Awesome Public Critiques of Combichrist and Nachtmahr by Ad-ver-sary

I know I have been copping out and not writing my own posts and posting others' posts most of the time lately. But, read this. My quick comments are at the end. This is sooooooo good and sooooo refreshing. Ad.ver.sary, thank you. Thank you. Wish I could have experienced it in person.



Copy/paste from idieyoudie:

We were contacted a few days before leaving for Kinetik by Jairus Khan from Ad·ver·sary. He told us that he was planning a visual presentation for his set at the festival which he anticipated would attract a lot of attention, and wanted to speak to us about it. The presentation related to themes and imagery in the work of two other artists on the opening night Kinetik bill, specifically Combichrist and Nachtmahr. The presentation, which can be viewed here, or at the bottom of this post, openly critiques what Jairus perceives as the use of misogynist and racist tropes in those band’s music and publicity materials. We spoke to Jairus after seeing an early version of the video.

IDUD: Before we talk about the presentation proper, can you explain why you wanted to talk to us about it ahead of time?

Jairus: I didn’t want there to be any confusion about what I was saying. It would be easy for things to get twisted through the telephone game, and I’d rather there be a clear description somewhere of what happened and why.
IDUD: Okay, so can you tell us what the genesis of the presentation was?
Jairus: It was when I got booked to play Kinetik, and I found out that I was scheduled to open for Nachtmahr and Combichrist. Given how strongly I feel about the way they do what they do, I didn’t think I could just get up there and play and pretend as though I wasn’t going to be followed by these two acts that I’ve openly criticized. I actually considered just cancelling my performance, and being done with it. I don’t want to be associated with what they do, and I don’t want to be a support act for them, even in a festival setting. But I took some time to think about it, and at some point I was listening to Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death and thought, “What would Jello Biafra do?” He’d use the stage time to tell people why he’s pissed off. And so here we are.
IDUD: Do you think your statement is in danger of being compromised by the nature of where and how you’re presenting it? In other words, is the dust that could be kicked up by directly confronting these bands going to overshadow what you’re trying to say?
Jairus: Oh, absolutely that’s a danger. I think that’s a danger any time you speak up about something you feel strongly about. People dismiss it as drama, or a stunt, or whatever else. Are some people going to think I’m just trying to sell more records or whatever? Probably. I went out of my way in the video to not take any unfair shots at the bands. I didn’t use photos of them where they looked ridiculous or nerdy or drunk, I used photos and media released by the bands. I didn’t quote them out of context, I didn’t attack them about their personal lives. I want the focus to be on what they’re doing as artists, and I’m doing what I can to be fair about it, so that the message doesn’t get overshadowed by the medium.
IDUD: You’re potentially in a position to directly address Thomas Rainier and Andy LaPlegua, but from the early version of the presentation we saw it seems aimed at the audience rather than the artists it’s responding to. Do you have any interest in actually addressing them?
Jairus: They’ve been asked in interviews about the imagery they use, and they brush it off. Andy will say in one interview that anything sexist is written from the point of view of the Combichrist character, then in another interview that he’s never said anything sexist, then in another interview that there’s no character anymore at all, and that he’s writing from a personal point of view now. I don’t know how effective it will be to address them directly in a video that they’re probably not going to be present for, even if it’s posted online. I’d rather speak to the audience and start a conversation with them about why we accept and embrace the images that we do.
After his performance today, we spoke to Jairus and Nick Thériault of Antigen Shift (who joined Ad·ver·sary on stage tonight) about the reaction from the crowd.
ID:UD: How do you think it went?
Jairus: I think it went pretty well. We really had no idea how it was going to be received, but people cheered at the start, at the start, at the end and all the way through.
Nick: I think people were a little reluctant to react at first, but once the message came through they realized they were down with it and started cheering.
ID:UD: What are you hoping people take away from this?
Jairus: We hope people think about their music, we hope that when an artist like Combichrist, Nachtmahr, or whoever else uses that kind of imagery, that regardless of whether the artists involved are great guys or not, they’re normalizing violence, they’re normalizing the marginalization of women.
Nick: They’re making something that should be completely unacceptable cool and aesthetically pleasing and that’s irresponsible. Because they’re directly in a position to influence.
UPDATE: We individually spoke with Andy LaPlegua and Thomas Rainer roughly an hour after the performance, neither of whom had been present during the performance but had been made aware of it.
Andy: Well, I didn’t see it, someone just came and told me about it. I think it’s really cool. That’s what he thinks and I think he should be allowed to say so. It’s a good thing, there’s nothing negative about what he’s doing, obviously. I totally agree about bands like Nachtmahr as well, obviously using symbolism of something that is extraordinarily negative. In Combichrist, for my sake, I always did it as a fictional character. No one would say that Wes Craven is sexist because he has a crazy scene in a movie. It’s a part of what he’s doing, he’s doing horror movies, I’m doinghorror stories with Combichrist. Lately we’re doing less of the Combichrist character because I’m frankly getting sick of doing that thing, it’s getting boring, and I’m the first to admit that when it’s done with it’s done. And I’m the first to admit, you know, how many times can you say “fuck” or “slut” in the same song? It was a storyline, something I was doing as a comic book character kind of thing and it’s still been hanging in a little bit because I couldn’t completely give up the character, but if you look at the new stuff we’re doing we’ve been going more and more away from it.
Andy: I don’t have anything bad to say about him [Jairus] at all. I think it’s cool what he’s doing, and he can get some awareness to people who I think took these things maybe seriously when it was meant as some kind of a parody, and little bit of irony and as a character. Suddenly you have people walking around in the scene and they’re dressed the part and behave like that because they think maybe we thought it was cool, but that was never the point. You see people dressing up, I don’t wanna say it badly, but like strippers and going like “oh, I’m a slut” and that’s never what we intended to do. It’s all like fan-fiction.
I have nothing negative to say to him at all. I have nothing to say in my defense for what I’ve done, I don’t feel like I should have to defend myself. It’s all fiction. Everybody who knows me knows that I am not the character. I am not pro or anti anything, really. I’m a realist, I know what’s wrong and I know what’s right, but I also believe in freedom of speech, and freedom of writing, about writing stuff I like to write about, if it’s fantasy or personal. And sometimes fans can get a little confused about what is what, but usually it’s very simple: if it’s really fucked up, it’s fiction. If it’s something emotional, it’s not. It’s very easy, but maybe people get it mixed up.
ID:UD: So moving away from that was a deliberate reaction to people taking these things seriously?
Andy: Yeah, definitely. It’s kind of like, if you start doing something for art or for a storyline and suddenly people take this seriously, they actually think that’s how they should behave, you know, they think “Oh, we gotta go drink and fight and fuck and get some sluts”, you know, it’s bullshit. It’s turning into Scientology, you know, like “you really believe this shit, it’s a fictional book”.
ID:UD: And that’s something you’ve encountered?
Andy: Yeah, I meet people all the time who take these things seriously. And you step back and go like, “this is not what I intended, never what I intended.” It’s also kind of like a director being blamed because someone walked out and did what he did in a movie. You can’t really blame the movie-maker. You have to blame the person who did it. They would have done something stupid anyway. Same thing with school shootings, they blame it on KMFDM and stuff like that. You can’t really do that, it’s not the band, it’s obviously the person, how they grew up. They would do something terrible anyway.
However, I did on purpose step more and more away from the character, because I never really identified myself with the character as a person, I identified with it as stuff I like to watch in horror movies, nothing I ever looked at as serious, but just a bit of entertainment. I’ve never been racist, never been sexist, never been violent. The only times I’ve gotten in fights was twice in all the time we’ve toured: one was to stop a fight in a pit, the other was a fight with security after I tossed out someone who started a fight. If anything, I’m exactly the opposite of the character. But I also let it live for a while. I intentionally never made too many comments on it. I thought it was kind of funny, sitting back and watching the social media and all the speculating. It was like, “yeah, just think whatever you want.” But after a while it got to the point where I deleted Facebook because I was sick of social media and people talking. I have my own personal life and I don’t need to deal with people who don’t know me and people who judge me for a comic book character I created.
——
Thomas: It’s like we say in the intro of our show: “You have enemies. Good. That means you have stood up for something in your life.” Some people can be critical of your stuff, but I think the industrial scene has been far too tame in the last years. The industrial scene is rooted in the punk scene, to stir up shit, to be controversial. It’s been all about that. And most of all the industrial scene has been too mainstream and trying to adapt to political correctness and all that bullshit for far too long. It’s like the movie “Se7en”, there’s a quote, “It’s not enough to whisper in people’s ears anymore, you have hit them with a sledgehammer.”
_______________

I never thought I would say this, but I appreciate some of Andy's comments an am glad he is learning and growing away from the misogynistic horrible "fiction" he was promoting before. His closing comments and personal responsibility need some work but I am overall happy to see progress from one of the biggest offenders. And @Thomas, lol, cool story bro. If industrial is tame and what you do in copy/pasting bad action movie crap into your music and videos is what it needs then... oh forget it. You're not controversial. Marilyn Manson is even bored. You are the only "mainstream" thing happening. Everything you do is "mainstream". If you want to create controversy and be un assimilationist, try, I don't know, doing something different than the rest of the world. Your videos and music mimic pop culture. And for real bro, did you just quote the religious serial killer, Se7en? 

Electronic Saviors Creator Needs Help With Medical Bills

Jim Semonik, creator of the cancer charity compilation series, Electronic Saviors needs assistance paying for medical bills after battling cancer.

On the Separation of Fetish and Industrial

I've been meaning to write something about this for some time, but was not quite sure how. I'm still not sure how, but I am going to do my best.

I am a kinkster. A total sadomasochist. A top. A big meanie.

I am a feminist. An anti-authoritarian. A consent-oriented queer. A lover, not a fighter.

I am also a rivet-head.

MINDFUCK, RIGHT? I hope not.

I support the separation of fetish and industrial. Not completely. They can be combined. But their consistent combination has cheapened both the BDSM (Bondage, Domination, Submission, Sadism, Masochism) scene and the industrial scenes. Here's how.

Back in the day, before my time even, BDSM was S&M and people had to learn things before they practiced them. Nowadays, any person can go to Spencer's, buy a flogger and a collar, call himself a master, and start taking home women (and usually without any negotiation and consent) and turning them into his playthings. These kinds of dudes (and sometimes other genders but usually straight dom top cis dudes) are known as creepy doms. They pollute otherwise mature, consent-oriented bdsm scenes and they suck.

From what I understand, industrial was not always associated with fetish, latex, women making out for men, etc. It was associated with pushing boundaries and counter cultures which I am sure at times included BDSM.

I got into BDSM scenes in part through its combination with the industrial scene. Note, I had been playing on my own with whoever was down from the time I was a young teenager. What I am saying is that I met groups of people willing to do nasty things together through these all ages "Fetish Nights" that began happening, which usually included Dommes, Dungeons (or portable dungeon like things), and industrial/goth/darkwave/etc bands on stage. When I first found it I thought I was in heaven. And over time, I watched each side of the coin deteriorate.

What was once nights full of people tied to large restraint structures being consensually abused by experienced people to hard beats and talented musicians has become fruitless nights of mislabeled "fetish" occurrences and bad sound systems pumping out the same 5 songs the DJs wish to play. Newer younger people coming into these scenes see skinny straight women dancing half naked and making out in vinyl for male onlookers and no real bdsm players or skill or experience or show. And let me say, I have met some of these newer DJs doing these nights, they deserve respect, especially for starting events in a scene that has been deteriorating and dying for so long. But events like the above flier make people like me roll their eyes at best.

So what happened?

Something happened. My theory is that the combination of these two awesome things together made the standard for an awesome event go down drastically. You don't have to put much effort into goth night if you tell people there will be "fetish" happening there. And if you don't know what "fetish" is aside from what you see at goth night, then you likely will be misrepresenting it. That combined with the ever increasing misogyny in industrial scenes, the expectation of women to be eye candy for men, and the bro-fest that encourages men only to be dom top masters who will own all of the ladies, is a recipe for disaster. And frankly, boredom.

I encourage everyone into kink to delve deeper, find munches in your area, meet real kinksters with experience, let them teach you, learn from them, or at the very least, do some research and test things on yourself and experiment wisely.

To industrial promoters who have fallen into this trend of "fetish nights," consider getting back to the music, not simply what will turn a few heads. There is one promoter in our fine city who's stuck to the music for decades now and he's succeeding and has done some amazing projects. Sure, "fetish" and vinyl might look nice on a flier. But if that's not what you're bringing, consider focusing more on the music. I took a friend out to an industrial fetish night once hoping to give her an easy introduction to a few things she was interested in and I got to a club, with horrible music, no bdsm whatsoever happening, two girls in their underwear flirting with the club owner, and when I asked one of the organizers where the fetish was, he said they were supposed to have topless jello wrestling but the girls cancelled.

And let me say, props to the young guys for trying to start something here and make it work. That takes bravery and persistence. But, to be very honest, as a queer female who brought a girl I was semi- interested in impressing to this night, I felt like I was at a frat bar. I was embarrassed and I didn't even design the thing. I was embarrassed of my scene. And to be honest, at the time I had little right to be because I was rarely around. So, take my complaints with a grain of salt. Perhaps I should get up and do something instead of complaining.

I will admit I did go to one night recently with a couple of DJs and an experienced queer woman rigger doing a rope suspension demo and while it was kind of a boring night, it was at least giving heed to some experience.

So come on now. Give me back my goth. Give me back my fetish. Remember that there are a hell of a lot of vanilla folks who want to go to shows once in a while without being subjected to our weird bdsm shit. And if you insist on combining kink and industrial, please do it in a smart and creative way that shows respect for both scenes. Otherwise you make us all look like assholes.

Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic - HELLS TO THE YEAH

I'm gonna give the floor to I Die You Die on this one as I do not have the time or energy currently to write a post as coherent and as well thought out as this Radical Gothic Journal deserves. From idieyoudie's post by the same name (It has better formatting, consider going to that link instead of reading my copy/paste below):

“We demand that the goth scene be more than a black-clad reflection of mainstream society.”

I’m sure there were dozens of factors which contributed to the appeal of goth, in all of its expressions, when I first stumbled upon it as a typically clumsy teenager, but looking back, one in particular stands out: the promise it made. The promise of something better, of a more thoughtful, expressive and heartfelt life beyond the suburban parameters I woke up to each morning. My early forays into it – dial-up trawls through newsgroups to which I was too nervous to contribute, tracking down suggested records as though they were panaceas for all of life’s ailments, those first giddy trips to the fog-shrouded nightclubs I’d been hearing about – all bore that promise out. There was more, there was something better, there were other ways to be. I’d found something else and I was home.

But, having been a part of that scene in some shape or form for fifteen years now, and having DJed in it for ten, it’s all too easy to become disillusioned with whatever transformative potential I once saw in it. It’s easy to point to and kvetch about stale records, off the rack fashion, crass commercialism and mindless conformity. And, while I didn’t initially connect my nascent political ideals with my fledgling gothdom (apart from the scene’s apparent acceptance of folks of all sorts), I’m disheartened today when I see the same reactionary, patriarchal bullshit mainstream culture foists upon us reinscribed within a scene that supposedly rejects normative mores (a recurring theme cannier readers of ID:UD may have detected on these very pages). In short, it can be difficult to locate the legitimately alternate modes of thought and living which this scene promised.

Bollocks, says editor Margaret Killjoy and the contributors to the first issue of Graceless: that radical tradition’s been right under your nose this whole time, and if it hasn’t, there’s nothing stopping you from helping to foment it. Assembling under the rallying cry of the “radical gothic”, Killjoy and friends have assembled a collection of interviews, editorials and historical monographs with an eye to the intersection of politics and goth aesthetics (in the broadest terms: film, literature, photography, art and all subgenres of dark music are embraced).

Flipping though Graceless‘ pages, I felt that same rush of hope and possibility in alterity that I first did lo those many years ago. Only a handful of records, concerts, and trips to clubs have ever prompted it since, and it’s certainly been a damn long time since anything printed did (delving through back issues of Carpe Noctem in ’99, perhaps?). Suffice it to say, any publication which opens with lines from Swans and closes with the final stanzas of Shelley’s “The Masque Of Anarchy” is one after my own heart.

There’s lots to love in Graceless‘ hundred-plus pages. Of the interviews, I particularly enjoyed those with Martin Bowes of Attrition (huzzah, another vegan to add to the list in Our Thing!) and Unwoman, who draws some fascinating parallels between genre and gender. A piece on “illegal dandyism” which somewhat recalls Greil Marcus’ pioneering work on the history of counter-culture in Lipstick Traces sits alongside glosses of morbid Victorian children’s lit and German expressionist cinema. While touching upon various strains of anarchism, as a rule the theoretical side of politics in Graceless is kept accessible, so you won’t have to brush up on your Kropotkin before diving in (though come to think of it I’d love a paper which triangulated goth, Baudelaire, and The Arcades Project…).

Particularly inspiring was “How To Start A DIY Goth Night”, which is chock-full of solid advice for those wanting to get something going in smaller cities. The DIY theme which runs through Graceless perhaps isn’t surprising given its extensive connections to zine culture, but it’s great to see it applied to genres and cultures outside of the punk and hippie umbrellas. That attitude’s also reflected in a report on the wholly independent and off-the-radar aspects of the scene in Germany.

Talking about printed material is a bit out of the ordinary for us at ID:UD, but like I said, there are far too many of the things which first drew me to Our Thing, and far too much consideration of the problems and issues I find in it today to be found in Graceless‘ pages to not comment on it. This scene desperately needs commentary and insight like that afforded by Graceless, and I am utterly thankful for its arrival.

The first issue of Graceless can be bought for $6 or downloaded by donation.

Women Can Be Sexy and Steretypically Attractive in Music Videos without it Being Shitty, PS I love Insane Music

My favorite thing about me starting this blog was that I got back into the scene in hearing and learning about newer acts that I would usually not have heard of. Today (from idieyoudie's site as usual) I learned about Santa Hates You which is a project between Peter Spilles of Project Pitchfork and an Italian Vocalist named Jinxy.

Many folks know that my two favorite industrial genres are "completely insane shit" and "music that makes fun of itself." OK, those aren't real genres but fuck that, this is industrial, I say what I want. And let's be honest, us mad folks need our black clad role models and we love to make fun of ourselves.

Anyways, back to Santa Hates You. So, with my limited experience it has this awesome sound with cheesey lyrics that also sometimes border on something from an mental hospital's art room in the poetry section. It also seems to not take itself seriously at all, while still sounding badass. Which, of course, makes it fucking amazing.

I didn't know how to write about it in the lens of anti-oppression for this blog. But then, a lightbulb went off when watching this video:



I'm always getting pissed about the portrayal and objectification of women in industrial videos. I complain that they are always skinny white girls in tight vinyl, often making out with each other for the dudes, and that is their only purpose in the eyes of the creators of the videos, and often the audience. But here, we have Jinxy. She's got that stereotypically attractive thing going on (ie if she lost the goth paint she could model in a magazine) but she is an integral part of this music and the videos. She's doing her own thing. It is sexy and hot, and of course beat dudes make comments about "wanting her for Xmas" and shit on the videos. But she's not a prop. She is a musician. She and PS are making this music together, and it is very obvious to me when I watch their videos that she is seen in that role and is being portrayed as half of Santa Hates You, not as PS' hot groupie who sings sometimes.

So, in my opinion, this is the difference between women just being used because they are sexy to be eye candy in videos, and women making music who happen to also be sexy, who are respected for their music. Get it?

Feel free to argue with me. Arguments can be made that often only attractive people get jobs as singers. The band's website says:

"Members and founders of the band are the musical icon Peter "PS" Spilles and the enigmatic italian vocalist Jinxy. Legend has it that they first met at the Ohlsdorfer Cemetery in Hamburg, where it is said that they accidentally 'scared the hell out of each other'. Apparently it was then that PS noticed Jinxy's unusual voice, and, well, it seems safe to say that he was quite intrigued by what he heard."

I am gonna believe this to be true, in part because of my love for Pitchfork and their anti-oppression lyrical tendencies (which have been mentioned before in this blog) and also because she is quite interesting and talented from what I have listened to so far.

And PS ain't too shabby looking himself is he?

A Little Hiatus

Your beloved rivet headed vaginas are still angry, but we are busy with many things from dying animal companions to new jobs to new lives and travels. We have many ideas and just have not had time to write about them. But we are thinking of you, and will be writing more soon on many more things.

Until then, listen to the most fun song to walk to work to. Makes the 9-5 feel like a revolution.

Henric de la Cour: Electronic Odes to Voguing

I fucking love this video.

I normally get bored quickly with videos that have a band standing there performing and little to nothing else. I have watched this a few times and every time it draws me in completely with the haunting song mixed with the visuals. It's pretty hard to pull off looking this melancholy and tortured in black lipstick and white make up without making me laugh to be honest, but they've done it swimmingly.

What really attracted me to this video was the person voguing throughout by Frederick Quinones. I have never seen anything that is such a unique tribute to the underground Harlem drag ball scene in darker electronic music. While I loved seeing Madonna's recent half time show turn the bro-tastic superbowl into a queer voguing extravaganza, it is also nice to see these things in the darker, less mainstream forms of music. I also appreciate the celebrations of male femininity and gender diversity in Henric de la Cour's performances and videos in general. For more history on this stuff, see Paris is Burning. It's a great documentary and has a lot of insight into this underground world and what participants faced in their day to day life during this time in terms of racism, homophobia, cis sexism, and so on.

Also, he has a cool neubauten tattoo on his right arm. Swoon.

Question for readers: Why don't people like this guy? All of his videos have a large portion of dislikes. Is it a homophobia thing or did he do something to piss off fans of these genres?

WE HATE YOU LITTLE FUCKING GIRLS

Haha, this isn't a post about how Throbbing Gristle is misogynist (though that would be pretty fucking funny since, despite years of loving essentially their whole body of work, and that song in particular, I don't honestly know much about them), but just some more thoughts about shitty scene themes.

Heads up: image of an industrial flyer below contains sexified lady image.

As I told y'all in my introductory post, it grieves me that a scene that purports to be countercultural is so damn mainstream in the shittiest ways. Today I will whine about the constant sexualization of women in gothy/industrial flyer imagery.

Sexualization is legitimately and truly harmful. I'm not making this shit up. The American Psychological Association says so, too! Dig it:

There are several components to sexualization, and these set it apart from healthy sexuality. Sexualization occurs when

• a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;
• a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;
• a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or
• sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

Part of being socialized as a woman is having repeatedly driven into your brain that all you're good for is being sexy, and you begin to develop your whole self worth around this concept. There ain't a damn thing wrong with being sexy, and enacting sexiness can be fun and fulfilling, but it is destructive in a big way to be held to such narrow conceptions of sexiness and have its necessity constantly reinforced and reified by every excrescence of the dominant culture-- even when you don't watch TV or read magazines there's still the billboards and bus shelter ads. And goddamnit, the goth/industrial subculture isn't much better.

Thinking back to when I was a regular at gothy/industrial nights/shows/events, the flyers regularly capitalized on images of pr0n-approved women's bodies, often without heads or faces, leaving us with sexualized body parts, incomplete and lacking in humanity. Some of these were local models and women I knew. Just now, from my work compy, I did google image searches for "goth flyer" and "industrial flyer," and I invite you to do likewise to see what I'm getting at. While the results for industrial flyer are less egregious, they almost invariably feature sexy women. If you read my bio on the sidebar, you may have gathered that I am all about women. But if an archivist from another planet were to attempt to reconstruct our scene based solely on the flyers generated for events, they would have no choice but to conclude that we are every one of us a sexy lady who fell into a vat of make up, latex, and hair dye. From an objective stance it's just sort of weird that essentially every flyer ever features an image of a woman. While I'm the first to admit that I'm not much of a dude-gazer, considering that men make up such a huge part of the scene and are the primary and most celebrated creators of the music it's all about, why are we not seeing them? I'd love to hear other people's thoughts, particularly people who generate flyers, on why this is. All I got is that it's a depressing mimic of mainstream marketing gimmicks. Some of the image results are kinda adorbz and invite us to identify with the subject and appreciate her complexity, but most of them are just there to be looked at and seem to have no spark of human inspiration or energy. Here's a particularly distasteful example from LA.

Because Jayzus. What is that really supposed to communicate to us?

And in our tradition here at Industrial Anti-Oppression of highlighting things that are not terrible, I have so much love for this flyer from Columbus, OH.

Is it coincidence that it promotes a night DJed by a woman?

In closing, I would like very much to echo Kraftwerk in saying that I don't want to be a Sex Objekt.

Revisiting the Comment Dogpile & Brief Notes on Colorblindness

triggers: racist, misogynistic, cissexist, transphobic, homophobic insults.

It's been about two weeks since I wrote about blackfacing and the Aesthetic Perfection video for Inhuman. As soon as Graves caught wind of the post, it received a dogpile of comments, few with any analysis of the argument and many full of insults and blind defense of the artist and video. One thing I will admit is that I should have watched this again before posting.

Anyways, I have thought a lot more about the aesthetic perfection video, and while I still think it is racially insensitive, and that Daniel Graves was really insulting and unwilling to dialogue about it, I am rethinking my reaction to this video as a whole. If I look at it devoid of the artist, and look at some rare histories in which black facing was not used for racial identification (while ignoring the rest), I see how it could be seen as mere contrast. I have been doing a lot of anti-racist organizing and my mind has become tuned to noticing and discussing these things when I see them, but I can also be swayed to change.

However, given the reactions from both the artist and many of the fans, I still hold true that even if this video isn't racist (I am beginning to think ignorant of the history of racism or racially insensitive may be better terms than "racist"), some if not many of the die hard fans are straight up white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, etc (with the exception of one DJ, who has been one of the only guys to write about this stuff online in the past- you know who you are). It becomes complicated more the more I think about it- how criticizing this video got a lot of fans (and some artists) to show some true colors. Even with Graves' arrogance at being challenged and ignorance of why this video was challenged, I still would not call him a "racist," but I would dare to label quite a few of his fans' actions as such. Hell, not just their actions, some of them even self identified as racist.

Graves was more than willing to defend himself from criticism by referring to me as "dense", "hopeless", "delusional", "paranoid", and other things, he had not one criticism of his fanboys referring to me with a slew of misogynistic, homophobic, and ableist terms. The slurs started gender neutral and then changed once people realized I was not a man (as they originally thought) and moved to become homophobic and sexist in nature such as "fat dyke", "tranny bull dyke", "bitch", "stupid," "retarded", or saying "racism is a dead issue", "fuck niggers", and other slurs on his facebook pages, in comments here, and in blogs referencing this. Graves also goes on to say "Anyone who actually cares about a persons skin color in 2012 is an idiot." Funny, Graves doesn't seem to realize the privilege of being pseudo-blind to skin color, not having to think about it, not having skin color affect him negatively. It just goes to show that colorblindness, gender blindness, and all blindness to our differences, is also a blindness to oppression. If you refuse to acknowledge the oppressive responses to your art being labeled oppressive, what does that say about you or your art? If dedication by any fan, regardless of how hateful, is more important than social justice, what does that say?

Last I want to talk about the countless comments exclaiming people look for things to be offended about, that people just want to troll the mighty Aesthetic Perfection video, and so on. These comments right up there with "get a job" are shouted at activists and organizers all of the time. Do people honestly think that those of us who use our free time (when we aren't working or going to school or both) we could be using otherwise to get people thinking about a better world just do this because we're bored? Our time is precious. I choose to use my time to do this because I hope people thinking about these things will lead to a better world. Sure I could watch Jersey Shore instead but I chose to write about things I feel are important and invisible in much of the industrial scenes.

Either way, I am leaving the entry up as it was originally written but felt these thoughts and realizations were important to talk about as well. If you choose to comment here, please read the article and think before starting another dogpile. I'd like to hope that we've evolved even a little bit since the last post.

Pre-Order for Premium Edition of Electronic Saviors 2 Now Available

Electronic Saviors - Industrial Music to Cure Cancer, project of Jim Semonik (a cancer survivor himself) is due to have their second installment of compilations out in May. You can preorder the premium edition here- Electronic Saviors Vol. 2 Recurrence Premium Edition includes: -6 CD Boxset -2 CD Companion Set -Gold Wristband with ES Logo -Bumper Sticker -BRICKS for Young Adults 70 Page Book all for 50 bucks. The proceeds will go to Gilda's Club and The Bone Marrow Foundation. Both organizations are human recovery focused and are not simply money dumps for animal research projects like so many organizations claiming to cure disease unfortunately are today. Your money will get your some great music from a wide variety of artists and will go to helping people recover from cancer.

At risk of revealing my secret identity, Jim has been an acquaintance since I was about 15 years old when I ran into him at the vastly stocked industrial section of a music store where he work(s/ed). He makes good music, he has more love and dedication to the industrial scene than most people I know- self included, and aside from all that, this project is amazing.

Justicia Pro Bestia! Crunch Pod Organizes Artists for Animals

I just found this. I am kind of amazed I had not found it last year when it came out. I must really be out of the loop. From the original info release:

Throughout much of the United States animals have about as many rights as a piece of furniture. There are more laws protecting your car then there are for animals. They are considered nothing more than “property” and do not deserve any rights. People who abuse them usually get little to no punishment for the suffering they cause. It’s time for that to change. JUSTICIA PRO BESTIA (Justice for Animals) is a collection of artists who believe that animals deserve their own rights and much more. All the proceeds from the sale of this digital compilation will be donated to The Animal Legal Defense Fund Since 1979 they have been fighting for animal rights, domestic and wild, by working to improve and expand laws protecting animals and to help make penalties against animal abusers much tougher...

Here is an interview about the compilation from some veg-heads at idieyoudie (which also includes a link to an amazing das ich peta2 ad (auf Deutsch)- whose vegetarianism previously unbeknownst to me just made them so much cooler... ).

It's nice to see industrial artists coming together for animals again. The ALDF and I have our differences (I mainly oppose their animal abuser registry intiatives on multiple grounds. If you want to know why, ask in the comments,) but they do a lot of great work. As much as the anti-authoritarian in me opposes prisons, the animal rescuer in me knows first hand how the treatment of animals as property means that the law is always involved. The ALDF helps it to move in the animals' favor.

I still have a copy of Animal Liberation (1990) on vinyl from the good old days when doing a fundraiser for PETA meant funding undercover laboratory infiltration rather than today's sexist ad campaigns. I would have chosen Mercy for Animals or a prisoner legal defense fund as the benefactor personally, but ALDF will do just fine. I bought my copy today (digital download only). All proceeds go to a good cause, so now is a good time to buy some intellectual property even if you usually don't. Bandcamp link was broken, so you'll have to go with amazon.

Critical Feminist Takes a Break from Being Critical to Watch Dad and Kids Play DM

Depeche Mode has been one of my favorite bands since I was about 4. Or that's as early as I can remember. I remember making my mom play "People are People" over and over again in the car until the tape eventually broke. Everything counts still gives me little feelings of nostalgia when I hear it and I remember teaching myself to play "Love, In Itself" on my synthesizer key-tar (yes I am THAT HARD). Actually, re-watching that video in all of Martin L Gore's s&m harness depressive glory tells me a lot about my love life these days... as do many depeche mode songs...

-BUT, I DIGRESS-

Look at this awesome Dad and his Kids recreating "Everything Counts" and other favorites of mine "Shake the Disease" and "Strangelove" on what looks like all kids toys and instruments. It might just be the most amazing thing ever.

Holy shit dad can multitask...