Headbanged Vol.2
this is still a work in progress so please forgive the mess, but there will be written out version's of all my zine writing here soon (as we know pdf's are not known for their accessibility).
if you would like the printable pdf of the zine, download here: headbanged printable.
if you would like a digital pdf of the zine, access it here: digital pdf.
Welcome
my name is samir and my pronouns are he/him. i made this zine as a class project, but it demanded to be continued. it was a way to talk about being a queer, trans, disabled person with the hopes of reaching others who are also those things!
we are all different and this is just my experience, but i would love to collaborate with others on future zines (such as interviews, having a zine with others’ writing/art, or anything else!!). reach out please!!
thank you to mani, for being the coolest person ever & letting me ramble at you. thank you to everyone who read my first zine (shoutout to ko for hyping it up more than i ever did).
much of my zine design is heavily inspired from Alyssa Giannini’s work (they don’t even know i exist but I am copying their introduction page formattig rn LOL). check them out at Craft Or DIY
lots have changed since the first zine which came out over 8 months ago (wow!). i am in music school and i am out to my parents as trans with meh success.
I have lost some friends and gained some new ones (as one does). I joined a student org at my school which is all about accessibility and finding community with other disabled people/persons with disabilities and it has been really cool (hi if u are from this org lol).
I am also experiencing the highs and lows of dorm living, but overall I’m doing okay enough.
this zine is a collection of musing and thoughts I’ve had over the months since the last ones
content warnings for this zine include: transphobia, Covid-19, medical situations
- samir (he/they)
my little pony..
i watched two seasons of my little pony while assembling this zine and i feel like everypony everyone should know this. my favorite pony as a kid was rainbow dash (obvs im gay), but now i think fluttershy is my favorite. she has a secret villain side which i find fascinating when it comes out.
this show is way more problematic than i remembered though and it is canon that they are “settler ponies” who stole the bison’s land. they also code zebras as african, and had an episode where they were all racist towards the zebra, lol? lots to think about in the MLP world. not sure if i want to be a bronie.
recent media consumption...
"Transgender Dysphoria Blues" by Against Me!
i listened to this album on loop when making the first edition of headbanged and if you need an angry punk soundtrack to accompany your trans life, this is the album for you.
"Learn to Walk" by Left Out
this is the debut album of a local columbus indie pop band and it is so cool! it has a very magical and whimsy feel mixed with mixed rhythmic synthy pop sounds. if you want a “i knew them before they were famous” group to follow, this is it!!
"Enta Fen" by Soapkills
lebanese Yasmine Hamdan’s enchanting voice mixed with Zeid Hamdan’s electronic mixing creates a blend of classical arabic songs with a completely new mesmerizing sound (they are not related). the band name came from watching beirut attempting to clean up the city after the war but everything was still awful thus soap kills!
"nước" by hawak
hawak is a screamo band based in Oakland, California with Fillipino American and Vietnamese American members. this is a debut album, nước is filled with memories from the past, combing hardcore screamo with fuzzed-out and mellow moments. telling the stories of their families past to search for what is “home” now.
"Brave Faces Etc." by Spanish Love Songs
a reimagining of their 2020 album “Brave Faces”. if we were to frame these albums on where they were in the five stages of grief, the original would be in the “anger” stage with piercing lyrics about how fucked it is to exist in the 21st century. however, they have stripped away the original’s angst and rage, making the Etc. version land in the blurred lines of the final two stages: “depression” and “acceptance”.
"Dungeons and Daddies."
a podcast about four dads flung into the forgotten realms on a quest to save their sons. it is a Dungeon and Dragons podcast, BUT you don't need to be a DnD enjoyer to like it!! the podcast has 3 people who created the iconic web series “Video Game Highschool” so ifykyk, but they are hella funny!
auditory processing disorder
i have auditory processing disorder (APD), which means that while i can hear things, my brain struggles to process the sounds. for music, this impacts my ability to notice the differences in pitches, process and remember rhythms, and replicate the pitches and rhythms i hear.
my first piano teacher would sing a short melody and instruct me to play it on the piano. i would sit there, trying desperately to remember if the next note should be higher or lower than the previous, but i could never tell. my second teacher introduced me to the metronome, but the click of the metronome and the piano quickly overwhelmed me as my brain tried to process all these different sounds at once. piano lessons often ended in being yelled at and a 6-year-old me crying as the incessant metronome beat on.
so now im in music school and barely passing aural skills* (which is like, antithetical to my APD). i can't sing the notes for sight-singing exercises because i cannot remember the starting pitch. dictation exercises require me to differentiate between small differences in pitch/rhythm. i try and i try, but it never seems to be enough.
in some masochistic way, i never stopped loving music, even when there felt like i was missing The Secret everyone else knew. i'm on a mission to find an alternative way to learn & teach aural skills. adaptive music education should be more widespread than it is currently because music is often cited as a treatment for sensory processing disorders, ADHD, autism, and so forth.
i am thankful to the patient few teachers who (inadvertently) taught me ways to combat my APD. i can now tap rhythms along with metronome apps that flash and show me the beat numbers because i just need to see the visual of the beat to understand. to help with singing different pitches, i move my hand up and down to physically understand the note change. I am learning to feel the position of my tongue, jaw, etc. as i sing each note so that i can go back to that position when the note comes again.
boobs
Most transmascs I have met opt to bind their chest, which is a laborious experience. A binder compresses your breast tissue, so if you are not careful, you can hurt yourself from binding too tightly/for too long. Binders are not met to be worn during moderate/heavy physical activity because they restrict breathing and it is overall uncomfortable.
I'm a transmasc oboist who has boobs (shocker!), but I have scoliosis & chronic migraine. I cannot bind when I play oboe and I play oboe almost every day. binding also puts a lot of pressure on my neck and shoulders which triggers tension headaches and flare-ups.
I didn't need to explain why I don't usually bind, but there is a culture of transmasculine folks hurting themselves with binding for a flat chest, and i want to challenge that a little. I have never particularly felt dysphoric because of my boobs when I am alone (some people do!), but people seem to use boobs as the determining factor of my gender and that upsets me.
I am tired of feeling ashamed that I am not "doing enough" to be trans when people ask my pronouns and they seem so shocked that they are not she/her. when you are in a chronically ill body, taking care of your body so that it is able to keep functioning is a full-time job. I will always care more about protecting my body than trying to conform to the expectations of my gender.
trans youth in sports now!
When you hear people talk about state’s legislation that attacks trans youth in sports, you perhaps have also seen a lot of rhetoric going around where people say they can count on one hand the number of trans youth athletes participating in sports. “So much hate directed at so few”, they say. And I was a queer, disabled, trans athlete in high school and I promise you that is not telling the full story.
I was not brave enough to keep playing the sport that I grew up playing and put every ounce of my soul into it because I could not take the isolation that I felt on the team. With much sadness, I left after my freshman year.
My trans (& disabled) friends who are athletes are some of the strongest people I know. They put up with so much in order to play their sport. To be told that we essentially don’t exist in sports is to deny our transness. To minimize our existence is to enable the ongoing trans genocide (bans like these are designed to kill & erase).
I want my trans friends to be able to exist in a world where there is not “just one trans girl athlete in Ohio” (that Ohio High School Athletic Association has approved to play on her proper team—after a year of hormone therapy). I want them to be able to have gender-affirming uniforms. I want them to be able to play in teams where their teammates and coaches are not constantly ridiculing or casting them out. I believe in trans joy and I believe there is a possibility for trans joy to be found in athletic spaces. The first step is acknowledging that trans people are not predatory, invasive species that seek to steal all of your trophies.
I feel as if you probably don’t need an explanation for why transgender athletes should be allowed if you are reading this zine, but maybe you stumbled upon this.
Trans boys are boys. Trans girls are girls. Trans kids are kids. To attack transgender athletes for whatever “biological advantage” they “possess” is transphobia. You are saying transgender athletes are not actually girls or boys (or non-binary) because of their bodies. ALL athletes have different shapes, sizes, and ability levels (like, so many cis Olympians have “biological advantages” & celebrated for it).
Youth sports should not be so competitive to the point that winning or losing is the main concern when having fun and building friendships are so important to have a successful team. Sports can have positive benefits on physical, social, and mental levels, so let my trans siblings play!!
In collegiate levels of athletics and beyond, to believe that a “transgender athlete” (often trans woman) only transitioned in order to win their athletic competition, is a complete misunderstanding of why a trans athlete had the bravery to transition. It would be much easier to simply take performance-enhancing drugs or do some other form of illicit behavior than to have to deal with the regulations, the tests, and the hatred that comes from being a trans professional athlete.
The attacks on trans woman athletes, not only harm transgender athletes, but also people of color, especially black women. There are too many racist regulations as it is.
We’ve seen it harm Caster Semenya, who had to undergo sex testing (without a proper explanation of what the tests were being used for) after her 2009 world championship in women’s 800 and has had the entire world speculate on her medical history & body since the age of 18.
We have also recently seen it harm Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi, who are (cisgender) Namibian 400M runners. However, they were forced to drop down from the 400M race at the 2020 Olympics to the 200M. Their natural testosterone levels exceeded World Athletics' "Eligibility Regulations for Female Classification" rule that caps the level of testosterone in women competing in races between 400M and 1 mile. Nonetheless, Mboma still earned a silver medal and Masilingi placed 6th!
meds and such
As you maybe know, I have chronic migraine and the fun thing about having chronic migraine is that insurance doesn't like to pay for the meds that are designed for chronic migraine because they are expensive.
I get to participate in what insurance likes to call ‘step therapy’: doctors have to prescribe less expensive options (in my case 2-3 different drugs) & see if those are effective before trying more expensive ones. However, the cheaper options are not drugs that are migraine-specific. I have been prescribed anto-depressants and two different types of anticonvulsants because they all have an off-label use for ‘headache’ prevention. Most of these drugs actually have headaches & other migraine symptoms as side effects!
Most of the newer migraine treatments aren't approved yet for younger people, so you have to be 18 at least, sadly. But, I've finally been approved for a CGRP blocker called Ajovy, which is a once-a-month injectable.
I believe Ajovy has been helping significantly. While I am not headache free, the moments in which I experience headaches are much shorter than before. Most days, I no longer wake up with a headache anymore.
Don't trust any doctor who blames "stress" and provides no solutions for your "stress"
why don't they care about disabled people?
My heart breaks a little more each time I see my friends not wearing masks in public spaces or seeing photos of them in crowded areas as if the pandemic will go away if we just pretend. I try to not blame them because it is the government and the CDC who are feeding them the delusion of safety—where they no longer feel like wearing a mask is necessary without a mandate. but, it gets more difficult to find forgiveness in this eugenicist country when even some of my disabled friends seem not to care anymore.
When I see an unmasked person in public (especially crowded areas), I wonder if they know the consequences of their actions. how do they live with the (high) possibility that they could have killed or disabled someone?
Almost 1 out of 5 people in the so-called United States who had covid, have symptoms of long covid. They do not care now, and I doubt many will care when disability eventually comes for them too.
thanks to the CDC, not-yet-disabled people (the only way to evade disability is to die first) do not seem to be able to grasp the precariousness of this public health disaster for themselves.
If you call yourself an ally to disabled people and you do not still mask, you are not my comrade. If you do not plan your events to be as covid-safe as possible, you force immunocompromised people to choose between your meeting and our safety (hint: we will probably choose the latter).
I'm exhausted from being told that I am overreacting and to stop “living my life in fear” by the same people who complain about how they mysteriously keep getting sick (congratulations covid probably weakened your immune system!). The disabled community is growing rapidly and yet, we have continuously been ignored throughout it all.
Nobody (but disabled people) knows what it means to love disabled people. I will do whatever it takes to protect us because nobody (and I mean nobody) else will.
In a capitalist world, disability, chronic illness, and neurodivergency are all states of being which have such negative connotations in our lexicon. We are told to judge a person’s worth based on how much labor one is able to exploit from them. But, why do we allow those who exploit to be the ones telling us how to judge our fellow community members? Every day, I make the choice to live in an ableist society that was designed against me (and would see my departure as a spike in productivity), not because I believe in a capitalistic society, but because I love disabled people.
We have lost too many already: the grief has seeped deep in my bones. Rather than allow my sorrow to consume me whole, I honor my fellow crips as I keep on loving, and keep on fighting for our disabled future. where access is an unwavering truth, and disabled people can thrive uninhibited.
we aren’t there yet. We live in a world where the health and safety of everyone is deprioritized as corporate greed runs rampant. if the world is not nourishing all, then it is nourishing none of us.