Staking claims in all the corners

I love punk music.

There is an ongoing theme of isolation and justified outrage combined with crass, irreverent humour that appeals to pretty much every part of me.  Many bands have songs about personal experiences with mental illness or of being labelled as crazy (The Ramones, Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, L7 to name a few).  This music - along with other heavy, hard or weird music of the ‘80s and ‘90s - was my lifeline as I stumbled through adolescence. Today, it is still my go to music when I feel overcome by frustration, anger or stress.  There’s nothing quite so cathartic as belting out “You can’t bring me down” by Suicidal Tendencies.


But the problem is that punk music doesn’t love me.

When I was fourteen I remember watching a video of some live punk show in which the male lead singer pulled a woman onto the stage and punched her.

That was when I learned that my beloved punk scene was no safer for me as a woman than anywhere else.

The misogyny and homophobia, both overt and implied, is so rampant in punk music that I quickly grew weary of trying to find new bands.  These days at least I can search online for lyrics and get a sense of their overall vibe but in high school the best I could do was borrow tapes from friends and fervently read the liner notes.

Mostly I look for bands that don’t have more than one or two objectionable songs, for example Suicidal Tendencies is not bad but only if I don’t listen to this song. Occasionally I find a band that is persistently offensive but has one or two songs that standout; Dayglo Abortions has very little to recommend them lyrically (this, for instance) – sad because their sound is kickass – but I can’t get enough of rocking out to “Homophobic, sexist cokeheads”.  Often the best I can hope for is that they don’t make me want to punch them.


But every once in a while there’s some ray of light like Liza and Louise by NOFX. When I was sixteen and newly out I was hanging out in the skate shop, looking through the 45”s when I saw this.

Without hesitation I bought it and instantly fell in love. Who knew that a bunch of straight dudes could write a song about lesbians that was actually about lesbians and not some porn fantasy for the male gaze (or ear as it were).


My relationship to punk music is complicated to say the least.

And this brings me to something that many people I follow on Twitter have been discussing lately, namely that Chris Brown’s violence against Rihanna is being held up as evidence of the misogyny in rap culture.  This black rap artist is being held up as the poster boy for male violence while Charlie Sheen (to name only one example) manages to skate right past his history of abuse.  Even when you compare those two narratives there are telling differences in how people explain the two men’s behaviour. Charlie Sheen’s offensive behaviour was due to his addictions and mental health while Chris Brown’s is due to his involvement in hip -hop culture – a convenient shorthand for blackness.

I have heard many black feminists talk about their love of hip-hop and the ways in which it is complicated by the misogyny so often lamented by mainstream white feminists and pop culture commentators alike.

And this is where my love of punk and a black feminists’ love of hip hop meet and shake hands.

What is it about punk music and rap music that makes them so hostile towards women? Is it the male bravado? Is it the blackness? Is it the anarchy?

No, decidedly and absolutely not.

Because the misogyny and homophobia we find in these genres is not what sets them apart from mainstream culture, it is the thing that ties them to it.

There are many things that define what rap and punk are: they both arose out of a sense of disaffection and alienation from the larger culture, at their core they are both about speaking truth to power and refusing to be defined or confined by a classist, racist society.  The one thing about them that is not unique is the way in which they both often wind up reinforcing cultural hostilities against women, queers and other marginalized groups.  The problem isn’t that they’ve stepped too far out of the dominant culture but that they have not stepped far enough.

So yes I love punk music and I like a lot of rap music, what I don’t love is the fact that so many of its creators have utterly failed to see how their regurgitation of objectifying, hateful and outright violent attitudes towards women is aligning them with the very system against which they so passionately speak out.

So before you throw the baby out with the bath water, remember that there is no corner of our culture that isn’t home to someone spewing hateful bullshit.  And the best thing we can do is not to say “This corner sucks, I’m going back to the centre” but to stay put and point out just how naked that punk ass emperor is.

I love my punk, and no amount of hostility from the macho men involved will keep me from it.


Women who rock, 10 essential punk songs
http://punksexism.wordpress.com/
Violence and Punk  Musichttp

Where the boys aren't

Ever since I was nine or ten I’ve gotten along with guys.  In high school most of my friends, especially the ones that hung around, were guys.  I don’t know why except that I never really related to the way so many of the girls acted with their friends.  I wasn’t into the New Kids on the Block, I didn’t watch 90210 and I had a foul mouth and a dirty mind.  While other girls were pining for Jason Priestly and reading Sweet Valley High I was watching Chopping Mall and listening to the Dead Milkmen.

All I know for sure is that I had some amazing friendships with straight guys in high school.

Of course I also had a lot of male “friends” turn into emotionally and sometimes physically abusive assholes. I can think of four off the top of my head who either threatened me with violence or actually hit me.  Others spread slut-shaming rumours about me.  Others would only talk to me on the phone, not willing to be seen talking to me in public.

Still, I miss having straight male friends.

But this last few weeks of witnessing the vile, hateful and abusive things (here and here) that have been said to and about women I respect, admire, and in some cases consider to be friends has driven home how I got to a point where I no longer had male friends.

Because you reach a point where you can no longer ignore the bullshit that sometimes comes out of their mouths.  Part of the deal was always that you didn’t call them on every sexist thing they say, besides, to do so would be exhausting.  So I pulled back.

As I was reading all the hate and vitriol on Twitter this past week all I could think was, “There’s no way to tell which guys walking down the street think this way”.  There are truly no signifiers of who is safe.  As any woman in the activist community will tell you, lefty beliefs and proclamations of feminist ideologies is no guarantee that a guy won’t shut you down with misogynist epithets or rape you after he gets you back to his place to check out his collection of feminist essays.

And I know what you might be thinking, what about the queers? I’ve heard straight women say things like “just hang out with gay guys!” but being gay is not some magic bullet to shedding all your misogynist baggage. In some cases it’s just more open because, unlike straight or bi guys, gay guys don’t have to worry that they won’t get laid if they piss you off.  I’ve been forced to hide out in a bar bathroom because a gay male “friend” was trying to physically intimidate me because I was upset with his friend’s sexism.

So what’s a girl who likes to hang with guys to do?

There are many amazing, open, and thoughtful guys out there but the problem is that it can take so much time and work just to find out if any given guy is “one of the good ones”.  There are friends I had in high school that I still wonder about.  For various reasons I lost touch with pretty much everyone but I still miss some of those guys, especially the ones with whom I spent a lot of one-on-one time. I miss my friend Ryan who’s only reaction to me coming out as bi was to shrug and start talking with me about who we thought was hot, and who promised me that if I ever died he wouldn’t let anyone eulogize me by talking about how “pretty” I was.  I miss my friend Jay whose only reaction to finding me crying in his bedroom at one in the morning was simply, “what happened?”

But at this point in my life as a married mother in her thirties the door on new guy friendship feels closed to me. Because as far as I can tell, straight (or bi) guys don’t make close friendships with married women, especially when the only men I meet these days are married fathers.

So I miss those old friends, and I wish I still had that kind of friendship in my life but Goddamn if I know how to find it now.

And this is why I talk about race

Wow, there’s a lot of shit pissing me off on the web this week. Never mind the natural disasters and the loss of a great Canadian political leader (we will carry on the fight Jack).  I’ve got so many posts rattling around in my head that I feel stumped as to which one to write today. I guess I’ll go with what’s making my head explode at this very moment.

So, as you may or may not have noticed there has been a lot of discussion about race on the web lately. Or maybe that’s just in my twitter feed.  In any case, between Mochamomma and The Good Men Project I’ve been spending a lot time reading (and a little time writing) about race. 

Last week I wrote this post about some of my experiences and thoughts on racism and I got an amazing response (much thanks to Mochamomma, The Bloggess, Schmutzie and Rage Against the Minivan for all of the retweets and links).  But the conversation is far from over and I felt the need to write a follow up. Then this morning I read Damon Young’s piece on The Good Men Project about the reaction he got to a previous post entitled “Eating While Black”. 

My favourite one was the commenter who said that “blacks are jerks, that’s all.”

And you wonder why we’re still talking about race and racism.

And now I’d like to share a quote from the body of Damon’s most recent piece:

And, the reluctance to freely share, to have open and honest discussions about anything race-related, to "air our dirty laundry in public" is basically just us not wanting to provide any opportunity for “White America” to gather more evidence to support their latent belief that we’re just not supposed to be here.

This is why it’s so vital that white people call out racism when we see it.

~ ~ ~

Too often when we’re in public spaces the onus is put upon racialized* people to speak up when something, shall we say questionable, is said.  I distinctly remember being in a classroom with only one black student when some discussion around race came up and all heads turned to her. I’ve since become familiar with this experience as the only out queer person in a room.  Whenever something that could conceivably be perceived as homophobic was said all eyes would turn to me.

This, my friends, is bullshit.

Let me start with the most obvious thing.  If you know enough to expect me to take issue then you know that perhaps something should be said. Instead of looking to the black kid or the queer kid or the kid in a wheelchair, why not just speak up your damn self?

Conversely, when someone who doesn’t fit the identity in question speaks up it creates confusion and often results in a different kind of resentment.

Let me share a friend’s story with you.

A good friend of mine was briefly enrolled at a local queer alternative school. He was glad to be free from the homophobia of his old school but frustrated with the other kinds of intolerance and ignorance he was hearing from his peers.  When he called someone out on their racism/biphobia/sexism they would invariably say, “What do you care? You’re not black/bi/female.”

And therein lies the problem. What do I care? I care that people are daily living with systemic and interpersonal bias and outright hatred.  I care that we live in a world that is inherently more dangerous for racialized people. I care that the voices of millions of people are silenced because they “just can’t get over it already”.

I don’t believe in a world where we only fight for causes that have obvious direct effects on our own lives. I don’t believe that there is anyone who isn’t adversely affected by the inequities in our system.

I do believe that a good life includes making choices based on who you want to be, not how you can benefit.  I do believe that if we all open our eyes to the humanity of one another we will see how ludicrous it is to ask the question, “What do you care?”

Few people enjoy conflict. It’s scary to call someone out on their shit.  Me, I hate it.  People who know me may think I love it because I just keep on doing it.  What they don’t know is that every time I do my hands start shaking and I have to fight to keep the tears at bay.  I hate doing it and I hate the way it makes me feel but I do it.  And speaking as someone who sees it from both sides let me tell you, it’s infinitely easier to speak up when you are not the target of the other persons vitriol.

It continually astounds me how patently unfair it is to expect the object of derision to be the one to speak up.

Let’s look at the risks involved.

As a white woman calling someone out on their racism the worst I’m likely to get (in most situations) is some foul language thrown my way. I’ll get called a slut, a bitch, a dyke – honest to God I once got called a squirrel (wtf?).  As a woman if I call someone out on their misogyny I know that there is a real physical danger.  I also know that my words will not be heard because I’m “just some whiny feminazi” and that any bystanders will be more likely to perceive me the same way.

Several years ago I was on a bus platform along with my mother and a diverse assortment of about fifty other people.  Along came two white guys talking loudly about “those damn niggers”.  I promptly shouted back, “Keep your racism to yourselves!” At which point they started calling me a whole range of sexist – and often nonsensical – epithets (see squirrel reference above).  Later when I was telling someone about it they asked, “Why bother, it’s not like you’re going to change their minds.” And they were right, me calling them out in public is not going change their beliefs.

But that’s not the point.

While I may not be able to change their minds, if enough people actually call them out when they so publicly share those opinions, they may decide that they're better off keeping it to themselves.  And this matters, because every time someone is allowed to pronounce these hateful attitudes unchecked they take over the public space and render it toxic and unsafe for the people against whom they are railing.  Which brings me to my second point. I needed all of the bystanders and witnesses on that platform to hear the racism being squashed. 

It is the responsibility of those who hold privilege, be it white, male, straight or cis to not be bystanders.  When you don’t speak up you are complicit in creating that toxic environment.

It is a delicate balance. On one hand it is incumbent upon us to speak up, on the other hand we cannot, and should never try to, speak on behalf of someone else.  To do so is paternalistic and condescending. We can, however speak in support of others. 

When I speak about race and racism, I am not speaking on behalf of people of colour, I am speaking for my own values. 

I am nobody’s saviour but my own, but I will stand by your side in the fight, because, to quote Emma Lazarus “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

image source: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/niem/FirstTheyCameForImages.htm

*After last week's post a good friend informed me that many people are now using the term "racialized" rather than "people of colour". This reflects the social context rather than focusing on the notion of colour. I will be trying to mostly use this term but may occasionally say POC for the flow of the writing.

A note regarding comments: Trolls and disrespectful comments will be deleted. I will not let my blog become a playground for bullies.

How to look good naked (so long as you look like a girl dammit!)

For a while one of my guilty pleasures was watching "How To Look Good Naked."  For those of you who haven't seen it in any of it's permutations (British, American or Canadian) here's the formula.  Take one average woman whose body image is so bad that she won't get naked in front of her husband (I only ever see straight married women on this show) and introduce her to her saviour in the shape of the benevolent gay host committed to showing her that she is beautiful just as she is.  Once we're introduced to our heroine and all the reasons she hates her body we watch her strip to her skivvies in front of the host and a three way mirror and cry.  The host chimes in at this point to tell her all about how beautiful she already is and how mistaken she is, hugging her all the while, and she tearfully agrees that yes, she would like to feel good about herself.  By the end of the show she is doing a nude photo shoot and modeling lingerie in a runway show at some mall while her family tells us through their tears how she's a new woman now.

There are a lot of things I like about this show.  I like how they show women how distorted there body image is.  In every episode the subject is asked to place herself in a line of women sorted from smallest (hips, ass, belly, depending on the woman's most hated body part) to largest where she thinks she fits.  Invariably she thinks she's bigger than she really is and has an aha moment that goes something like this, "well she's got a gorgeous hips/ass/belly and she's bigger than me?  Wow! I can't believe I was so off!" 

So yes, I appreciate that this show gives all women permission to feel beautiful in their own skin.  I love that they don't give weight loss tips or put them through booty boot-camp.  But as far as debunking the beauty standards it leaves much to be desired.  First, don't tell me that there's nothing wrong with my belly and then put me in a body shaper.  I've tried a body shaper, and while I liked not having a "muffin top" I was hot, the waist-band of the damn thing kept rolling down to my waist giving a lovely double muffin top and I had a weird muffin thigh thing going on where all the displaced leg fat popped out of the bottom of it.  I would rather make peace with my jiggly bits as they are than squeeze myself into that instrument of shame and torture again.  But I digress.  The body shaper is really only a minor quibble.  The real issue for me is much more fundamental.

The thing that really gets my granny panties in a twist is that there is still really only one kind of beauty.  As soon as we get into shopping and hair and make-up it's the same hyper-feminine commercially viable twaddle as "What Not to Wear."  First, you must where heels.  You cannot be beautiful or confident as a woman without some back breaking, foot squeezing stilettos.  You must wear conventional trendy clothes and you must "dress your age."  If someone pleads comfort it's dismissed as so much nonsense.  Comfort, clearly, must never be allowed to trump fashion and confidence comes from feeling sexy.

So maybe that's why all of the women seem to be straight.  Because queer women know that you can be butch and beautiful, you can be a boy-dyke and be the hottest thing at the bar.  You can be a fat girl in a mini skirt with belly rolls and if you own it and carry yourself with confidence there is no questioning that you are fabulous.  If you really want women to love themselves as they are you have to embrace the whole range of gender expression and gender identity.

When I was a teenager hanging out with all of my alternative friends in the alternative scene I felt damn hot when I walked down the street in steel toe boots, leggings, a mini kilt and an over-sized L7 t-shirt.  Now that I'm a mom and married to a man I'm surrounded by "normal" straight people and I have to constantly shut down those voices in my head that make me feel inferior because I'm not femme enough.  These makeover shows just amplify the already overwhelming pressure to toe the gender line.

While I'm glad that some people are starting to talk about fat phobia and fat acceptance I'd feel a lot better if the gender police would just back the fuck off.  If you don't know what I'm talking about ask yourself how many times you've heard some woman disparaged because she didn't shave her legs or pits.  Or how many times you've hears someone say, "she could be pretty if she just tried."  Because seriously, who the fuck says that smooth legs and pits are more feminine, and who says a woman has to be feminine anyway.  And what does it even mean to 'try' to be pretty.  As one woman I know and love said when confronted with that particular line of crap, "I've got better things to do."

Well, I've got better things to do than worry about if my gender expression is threatening to others.  I've spent my whole life not fitting in.  I didn't fit into to the mainstream but I didn't fit into any of the alternative boxes (punk, mod, hippie, grunge etc.).  I'm not straight but I still like men.  I'll wear a skirt and make-up one day and army shorts and boots the next.  I shave my legs but not my pits.  I love to cook and knit but I'm the "handyman" in the house.  By Sandra Bem's Sex Role Inventory I am androgynous, meaning I am high in both masculine and feminine identification.  I like this definition, I embrace it.  But it sure does seem to confuse people.  So, as with so many other things, I say, "Fuck 'em"  because life is too short to let other people tell you who to be.