Rachel’s Team Pick:
Happy Monday! What do you do on weekends? Go outside? Have fun? Hug people with your legs? Mostly I like to type things into search fields on the internet. This weekend I tried typing “queer zines” into some things because I felt really strongly that I wanted more of them in my life. It turns out — and maybe this is obvious — that someone (well, several someones really) has used the internet to make this possible!
Typing “queer zine” into places will find you a lot of neat things, but one of my favorite things that I’ve found is the Queer Zine Archive Project. It’s exactly what it sounds like. According to the principle of fair use as archivists, there are literally dozens (maybe more? I can’t count) of queer zines from the thirty to forty years ago to now just waiting for you. It’s not new, but did you know about this? I didn’t know about this. Just a few things you can enrich your life with via QZAP:
+ Learn to make a harness out of bike parts!
+ Read about making zines as a suburban married dyke!
+ “Map and Visitor Guide to Things I Found in My Back Pocket”
+ “I got the title from a Prince lyric because Prince is fucking awesome and also because it pretty adequately sums up the nature of what this zine means.”
+ Thoughts on privilege and also “Invasion of the Nipple Snatchers”
+ A handbook on sexual assault for queer and trans youth!
Can you find all these? (Unofficial scavenger hunt??) Even if you don’t, you can still buy zines, donate to QZAP, submit your own zine, and check out suggested reading and information on events and distros. Also though, building your own harness out of bike parts. That seems important.
One of the founder’s of QZAP came into my LGBT Studies class last semester, and it was quite awesome (I live in Milwaukee where it is based). He brought zines for us to look at and basically gave a lecture about how important zines were to the queer community. So great you guys posted this!
Ditto! One of the founders came to my class at the University of Alabama and told us about the project and read some zines with us and it was awesome. This year we’re going to be distributing some zines in celebration of LGBTQ History Month. And our GSA is working on creating our own zines now! Yay Zines!
This is amazing, thanks for sharing!!
I know I’m going sound really stupid asking this, but did you guys change the font-size you normally use on posts? It seems bigger, but I might be imagining things.
I’m really uncomfortable with it, not gonna lie. I feel like I’m being bombarded with so many words >.<
Words I like! But I kind of need to back away from my screen while I read and it's slightly painful in my opinion. Like I'm wearing the wrong prescription on my glasses. Sorry, Alex…
Can I ask what browsers you guys are using? Everything looks normal in Chrome.
I’m using Safari just like cait-o… Hm. But it’s definitely twice as big as it was yesterday on my browser for some reason :/
This is a picture if it helps: http://i.imgur.com/dZ7YS.png
things are looking as usual on safari
QZAP! making this a code word for something.
Hi! I’m one of the co-founders of QZAP. Someone shared this story (and your site) with me this morning. Thanks for the shout out. Currently QZAP has just over 400 queer zines online. They come from at least 15 countries, and there are zines and ephemera in at least a dozen languages. We’re always happy to help folks find out more about queer zines and queer zine history, so please contact us if there are questions.
xoMilo
Team pick deja vu!
QZAP was my favorite thing when I found it as a teenager because it meant that sending cash to distros wasn’t the only option anymore. I should probably send them the queer zines I do have.
Read Queers Read This at the zine library! http://zinelibrary.info/files/queers_read_this.pdf
You might also be interested in this: http://www.queermusicheritage.us
Not gonna lie, the layout of this site is not so user friendly. But the content is PRICELESS.
In addition to music, there’s a lot of scans of DIY sleeves and such like: http://www.queermusicheritage.us/jul2009qg1.html
Bike parts harness. That’s worth a lifetime supply of badassery points.
Ahh I have this bookmarked to go over some day but then I forgot about it. Thank you for reminding me!
Excellent, is there any better way to spend breakfast than reading about S&M and bondage.
If there is, i don’t want to know (and please don’t tell me)
I can actually feel my cold heart thawing because this exists.