This work has not been peer reviewed by the University of the Philippines Rainbow Research Hub or its project members. The views expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Hub or its project members.
2026 Philippine Queer Studies Conference
POSTER PRESENTATION
Zine/scene of desire: Puso(k) and the mobilization of queer erotica
Mark Andy Pedere
This presentation reflects on PUSO(K): Antolohiya ng mga Akdang Erotika, one of the newest zines produced by Kinaiya: Kolektib ng mga LGBTQIA++ na Manunulat, where I served as co-founder and primary compiler. Conceived as a queer intervention in literary production, PUSO(K) sets out to foreground narratives from LGBTQIA++ writers that enter, unsettle, and challenge the category of “erotica.” Against the repressive forces that seek to regulate queer bodies and desires within heteronormative and machofeudal norms, the project aims to lay bare the moments, impulses, and intimacies often silenced or disciplined by dominant culture.
Contributors were LGBTQIA++ individuals, ages 18 and above, who responded to a public call for submissions. The project encouraged a wide spectrum of queer identities and backgrounds beyond cis gay men from Metro Manila, including closeted writers who published under pseudonyms to protect their privacy. This widened the archive of voices and situated the zine as a plural, collective articulation of queer intimacies.
Methodologically, the zine itself functioned as an alternative literary platform and archive. Submissions underwent a process we termed “queer-review”—distinct from institutional peer review—where entries were read primarily for their contribution to queer discourse and community, rather than on technical or formalist criteria. This re-centering of evaluation underscored the project’s commitment to queer epistemologies and solidarities in literary practice.
The zinethology revealed several key outcomes. First, poetry emerged as the dominant form, suggesting its elasticity in negotiating terrains of desire, intimacy, and vulnerability. Second, the texts collectively redefine “erotica” not merely as textual genre but as a contextual and intertextual meeting point of sex and love. Contrary to its conventional reduction to pornography, the entries foreground articulations of longing, hope, and autonomy, treating erotica as a layered exploration of both the inner and outer body—literal and metaphorical. Recurrent across the works are notions of safety and consent as ethical anchors, highlighting a queer reimagining of intimacy that is simultaneously affective and political. Some contributions explicitly link erotica to broader desires for freedom and liberation, situating erotic practice within struggles for a just and inclusive society.
Framed through Jack Halberstam’s (2005) notion of queer time (oras bakla) and queer space (espasyong bakla), PUSO(K) may also be read as a site where queer life-writing unfolds outside linear timelines of productivity and respectability. As queer time, the zine suspends normative life schedules by privileging unruly impulses and affective intensities. As queer space, it gathers dispersed voices into a counterpublic that reclaims intimacy as a mode of critique and resistance. Through this lens, the zine is not only a repository of texts but also a lived practice of community-making and world-building.
More than a literary experiment, PUSO(K) positions queer erotica as a fertile site of cultural critique and creative invention. It demonstrates how community-driven projects can intervene in Philippine queer studies by reframing erotica as both discourse and praxis, while producing counter-archives that affirm LGBTQIA++ lives, bodies, and desires.