| Living
in a place of contradictions:
Creating a place to exist
An interview with
Caleb, editor of Soldier
Seattle, USA
by Elke Zobl, February
2003
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"My
name is Caleb. I am a 21-year-old tranny boy, boydyke, boy with a cunt,
whatever... I live in a place of in-between, of contradictions. I am stretched
thin between worlds, spheres that do not like to intersect. I force them
together, force them to create a place where I exist. Sometimes I fear
that I won't be strong enough to hold them, that my world will be ripped
apart like stitches from a quilt stretched taught. But I do okay."
(#4)
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Can you tell me first of all a
little bit about yourself? How old are you, where are you originally from
and where do you reside now?
I'm from Mansfield, Ohio
which is halfway in between Cleveland and Columbus. It's a rather rural,
economically depressed conservative area and not a fun place to grow up
in as a rather obviously queer child/adolescent. I spent four years going
to college in Athens, Ohio which is right near the West Virginia border
in southeast Ohio. Now I live in Seattle, Washington, but only since like
September. I am 22 years old.
What do you do besides your zine?
Well, right now I work 50 hours a week as a *cough cough* telemarketer.
Yay for that college degree, it was really worth my time and money. I'm
being sarcastic. I also live in a really amazing little community of folks
right now and I write and read and go out drinking and to shows quite
often.
For how long have you been running
your zine now? How many issues did you put out until now? Are you the
only editor or is there a team?
My zine started out a weird
little experiment back in Athens, Ohio when I was a very young 19. Soldier
was a personal zine just about me so it was just me who did it. There
are five issues but you can only get the last two, and there will be no
more - it's permanently retired. I'm working on something new now though
and it should be out by summertime.
What made you decide to start
this project? How did you come up with the idea and the name?
I wanted to do a zine because
I saw a friend doing one and I thought it was a really cool idea. I didn't
know anything about the riot grrl/queer punk/zinester scene, I just wanted
to write and get my ideas out there. The name "Soldier" comes
from the way I felt when I was in high school - someone behind enemy lines.
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| "I
am not a dyke, but I do have a dyke's history in that I am queer, I was
born apparently female-bodied and thus assigned female gender. I do not
identify with female gender. I do not identify with femininity. As a boy
performing a type of boy gender, I am able to feel sexy and confident.
My assigned gender was not consensual. I feel no sense of connection to
it, when I tried to perform it I was not present. I was somewhere else,
dissasociated from my body. Whe I perform my chosen gender, however, I
feel present, engaged with mysef and the world around me, with my friends
and lovers. My chosen gender is "boy". (from Soldier #5)
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What topics are most often discussed
in your zine?
Trans and queer stuff and how it relates to my life, identity, politics,
friendship and relationships, critiques/criticisms of mainstream society
and the queer scene.
What do you hope to accomplish
by establishing your zine?
Well I just wanted to get my ideas
out there, to hopefully generate discussion and create something someone
else could maybe relate to or identify with. A lot of it stemmed from
loneliness and isolation and not having very many people to talk about
that kind of stuff with.
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What topics are most often discussed
in your zine?
Trans and queer stuff and how it relates to my life, identity, politics,
friendship and relationships, critiques/criticisms of mainstream society
and the queer scene.
What do you hope to accomplish
by establishing your zine?
Well I just wanted to get my ideas
out there, to hopefully generate discussion and create something someone
else could maybe relate to or identify with. A lot of it stemmed from
loneliness and isolation and not having very many people to talk about
that kind of stuff with.
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What does zine making (and reading)
mean to you? What do you love about zine making? What’s the most
challenging aspect of making zines?
Well for me it's about do-it-yourself independent media and creating
our own representation, and that is so important because the mainstream
media is so fucked up in so many ways and it made me feel so invisible
and crazy when I was younger. It was about creating my own culture and
my own representation and an alternative to having to shoplift from the
gay and lesbian section of Barnes and Nobles to get positive images of
queer people (which is what I did in high school). A lot of it was about
processing who I was and what I went through in high school, and what
I was going through as a very non-mainstream queer in rural Ohio. The
most challenging aspect is watching other people's reactions and accepting
both praise and criticisms, just because Soldier was so personal.
What was your first exposure to
zines? How did you find out about them? What have they come to mean to
you?
Well my first exposure
to zines was probably this zine Johnny Schilling (of Pussboy fame) did
several years ago, I can't remember what he called it but it just made
me want to do one two. Unfortunately we aren't friends anymore but he
was a really positive influence in my life.
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Do
you consider grrrl, lady, queer and trans zines as an important part of
a movement of sorts? Do you think zines can effect meaningful social and
political change?
I don't necessarily think zines will
inspire or create social or political revolution on a broad scale but they
are very important for networking with other communities, creating our own
culture and positive representations, providing support for each other and
working through our own shit by writing and reading our experiences and
ideas. I think zine culture is a very liberatory space - by that I mean
that zines can and do liberate us from what manufactured/ mainstream culture
has told us what is okay to be and how to live. Zines are good for creating
"pockets of resistance" to a corporate-owned world.
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What does the zine community mean
to you?
I don't really know a lot of zine kids. I love trades but I haven't done
a zine in almost a year now and I'm really not a part of the community
here in Seattle. Back in Athens there wasn't any sort of zine community
so...
What advice would you give others
who want to start a zine?
Don't be afraid of the
work, just do it. It's incredibly rewarding and once you have it you will
get to trade it, distro it and that's pretty cool. I don't know what I'd
say, I guess I would just say that I thought it was great the person wanted
to do the zine, and bug them about trading until they got it out. That
would be my way of being supportive, ha ha.
What
are some of the zines you admire?
Timtum is amazing, of course. Rocket Queen, that one about sex work. Urban
Hermit. Pussboy. Hard as Nails.
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