XEM 1

Xem Skaters is a community queer skate zine founded by Aimé Dabbadie in June 2016. It was created with the aim to start the conversation about homophobia, transphobia and genderqueer visibility in the skateboarding scene.

The zine is constructed on the community editorial basis. Aimé published “Call for Submissions” inviting all genderqueer and genderqueer-friendly skaters to submit all kind of content that could fit in the zine format for each issue. Submissions were sent from various places in the world including Chile, France, Australia, U.S.A, the U.K, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and many more. Aimé handled the editorial process, ran interviews with selected skateboarders and artists for each issue and created playlists of queer-fronted music as well as queer zines and books recommendations. The submissions took the form of poetry, testimonies, photographs, drawings, artworks, music lyrics, band presentations and more. The zine was also meant as a tool for queer skaters to connect and avoid feeling isolated and an easy format to bring to local skateparks to raise awareness about queer and trans inclusivity.

The zine was mainly made of analog collages and followed the usual A4 double sided black and white format in order to be easily printed anywhere in the world. The PDFs were shared with local actors of the skate scene in different countries so they could print it and distribute it for free during women and/or trans separatist skate sessions and meet ups.