Ari - taken from blog)
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“I guarantee you that by the end of the first half of this lecture, all the guys will leave, and by the end of the second half all the girls will leave.”
This is how our Chinese History teacher started off one of the lectures a few semesters ago. In the first half, he spoke about eunuchs, which sure enough made all the guys cringe because of the graphic description of how they were castrated. In the second half he spoke about foot binding, which all the girls thought of as being oppressive, and even more absurd while considering the fact that the women themselves bound their daughters’ feet, willingly. Chinese women in the past believed no man would want to marry their daughters if their feet were not bound. Somehow, although the women were all limping when they walked, the men found it seductive (note that this is an ancient Chinese practice which was abolished in the early 20th century. It is no longer practiced).
I feel the same about such oppressive practices as foot binding and female genital mutilation and whipping women for adultery and all the bullshit we hear about in Third World countries and such. I think it’s absolutely inhuman that women are treated this way, and I find it even more absurd that the women themselves (who are a majority in this world – is everybody missing that fact??) are letting themselves be victimized. I understand that most do not have the means to retaliate, but when women take part in their own oppression (such as the foot binding example above) they make retaliation that much more difficult.
Aside from that, I find it interesting to ponder on the following: How can we consider such practices as being barbaric when people from these countries can just as easily look at us and judge our practices just as harshly? For example, why is female genital mutilation wrong when a substantial part of the developed world’s population circumcise their boys (Jews are not the only ones)? I don’t mean to say that female genital mutilation is right, because I believe it’s utter cruelty. But who’s to say that male circumcision isn’t? And what about waxing? Women who wax their legs, arms, underarms, upper-lip, bikini line, and areas I didn’t even know existed, don’t see anything wrong with it. But it’s painful and women do it just as willingly as Chinese women bound their daughters’ feet, to make them fit into the status quo of what beauty is and to be seductive for men. The longneck women in parts of Africa destroy their back, shoulders and neck for beauty from early childhood. We view that as oppressive and barbaric, but we don’t see anything wrong with 10, 11, 12 year old girls wearing high heels which can just as easily damage their back on the long run.
We should probably look at the state of our society and the negative effects the status quo has on our population before dealing with other people’s business.
Peace, love and hairy armpits.

Whatever Doesn't Kill You (By Dr. Lea-Ora Leeder)
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Chain Email: Three Men on a Hike (Author unknown)

Three men were hiking through a forest when they came upon a large raging, violent river. Needing to get to the other side, the first man prayed: “God, please give me the strength to cross the river.”
Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs and he was able to swim across in about 2 hours, having almost drowned twice.
After witnessing that, the second man prayed: “God, please give me strength and the tools to cross the river.”
Poof! God gave him a rowboat and strong arms and strong legs and he was able to row across in about an hour after almost capsizing once.
Seeing what happened to the first two men, the third man prayed: “God, please give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to cross the river”
Poof! He was turned into a woman. She checked the map, hiked one hundred yards up stream and walked across the bridge.
Go ahead and share this with a woman who needs a good laugh and any man who can handle it!
“If at first you don’t succeed, do it the way your wife told you!”

Sluts Are Cool. Rape Is Not (By Hadass S. Ben-Ari - taken from blog)
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I Can't Keep On Breathing If I Don't Keepsake This (By Sue Tourkin-Komet)
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Trumpeters, Drummers, Dancers, Plus Elephants: Princes' Promises (By Hannah Greenberg)
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Riot Grrrl Corner - Interview with Cochlea
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