Sexuality, especially non-normative sexuality, can be a confusing topic. Thankfully, there’s Robnoxious to provide us with a guide to “Queer Anarchist Happiness Thru Good Living” through his eye-opening and creative zine, Shut Up and Love the Rain. California-based Robnoxious, or Rob, has been writing about these and other topics for years, but his new zine is an especially impressive effort of clarity and understanding.
In Shut Up and Love the Rain, Rob describes his early sexual experiences through comics, attempts to explain his queerness in a few essays, and even provides a list of books for further reading. His explicitness in relating his experiences — a bully grinding on him, experimenting with masturbation, and more — are humorous and insightful. Whether wondering if masturbation is the reason “Jesus got busted” or showing his speculative side in a comic about two robots that explore sexual pleasure through mechanized attachments, he writes about sexuality honestly and openly.
The centerpiece of the zine is a wonderful story/interview with Rob’s father, Rachel, and her recent process of coming out as transgendered. Even with a highly supportive group surrounding her, Rachel encountered plenty of difficulties in the process of transitioning, and Rob treats this clearly personal story with honesty and forthrightness. He gives tips for making the transition as healthy and positive as possible, and his father inspires through her success. As Rachel says of transitioning, “It gets easier. As time goes on, it’s getting easier and easier. I go to work, and I don’t even think about being female, I’m just me, and I’m there.”
In many ways, the message of the zine could be summed up as, “It’s okay!” Most of us have grown up in environments where our sexuality was something hidden or forbidden. Rob writes, “Most people seem to have experienced weird childhoods in our crazy culture of sexual repression. Because these are things our culture doesn’t find acceptable to talk about, nobody shares their stories to find out that it’s actually normal to be weird.”
Shut Up and Love the Rain has a unique format, with alternating comics and essays composed of typed lines pasted over photographs. The handmade quality gives the sense that the creator lavished attention on this zine — and on the reader. “I think the tactile relationship to putting the visual page together is important to the telling of the stories,” Rob says. “It doesn’t look perfect like a computer could do, and I think that’s important; to include minor imperfections in the work makes it that much more human.”
Lately, Rob has been working on a zine called Awesome Future and the final issue of his sci-fi comic, You Fucked Up — however, neither of these address gender and sexuality as directly as Shut Up and Love the Rain. “I follow the inspiration to write, and it will likely lead me back to sexuality and gender again in the future,” Rob says.
The powerful themes of queerness and understanding are effectively conveyed in the final comic of Shut Up and Love the Rain. A younger Rob tries to get a girl’s attention with a paper-airplane note, which misses its mark. He ends the comic, saying, “Thus began my life as an outsider. Up to this day, I still use the same method to flirt.” The moral is clear: in love, we are all outsiders, and that’s just fine.