Trigger warnings: subject matter includes church, predatory dudes
Strig and I share an alarming number of things in common, only beginning with the fact that we favor Adrienne Rich's politics of location, and both locate ourselves as pro-liberation tall white city-based feminist veganarchist queers in our late 20s, riding bikes and suffering from acute dude fatigue. Unlike my magnificent colleague here at Industrial Anti-Oppression, my record as a rivetkid is less pure. Strig's been jamming out to Skuppy since age 13, but though I've long tended toward a darker aesthetic, my spooky teenage ass was stuck in church and I listened to what the stupid church boys told me was cool, which regrettably consisted of WalMart metal I had to pretend I liked. At 17, a different dumb church boy gave me different required listening for coolness, which mercifully introduced me to goth/industrial. The genre/s resonated with me and I felt a stronger connection to music than I had thought possible. So I bloomed late, but made it out of church into the city before my teens ran out. Further detracting from my purity is the fact that I have a tendency to be gothier than rivetier, also that I peaced from my local scene some time in 2006 to dedicate myself more wholly to anarchy (talk about subculture shock-- so many punks!) and have only recently started listening to industrial again, largely inspired by Strig. Plus I don't know nearly as much about the entirety of industria as I do about my top 2 gothy bands, so all I got are my experiences. But my experiences are valid as fuck, so I'm gonna keep typing.
Strig articulated one of the things I love so well about the scene, viz. the range of gender exploration and expression, particularly for men, who are permitted and even encouraged to access and create forms of feminine androgyny (a concept so rare in the U.S. post-WWII!). My caliginous heart swells with admiration for the vivid and demonstrative, idiosyncratic and vibrant dancing that scene kids offer (hilariously, I've since figured out how to adapt my body's ambrosial vocabulary of movement to the likes of Rihanna and Robyn at queer nights). Furthermore, I will forever value and cherish how goth/industrial kids (at least in the 4+ eastern U.S. cities I've gothed in, if not everywhere) negotiate and navigate personal space at shows and on dance floors. I didn't have occasion to realize how truly special it is until my 2nd unit crew took me to some queer indie show in Strig's city two years ago; the dumb indie kids in attendance just kept running their bodies and properties and drinks into me and everyone else, oblivious to the idea that maybe I didn't want their feathered hair on my face, their arms in my ribs, their purses in my ass, or their drinks down my sleeve. My local scene was a great place for me for four full years, but since absenting myself from the scene, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I recognize the full ickiness of some of my experiences. That I maintain any enduring positive associations with industrial music may be wholly credited to Strig.
I had suffered much at the hands and appendages of church dudes before I hit the scene in my own right. For years I did like a cybergoth, viz. came alone, danced alone, left alone. Certain nights let me in at age 18, certain nights would let me in at age 19, but I was still gothing in a big way when my 21st birthday granted me full access to my local scene and I actually started (get this) talking to people at the clubs. By this point, blooming late again, I was finally out to myself and my metropolis as a lady-lovin-lady. In my earliest experiment with social interaction during gothy-times, one young man in particular was very kind and introduced me to everyone else. Exquisitely coiffed, clad, and groomed, he worked a pink-collar job and exhibited all the social and linguistic cues that our culture associates with gay men, including ribald flirtations with men in my presence. One night he offered to buy me a drink. Months after my 21st birthday, I had never imbibed and told him as much. He chose a Long Island Iced Tea for the occasion. Actually 4 of them. Once I was sloshed beyond any shadow of a clout, finally unable to dance or do anything involving more motor skills than staring heavy-lidded at the lights with a dumb grin, he started making out with my face. I was shocked, given that I was gay and that he had given me no reason to believe that he was not. He told me he loved pussy. I giggled and said I did too and then I collapsed. Blessed providence, menstruation consecrated my box to myself so that I managed to go to sleep that night with my virtue in tact.
There were some fellas in this crew whom I recall as wholly decent human beings, and I met and hooked up with a number of lovely women I never saw again. It didn't ring any warning bells how approval of my gayness among the regulars was largely contingent on its hotness value to the dudes. My affection for women was like a party trick, and it is no coincidence that a substantial percentage of the gothy women I had sexytimes with were intentionally introduced to me by mutual dude acquaintances who wanted to see us make out and then wank over their vision of what went on when these ladies went home with me.
Simply put, and this will be the recurring theme of my contributions to this blog, my complaint is that while this subculture exists, its values don't seem to deviate from the values of our parent culture, which is oppressive and misogynist and rapey as fuck. A bro dude in eyeliner and a skirt is still a bro dude. He may be stomping imaginatively to Sister Machine Gun instead of stalely humping someone to Dave Guetta with a Miller Lite in the other hand, but if he subscribes to all the values that preserve the current inequitable distribution of social and economic power, I'm unimpressed.
A number of components factored in my decision to abandon the scene, nearly all hinging on my developing political awareness which ultimately led me to shift my energies to the more principled local anarchist community/scene, even if they were mostly punks. Once we figured out we can all get down to vapid pop music, though, shit's been real.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Love for Android Lust
Amongst the anger that some of the posts in this blog have invoked, I am always trying to alternate with something positive. I can often look to Android Lust to gain a feeling of hope. I am not sure if this song is about reproductive justice or simply being in control of oneself with a world doing its best to control you. Either way, I listen to this a lot.
This body belongs to me
To fuck to hurt to kill
And if I choose to give it all up
It's mine until the end
Do you understand?
You think you have the right
'Cause you fucked me a couple of times
To tell me what to do
With this damned body of mine
You just don't understand
You say you know it all
Trust and take the fall
And feed me all this shit
About what's good for me at all
You just don't understand
Get it, say it, hear it
This time I've got to get you off of my back
Get it, say it, hear it
This time I've got to get you off of my back
This body belongs to me
To take it where I will
And if I choose to be unkind
Decision's mine to make
Do you understand?
Do you understand?
This body belongs to me
To fuck to hurt to kill
And if I choose to give it all up
It's mine until the end
Do you understand?
You think you have the right
'Cause you fucked me a couple of times
To tell me what to do
With this damned body of mine
You just don't understand
You say you know it all
Trust and take the fall
And feed me all this shit
About what's good for me at all
You just don't understand
Friday, January 27, 2012
Nachtmahr - Can You Feel The (Genocidal Misogyny)... oh I mean "Beat"
Content note: racism, sexual assault, military sexual assault, misogyny, man-on-woman physical violence, female/female sexual assault and murder
Well, this video far surpassed my expectations of how bad it was going to be. I wrote about the trailers briefly in my first entry on misogyny in industrial videos. Seeing the first installment of this suggested set of videos, well, I'll just show it to you first.
There don't seem to be any good guys in this video. But we are first met with a white blond woman tied to a chair being threatened by a muscular brown man who then proceeds to torture her. The violence against her is glorified by not only the pounding bassline but also the suggestion that she is being interrogated about world domination.
This starts the video off reinforcing the racist (systemic, strategic) stereotype that brown people, specifically those from the Middle East, are torturers and misogynists with no regard for the lives of women. How soon we forget guantanamo bay and how white dominated Western militaries have poured loads of money, time, tactics and so on into their prisons and torture facilities. Into the coverups when these facilities are exposed. Into the massive racial profiling of brown people and labeling all kinds of people who dissent from the government terrorists. Moving on. It only gets better.
We later meet the leader of this group. A white dude with a side part flop in a nazi-esque military uniform, complete with arm bands and all, showing off for the camera as the lead singer of the band. The two white women, tall, thin, with very tight clothing and lots of make up stand silently behind him waiting for orders. Note we see no torture happening on part of the man obviously making nods to Hitler reminiscent of the film Downfall, pointing at the map angrily. The man responsible for a regime who killed millions of jews, queers, differently/dis abled people, mentally different people, women, children, and so on is acted out as a strong figure surrounded by beautiful women waiting to follow his every order. Including sexual assault.
After we see clip after clip of the women prisoner in the pain of torture, we then pan to her being stripped naked and assaulted by the two women behind hitler-wannabe. The original torturer is gone, and we are left with an eroticized view of only the bodies of two uniformed women, as well as one gloved person whose gender we don't know, assaulting a woman who is their prisoner. Eventually she begins to show affection back placing her arms on those of the other women. I am sure the clever director thought this made it erotic. But for many survivors of sexual assault, especially that which happens to 1 in 2 women in the military, it's simply triggering and awful to watch.
We then pan back and forth between not-Hitler and his droog assaulting a woman with a bag over her head until we meet him at his desk again. The woman who has just been physically beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted meets Der Fuhrer Nachtler at his desk and received the N pin on her collar, right where the SS would be. She earned her pin through submitting to physical and sexual violence, as if she had a choice. Most of us don't.
Oh but wait, she walks out of the room and another woman clad in tight clothesand red lipstick is ordered by nachtmuhrer to follow her and strangle her to death. What an exciting twist! Actually, no.
On top of all of the nazi glorifying racist misogyny, the song isn't even that good.
On Nachtmahr's website, the bio begins with a quote from Winston Churchill. Is this irony? When the other parts of this set of videos come out, will we find it all being a statement against maziism, racism, and misogyny? I don't think that's really possible given the mistakes already made. But hey, I'll watch and see.
UPDATE: If you want Thomas Rainer's side of things, that ironically does a far better job of making him look bad than we did with this article, idieyoudie did an interview with him after the whole ad-ver-sary on stage protest. The comments section is the best part.
Also, for those claiming "kink-shaming," I've been involved in BDSM scenes for about 15 years off and on. It's not an excuse to be a rapey douchebag, though some dudes do use it for that, and Thomas Rainer really likes those dudes. I don't hang out with those dudes.
Well, this video far surpassed my expectations of how bad it was going to be. I wrote about the trailers briefly in my first entry on misogyny in industrial videos. Seeing the first installment of this suggested set of videos, well, I'll just show it to you first.
There don't seem to be any good guys in this video. But we are first met with a white blond woman tied to a chair being threatened by a muscular brown man who then proceeds to torture her. The violence against her is glorified by not only the pounding bassline but also the suggestion that she is being interrogated about world domination.
This starts the video off reinforcing the racist (systemic, strategic) stereotype that brown people, specifically those from the Middle East, are torturers and misogynists with no regard for the lives of women. How soon we forget guantanamo bay and how white dominated Western militaries have poured loads of money, time, tactics and so on into their prisons and torture facilities. Into the coverups when these facilities are exposed. Into the massive racial profiling of brown people and labeling all kinds of people who dissent from the government terrorists. Moving on. It only gets better.
We later meet the leader of this group. A white dude with a side part flop in a nazi-esque military uniform, complete with arm bands and all, showing off for the camera as the lead singer of the band. The two white women, tall, thin, with very tight clothing and lots of make up stand silently behind him waiting for orders. Note we see no torture happening on part of the man obviously making nods to Hitler reminiscent of the film Downfall, pointing at the map angrily. The man responsible for a regime who killed millions of jews, queers, differently/dis abled people, mentally different people, women, children, and so on is acted out as a strong figure surrounded by beautiful women waiting to follow his every order. Including sexual assault.
After we see clip after clip of the women prisoner in the pain of torture, we then pan to her being stripped naked and assaulted by the two women behind hitler-wannabe. The original torturer is gone, and we are left with an eroticized view of only the bodies of two uniformed women, as well as one gloved person whose gender we don't know, assaulting a woman who is their prisoner. Eventually she begins to show affection back placing her arms on those of the other women. I am sure the clever director thought this made it erotic. But for many survivors of sexual assault, especially that which happens to 1 in 2 women in the military, it's simply triggering and awful to watch.
We then pan back and forth between not-Hitler and his droog assaulting a woman with a bag over her head until we meet him at his desk again. The woman who has just been physically beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted meets Der Fuhrer Nachtler at his desk and received the N pin on her collar, right where the SS would be. She earned her pin through submitting to physical and sexual violence, as if she had a choice. Most of us don't.
Oh but wait, she walks out of the room and another woman clad in tight clothesand red lipstick is ordered by nachtmuhrer to follow her and strangle her to death. What an exciting twist! Actually, no.
On top of all of the nazi glorifying racist misogyny, the song isn't even that good.
On Nachtmahr's website, the bio begins with a quote from Winston Churchill. Is this irony? When the other parts of this set of videos come out, will we find it all being a statement against maziism, racism, and misogyny? I don't think that's really possible given the mistakes already made. But hey, I'll watch and see.
UPDATE: If you want Thomas Rainer's side of things, that ironically does a far better job of making him look bad than we did with this article, idieyoudie did an interview with him after the whole ad-ver-sary on stage protest. The comments section is the best part.
Also, for those claiming "kink-shaming," I've been involved in BDSM scenes for about 15 years off and on. It's not an excuse to be a rapey douchebag, though some dudes do use it for that, and Thomas Rainer really likes those dudes. I don't hang out with those dudes.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Skinny Puppy - Kill to Cure
The lyrics apparently changed from show to show. Dog knows there is plenty of horror to draw from.
This video is not only amazing for it's statement but also for it's stream of consciousness sound and lyrics, all reminiscent of old school skinny puppy. Beautiful.
I also found a cover someone did of it here.
The band is called "Dead When I Found Her" and I am gonna turn the feminist criticism of their name off for a moment. Maybe. This recording is so skuppy-like and I really enjoyed it and the quality is so that the lyrics are more clear. Enjoy.
(Why "dead when I found her"? Maybe dude has a creative explanation drawing from some sort of "calling light to misogyny in the unconscious all people are born into a culture of already present white heteropatriarchy- when they found her" or something... One can dream, right? This artist is REALLY good, especially if you like 80s and early 90s industrial. I didn't know anyone did much of this anymore. You can buy their album here.)
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