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J o d i e T a y l o r

P
opular music has always been a dynamic mediator of gender and sexuality, and
a productive site of rebellion, oddity and queerness. The transformative
c apacity of music-making, performance and consumption helps us to make
and make sense of identity and allows us to glimpse otherworldliness, arous-
ing the political imagination. With an activist voice that is impassioned yet adherent
to scholarly rigour, Playing it Queer provides an original and compelling ethnographic
account of the relationship between popular music, queer self-fashioning and (sub)cul-
tural world-making.
This book begins with a comprehensive survey and critical evaluation of relevant litera-
tures on queer identity and political debates as well as popular music, identity and (sub)
cultural style. Contextualised within a detailed history of queer sensibilities and crea-
tive practices, including camp, drag, genderfuck, queercore, feminist music and club

J o d i e Tay l o r
cultures, the authors rich empirical studies of local performers and translocal scenes
intimately capture the meaning and value of popular musics and (sub)cultural style in
everyday queer lives.

Playing it
Taylors revised conception of music scenes and thought-provoking case studies pro-
vide new insights into the ways music contributes to the production and maintenance
of queer social relations. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary book is an essential

Queer
read for scholars interested in popular music and queerness. Sheila Whiteley, Profes-
sor Emeritus and author of Women and Popular Music

Jodie Taylor makes us sit up and pay attention to the wild experimentations in cul- P o p u l a r M u s i c,
ture, subculture and community that can be heard in queer clubs and music venues Ident i t y and
Taylors intricate and detailed ethnography makes an important contribution to recent
Q u e e r Wo r l d - m a k i n g

Playing it Queer
scholarship on queer music cultures. Claiming that music-making conjures new possi-
bilities for politics and pleasure, Taylor lets us believe in queer rhythm and hear the beat
of an exciting elsewhere. Tune in or miss out! Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer
Art of Failure

J o d i e T a y l o r received her PhD in Musicology from Griffith University, Australia.


She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Sociology at the Griffith Centre for
Cultural Research (200912) , and is currently a Research Fellow at the Queensland
Conservatorium Research Centre. She has published numerous articles on aspects of

Peter Lang
queer culture, popular music and ethnography and is currently co-editing three anthol-
ogies on erotic cultures, festivalisation and mainstream music.

www.peterlang.com
ISBN 978-3-0343-0553-2
J o d i e T a y l o r

P
opular music has always been a dynamic mediator of gender and sexuality, and
a productive site of rebellion, oddity and queerness. The transformative
c apacity of music-making, performance and consumption helps us to make
and make sense of identity and allows us to glimpse otherworldliness, arous-
ing the political imagination. With an activist voice that is impassioned yet adherent
to scholarly rigour, Playing it Queer provides an original and compelling ethnographic
account of the relationship between popular music, queer self-fashioning and (sub)cul-
tural world-making.
This book begins with a comprehensive survey and critical evaluation of relevant litera-
tures on queer identity and political debates as well as popular music, identity and (sub)
cultural style. Contextualised within a detailed history of queer sensibilities and crea-
tive practices, including camp, drag, genderfuck, queercore, feminist music and club

J o d i e Tay l o r
cultures, the authors rich empirical studies of local performers and translocal scenes
intimately capture the meaning and value of popular musics and (sub)cultural style in
everyday queer lives.

Playing it
Taylors revised conception of music scenes and thought-provoking case studies pro-
vide new insights into the ways music contributes to the production and maintenance
of queer social relations. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary book is an essential

Queer
read for scholars interested in popular music and queerness. Sheila Whiteley, Profes-
sor Emeritus and author of Women and Popular Music

Jodie Taylor makes us sit up and pay attention to the wild experimentations in cul- P o p u l a r M u s i c,
ture, subculture and community that can be heard in queer clubs and music venues Ident i t y and
Taylors intricate and detailed ethnography makes an important contribution to recent
Q u e e r Wo r l d - m a k i n g

Playing it Queer
scholarship on queer music cultures. Claiming that music-making conjures new possi-
bilities for politics and pleasure, Taylor lets us believe in queer rhythm and hear the beat
of an exciting elsewhere. Tune in or miss out! Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer
Art of Failure

J o d i e T a y l o r received her PhD in Musicology from Griffith University, Australia.


She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Sociology at the Griffith Centre for
Cultural Research (200912) , and is currently a Research Fellow at the Queensland
Conservatorium Research Centre. She has published numerous articles on aspects of

Peter Lang
queer culture, popular music and ethnography and is currently co-editing three anthol-
ogies on erotic cultures, festivalisation and mainstream music.

www.peterlang.com
ISBN
Play ing i t Queer
J O D I E T A Y L O R

Playing it
Queer Po p u la r Mu s i c,
Id e n t i t y a n d
Q u e e r Wo r l d - m a k in g

PETER LANG
Bern s Berlin s Bruxelles s Frank fur t am Main s New York s Ox ford s Wien
Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliograe ; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de .

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data : A catalogue record for this book


is available from The British Library, Great Britain

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Taylor, Jodie
Playing it queer: popular music, identity and queer world-making / Jodie Taylor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978 - 3 - 0343 - 0553 - 2
1. Popular musicSocial aspects. 2. Gender identity in music. I. Title.
ML3918.P67J64 2012
781.64086'64dc23
2012019984

Cover illustration : I Am Solid Gold , 2010


Photographer : Hillary Green (stillsbyhill.com.au)
Graphic Designer : Sean Bates
Cover design : Thomas Grtter, Peter Lang AG

ISBN (pb.) 978 - 3 - 0343 - 0553 - 2 ISBN (eBook) 978 - 3 - 0351- 0420 - 2

Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012


Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
info@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com

All rights reserved.


All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microlming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.

Printed in Switzerland
To my families: Colleen and Barry, Kate and Simon
CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................... ix


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................ xi
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1

Part I: The Theoretical Landscape

CHAPTER 1: QUEER
IDENTITIES, THEORIES AND POLITICS ..................................................... 13
CHAPTER 2: MUSIC AND IDENTITY
SELVES, SEXUALITIES AND SCENES........................................................ 41

Part II: Translocal Styles, Sensibilities and Local Representations

CHAPTER 3: CAMP
A QUEER SENSIBILITY ............................................................................ 67
CHAPTER 4: DOING DRAG, (UN)DOING GENDER
GENDER SUBVERSION AND MUSICAL PERFORMANCE ........................... 83
CHAPTER 5: QUEER PUNK
IDENTITY THROUGH A DISTORTION PEDAL .......................................... 117
CHAPTER 6: WOMYN, GRRRLS AND SISTAS
QUEER AGENDAS IN FEMINIST MUSIC-MAKING ................................... 149
CHAPTER 7: MAKING A SCENE
LOCALITY, STYLISTIC DISTINCTION AND UTOPIAN IMAGINATIONS .... 175
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ................................................. 215

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................... 219


INDEX .................................................................................................... 243
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Twang Gang performers..................................................... 104


Figure 2: The Twang Gang performs Our Tribe at
Pride Fair in Brisbane, 2005 ............................................... 115
Figure 3: Anal Traffic promotional image ......................................... 134
Figure 4: Front cover of Anal Traffic EP ........................................... 138
Figure 5: Back cover of Anal Traffic EP ........................................... 138
Figure 6: Album inlay from Anal Traffic EP ..................................... 139
Figure 7: Anal Traffic chocolate tea party photograph ...................... 146
Figure 8: Bertha Control promotional image ..................................... 162
Figure 9: Cover image from Youre a Bertha Control Yourself ........ 167
Figure 10: Out of Control album cover ............................................... 167
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is my first book: the result of my doctoral and postdoctoral intel-


lectual labour. Accordingly, there are numerous people I wish to thank
for inspiring me and providing me with the emotional support and
practical guidance that made this book possible.
I am deeply grateful for the support that I have lovingly received
from Colleen, my mother, whose courage, strength and intrepid spirit
have brought me to this place in life, and from Barry, my father, who
passed away in 2006 while I was writing my doctoral dissertation, which
was the foundation for this book. I thank you both so deeply for your
unconditional love, enduring trust and confidence in me. My gratitude is
beyond words. Thank you to Kate Jones, my stunning partner and great-
est love. Your compassion, equanimity and playful spirit continue to
inspire and rescue me; a life without you is incomprehensible. To my
beloved other third, Simon Betteridge, I thank you for your abiding and
immoderate friendship. You never fail to excite, encourage and comfort
me. I love you all immensely.
This book has been inspired by the creativity, style, activism, trick-
ery and resilience of so many amazing queers. I regularly find myself
overwhelmed by the networks, friendships and kinships that have un-
folded in the process of doing this research. I sincerely thank all the
musicians, performers, event organisers and (sub)culturalists who gener-
ously participated in this study and continue to make queer culture: your
work is testimony to our diversity and endurance. In particular, I wish to
acknowledge the world-making efforts of the Omo/Skank crews: I am
still inspired by your commitment to sound, your efforts to build inhabit-
able spaces and your disregard for queer credential-checking. I thank
Nathan, Cameron, Keith and Paul for enabling my foray into the Berlin
scene, and for the magical memories we made. And I thank my friends
Hillary Green and Sean Bates for generously allowing me to use their
photographic and design work as the cover image for this book.
I have been fortunate to work with some wonderful scholars at
Griffith University. I am beholden to Paul Draper for his unfailing sup-
port and encouragement in the early years. I sincerely thank Scott
xii Acknowledgements

Harrison and Huib Schippers for the valuable criticism they provided
during my PhD candidature. I thank my dear friend and mentor Anna
Haebich for giving me my first research job and for being a shining
example of how to do scholarship from the heart. I also thank my won-
derful Griffith colleagues and friends, especially the bewitching Narelle
McCoy and the urbane Ian Woodward. Without the support of the
Griffith Centre for Cultural Research, this book would not have been
possible. I am tremendously grateful to Andy Bennett, whose practical
and theoretical guidance has been critical to this work. I really cant
thank you enough for the opportunities you have given me as a postdoc-
toral scholar.
I recognise the ongoing encouragement and inspiration I have re-
ceived from Sheila Whiteley: you are a treasure! I am also very grateful
to Jack Halberstam for her willingness to support my work. As a long-
time admirer of both Sheila and Jacks scholarship, it is truly an honour
to know they appreciate mine. While writing this book I was fortunate to
speak about parts of it at a number of conferences and invited seminars. I
thank Erik Hannerz and Ulrika Dahl for their Swedish hospitality, and I
thank my IASPM colleagues for many years of questioning and feed-
back. I also want to thank my editors at Peter Lang, Katrin Forrer and
Trudie Joras, for making this a trouble-free process. I give special thanks
to my colleague Alison Huber for her astute reading of draft chapters of
this book and to Sue Jarvis for her meticulous editing.
Finally, some of the ideas in this book have been revised from pre-
vious publications. I would like to thank those who gave permission for
these ideas to be expanded upon and reprinted in this book. An earlier
version of my autoethnographic introduction was originally published in
B. Bartleet and C. Ellis, eds., Music Autoethnography: Making Autoeth-
nography Sing/Making Music Personal (Australian Academic Press,
2009), 245260. Extracts from Chapter 2 originally were published in
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26(1) (2012), 143
156. Extracts from Chapter 5 previously appeared in L. Mackinlay, B.
Bartleet and K. Barney, eds, Musical Islands: Exploring Connections
Between Music, Place and Research (Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2009), 221241. Extracts from Chapter 7 originally were published in
The Scenes Perspective and the Australian Context, special issue of
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22(5), (2008), 651
665.
INTRODUCTION

Life is a cabaret, sang Liza Minnelli in her role as the mediocre but
aspirational Kit Kat Club performer Sally Bowles a character written
into existence by gay novelist Christopher Isherwood. Sometimes song,
dance, comedy, drama, costume or literature can provide more suitable
ways to proclaim to your onlookers (and to yourself) who you are in a
moment or, perhaps more importantly, who you want to be. In my youth,
lifes cabaret was so apparent to me, it was the beguiling worlds created
in those musical moments that were most appealing and most accommo-
dating, and perhaps this is why I loved to sing, dance and dress up so
much. If queerness is, as I believe and as Jos Esteban Muoz so beau-
tifully writes, the rejection of the here and now and an insistence on
potentiality or concrete possibility for another world (2009, p. 1), then it
is through music that I have staged my rejection and imagined such
otherworldly possibilities. In the spirit of a queer and feminist approach
to the critical ethnography and queer cultural research that I do herein, I
begin this book with a story about myself. Self-indulgent? Perhaps. But I
like to think of it as an upfront declaration of my epistemological and
political baggage. So here goes:
As a teenager growing up in the mid-1990s, identifying as a femme,
bisexual, feminist goth was not so great a problem for me personally; I
actually drew a lot of strength from these identities. They made me feel
distinguishable and independent; they seemed to me a perfect set of traits
for someone who romanticised notions of becoming a performer, a
scholar and a political anarchist. Identifying as all these things did, how-
ever, raise a lot of suspicion and grief among friends at my all-girls high
school and among the three twenty-something-year-old-boys with whom
I played in a band. The problem most of my friends seemed to have with
me was not whether I was gay or straight; it was my inability to choose.
This choice was complicated not least by my sexual desires but also by
the rigid gender stereotypes that (I thought) went hand in hand with de-
claring a particular sexual identity. I didnt look or act like a lesbian: I
didnt know you could be a velvet skirt-, fishnet tights- and makeup-
wearing lesbian who ate meat and wanted to sing in the theatre. More-
2 Introduction

over, I didnt act like the straight girls I knew: I didnt want to get mar-
ried or have children; I didnt like any boys my own age; I chose to have
hairy armpits and sleep with girls. Rather than spending Saturday after-
noons shopping for clothes, I scoured secondhand bookstores for as
much feminist literature as I could find, and I wrote songs about suffra-
gettes and played in a hard-rock band with sweaty men one of them
being my serious boyfriend.
Eventually, the social pressure to fix my sexual identity and my
inability to do so isolated me from the rest of my peers. I felt that the
only way I could relate to people on my own terms was through music. It
was in music, and only in music, that I could perform all the roles
necessary to satisfy me. In music I could compose, perform and listen; I
could play multiple instruments; I could perform and appreciate various
styles. It was only as a musician and music lover that I was allowed to be
fluid: to interpret and reinterpret, to create and recreate. As a weekday
student of classical voice and a weekend singer in a hard-rock band, I
found the freedom in music to explore my sexual desires. I was the diva
one moment and a rock star the next. As an opera and musical theatre
enthusiast, I discovered that the diva was often an object of desire just
as I longed to be. Her femininity was robust and disciplined. It was
captured in her costumes, in the roles that were written for her, in the
curves of her body and in her voice, which gave a powerful blast and
refused containment. In my eyes, her voice was the key to her sexual
prowess, and thus she became a personal icon: she was a disciplined
woman in control of her voice, a woman who regulated her own pleasure
(often through her voice). In contrast, the masculinity encapsulated in
playing the rock star afforded me the public expression of aggressive
sexuality and a toppy femme-ininity. It made me feel like the object of
female desire while also excusing my gaze upon other women. The rock
star was a fugitive of definition and self-control. In this role, it became
perfectly acceptable to flaunt my sexuality, to adorn my body in pier-
cings and S/M-style couture, and to speak and act in whatever manner
pleased me.
While many people still found it unusual that I possessed an equally
intense passion for the genres of opera, musical theatre, industrial rock
and metal, it seemed that expressing conflicting tastes in music did not
attract nearly as much scrutiny as expressing conflicting sexual desires.
This is because, unlike the supposedly natural and thus normal expres-
Introduction 3

sion of gender and sexuality, musical taste is not understood to be in any


way natural, normal or innocent, but rather a self-determined and defin-
ing mechanism of cultural identity. Music allowed me to perform gender
and express sexuality in multiple ways that were unavailable to me in
daily life. Furthermore, it allowed me to do this under the radar to
explore the spaces in-between masculine, feminine, gay and straight
without fear of rejection. An expert in border crossing, I played it femi-
nine with the men and boyish with the girls, and managed for quite
some time to stay sexually vague to stay musical escaping detection
and social punishment.
Several years later, I started going to queer bars and clubs. These spaces
were meaningful, not least because they allowed me to meet and socialise
with like-minded people, but that socialising was almost always accompa-
nied by music and dancing. Queer spaces were saturated with gender vari-
ation, sexual oddities, theatrical display, music and musical performance I
thought Id found a queer kind of heaven. At this time in my late teens/early
twenties, I could not have imagined the ethnographic project and cultural
analysis involved in writing this book. However, this book is both the result
of and partially an account of this time, these spaces, the people I met, the
friends I made, their stories and most importantly their music. More broadly,
this book is about some of the many ways in which queers have used, and
continue to use, Western popular musics and extra-musical style to express
their gender and sexual differences, empower and transform themselves,
form queer social alliances and mobilise social protest. This book identifies
and examines the kinds of decidedly queer aesthetics, sensibilities, musics,
local and global styles that are the result of queer identificatory and disiden-
tificatory processes. It is as much a book about popular music as it is a book
about queer identities and cultures: a queer insurgency against the hetero-
centric canon of popular music and subcultural studies and a heartfelt
reminder to queer studies that music matters. Borrowing from Sheila
Whiteley and Jennifer Rycengas book Queering the Popular Pitch (2005),
this book similarly embraces an understanding of popular music as a social
force that constructs heteronormativity and resistant queer sexualities
(p. xiii, emphasis in original). Thus, as Whiteley and Rycenga also point out,
popular music has figured centrally in the fashioning of queer identities and
self-consciousness, merg[ing] queer social relations with queer musical
ones, thus demonstrating the transforming significance of musical dis-
courses (p. xiii).
4 Introduction

Methodology

I have been overtly queer-identified, a zealous participant in queer


culture, an advocate of radical queer politics, a music-lover and occa-
sional performer/composer for over a decade now, but it wasnt until
beginning a PhD in 2004 that I began to critically (re)imagine queer
identities, subjectivities, cultures and music as a scholar. Since then, my
aim has been to conduct a detailed qualitative inquiry into queer musical
performance, identities and scenes to explore queer self-fashioning and
world-making as it occurs in and through music. This begun with a com-
prehensive examination of the queer popular music histories, politics,
styles and sensibilities of camp, drag and genderfuck, queer punk and
queercore, as well as queer feminist music cultures and queer dance
music and club spaces. This literature was synthesised to create a de-
tailed picture of some of the key stylistic, musical and performance
traditions of queerness, then built upon using a multi-method ethno-
graphic approach, which included participant observation at hundreds of
local and international queer events, twenty-five in-depth semi-struc-
tured interviews with queer musicians, performers, deejays and scene
participants, hundreds of in situ ethnographic conversations, and inter-
pretative textual analysis of queer performances and music. In keeping
with the queer premise of this text, I approach my discussion of music
queerly, evoking what Judith Halberstam (1998) might call a queer
methodology that is a scavenger methodology (p. 13), which she
avows necessitates interdisciplinarity in its betrayal of disciplinary con-
ventions and boundaries, both methodological and theoretical. I make no
apologies for borrowing from multiple sites of musicological, sociologi-
cal, cultural and philosophical thought on music, or for combining
textual analysis with ethnographic interviews and archival research into
queer popular music histories and practices.
All empirical interview data and participant observations referred to
herein were collected between January 2004 and December 2010. Par-
ticipant observations and ethnographic conversations in the field were
recorded in field journals. On occasion, this was done on the sideline of
the research site especially when trying to capture specific details of
field conversations but usually the process of writing up an event or
performance was at a spatial and temporal distance from it so as to not
Introduction 5

stifle my immersion in these cultural moments. All interviews (with the


exception of one, at the request of the respondent) were tape-recorded
and transcribed at a later date. Where musicians and performers have
given me express permission to use their real or stage names, I have
done so when referring to their artistic practice. However, for ethical
reasons, pseudonyms are used when quoting interview data and field
conversations involving scene participants as well as some musicians
and performers in Chapter 7. The reasons for using pseudonyms for
some participants here and not elsewhere in the text is because some
people expressed concern regarding the frankness of their commentary
on local culture, fearing that it might be ill-received by other members of
the community.
In musical terms, analysis has focused primarily on extra-musical
and para-musical elements such as the meaning of musical and visual
style, lyrical content, performance, gesticulation and so forth. The sonic
parameters such as rhythm, melody and timbre are of less concern, as
this study is motivated by understanding popular music as a site of queer
identity work and world-making rather than with sonic materials per se.
The queer histories, politics, styles and sensibilities discussed and ana-
lysed in this book refer to multiple locales, including Australia, Britain,
America, Canada and Germany; however, the three case studies pre-
sented at the end of Chapters 4, 5 and 6 focus in detail on queer music
and performance taking Brisbane, Australia as my primary locus of in-
vestigation. That I studied Brisbane-based queer performers was not only
determined by my access to this scene (living in Brisbane and partici-
pating heavily in its culture as I do), but also by the political history and
vibrant DIY (do-it-yourself) culture of this city, which I discuss further
in Chapter 7. In 2009, I extended the geographical scope of my field-
work to include a translocal scene study of Berlin, Germany, which also
features in Chapter 7. This book does not geographically bound its study
of music and queerness, but rather aims to rethink queer culture through
translocal styles, movements, networks and cultural knowledges that are
inherited, appropriated and newly produced.
6 Introduction

Critical Insider Research

I believe my way of being which I incorporate into and embody in my


everyday life affords me a particularly queer kind of worldview. But I
also acknowledge that my some would say radically queer way of
viewing the world is never commensurate with the views of others who
might also see themselves as incorporating and embodying queerness in
their lives and cultural practices. As a queer researcher of queer culture,
my critical insider status is both beneficial and challenging. It is at once
a departure from and an acute reminder of alterity. To embrace the frac-
tured and broadening landscape of the postmodern and escape the false
dichotomies of object/subject, self/other, queer/non-queer and particu-
larly in this case researcher/researched, it was necessary that I pay
particular attention to the queer subjects who are often excluded from
popular cultural research. Moreover, being a long-term participant in some
of the queer scenes I was investigating had profound epistemological im-
plications regarding how, as a researcher, I came to know and related to
the culture and the people being studied.
The interdisciplinary project that is this book, which straddles queer
studies, popular music studies and cultural sociology, necessitates both
methodological innovation and risk-taking, and doing this kind of work
as a critical insider researcher has additional advantages and dilemmas.
In the fields of popular music and subcultural studies, those researchers
(like myself) with a degree of proximity to the people and culture under
investigation have enthusiastically taken up this method. Paul Hodkin-
sons (2002) account of the meaning and style of goth, Ben Malbons
(1999) project on dance club culture and Deena Weinsteins (2002) in-
vestigation into the culture and music of heavy metal are just some ex-
amples that exploit the researchers cultural affiliations, street creden-
tials and subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995) in the process of doing
ethnography. The advantages of conducting research from this position
are well documented (e.g. see Adler & Adler, 1987; Bennett, 2003;
Brewer, 2000; Edwards, 2002; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Hodkinson, 2005;
Merton, 1972; Platt, 1981; Sprague, 2005; Wolcott, 1999). Such advan-
tages include deeper levels of understanding afforded by prior know-
ledge; knowing the lingo or native speak of field participants and thus
being empirically literate (Roseneil, 1993); closer and more regular
contact with the field; more detailed consideration of the social actors at
Introduction 7

the centre of the cultural phenomenon making access to, and selection
of, research participants easier and better informed; quicker establish-
ment of rapport and trust between researcher and participants; and more
open and readily accessible lines of communication between researchers
and informants due to the researchers continuing contact with the field.
However, insider research also has limitations, as one can never presume
that, as an insider, one necessarily offers an absolute or correct way of
seeing and/or reading ones culture. The deconstructive logics of post-
modernism and poststructuralism have for decades now warned against
privileging knowledge that is constructed within dichotomous rubrics such
as insider/outsider. Moreover, scholars have long warned that as a re-
searcher, and indeed as a cultural participant, one can never assume to-
tality in a position as either an insider or as an outsider, given that the
boundaries of such positions are always permeable (Merton, 1972; Oak-
ley, 1981; Song & Parker, 1995). Some have cautioned against privileging
this position, noting that as an insider one does not automatically escape
the problem of knowledge distortion, as insider views will always be
multiple and contestable, generating their own epistemological problems
due to subject/object relationality (Bennett, 2003; Hodkinson, 2005; Spra-
gue, 2005; Wolcott, 1999). There is no monolithic insider view, argues
Harry Wolcott, every view is a way of seeing, not the way of seeing
(1999, p. 137, emphasis in original).
While I duly acknowledge these concerns and agree that I have been
afforded certain benefits in undertaking this work given my insider sta-
tus, there is another matter of methodological significance that I wish to
discuss before proceeding. In Halberstams work on queer subcultural
lives, she argues that where alliances exist between minority academic
fields and minority cultural production, queer academics can and
some should participate in the ongoing project of recording and inter-
preting queer culture and circulating a sense of its multiplicity and so-
phistication (2005, p. 159), intentionally blurring the presumed boun-
daries between expert or archivist and the object of study. In fact, queer
cultures routinely problematise straightforward distinctions in terms of
who is documenting or theorising and who is producing culture (Dahl,
2010; Halberstam, 1998, 2005; Kennedy & Davis, 1993; Taylor, 2011;
Volcano & Dahl, 2008) a kind of queer phenomenon in and of itself
that is symptomatic of this project. In Ulrika Dahls work on queer
femme-inist ethnography, she states that there is always something aca-
8 Introduction

demically queer about the desire to be with and write about ones own,
even if it is not a territorialized, localized or even always visibly recog-
nizable stable community (2010, p. 144). The something queer or as-
kew here is that any notion of objectivity is blatantly transgressed in
this action, which by its very nature makes scholarship appear more vul-
nerable to emotional contamination. As Dahl goes on to argue, despite
decades of feminist epistemological discussions, anxieties around issues
of objectivity still loom within the academy. This work, then, is queer
not only in terms of the objects and subjects at the centre of its study, but
also in its way of approach, which brings to bear the allied and sympa-
thetic relationship between those subjects, objects and myself.

Outlining the Book

As the autoethnographic section of this introductory chapter suggests,


music, gender and sexuality are both intensely personal and social.
1
Music and its attendant realms of (sub)cultural style provide meaningful
ways to make, articulate and situate the self. Music does not merely re-
flect gendered and sexual realities, but contributes to the production of
gender and sexual subjectivities. Queer music cultures are by no means
separate from queer theories and theorisation; rather, they emerge as part
of and always in dialogue with this labour. The chapters to follow ex-
plore a range of musico-sexual dialogues and aim to account for some of
the ways in which music has contributed to the production and mainte-
nance of queerness. Presented in two sections, this book discusses
queerness and music in both theoretical and practical terms. The first
section is primarily theoretical, and provides the reader with a necessary
background to social and intellectual debates. The second section ex-
plores the broader cultural milieu in which queer musical work occurs,
and provides a comprehensive study of queer popular music practices
that is historical, translocal and ethnographic.
Beginning with an overview of sexual deviance and the emergence
of homosexual identity, Chapter 1 unpacks what we have come to call

1 In an attempt to distinguish between subcultural theory and subcultures as referred


to in a vernacular sense, I use (sub)culture as suggestive of the latter. A detailed
discussion of subcultural theory is presented in Chapter 2.
Introduction 9

queer theory and establishes an understanding of the theoretical and po-


litical arguments that underpin queerness and queer cultural production.
Contextualised within contemporary literatures that establish musics
value as a tool for undertaking identity work, Chapter 2 examines
musics role in self-aestheticisation and self-articulation, and connects
music to the project of queer world-making. In particular, the chapter
advocates for a revised conception of the music scenes perspective so
that we may better understand musics role in structuring queer social
relations. Chapter 3 establishes a general understanding of queer style
and sensibilities in terms of camp. It traces the emergence of camp, its
value as an aestheticised form of political praxis and its relationship to
music performance. Chapter 4 introduces the reader to the history of
drag performance and provides an overview of contemporary drag roles,
which leads into a focused discussion surrounding the lesser known roles
and identities of female drag kings and bio queens. Notions of gender-
fuck, the musicality of drag and the significance of lip-synching are also
prominently featured in this chapter. A case study of an Australian drag
king and bio queen troupe, the Twang Gang, is presented at the end of
this chapter, and is used to exemplify the ways in which women engage
with drag traditions, perform gender and make use of camp in a musical
context. Contextualised within a history of punk rock style, ideology and
queer counter-publics, Chapter 5 maps the emergence of queer punk
with particular reference to the musicality, politics, narrative qualities
and sensibilities of queercore. An understanding of queer punk sensibili-
ties is then elucidated through a case study of Australian queer punk
band Anal Traffic at the end of the chapter. Chapter 6 chronicles femin-
ist music-making. It begins with a discussion of the lesbian feminist tra-
ditions of womyns music, followed by an account of riot grrrl and riot
dyke ideologies, and proceeds to argue that in recent times we have seen
the emergence of new queer agendas in feminist popular music produc-
tion. A case study of Australian queer feminist funk/reggae/ska band
Bertha Control is used to illustrate the chapters central claims. Focusing
on the ways in which queers collectively organise around certain musics,
Chapter 7 examines queer scenes locally and translocally. It identifies
what we might call mainstream gay aesthetics and queer logics of
musico-stylistic distinction in Brisbane, Australia and Berlin, Germany.
It also examines the way music, style and place resource queer worlds
and utopian imaginings. Finally, returning to broader questions of popu-
10 Introduction

lar musics role in queer self-making and world-making, Chapter 8


muses on the idea of queer musical ancestry and provides a concluding
summary of the main points discussed throughout, underscoring the
wider theoretical implications of this work.
Part I

The Theoretical Landscape


CHAPTER 1

QUEER Identities, Theories and Politics

Queer is a slippery term. In the history of all that is and has ever been
queer, it would seem that queer is and has always been at odds with
normal and supposedly natural behaviour. Even the etymology of queer
poetically evokes the ambiguity queerness has come to signify in modern
times. Queer, as the Oxford English Dictionary says, is of doubtful ori-
gin (Queer, 1989). According to pre-eminent queer theorist Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993), queer originates from the Indo-European
root twerkw (across), which also relates to the German quer (transverse),
the Latin torquere (to twist) and the English athwart. The literal English
definition of the word itself implies odd or perverse behaviour or abnor-
mal conditions. Yet there is a record of the Scottish queir, from 1508,
which describes strange, peculiar or eccentric characteristics. The early
English word crew, meaning crooked or not straight, bears further simi-
larity to queer as we understand it today, and provides another etymo-
logical link to the contemporary meaning of queer. In essence, queer
bespeaks a displeasing oddity, perversity and twistedness.
Queer was not used colloquially to describe sexual behaviour until
the end of the nineteenth century. Initially, men who distinctly identified
themselves as part of a homosexual subculture vis--vis the dominant
norms of heterosexuality used queer as a self-descriptor (Chauncey,
1994). However, it soon became a pejorative term of reference to homo-
sexuals and gender deviants, and this meaning endured for much of the
twentieth century. The reappropriation of queer as a positive epithet for
gender and sexual non-normativities began again in the 1990s, with the
1
emergence of activist groups such as Queer Nation. In recent times,

1 Queer Nation was formed in New York in 1990 in the wake of escalating violence
towards queers and the heterosexist prejudices of mainstream society. Queer Nation
was a decentralised militant organisation that favoured large-scale direct public
actions and protests, which were often staged in public commercial spaces.
14 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

queer has come to be used in two quite distinct ways. First, and most
commonly, it is a catch-all term for communities of lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual and transgender (LGBT) folk. This particular use of queer is rather
problematic. As Nikki Sullivan argues, using queer as an umbrella term
does little if anything to deconstruct the humanist understanding of the
subject. It fails to acknowledge differences of gender, race, ethnicity,
class and age, for example, positioning sexuality as a unified and uni-
fying factor (2003, p. 44). The second use of queer, which informs this
study, is as a term of resistance imbued with anti-assimilationist and de-
constructionist rhetoric that aggressively opposes hegemonic identifica-
tory and behavioural norms, including liberal lesbian and gay identity
politics.
When used in this second sense, queer is destabilising, liminal, un-
fixed and contingent, and quite possibly above all else, it is highly con-
tested. Within the academy, it is often argued that queer refers to nothing
specific, but is defined precisely by what it is not, acquiring meaning
only from its oppositional relation to the norm (Halperin, 1995, p. 62).
Since the purpose of queer is to oppose norms through disturbing defini-
tions and legitimisations, queer perpetually refuses to be defined or le-
gitimised, and attempting to do so would be a decidedly un-queer thing
to do (Sullivan, 2003, p. 43). Queer is not a single theory, argument or
positivity, for it has neither a fundamental logic, nor a consistent set of
characteristics (Jagose, 1996, p. 96). Queerness is sustained through its
perpetual challenge to normalising mandates, thus it can never define
an identity; it can only ever disturb one (Edelman, 2004, p. 17). Yet I
know many people including myself who identify as queer in an
effort to keep ourselves, our desires and our positionalities mobile. To
complicate the matter further, queer whatever that might be, or not be
can function in a number or ways: as a noun (naming some-
thing/someone), an adjective (describing something/someone), a verb
(queering something or someone) or an adverb (to do something
queerly). Queer can be a political or ethical approach, an aesthetic

Although Queer Nation was a relatively short-lived movement, it was instrumental


in the reclamation of the pejorative term queer and had a lasting impact on sexual
identity politics in the United States (for a detailed discussion of Queer Nation, see
Berlant & Freeman, 1993).
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 15

quality, a mode of interpretation or way of seeing, a perspective or ori-


entation, or a way of desiring, identifying or disidentifying.
This may be a confusing start to a chapter for a reader new to queer
theory, while the theoretically advanced reader is likely to be very fa-
miliar with such abstrusity and attest to its greyness. Queer theory is a
minefield of contested conversations, disputed perspectives, unsettled
epistemologies and multidisciplinary approaches, and in light of this
confusion I write this chapter specifically for the reader new to queer
theory. Because queer thinking is at the core of this book, I wish to give
new readers a chance to acquaint themselves with queer ideas, but I also
acknowledge that the more theoretically advanced reader will be familiar
with the discussions in this chapter.
The following pages seek to clarify how we come to know ourselves
as gendered and sexual subjects through discourses, institutions and
practices that are historically contingent and socially constructed. I begin
this chapter with a genealogical account of homosexuality and homosex-
ual rights movements in Western culture, enabling us to understand how
we have arrived at queer. I acknowledge that this account is partial, as it
is meant only to introduce key theories and is by no means offered as a
2
complete historical picture of the discursive development of sexuality.
3
Grounded in the deconstructive logics of poststructuralism, queer theory
draws on a range of arguments across a number of disciplines including
philosophy, second-wave and postmodern feminisms, lesbian and gay
studies. Throughout the course of this chapter, I unpack some of these
arguments as necessary so that we may clarify the messiness of queer
theory to which I have alluded in these introductory paragraphs. High-
lighting key literatures from the corpus of queer theory, this chapter

2 For more complete accounts, see the following key texts: The History of Sexuality
(Foucault, 1979), Sex, Politics, and Society (Weeks, 1981); Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities (DEmilio, 1983) and Epistemologies of the Closet (Sedgwick, 1990).
3 Poststructuralism interrogates the constitution of subjects through symbolic structures,
arguing that an autonomous subject does not exist prior to the structures that we use in
order to understand it for example, binary opposition is the relationship between
mutually exclusive terms such as mind/body, man/woman, masculine/feminine,
heterosexual/homosexual, rational/emotional, public/private or natural/unnatural. This
system of language and knowledge suggests that we come to understand each term
only in relation to its opposite. Moreover, these symbolic structures perpetuate
unequal power relationships between the primary terms such as mind, man and
masculinity, and the secondary terms such as body, woman and femininity.
16 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

identifies the theoretical arguments and political debates that underpin


the queer identities, cultural practices, aesthetic sensibilities, (sub)cultures,
styles, performers and music-makers that are the focus of this book.

Sexual Deviance: A Brief Introduction

The act of sex has no history says David Halperin: It is a natural fact,
grounded in the functioning of the body, and, as such, it lies outside of
history and culture (1993, p. 416). While sex as an activity much like
eating or sleeping may have no history, sexuality is historical. In a land-
mark text entitled The History of Sexuality (1979), French historian and
poststructuralist philosopher Michael Foucault traces the emergence of
sexuality in Western societies. According to Foucault, prior to the mid-
nineteenth century, a sex act was not understood as an expression of a per-
sons psyche and did not characterise an innate identity. Instead, sex acts
were either considered to be natural and thus moral and legal or un-
natural and thus sinful and criminal. Sinful sex acts were those that
denied the reproductive destiny of fluids omitted during ejaculation.
Therefore, any sex act that was not in the interest of procreation, such as
anal sex, oral sex, masturbation, sex with non-humans or sex involving the
use of contraception or the withdrawal method, was an abomination, but
4
an abominable act that potentially anyone was capable of committing.
According to Foucault, during the latter part of the nineteenth century,
sex became a growing concern for a number of social institutions. Sex was
suddenly a topic of discussion, and the medical profession in particular
became preoccupied with the nature and treatment of sexual activity. Psy-
chiatrists identified, named and thus discursively constructed a plethora of
new sexualities at this time zoophiles, auto-monosexualists, mixo-
scopophiles, gynecomasts, presbyophiles, sexoesthetic inversts and dys-
pareunist women and among these was the homosexual. The first sig-

4 Christianity was paramount in purporting the sinfulness of such sexual acts because
the Christian church believed that the male sperm was the seed of human life, and
to ejaculate without the intention of procreation was wasting the seed and therefore
wasting a potential human life.
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 17

nificant publication on homosexuality was by Karl Westphal, a German


neurologist and psychiatrist who published an article in 1870 entitled
Contrary Sexual Sensations. According to Foucault, this article
marked the conception of the homosexual as a subject of psychological
and physiological inquiry: the homosexual had become a new species
and homosexuality was born:

The nineteenth century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and
a childhood in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with
an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into
his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in
him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely ac-
tive principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that
always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than
as a singular nature. (Foucault, 1979, p. 43)

The reconfiguration of the habitual sinner into the homosexual as a type


of person raised questions surrounding the legalities of homosexual ac-
tivity. In the mid-1860s, German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrich began ar-
guing that homosexual acts should not be punished because they were a
fact of nature (albeit an uncommon one). Ulrich suggested that homo-
sexuality was congenital, occurring during inter-uterine development:
some males are born with a strong feminine element or psyche [and]
some females are born with a strong masculine drive, he argued (cited
in Sullivan, 2003, p. 4). In other words, homosexuals were considered to
be inverts: a theory that argued male homosexuals were women
trapped in mens bodies and female homosexuals were men trapped
in womens bodies. Notable sexologists such as Westphal and his Ger-
man contemporary Richard von Krafft-Ebing skewed Ulrichs assertions
of naturally occurring homosexuality. Instead, they maintained that it
was a disease of the mind, or psychological illness, advocating that
homosexuals were degenerate human beings and, while they should not
be criminalised, they should be treated.
The work of British doctor and sexual psychologist Havelock Ellis
marks an adjustment in thinking about sexuality in exclusively biological
terms. While he did not wholly dismiss the notion of congenital homo-
sexuality, he rather controversially rejected the notion that it was a dis-
ease. Notably, he also advocated for an understanding of sexual
inversion that, while still grounded in ones physiology, was also influ-
18 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

enced by cultural factors. In a study from 1896 entitled Sexual Inversion


(1940), Ellis puts forward an argument that suggests ones disposition
towards inversion can be encouraged by certain social and cultural cir-
cumstances that might trigger ones homosexuality, awaking it from its
slumber; thus it followed that if such circumstances could be controlled,
then the risk of homosexual arousal could be diminished. In Sexual In-
version, Ellis gives three examples of possible cultural triggers for
homosexuality: sex-segregation in schools, which he argues plays a role
in developing sexual inversion; the seduction of a younger person by an
older person whose inversion is already developed; and for a congenital
invert to be disappointed with normal meaning heterosexual love.
In 1897, doctor Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Wissenschaftlich-
humanitre Komitee (Scientific-humanitarian Committee) in Berlin. His
agenda was to educate the public about homosexuality in order to reduce
unnecessary suffering and persecution. Hirschfeld understood same-sex
attraction somewhat differently from Krafft-Ebing and Westphal. In-
itially, Hirschfeld built upon Ulrichs argument suggesting that homo-
sexuality was a congenital condition and the homosexual was a kind of
third sex: an amalgamation of both masculinity and femininity. As his
studies progressed, however, he radicalised his thinking and came to ac-
knowledge a form of sexual pluralism that preposed multiple forms of
human sexuality in contrast to the rigid polarity of other nineteenth-
century paradigms. Sullivan states that Hirschfeld positioned a notion
of infinite sexual variability that he compared to the distinctiveness of
fingerprints [and he] totally undermined the distinction between
normal and abnormal forms of sexuality and challenged the popular
theory of constitutional degeneracy (2003, p. 12). Attempts to cure
homosexuality were erroneous under Hirschfelds model: instead, he
advocated for legal and moral acceptance of sexual difference, and thus
became a leading figure in the early homosexual rights movement.
Almost a decade before Hirschfeld, another man had similarly
spoken out against the growing illegality of homosexuality in Germany.
Given that homosexuals were degenerates who were perceived to be
suffering from a sickness of the mind, many questioned the degree to
which they should be held legally accountable for such actions. In 1869,
Austrian-born journalist Karoly Maria Benkert is said to have coined the
term homosexual in an open letter he wrote to German legislators
calling for the emancipation of homosexuals, suggesting that people who
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 19

partook in these activities should not be punishable by law because


homosexuality was inborn. Benkerts actions marked the beginning of,
and partially set the agenda for, the homosexual rights movement that
would follow (Jagose, 1996).
The work of German writer and anarchist Adolf Brand offers a mo-
mentary reprieve from scientifically grounded theories of sexuality and
represents a radical shift in thinking. Brands ideas, which he published
between 1896 and 1932 in his journal Der Eigene (meaning The Pecu-
liar or Ones Own, depending on translation), argued against the
medicalisation of homosexuality and the popular notion of inversion,
specifically male homosexuality being associated with the feminine.
Although his notions were overtly masculinist, Brand based his argu-
ment on Max Stirners theory of self-ownership and the sovereignty of
5
the individual, suggesting that sexual desire was a personal choice and
each person had the exclusive right to control his own body and sexual
conduct (Kennedy, 2005; Stirner, 1974). Der Eigene was not a journal of
sexual behaviour, but rather the first ever literary, art and cultural journal
dedicated to male homosexual culture in the world. According to histor-
ian Harry Oosterhuis most authors of Der Eigene were of the opinion
that their feelings and experiences could not be understood in scientific
categories and that art and literature provided the better means of expres-
sion (Oosterhuis, cited in Kennedy, 2005, para. 6). Brands journal gave
rise to the foundation of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of
the Peculiar or Community of Ones Own) in 1903. Bringing together
writers and artists who expressed individualistic and anarchistic ideas
about homosexuality, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen is understood to have
been the second homosexual movement in Germany (Hirschfelds being
the first).
Returning now to scientifically grounded theory, in 1905 Austrian
neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud rejected
all claims of congenial sexuality, suggesting instead that sexuality (in-
cluding heterosexuality) was not predetermined but rather continuously
constructed through human social development. In other words, Freud
radically proposed that heterosexuality, while a necessity for the con-
tinuance of humanity, was not natural. According to Freudian scholar

5 Stirner originally published The Ego and His Own in 1844, from which Brand drew
upon the theory of self-ownership.
20 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

Juliet Mitchell: Freuds achievement was to transform the biological


theory of instincts into the notion of the human drive, then to trace its
possible expressions and to regulate them to their place within the per-
sons history and subjectivity (2000, p. 27). Freud theorised that hu-
6
mans are born polymorphously perverse, and it is only through social
instruction that they learn heterosexuality. Thus, in the event of incorrect
instruction or social development, a person may exhibit sexual deviance.
Another radical scientific thinker about sexuality was American bi-
ologist Alfred Kinsey, whose research caused enormous controversy,
outraging academic, medical and social institutions alike. During the
1940s and 1950s, Kinsey (with the support of the National Institute of
Mental Health) conducted extensive surveys collecting data on the sex-
ual identity and practices of individuals. From this he contributed to the
publication of two landmark texts, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male
(Kinsey, Pomeroy & Martin, 1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human
Female (Institute for Sex Research, 1953). In this work, Kinsey derived
a seven-point scale with exclusive heterosexuality marked at one end,
exclusive homosexuality at the other and bisexuality (or equally hetero-
sexual and homosexual, as Kinsey termed it) as its midpoint. Kinseys
extensive statistical data showed that most people regarded as heterosex-
ual have at some time in their life experienced varying degrees of sexual
interaction with members of the same sex. Thus the majority of people
are not exclusively heterosexual, and instead can be located somewhere
along a sexuality continuum.
The social propagation of the homosexual as a kind of deviant
served to segregate and control homosexual identity by drawing clear
boundaries between the normal and abnormal, while at the same time
perpetuating a homosexual character stereotype. In 1968 (pre-dating the
work of Foucault), British sociologist Mary McIntosh published The
Homosexual Role, proposing that homosexuality was not a medical or
psychiatric condition, or human deviance; instead, it was a social role a
socially constructed identity. Using cross-cultural examples, McIntosh
argues that behaviours labelled homosexual vary across time and cul-

6 Polymorphous perversity suggests that sexual desire can be directed towards any
object, and sexuality can be satisfied in many ways that lie outside of socially
normative sexual behaviours. According to Freud, it is a condition of childhood,
and is considered to be abnormal in adults.
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 21

tures, defying categorisation and thus suggesting that there are homosex-
ual behaviours but not innate homosexuals. McIntosh explains that this
role refers not only to a cultural conception or a set of ideas but also to
a complex set of institutional arrangements which depend on and re-
inforce these ideas (1968, p. 189). By labelling and persecuting homo-
sexuals, society created for them an identity and a way to identify each
7
other, forcing homosexuals into the closet, and ultimately giving rise
to homosexual cultures.
For much of the twentieth century, the homosexual adult generally
was depicted as a sick and loathsome character stigmatised by his or her
illness and condemned to an ignominious existence. While some did
not believe that homosexuality could or should be cured, a variety of
therapies and treatments continued to plague the lives of people who
exhibited signs of homosexuality. These included subjecting people to
emotional abuse and physical tortures ranging from drug therapies to
electric shock treatment, lobotomies and the surgical removal of repro-
ductive organs (DEmilio, 1983). In was not until 1973 that the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association agreed to remove the classification of
disease from the condition of homosexuality. In response to such tor-
ture and persecution, in the time following the Second World War, civil
rights groups emerged across Britain, Europe, the United States and
Australia calling for the humane treatment of homosexuals.

Homophiles, Liberationists and Lesbian Feminists

While many of the earlier efforts to advance the rights and the treatment
of homosexuals had occurred in Europe particularly Germany the
war years and the rise of Nazism extinguished a lot of these advance-
ments. Beginning again around the 1950s, a number of civil rights
groups which can be referred to collectively as the Homophile Move-
ment reignited these efforts. Organisations such as the US-based
groups One Inc., The Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, the

7 In very simple terms, the closet is a metaphorical space that indicates secrecy
regarding ones non-normative sexual desires. Being in the closet suggests that
feelings or activities relating to non-normative sexual desire are undisclosed, while
coming out or being out of the closet suggests that one publicly acknowledges
these feelings, actions and desires.
22 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

British Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Australian-based or-


ganisation known as CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution),
lobbied to transform public attitudes towards homosexuality. The agenda
of the homophile movement was largely based on the politics of assimila-
tion (see Altman, 1972; DEmilio, 1983; Jagose, 1996). Such organisa-
tions tended to stress the biological innateness of homosexuality. While
they opposed the inhumane treatment of homosexuals, they argued that
sexuality was private and should therefore not be a matter of concern to
the church, state or medical profession. Moreover, homophile groups
tended towards conservative representations of homosexuality, arguing
that homosexuals were just like everyone else while disavowing the less
respectable elements of homosexual (sub)cultures such as drag queens,
butches and transsexuals.
In 1969, exactly a hundred years after Benkert first called for the
emancipation of homosexuals, the gay liberation movement was ignited
when, on 28 June, police raided a New York gay bar called the Stone-
wall Inn in Christopher Street, Greenwich Village that was frequented by
the so-called disreputable elements of gay culture. A glorified and now
somewhat mythologised moment in the annals of gay history (see Alt-
man, 1972; Duberman, 1993; Carter, 2010), the Stonewall riots are said
to have provoked a new movement of collective resistance against sexual
oppression, signifying a refusal to stay respectably closeted any longer.
Homosexual identity was being dramatically reconfigured and an un-
apologetic and distinctly gay identity constructed in its place one
based on pride in being gay (Altman, 1972, p. 109). The counter-cul-
tural politics of the 1960s were sweeping the Western world, and while
Stonewall did not single-handedly launch a movement, it symbolically
marks a shift in the assimilationist agendas of the homophile politics and
towards a revolutionary counter-cultural logic akin to other political
demonstrations of the era.
For many lesbians and gays in the post-Stonewall era, collective
pride became a platform upon which liberationist efforts were mobilised
and a new and publicly visible identity was constructed. Annamarie
Jagose explains that gay was mobilised as a specifically political
counter to that binarised and hierarchised sexual categorisation which
classifies homosexuality as a deviation from a privileged and naturalised
heterosexuality (1996, p. 72). An international collection of groups
(originating in New York in 1969 and London in 1970) known as the
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 23

Gay Liberation Front began publicly protesting against the persecution


of lesbians and gays in a far more disruptive fashion than their
homophile allies. The Gay Liberation Front rejected the biological model
of homosexuality, instead opting to assert a notion of choice. As Sullivan
suggests, in response to the image of homosexuality as a [shameful]
biological anomaly liberationists claimed that ones identity needs
no excuses, that, in fact, it is something to celebrate (2003, p. 30). Les-
bians and gays began openly celebrating their identity, and various cul-
tural products are testament to this. Pride songs began circulating
through gay communities and musicals such as Let My People Come
(1974) and films such as La Cage Aux Folles (1979) explored deviant
gender and sexual identities on public stages and screens. Scholarly dis-
course surrounding the history, culture and politics of non-heterosexual
gender and sexual identity also started to appear.
Australian Dennis Altman contributed significantly to this with his
publication of Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1972), as did
Karla Jay and Allen Youngs edited volume, Out of the Closets: Voices
of Gay Liberation (1992), which first appeared in 1972. Akin to the lo-
gics of what we now call postmodernism, liberation politics radically
suggested, among other things, the dispensation of sexuality from the
repressive mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality and homosexuality; the
transformation of gender relationships and roles; the rejection of institu-
tionalised marriage and monogamy; and a reconfiguration of the family
unit. According to Steven Seidman, liberation theory presupposed a no-
tion of an innate polymorphous, androgynous human nature [and]
aimed at freeing individuals from the constraints of the sex/gender
8
system (1993, p. 110). Basing its politics loosely upon what Robert
Reynolds calls a utopian vision of liberated bodies and unrepressed
psychic drives (2002, p. 70), gay liberation sought a new and radical
approach to the way gender and sexual identity were conceptualised for
all human beings.
The liberationist project critiqued not only the power structures of
gender and sexuality, but also those of race, class and nationalism.

8 Feminist theorist Gayle Rubin (1975) coined the phrase sex/gender system to
delineate the separation of gender from sex. In effect, Rubin suggests that women
and men are taught how to behave in masculine or feminine ways; moreover, they
are taught that they are only allowed to act according to their biology.
24 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

Strong critics of capitalism, liberationists advocated for developing


world freedoms, and aligned themselves with radical anti-war move-
ments and black power counter-cultures. However, conflicting identity
politics stifled such attempts, and factions within the movement began to
destroy the hope of achieving a unified state of resistance. As white,
middle-class lesbians and gays gained greater mainstream acceptance
during the 1970s, the liberationist model (to which contemporary queer
radical politics are considerably indebted) was outmoded in favour of an
ethnic (and at times essentialist) model of minority identity politics.
The legitimation of lesbian and gay sexuality, and the mobilisation
of lesbian and gay lobby groups throughout the Western world, conse-
quently resulted in a return to assimilation (Reynolds, 2002; Wother-
spoon, 1991). Jagose efficiently summarises the contrasts between the
two models:

According to the liberationist model, the established social order is fundamentally


corrupt, and therefore the success of any political action is to be measured by the ex-
tent to which it smashes that system. The ethnic model, by contrast, was committed to
establishing gay identity as a legitimate minority group, whose official recognition
would secure citizenship rights for lesbian and gay subjects. (1996, p. 61)

The notions of erotic freedom, the challenges to traditional gender roles


and the right to choose ones sexuality that underpinned liberationist
ideals were discarded as the ethnic model necessitated visible, stable and
commodified sexual identity communities, as this was crucial to the
struggle for civil rights such as the right to marry, the right to raise a
family and inclusion within the military. Rather than attempting to de-
stroy normalising and oppressive systems, the goal became inclusion
within existing heterosexist structures and the hegemonic social order.
Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s, liberation efforts increas-
ingly became gender separatist as many lesbians grew disillusioned with
the political position of women in what they saw as the increasing sup-
remacy of the misogynistic and anti-feminist agendas of gay liberation.
Similarly, many lesbian women were also angered by the marginal posi-
tion of lesbians in feminist movements at the time, with certain hetero-
sexual feminists believing that lesbianism hindered their struggle for
womens rights, referring to lesbians as the lavender menace. Conse-
quently, lesbian feminism a distinct and more radical faction of sec-
ond-wave feminism attempted to reconstruct the category of lesbian,
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 25

shifting it from a category of sexuality to a political position one that


all women who rejected men could assume, regardless of whether they
has sex with other women or not. This was a call to the woman-identi-
fied woman (see Radicalesbians, 1992).
In this sense, lesbianism was regarded as a kind of consciousness.
One means by which this consciousness could be achieved was through
the rejection of compulsory heterosexuality (Rich, 1980). Compulsory
heterosexuality is the assumption that heterosexuality is the natural and
universal form of sexual desire. It suggests that men and women are in-
nately attracted to each other, and leads to an institutionalised inequality
of power between women and men, as well as between heterosexuals
and non-heterosexuals. Adrienne Rich (1980) suggested that heterosex-
uality is not natural but rather a condition into which we are coerced by
the patriarchy in order for men to maintain social, economic and physical
power over women. In other words, through denaturalising heterosex-
uality, Rich set out to expose it as an institution grounded in unequal
power relationships; however, she did this (as did some other feminists)
but naturalising gender in its place.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, representational struggles over
gender and sexual identification, and in particular lesbian sexuality, were
debated and constructed in a number of often contradictory ways that I
cannot unpack adequately here. However, it is important to understand
that gay and lesbian liberation efforts were multiple and divergent. Some
returned to assimilationist attitudes, opting for an end to discrimination
and systematic mainstream recognition on the grounds that they were
respectable citizens whose sexuality was a private concern. Others,
such as sadomasochists, transgender people, butch/femme lesbians, sex-
workers or pornographers, challenged hegemony though public sexual
dissent and consequently were regarded by some lesbian feminists and
other feminists as obscene (see Duggan & Hunter, 1996). Some women-
identified women avoided replicating the oppressive politics of hetero-
sexual hegemony through a rejection of all men, masculinity and even
certain kinds of sex between women, such as sex with a dildo (a phallic-
shaped object), which they saw as male-supremacist and anti-feminist.
Still other women-identified women believed as did liberationists
that gender role rigidity was grounded in male supremacy and oppress-
ing to all people, and thus a deconstruction of these roles would lead to
erotic freedom for everyone.
26 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

Importantly, as Jagose notes, lesbian feminism productively in-


formed queer theory in three crucial ways: its attention to the specificity
of gender, its framing of sexuality as institutional rather than personal,
and its critique of compulsory heterosexuality (1996, p. 57). Indeed,
many of the insights and aspirations of lesbian feminism and the gay
liberation movement have concomitantly inspired much queer thinking
about gender, sexuality, power, difference and utopian visions. However,
as we will now see, a major difference between the liberationist agendas
and what we might call a queer agenda is that queer dispenses with the
universalising goals and grand narratives of sexual freedom, which encap-
sulates the liberationist ideals, in favour of a politics of difference.

Queer Theory

The term queer theory was coined by Teresa de Lauretis (1991). She
initially used it to examine the implicit differences that are less apparent
when we speak of lesbian and gay. For de Lauretis, Queer Theory
conveys a double emphasis on the conceptual and speculative work in-
volved in discourse production, and on the necessary critical work of
deconstructing our own discourses and their constructed silences (p. iv).
Grounded in the deconstructive and denaturalising logics of poststruc-
turalism, queer theory takes up the critique, as set out by Jean-Franois
Lyotard (1984) and others, of truth, knowledge, objectivity and authen-
ticity, and argues that there is no universal human subject especially not
one that can be understood as stable and unified. Instead, as we have seen
in Foucaults (1979) work on sexuality, queer theory proposes that identi-
ties are generated by discourses, regimes of disciplinary knowledge, and
as such they are contingent, grounded in historically and culturally specific
concepts. As Joshua Gamson suggests, queer studies is largely a decon-
structive enterprise, taking apart the view of a self defined by something at
its core, be it sexual desire, race, gender, nation or class (2000, p. 348).
While queer theory has made a significant contribution to contemporary
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 27
9
discourse on race and class, this book is concerned predominantly with
issues of gender and sexual identity, yet it is careful not to completely
ignore other facets of identity.
Queer is not a monolithic category in itself: queerness manifests in
many different ways, and may be done and/or read differently according
to an almost endless combination of feelings, experiences, contexts and
contestations. According to Moe Meyer, queer indicates an onto-
logical challenge to dominant labelling philosophies, especially the
medicalisation of the subject implied by the word homosexual, as well
as a challenge to the discrete gender categories embedded in the divided
phrase gay and lesbian (1994, pp. 12). While queer theory does not
dismiss the lived reality of being male, female, heterosexual, lesbian or
gay, it rejects the didactic power relationships that structure these cate-
gories, and encourages an analysis that embeds the self in institutional
and cultural practices (Seidman, 1993, p. 137) rather than a preoccupa-
tion with identity politics and the assertion of a natural or coherent
lesbian or gay perspective. In the remainder of this chapter, I will unpack
queer thinking in relation to the way discursive systems of power/
knowledge construct identities and review central arguments within
queer theory concerning heteronormativity, performativity, identity and
emergent homonormativities.

Power, Discourse and Heteronormativity

Power, as Foucault (1979) explains it, is the name that one attributes to
a complex strategical situation within a particular society (p. 93), which
organises, institutionalises, moralises and makes lawful certain ways of
living and desiring. Networks of knowledge and power dictate the be-
haviours, values, identities and desires deemed normal, acceptable and
advantageous; thus it is within a matrix of power that normativities are
constructed. Yet normativity cannot be challenged effectively by simply
opposing it; power cannot be so easily argued in terms of a majority vis-

9 For further information on queer theory, race and class, see Muozs Dissidentifi-
cations (1999), Sulllivans chapter, Queer Race, in her Critical Introduction to
Queer Theory (2003); Ian Barnards Queer Race (2004); and Max Kirschs Queer
Theory and Social Change (2000).
28 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

-vis minority logic in other words, who does or does not have power,
and who should or should not have access to power. Gay and lesbian
liberationists attempted to fight repressive knowledge/power systems
by opposing what they believed were the false truths of dominant soci-
ety, arguing for a different set of truths in place of the dominant logic.
However, as Foucault argues, power is not a duality, something held by
a ruling class or an opposition between who is ruling and who is ruled.
Where there is power, Foucault maintains, there is resistance, and yet,
or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority
in relation to power. Rather, power and resistance are not in opposition
but are entangled, and within this system there is always a multiplicity
of points of resistance (p. 95).
Both power and resistance circulate through knowledge, and it is in
discourse that power and knowledge are joined together (p. 100). In
the same way that the hierarchy of power/powerless is a false construct,
so too is it dangerous to consider discourses in terms of what is accept-
able and what is excluded. Instead, Foucault insists that there is a
multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various
strategies (p. 100). Discourse transmits and produces power; it re-
inforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, render it fragile and make
is possible to thwart it (p. 101). Thus to claim unitary minority status in
the face of an oppressive power structure is to ignore the other dis-
courses or power operations that are circulating within the supposedly
cohesive minority itself.
Through the medicalisation of homosexual behaviour, introducing
homosexuality into public consciousness, hegemonic institutions (law and
medicine) inevitably gave rise to discourses on homosexuals as a distinct
group of people. However, it also made it possible for this distinct group
of people to speak for themselves. Foucault argues that attempts to de-
mand legitimisation or naturalisation by this group using the same
institutional discourses are problematic because, while it might be in op-
position to oppression, it is still a form of opposition that exists within the
same oppressive strategy. What is needed instead is strategic change:

We must not expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what strategy they de-
rive from, or what moral division they accompany, or what ideology dominant or
dominated they represent; rather we must question them on the two levels of their
tactical productivity and their strategical integration. (Foucault, 1979, p. 102)
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 29

In this sense, following Foucault, queer is not a singular oppositional


position, but rather evokes a broad range of radical critical responses,
which are constantly questioning the dominant discourses that produce
ever-shifting logics of social and cultural normativity and non-normativity.
The mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality/homosexuality, for example,
places the unnatural or deviant category of homosexuality in binary op-
position to the normalised and thus natural category of heterosexuality,
and it is the discourse of normativity the natural/unnatural, nor-
mal/abnormal binary logic that produces oppressive knowledges and
power relations. Queer instigates its challenge around the structuration of
any action or identity as natural or normal. As Sullivan reiterates:

The punishment or stigmatisation of so-called unnatural actions and identities is


everywhere apparent in our society, and functions to reaffirm or naturalise that
which is held to be normal. And we are all both agents and effects of disciplinary
regimes. (2003, p. 84)

Where liberationists attempted to argue that homosexual sex is just as


natural as heterosexual sex, queer theory and politics argue that while the
act of having sex might be an historical fact, there is indeed no such
thing as a natural or normal way to have it.
This institutionalisation of heterosexuality is called heteronorma-
tivity, and it is a valuable conceptual addition to sexual discourse on the
part of queer theory. According to Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner,
heteronormativity is the institutions, structures of understanding, and
practical orientations that make heterosexuality not only coherent that
is organised as a sexuality but also privileged (1998, p. 565). These
structuring norms organise homosexuality as its binary opposite. Thus,
within heteronormativity, the category of homosexuality works to main-
tain heterosexuality as the primary, correct or normal sexual identity. It
is important to note that heterosexuality and heteronormativity are not
interchangeable terms. Furthermore, heterosexual sex is not necessarily
heteronormative, as heteronormativity is constituted in the regulation of
normative desires and practices favouring monogamy and other natural
sexual relationships and institutions such as marriage and kinship fami-
lies.
The impetus of queer theory is to confuse these sexual binaries and
deconstruct fixed categories on the grounds that fixed identity catego-
ries are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power
30 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

(Gamson, cited in Gamson & Moon, 2004, p. 50). Fixed categories as-
sign power to the majority by organising society into central and
marginal groups. Those who construct the ideal centre of mainstream
Western society what Audre Lorde (1990) calls a mythical norm
can aptly be described as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Chris-
tian and financially secure (p. 282). And those who reside in the
margins are scrutinised for their deviation from the social, moral and
political codes purported by the centre. Queer theory seeks to expose the
false truths that have constructed boundaries of centrality and margi-
nality, and have normalised the centre by revealing the performative
nature of gender and sexuality and the fluidity of identity. As Shane
Phelan proposes, by challenging the boundary lines as well as the con-
tent of the territories they mark, queer work calls each of us to attend to
the uncertainties and incompletion in our identity (1997, p. 3). In con-
clusion, queer theory does not call for a secure space within the margins
for the articulation of deviant gender or sexuality; instead, it seeks to
disrupt or trouble all boundaries and identities as part of a large-scale
egalitarian project.

Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Performativity

In 1990, poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler published what was


to become a highly influential book entitled Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity, considered by many as one of queer
theorys foundation texts. In Gender Trouble Butler proposes that gender
is in no way natural or stable, but rather is constructed by a series of re-
peated gestures understood as performative acts. She says:

Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally constructed, are performative in the sense that
the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufac-
tured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the
gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the
various acts which constitute its reality words, acts and gestures, articulated and en-
acted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion
discursively maintained for the purpose of the regulation of sexuality within the obliga-
tory frame of reproductive heterosexuality. (1990, p. 136, emphasis in original)
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 31

According to Butler, gender is discursively produced by social institu-


tions of knowledge that shape our understanding of gender as an outward
sign of biological sex. Gender discourse the ways in which we describe
masculinity and femininity and the repetitive bodily enactments that we
associate with lexicons of gender are, in fact, all that gender is. Gender
essence is an illusion, and it is only through discursive re-enforcement
and repetitive performance that gender appears innate. Ontologies of
gender are fictions created by disciplinary regimes for the purpose of
normalising and limiting gender performance to benefit the appearance
of heterosexuality and gender polarity as natural:

Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis: the tacit collective
agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fic-
tions is obscured by the credibility of those productions and the punishments that
attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction compels our belief in its ne-
cessity and naturalness. The historical possibilities materialized through various
corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions
alternately embodied and deflected under duress. (Butler, 1990, p. 140)

In simpler terms, the two distinct gender categories of masculinity and


femininity that we have come to accept as reality are nothing more than
fictions that, albeit unwittingly, we are coerced into performing on our
bodies. Those who do not perform as they should risk punishment for
appearing to have an unnatural gender identity that is, a gender identity
that conflicts with or hyperbolises the sexed body.
Furthermore, it is a culturally and historically specific performance of
gender that informs natural gender identities and ways of being and
knowing our gendered selves. The cultural and historic specificity of gen-
der suggests that the ways in which we do gender are variable, thus what
constitutes proper masculinity and femininity will vary according to
social, cultural and temporal contexts. There is no gender identity behind
the expressions of gender, says Butler. Identity is performatively con-
stituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results (1990, p.
25). Butler contends that we have no essential gender identity that informs
how we behave; instead, how we behave (our performance of gender) is
all that our gender identity is. Therefore, gender does not express a bio-
logical essence, but instead is an effect of power.
Sexuality, too, is performatively constructed, argues Butler:
32 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

If sexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations, then the pos-
tulation of a normative sexuality that is before, outside, or beyond power is a
cultural impossibility The replication of heterosexual constructs in non-hetero-
sexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called
heterosexual original. Thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather,
as copy is to copy. The parodic repetition of the original reveals the original to
be nothing other than a parody of the idea of the natural and the original. (Butler,
1990, pp. 3031, emphasis in original)

Here, Butler is arguing that any notion of an original thus natural or


normal gender or sexual identity is a fiction because there is no ori-
ginal. Instead, these concepts are made intelligible via a matrix of power:
the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990, 1997). The logic purported by the
heterosexual matrix suggests that our biologically categorised body de-
termines the expression of gender and, in turn, gender determines the
bodies/objects we are normatively permitted to desire. In other words:
man = masculine = attracted to women/femininity; and woman = femi-
nine = attracted to men/masculinity. Gender norms fundamentally
stabilise and maintain heterosexuality. Thus homosexuality is often at-
tributed to failed or misconstrued gender roles. Heteronormativity
positions the gay male as feminine because his gender non-normativity is
generative of his sexual non-normativity and thus essentialises the het-
erosexual males masculinity. Similarly, the lesbian female is often
perceived as masculine because she too normalises societys construc-
tion of the heterosexual woman as feminine.
While biological sex most commonly is understood as either male or
female, Butler also questions the organisation of people into sexed cate-
gories, suggesting that like gender the sexed body is also a cultural
construct, the consequence being that the distinction between sex and
gender turns out to be no distinction at all (1990, p. 7). As Chris Beas-
ley clarifies this with reference to Butlers (1990) work:

Gender is typically interpreted as derived from the body. Bodily (anatomical)


sex is seen as pre-dating culture, as eternal sex, the eternal male female binary.
However, in Butlers analysis, the body is also a gendered performance which is
socially constituted as the essence of gender, and its an intact, untouched founda-
tion, and is all the more culturally powerful for this interpretation as being outside
culture. Indeed, in her view, socially constituted gender creates anatomical sex, ra-
ther than the other way around, in the sense that the former makes the latter relevant
in social practice. And if gender does not follow automatically from anatomical sex,
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 33

then it is not axiomatic that gender refers only to the two categories designated in
the binary men/women distinction. (2005, p. 101)

The existence of ambiguously sexed or intersex bodies points to an-


other category of body that contests the supposedly stable binary of sex
itself. Moreover, since gender is not fixed to the sexed body, we are able
to perform our gender in multiple and conflicting ways that challenge the
distinction of man/woman. To do gender in contrary ways, suggests
Butler (1990), is to cause gender trouble. The power of Butlers theory
of gender performativity is its ability to reveal that, as individuals, we
are not locked into gender roles; there is no natural way to desire, and
there is no natural way to perform identity upon our bodies.
In following chapters, I discuss in detail some of the performance-
based methods employed by queers that attempt to reveal gender as
performance. Drag performance, being the primary example of this, is
offered by Butler as testimony that all gender identities are a mlange of
concealed norms and performed acts. However, one must be careful not
conflate these types of conscious performance with performativity. As
Butler herself argues: Performativity is neither free play nor theatrical
self-presentation; nor can it be simply equated with performance (1993,
p. 95). Rather, performativity is a precondition of the subject, a forced
and repetitious performance of norms sustained by the constraints soci-
ety applies to those norms that effectively endorse some sexual and
gender practices and outlaw others. In contrast, performance is a condi-
tion of the subject, a chosen enactment that we put on at will:

In no sense can it be concluded that the part of gender that is performed is therefore the
truth of gender; performance as bounded act is distinguished from performativity
insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and
exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the per-
formers will or choice; further, what is performed works to conceal, if not to
disavow, what remains opaque, unconscious, unperformable. The reduction of per-
formativity to performance would be a mistake. (Butler, 1993, p. 234)

Thus performativity is not a voluntary act, while performance (for the


most part) is voluntary. According to Sullivan, the distinction between
voluntarism and anti-voluntarism is often understood by commentators
as the difference between performance and performativity respectively
(2003, p. 89).
34 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

While the constitutions of performance are clearly defined by the


will to act, interpreting a performance or the intent of the performer re-
mains highly contestable. As Sullivan suggests, all performances and
all attempts at subversion will be ambiguous and open to multiple
meanings (2003, p. 92). The potential for a performance to subvert or
expose the rigidity and unnaturalness of gender and sexuality will be a
fundamental measurement of its success at queering normativity. How-
ever, the multiple potential of meanings suggests that the measurement
of its success will always remain ambiguous, thus the political and sub-
versive potential of performance is always contextual.

Queer Identities and Homonormativities

Queer theory undermines the binary logic that constructs identities as


oppositional and exclusionary, and seeks as its primary strategy the de-
naturalisation of identity categories. As Phelan notes:

Queer theory [has] pointed to the fundamental indeterminacy of identities of


inside/outside communities, of masculine/feminine, of homo/hetero/bi, of male/female,
and of racial and ethnic categories. Ultimately queer theorys target is identity itself the
assumption of unity or harmony or transparency within persons or groups. (1997, p. 2)

Queer theory says we do not have to confine our identificatory practices


to the limited patterns of behaviour like those insisted upon when the
fixed labelling of a sexual identity is heterosexual, lesbian or gay, and
when a gender identity is labelled either feminine or masculine. In fact,
queer manifests in opposition to such bourgeois models of identity, re-
futing definition based upon material sexual practices. In this space of
refusal, queer sexualities then emerge as a series of improvised per-
formances whose threat lies in the denial of any social identity derived
from participation in those performances (Meyer, 1994, p. 3). Queer
displaces the notion of self as exclusive, abiding and continuous in fa-
vour of a concept of self as performative, improvisational and dis-
continuous, constructed through the repetition of stylised acts. It
understands identity as constructed categories of self-knowledge, capa-
ble of shifting over time. Borrowing the Deleuzian idea of becoming,
queer theory explores the dynamism of desire and mutability of life it-
self. So if queer is improvised, unfixed, processional, troubling and, as
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 35

some have argued, implicitly unknowable, what does it mean to call one-
self queer?
Many of the people I interviewed as part of this project employ the
term queer as a way to describe themselves, while others choose to mix
up terminology, switching between queer, lesbian and/or gay (among
others). Therefore, when I talk about queers in a collective sense I am
not naming and describing a cohesive group of people. The usefulness of
queer is that it marks a flexible space of expression and signification,
and those who occupy this space will not necessarily understand them-
selves to be queer in the same way that others who also occupy this
space. As Sedgwick points out, queer can be understood as:

[T]he open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses
and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyones gender, of
anyones sexuality arent made (or cant be made) to signify monolithically
Anyones use of the word queer about themselves means differently from their
use of it about someone else gay and lesbian still present themselves (how-
ever delusively) as objective, empirical categories governed by empirical rules of
evidence Queer seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a per-
sons undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and
filiation. (1993, pp. 89)

By calling oneself queer, one is not signifying a specifically inclusive or


exclusive identity, but rather calling attention to identity as non-essential
and provisional, moving away from the totalising effects of categories
such as woman or lesbian. When identifying as a queer woman, for ex-
ample, it is perhaps better to think of this as signifying a certain way of
doing the identity of woman and/or lesbian rather than something that
is a specific or bounded identity itself. Thus Halperin (1995) suggests
that instead of thinking of queer strictly as an identity, it might be better
to think of it as a positionality that is available to anyone who aims to
subvert hegemony, one that can be taken up by those who have been
marginalised owing to their desires and/or because of their inability to
locate themselves within a specific fixed identity category.
Noreen Giffney explains queer as signifying the messiness of iden-
tity a resistance to identity categories or easy categorisation, marking
10
a disidentification from the rigidity with which identity categories con-

10 Disidentification can be thought of as a performative mode of resistance to


normalising discourses and dominant logics of identification (see Muoz, 1999).
36 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

tinue to be enforced and from beliefs that such categories are


immovable (2009, pp. 23). Queer is a politicised rubric that asserts
gender and sexual multiplicity and fluidity, and is thus available to sig-
nify a range of non-normative gender and sexual subjectivities, practices
and relationships of desire that defy the moral codes and normalising
regimes imposed by the dominant society. Such subjectivities, practices
and relationships that queer may signify include lesbian, gay, bisexual,
pansexual, omnisexual, asexual, butch, femme, androgyne, genderqueer,
intersex, transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, fetishist, polyamory, non-
monogamy, sex work, practices of bondage, discipline, sadism or maso-
chism (BDSM), or other radical sexual practitioners such as leathermen
or dyke daddies among other things. As Alexander Doty (1993) has ar-
gued, queer can be conceptualised as something different, something
more than lesbian and gay: the intersecting or combining of more than
one specific form of nonstraight sexuality (1993, p. xvi).
Of course, it is important to note that the deconstructive tendencies
of queer are not wholly celebrated. While unpacking the numerous con-
testations to queer theory is not something I have either the space or
inclination to do here, I feel that it is only fair to signal this and offer
readers the opportunity to engage with critical literatures. A number of
scholars have waged critical assaults on queer theory, arguing that it is
jargon laden and hierarchical, dominated by North American (and to a
lesser extent British) theories and thinkers who fail to consider the con-
textual specificities of other locales. Some have suggested that queer
theory has failed (Bawer, 1996), or that the time has come to move into a
transdisciplinary post-queer critique (Ruffolo, 2009). Others contend that
it does little to change social inequalities and debases collective political
action by destabilising the subject and undermining sexual discourse
(Edwards, 1998; Weeks, 2000; Taylor, Y., 2010). Moreover, it is said to
sometimes deny the lived reality of women, lesbians and trans people
(Jeffreys, 1993; Richardson et al., 2006; Stryker, 2006), and offers little
in the way of thinking about identity beyond textual analysis (Escoffier,
1990; Plummer, 1998). I am mindful of such criticism and I agree with
those scholars who stress the necessity and importance of empirical work
on queerness. The cultural styles and artefacts that I examine in this
book say a great deal about the lives of the people who make and pro-
duce them, and as such this research pays equally close attention to the
lived realities of makers, producers and consumers of queer culture and
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 37

their negotiation of gender and sexual difference in and through cultural


participation.
A final distinctive point of queerness to which I attend in this chap-
ter has to do with its contestation of the mainstreaming of lesbian and
gay culture and identity politics. In relation to music, extended discus-
sions of the distinctions between mainstream gay culture and
alternative queer cultures are presented in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. How-
ever, for now let us considered the concept of homonormativity.
In the wake of assimilationist agenda, many queer activists argue
that the call for civil rights and legislative gains gay marriage, child
adoption, military service, welfare and pension benefits has forced the
mainstreaming of gay and lesbian identity. In other words, in order to
gain equal standing within these social institutions, lesbian and gay
identities have been normalised. The gay mainstream, argues Eric Rofes,
present[s] a sanitized vision of our people and replace[s] butch/femme
dykes with Heather and her two mommies, and kinky gay men with do-
mestic partner wedding cakes (1998, p. 204). Instead of advocating for a
pluralistic queer culture, certain forms of sexual non-normativity become
privileged at the expense of others. Those that are most privileged and
gain the most status are the ones that most closely replicate heteronorma-
tive ideals: wealthy, monogamous, same-sex couples. For example,
Warner argues that marriage is a vehicle for a great load of privileges,
and because it confers status that has a great deals of normative force, it is
an inherently discriminatory system. Warner goes on to say that he finds
the position of gay marriage advocates to be highly problematic, as they
still pretend that marriage is just a private choice, or a personal right, as
though participating in this institution has no consequence for others
(cited in Jagose, 2000, para. 8).
These new individualistic and bourgeois neoliberal sexual politics
that privilege certain kinds of same-sex relations are termed homonor-
mativity. In Lisa Duggans critique of neoliberalism, The Twilight of
Equality? (2003), she outlines homonormativity as:

a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institu-
tions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a semi-
mobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticised gay culture anchored in
domesticity and consumption (p. 50).
38 CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics

Radical queer activists argue against the homogenisation of gay identity


and the acceptance of liberal gains within the private, consumer sphere.
Queers must remain resistant to such normalising effects, argues gay
shame activist Mattilda (aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore), because assimi-
lation is leading to the increasing marginalisation of queers and
potentially may result in the erasure of certain forms of queer culture:

A ravenous gay mainstream seeks control of the very ways we represent our
own identities. The radical potential of queer identity lies in remaining outside in
challenging and seeking to dismantle the sickening culture that surrounds us. (Bern-
stein Sycamore, 2004, p. 5, emphasis in original)

Writing queer social theory and textual analysis, and partaking in direct
political action are useful ways to challenge assumptions, dismantle
cultural norms and instigate radical transgression. However, perform-
ance and certainly music-related performances also generates radical
contestations to normalisation and enables the transformative politics of
queer possibilities. In his study of Latina performance, Muoz (1999)
argues that minoritarian performance labors to make worlds more
than simply views or perspectives; [queer performances] are oppositional
ideologies that function as critiques of oppressive regimes of truth that
subjugate minoritarian people (p. 195). Queer world-making perform-
ances are disidentificatory in that they not only seek to dismantle
majoritarian cultures; rather, argues Muoz, they also use majoritarian
culture as raw material to make a new world (p. 196). By using per-
formance as a performative strategy to tear down and then queerly
rebuild the world, Muoz suggests that these disidentificatory perform-
ances generate ideological transformation and map space for the
emergence of oppositional counter-publics. This is an important idea to
which I return in detail in the next chapter.
In summary, queer as it is employed herein signifies a twisting,
lampooning and dismantling of hegemonic culture. Resistant to both
heteronormativity and neoliberal liberal sexual politics, queer executes
its critique of normalising logics from the social and cultural margins. Of
course, what counts as, or can be read as, queer identity, action or object
is dependent not only on history and culture, but also on personal experi-
ence, and as such queerness is always mutable, contentious and quite
often contradictory. The potentiality of the queer project is signified by
its intensely personal, partial and perverse qualities, where identities
CHAPTER 1: Queer Identities, Theories and Politics 39

become not so much categories to be occupied, owned, protected or re-


jected, but spaces to be navigated, revisited, revised and elided on a
moment-to-moment basis (Giffney, 2009, pp. 67). Queer navigations,
challenges, troubling actions and disidentificatory performances take
many forms and pervade multiple genres of cultural expression. Looking
through the lens of music and performance, this will become increas-
ingly evident in the second part of this book, where we will explore
queer cultural histories, practices and people who are in conflict with and
attempt to calve an existence beyond both straight and gay social norms
and mainstream cultural conventions. In the next chapter, however, we
shall turn to thinking about music production and consumption as a re-
source for doing queer identity work and as a catalyst for queer scene-
building and world-making.
CHAPTER 2

MUSIC AND IDENTITY


Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

The task of defining music and delimiting its constituent characteristics


has been problematic for musicians, audiences and scholars for centu-
ries. Definitions of what constitutes music are both culturally and
historically variable and subject to logics of taste and value. Music,
understood in its most basic form as organised sound, is located in cul-
tures worldwide, and manifests itself in multiple styles and genres, each
with characteristics that extend far beyond what is simply heard. In fact,
for many people, and as it is situated in this study, music constitutes
something far greater than sound objects. As sociologist Tia DeNora
suggests, music may serve as a resource for utopian imaginations, for
alternative worlds and institutions, and it may be used strategically to
presage new worlds (2000, p. 159). DeNoras idea foregrounds the no-
tion of queer world-making to which I will return later.
Much more than a static object or product, music is a collection of
interconnected activities and texts employed as strategic resources in the
production and transmission of self-narrative and collective belonging.
As Nicholas Cook so succinctly states:

In todays world, deciding what music to listen to is a significant part of deciding


and announcing to people not just who you want to be but who you are.
Music is a very small word to encompass something that takes as many forms as
there are cultural or subcultural identities. And like all small words, it brings a dan-
ger with it. When we speak of music, we are easily lead to believe that there is
something that corresponds to that word But when we speak of music we are
really talking about a multiplicity of activities and experiences (1998, p. 6, em-
phasis in original)

Popular musics in particular are intricate systems of social practice and


process usually accompanied by lyrics, dance, fashion, video and other
media texts, and thus popular music necessarily incorporates all of these
and acknowledges that it is not only sonic, but also visual, kinetic and
42 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

verbal modes of signification that make it such an appealing and com-


plex social phenomenon. Popular musics, argues Lawrence Grossberg,
cannot be studied in isolation, either from other forms and practices of
popular culture or from the structures and practices of everyday life
(2002, p. 27). The idea of music as it is employed throughout this book
thus extends beyond the sound object itself. I am concerned specifically
with how music functions as a strategic resource in the reflexive deriva-
tion and performance of queer identities a practice and process that
necessarily are examined in relation to both the spectacular and the quo-
tidian as a multi-textual site for meaning-making.
Popular music and its associated subcultural and scenic sites have
long operated as critical modalities of symbolic resistance to cultural
hegemonies (Hall & Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1991; Willis, 1978). As a
common site of rebellion, popular music meanings and styles frequently
emerge as a polemic against dominant notions of morality or in tension
with stylistic commodification and mainstream sensibilities. Providing
a framework for self-making and social action, popular music remains a
contested realm in which multiple and often contradictory meanings cir-
culate, and to study it is to gain insight into the way people construct
their identities, enact their political and social values, and live their lives
in particular times and places. Concomitantly, to understand both the
musics of queer subjects and how queers have coalesced around par-
ticular musics can tell us much about sexual agency, advocacy and the
stylistic modes of queer resistance and survival.
The purpose of this chapter, then, is to establish a conceptual
framework for understanding musics significance to queer identity
work. To begin, I discuss music in relation to the ways in which it pro-
vides a context for the formation and elaboration of self-identity. I go on
to establish musics significance to the project of queer world-making by
reflecting on some of the ways in which music has been theorised as a
queer pursuit, not only connecting music to gender and sexual identity
and desire, but specifically locating its historical significance as a re-
source in queer identity-formation. With specific reference to
subcultures and scenes, I then review notable attempts at theorising ways
in which music and extra-musical style are used to organise and distin-
guish social groupings. Finally, I discuss the need to rethink musics role
in structuring queer social relations and propose some theoretical possi-
bilities for how we might do this.
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 43

Making Selves and Mapping Sexualities

In modern society, music is ever present, used for entertainment, for


ritual, to influence consumer behaviour, to pacify angry crowds and to
incite armies to war. While music serves these and many other purposes,
my primary interest here is in musics ability to assist individuals to es-
tablish, develop and negotiate a sense of identity. Music is a dynamic
cultural practice that can be individually or collectively made, performed
and consumed. Regardless of whether a person is a maker, performer or
consumer of music, music contributes significantly to our identity work.
According to DeNora, a sense of self is locatable in music. Musical
materials provide terms and templates for elaborating self-identity for
identitys identification (2000, p. 68). Similarly, social psychologists
David Hargreaves, Dorothy Miell and Raymond MacDonald (2002) ac-
knowledge that music is a particularly important communication device
for self-expression and development, allowing us to construct new iden-
tities, and express and transform existing ones. We use music to regulate
our moods and behaviours, and to produce a desirable image of our-
selves both for ourselves and for others: Our musical tastes and prefer-
ences can form an important statement of our values and attitudes, and
composers and performers use their music to express their own distinc-
tive views of the world (p. 1).
The production and consumption of music are performative in that
they constitute an assemblage of identity-markers, and it is at the site of
performance where Butlers thinking about sex, gender and sexuality
intersects most poignantly with theories of music and identity. As Susan
Cusick explains, performances of a gendered and sexed self are partly,
but certainly not entirely, performances of and through the body; like
these, music too is partly (but not entirely) the culturally intelligible
performance of bodies Musical performances, then, are often the ac-
companiment of ideas performed through bodies by the performance of
bodies (1999, p. 27, emphasis in original). Music is a way for us to
translate, perform and intensify through our bodies, intimate thoughts,
feelings and desires of the body. The act of creating and performing
music whether creating or performing it ourselves or listening to it, and
thus performing musical meaning-making operations for ourselves
44 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

(Frith, 1996) results not only in the creation and performance of


sounds but also in the creation and performance of subjectivities.
Acknowledging musics role in self-structuration is, in Foucaudian
terms, to make sense of music as a technology of the self. According to
Foucault (1997a), such technologies permit individuals to effect by
their own means, or with the help of others a certain number of oper-
ations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and ways of
being (p. 225). These operations transform subjects, assisting us in the
attainment of desirable states of being while also providing us with a
means to position ourselves in relation to the constitutions of power and
truth as they operate within disciplinary and discursive systems. As
Judith Peraino points out, technologies of the self are both ascetic and
ethical, entailing exercise[s] of the self on the self and tak[ing] into
account positive or negative feedback accorded by the moral codes or
acceptable ranges of conduct produced in the given matrix of truth and
power (2003, p. 435). Thus, for Foucault, subjectivity is mutable: a
product of institutionalised domination and the potential for one to exert
resistance towards domination, striving towards an aesthetic goal of life
as a work of art. In his words: From the idea that the self is not given to
us, I think that there is only one practical consequence: we have to create
ourselves as a work of art (1997b, p. 262). According to Peraino, Fou-
caults integration of ethics and aesthetics:

holds promise for an account of music as a self-practice that cuts across yet engages
symbolic systems, and instigates ethical questions of individual conduct vis--vis
discipline and desire within or against in-place social and symbolic structures
(2006, p. 12).

Just as I illustrated in my autoethnographic introduction, music is one


way in which we, as aesthetic agents, can facilitate exercises of self-
(re)creation upon ourselves while negotiating the self we are creating in
relation to normative codes of conduct.
While musics affect works potently at the level of self-identifica-
tion, the social function of music is inextricable from this. Simon Frith
argues that the interplay between personal absorption into music and
the sense that it is, nevertheless, something out there, something public,
is what makes music so important in the cultural placing of the individ-
ual in the social (1987, p. 139). Popular music especially has been an
important resource in forging collective identities for working-class
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 45

youth in a post-war Western context (Willis, 1978). Racial and ethnic


minorities, too, collectively express their differences in and through
musical practices and consumption (Bennett, 2000). Music, says Frith:

can stand for, symbolize and offer the immediate experience of collective identity.
Other cultural forms painting, literature, design can articulate and show off
shared values and pride, but only music can make you feel them. (1987, p. 140, em-
phasis in original)

It is the premise of this book that gender and sexual identities also col-
lectively articulate subjectivities in and through music. Moreover,
musics ability to locate the individual in the social has the potential to
provide marginalised people such as queers with a means of transgress-
ing the public/private dichotomy that has long operated as a means of
sexual repression. Music is used extensively in queer identity work to
contest gender and sexual norms, and as I demonstrate in Chapters 4, 5
and 6, this particular function of music is especially important to queers
because it accommodates emotional, physical and sexual expressions
that may be unavailable to them in other expressive forms or in other
aspects of daily life.

Music and Queerness

Music can be queer. It can speak of that which is beyond the normal and
signify that which is often invisible. In her introduction to Feminine
Endings, Susan McClary asserts that music is very often concerned
with the arousing and channelling of desire, with mapping patterns
though the medium of sound that resemble those of sexuality (1991,
p. 8). In other words, music allows us to explore and circulate emotions
and pleasures, to immerse ourselves in the ecstatic, to let go, to speed up,
to slow down, to be overcome and to climax. Moreover, music may be
considered particularly accommodating to queer expressions of gender
and sexuality because of its theatrical and fanciful qualities, its mystery
and miasma (Koestenbaum, 2001, pp. 189190). Reaffirming this no-
tion in his comparison between music and films accommodation of
queerness, Boze Hadleigh points out that popular music forms indulge
all manner of gestures, get-ups, accessories, poses and public an-
nouncements. Sex and reputations are a lot more fluid on the musical
46 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

scale than on thin, potentially jagged celluloid (1991, p. 8). In music,


you can get away with exaggerated and artificial effect; you can try
on different modes of self-presentation; you can come out and reveal
yourself in music, lessening (but not eliminating) the risk of exposing
yourself to and being punished by those who would destroy queer possi-
bility. These possibilities are available because music is a somewhat
mysterious and implicit cultural form (Brett, 1994b; Koestenbaum, 2001;
Peraino, 2006). It is for this reason, argue Sophie Fuller and Lloyd
Whitesell, that music has provided the accompaniment for confronta-
tions between disparate conventions of social propriety in general, and in
particular, for encounters between diverse idiolects of sexual identity
(2002, p. 12).
Beyond music being a conduit for the performance of identity, there
are some striking parallels between the experiences of queerness and
music. Like queerness, music is often constructed as dangerous, subver-
sive and deviant those who make it, play it and intensely participate in
its gratification and circulation of pleasure are often accused, again like
queers, of being weak in moral fortitude, for they pose a potential threat
to regimes of the normal. As the pioneering gay musicologist Philip
Brett once said: All musicians, we must remember, are faggots in the
parlance of the male locker room (1994a, p. 371, emphasis in original).
While certain popular music genres and subcultures have, over time, es-
tablished their own regulatory regimes of hetero-patriarchy (as I discuss
in Chapters 5 and 6), there is certainly truth to his claim. Twentieth cen-
tury euphemisms that interconnect musicality and queerness, such as a
friend of Dorothy or hes a little bit musical were once commonly
used to describe a persons (usually a males) suspect homosexuality. A
friend of Dorothy makes reference to Judy Garlands character in the
1939 film musical The Wizard of Oz, and plays on the established
knowledge of Garlands iconic position within homosexual culture dur-
ing the mid- to late twentieth century. More abstractly, the term musi-
cal in the phrase hes a little bit musical is intended to replace the term
queer; thus musicality colloquially insinuates a recognisable perform-
ance of queer male identity. The equation of music and queerness has
longer historical roots. For example, in the English novel Despised and
Rejected (1988), by lesbian writer Rose Allatini (who first published the
book in 1918 under the name A.T. Fitzroy), the term musical is used as
a coded implication of her characters homosexuality. Similarly, Bretts
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 47

(2002) work on the history of musicology and sexuality shows how,


during the first half of the twentieth century, Tchaikovskys sexual
nervousness (his homosexuality) was theorised in relation to his musi-
cal disposition.
Musics capacity to construct, express, stimulate and channel sexual
urges and desires especially queer desires renders it both a dynamic
mode of sexual signification and, for the puritanical, a threatening agent of
moral corruption: From Plato to Artusi to Hanslick, anxieties about
musics power have been elaborated through metaphors of gender, sexual
difference, and sexual allure, claims Susan Cusick (1999, p. 478). Brett,
too, argues that music has often been considered a dangerous substance,
an agent of moral ambiguity always in danger of bestowing deviant status
upon its practitioner (1994b, p. 11). Since the eighteenth century, music
has been conflated with woman, and the hysteria and weakness she sym-
bolises within the patriarchal order; thus to fear music constituted what
Richard Leppert calls a fear of feminine eruption (1993, p. 69) of irra-
tional, unbridled and uninhibited desire. There has long existed in the
West at least a degree of anxiety regarding the effect of music upon
ones sexuality, as music potentially encourages one to overstep the
bounds of modesty and deference (1993, p. 69).
Remnants of musically mediated sexual anxieties are littered
throughout the history of Western popular musics too. Jazz, for example,
induced moral panic due to its supposed primitive sexuality, jungle
passions and provocation of interracial sex and immorality (Starr &
Waterman, 2010). Since its beginnings in the 1950s, rock music and its
stars have regularly inspired moral outrage, making it a target of moral
reformists vigorously opposed to the blatant sexuality and phallocen-
trism performed on stage by musicians such as Elvis Presley and Mick
Jagger (Frith & McRobbie, 1990). Moreover, one only has to consider
the phrase sex, drugs and rocknroll, which insinuates that rock music
propels its subjects towards hedonism, immoral and illegal acts. Add to
this the fact that the term, rocknroll was originally a euphemism for
sex and it becomes easier to understand how embedded sexuality is in
this form. Panic and moral opposition to popular music icons are still
evident today. Consider, for example, the neoconservative gnashing of
teeth that surrounds the likes of metal performer Marilyn Manson and
his androgynous gender-distorting costumes and supposed incitation of
violence, drug use and sexual obscenities. Or consider the more recent
48 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

pop sensation Lady Gaga and her presentation as hyper-femme, hyper-


sexual and a rumoured hermaphrodite. Indeed, spectacular musicalised
manifestations of peculiar, strange, queer embodied obscenities like
Manson or Gaga are considered especially dangerous, disturbing and
subversive because they pre-empt, perform and circulate a range of new
identificatory and disidentificatory possibilities that lie outside of the
given codes of gender and sexual identity and pleasure codes upon
which society relies for the maintenance of order and power. And they
do so spectacularly and on a grand scale in the most popular and populist
forms of music culture: the pop charts.
Indeed, according to Jacques Attali, musicians threaten the social
order with their visions and practices because music is prophecy
(1985, p. 11). Music heralds the future; it is a harbinger of change and
speaks to new realities. If this is so, then it is entirely possible that queer
musics anticipate new queer futures. In other words, the ways in which
individuals and communities structure and imbue meaning in music pro-
vides a way of understanding how people and communities also structure
themselves. Thinking about queer music, and by extension queer coales-
cence around particular musics, offers an insight into queer organisations
of subjectivity, agency, community and activism. Through musical con-
testations of the majoritarian public sphere, we can read the potentialities
of queer world-making, where music instigates a transgression of the
limitations placed upon queerness in what Muoz calls the prison
house of the here and now, and allows us to imagine collectively and
anticipate the possibilities of queer futures. In his writings on queer uto-
pia and futurity, Muoz asserts:

We must strive, in the face of the here and nows totalizing rendering of reality, to
think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of
this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream
and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately
new worlds Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queer-
ness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, fre-
quently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the
ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness.
(2009, p. 1, emphasis in original)

Music, whether we are making it, performing it or listening to it, assists


subjects to transcend the regularity of the everyday. As a temporal art
form, music literally propels us through time and alters our experience of
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 49

ourselves across time and space. If we think of music as something that


exists only in the continual present of its unfolding (Malbon, 1999,
p. 76), then perhaps it is easier to understand how music may provoke a
dynamic, forward-dawning, unfixed and timeless idea of selfhood: a self
that exists outside what Halberstam terms the heteronormative temporal
frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity, risk/safety, and
inheritance (2005, p. 6). This is a self that can be (re)imagined, assem-
bled and presented to the world via a meaning-making and signifying
system music which, like queerness, is already outside of normative
sexuality and sexual restraint. In other words, both music and queerness
bring forth new organisations of the self and our world. And to think
about queerness through music and to think about music through queer-
ness theoretically enables one to enlighten the other in ways that have
not yet been explored.
More than any other form, argues Aaron Lecklider, music par-
ticularly popular musics from the twentieth century onwards has pro-
vided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual
identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated (2006, p. 117). Indeed,
popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been a
dynamic site of gender and sexual oddity, and a productive site of queer-
ness, providing numerous opportunities for people to explore alternative
forms of self-presentation and to seek definition. With these parallels
between queerness and music in mind, I want to argue further that music
has played a crucial role in the fashioning of queer identities, the theatre
of queer memory and the maintenance of queer culture more broadly.
Moreover, music is a queer tactic of survival. Through music, queer
bodies, subjectivities, desires and social relations are frequently con-
structed, affected and performed, and queer coalescence around particu-
lar musics has made space for, and temporally mapped otherness in,
aggressively heteronormative cultural landscapes. Through music,
queers have made and remade worlds. Perhaps, to non-queer ears and
eyes, these worlds are barely recognisable as scenes and perhaps unrec-
ognisable as anything as coherent as a subcultural genre or form like,
for example, metal, hip hop or punk. But while we dont flick through
catalogues in record stores or scroll iTunes browsing the queer section,
it can also be said that there is no style or genre that does not contain
elements of queerness. The musical aspects of queer world-making are
often overlooked by popular music scholars, subcultural theorists and
50 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

even though to a lesser extent queer theorists themselves. Instead,


what we more commonly find are one-off accounts of the more spec-
tacular renditions of queerness for example, David Bowies gender-
bending style of glam rock (Hawkins, 2009) or k.d. langs queer pres-
ence in country music (Bruzzi, 1997) or Deep Dickollectives affirma-
tion of black queer identity through hip hop (Halberstam, 2005;
Dunning, 2009). Moreover, because queerness lacks stylistic continuity
and genre parameters, subcultural theory has tended to collapse exami-
nations of music and sexuality into pre-existing and cohesive logics of
cultural style, creating overly simplified queer versions of pre-existing,
otherwise straight forms: merely placing the queer as an interjection or
episode in otherwise heterocentric subcultural groupings. In popular mu-
sic and subcultural studies in particular, there is little recognition of the
stylistically and musically promiscuous histories of queerness and mini-
mal attempts to understand how, collectively, these constitute significant
acts of queer world-making.
While, as I established earlier, music is a productive conveyer of
sexual expression, particularly queer expression, I will now argue that
we are yet to see the application of a useful theoretical model that ex-
plains the social significance of popular music in queer terms, and ap-
propriately deals with the histories and logics of queer sexual style in
both local and translocal contexts. In what follows, I suggest that a major
reason for a lack of suitably nuanced understanding of queer music and
subcultural activity directly relates to the limitations of subcultural
theory itself. That is to say that subcultural theory has thus far been un-
able to deal with queerness as a subjectivity, a stylistic modality and as a
form of resistance at the foundation of stylistic interpretation. Instead of
placing sexual differences, queer self-fashioning and world-making at
the centre of collective musical organisations, subcultural theory has
tended to relegate queerness to the periphery. As Halberstam suggests in
her work on queer subcultures, they need to be reckoned with on [their]
own terms (2005, p. 154).
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 51

Popular Music, Subcultures and Queer Scenes

As I outlined in the introduction, this book is concerned with tracing


queer musical and stylistic histories, and with examining how queer
identities are fashioned and expressed through music. It is also con-
cerned with understanding how popular music is used to mark and regu-
late queer scenes, and with how queer world-making occurs in and
through music and style. In order to put these aims in further context, I
now turn my attention to subcultural theory and its relationship to sexual
style and queer musics. Here, I offer a critique of relative theories relat-
ing to the social significance of popular music and extra-musical style,
and argue for a more nuanced understanding of sexualities and their role
in shaping relationships between popular music and (sub)cultural
counter-publics.
In the early 1970s, cultural theorists based at the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) borrowed and re-
worked the notion of subculture, shifting the application of the term from
studies of juvenile delinquency, local gangs, crime and deviance origi-
nally employed by sociologists from the Chicago School (e.g. see
Whyte, 1943) to youth cultural styles of the British post-Second World
War period. The CCCS subcultural model, most famously developed in
Stuart Hall and Tony Jeffersons landmark text Resistance Through
Rituals (1976), sought to explain the behaviours of style-based youth
cultures such as teddy boys, mods, rockers, skinheads, bikers and punks
which had been developing rapidly in Britain since the 1950s. Imbued
with both neo-Marxist structuralism and labelling theory, and tied spe-
cifically to the social conditions of young, white, working-class males,
subcultures were theorised by the CCCS as sites of resistance that em-
erged as symbolic and aestheticised articulations of disdain for a mono-
lithic parent culture and in contestation to Britains socio-economic and
political post-war structures. While conceptualised in a number of differ-
ent ways in Resistance Through Rituals, subcultural theory can be
summarised broadly as a conceptual framework for reasoning a groups
collective style-based responses to social exclusion, ambiguity, social
conditions or limited potential, allowing for deviant behaviours to be
read as markers of differentiation, opposition and struggle, and thus le-
52 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

gitimising or normalising these behaviours in relation to oppressive


social circumstances.
Developing this model in his landmark text on punk, Subculture:
The Meaning of Style (originally published in 1979), Dick Hebdige dem-
onstrates how forbidden subcultural identities are signified through a
limited array of stylistic artefacts; those who do not take part in these
differentiating forms of semiotic guerrilla warfare (1991, p. 105) are
implicitly incorporated into this paradigm as complacent unnamed
straights. According to Hebdige, subculture provides a framework for
understanding how cultural objects such as fashion, dance, music, film,
literature and language can collectively be appropriated and inscribed
with a range of new meanings detached from commodified culture, gen-
erating symbolic resistance and dissent. Thus, locating subculturalists
outside of the majoritarian sphere. Consequently, when subcultural styles
become commercialised by the cultural industries through incorporation
back into the mainstream, they lose their critical potential for symbolic
resistance. Thus, according to this theoretical model, subcultures are ac-
tive, innovative, authentic and substantive sites that exist outside of mass
culture in contrast to the passive uncritical consumption practices of an
essentially homogenised mass cultural mainstream. The CCCS subcul-
tural model is of importance here because it represents one of the first
attempts to consider how marginalised and discontented groups of peo-
ple generate connectedness and collective distinction via the meaning
they imbue within popular music forms and associated extra-musical
texts. Yet subcultural theory is problematic, and for a number of reasons
one must approach the naming of distinct groups of people as subcul-
tures with caution.
There are numerous well-cited critiques of the Birmingham
Schools approach, the most significant of which (at least to my argu-
ment) I will touch upon briefly. Since the 1990s, subcultural theory has
taken an anti-essentialist turn, resulting in what we might generally refer
to as post-subcultural studies. Subcultural critiques, reworkings and de-
bates have exhaustingly been played out across a variety of cultural
forms and contexts in a range of scholarly volumes such as Club
Cultures (Thornton, 1995), The Clubcultures Reader (Redhead, Wynne
& OConnor, 1997), The Post-subcultures Reader (Muggleton & Wein-
zierl, 2003), After Subculture (Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004), Music
Scenes (Bennett & Peterson, 2004) and Youth Cultures (Hodkinson &
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 53

Deicke, 2007). The majority of this work argues that the CCCS notion of
subculture both exaggerated the differences between and underscored the
internal homogeneity of those who fell within its groupings, thus pre-
senting an overly simplistic duality between authentic subcultural pro-
duction and mainstream media and commerce. Grounded in structuralist
and oppositional logics of us versus them and minority versus ma-
jority, such an uncritical acceptance of subculturalists as authentic,
outside of and Other to a relatively untheorised and monolithic main-
stream fails to acknowledge that subcultural spheres are not hermeneuti-
cally sealed from one another.
In a postmodern landscape characterised by cultural fragmentation
and the proliferation of consumable products in late capitalism such as
music, fashion or film, our contemporary understanding of a coherent
individual subject with discrete ties to culture is unravelling. As argued
in Chapter 1, the stable subject has now been replaced by a subject
whose identity is understood to be fluid, or at least less fixed and reflex-
ively derived from a multiplicity of sources ad sites whose boundaries
are mutable and permeable (Jameson, 1992). Predicated on the know-
ledge that collective identification rooted in traditional social categories
such as class, race, ethnicity and gender has shifted towards a freedom to
choose ones identity and lifestyle, which may be derived from all
manner of consumer goods, images and texts, the internal coherency of
and boundaries between subcultures is decaying.
While the meaning of stylistic commodities lay at the heart of sub-
cultural theory, a number of scholars have raised concerns regarding the
limited attention that the CCCS approach paid to popular music (e.g. see
Bennett, 2000; Brown, 2003; Redhead, 1990). In his study of pop art and
glitter rock, Van M. Cagle points to this noting that while the CCCS
theorists view music as integral to the homology of the subculture, very
little is said about how and why the music plays a significant role in the
identity-making process of the subculture (1995, p. 39). Instead, what
we more commonly find in CCCS work is a fixation on visual display at
the expense of musical meaning. As Dave Laing (1985) demonstrates in
his critique of Hebdiges (1991) analysis of punk, given the limited at-
tention Hebdige gave to music, it thus seemed to be a less important part
of the stylistic ensemble called punk (1985, p. x), the most signifi-
cant part being the visual display or look of punk. Furthermore,
Laings study is of significance because it demonstrates that musical
54 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

taste is not necessarily a modality of class-consciousness but a form of


oppositionality available to a range of social classes, and may in fact be
read as a way to circumvent class rigidity. Indeed, when examining the
social meaning of music in queer terms, the class-based interpretations
of musical style put forward by the CCCS hold no credence. Moreover,
in a queer context it is not only those supposedly counter-hegemonic
forms like punk or rock that are employed politically, but a number of
supposedly mainstream forms (such as pop) also acquire political
meaning and provide a context for oppositional social critique.
Although it could be said that the CCCS never claimed its work to be
totalising and transferable, the centres approach also dealt rather haphaz-
ardly with the significance of locality. Emphasising the uniformity of style
in white metropolitan contexts, the CCCS consequently overlooked trans-
local exchanges and cultural hybridisation, as well as locally specific
meanings and variations of style in smaller urban, regional or rural set-
tings. Moreover, in a globalising world, the local increasingly is influ-
enced by transnational and disaporic peoples whose cultures impact upon
existing localised forms and subsequently become incorporated into global
mainstreams. Countering the limitations of a global and essentially white
approach to subcultures, a considerable number of scholars have since
demonstrated the embeddedness of musical expression in place, leading to
a number of locally specific ethnographic studies of popular music and
identity from both music-making and audience perspectives (e.g. see Ben-
nett, 2000; Cohen, 1991; Harris, 2000; Shank, 1994). This has led to an
understanding of musicalised identities as necessarily engaged in a dialec-
tical relationship with the social organisations of the local contexts in
which identities are lived out. In relation to the ethnographic work on
queer music-making and scene formations in this study, we will see how
musicalised articulations of queer approaches to gender and sexuality re-
flect both the global mobility of cultural forms and local structures of
feeling.
Youth possibly the most steadfast determinant of subcultural
membership to date has also become a contested category within the
post-subcultural debate. The original subcultures identified in the
CCCS work are themselves ageing, and thus it follows that some of
those people who came of age as part of a particular subculture are
themselves growing old with that subculture. As recent British studies
into punk (Bennett, 2006), goth (Hodkinson, 2011) and northern soul
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 55

scenes (Smith, 2009) have demonstrated, these days it is far less com-
mon for people to resist the music and subcultural investments of their
youth completely. Increasingly, early adult and middle-aged subjects are
finding ways to incorporate traditionally youthful activities into their
ageing lifestyles, and to locate their sense of self in music either through
continuing musical and stylistic investments carried over from their
youth or through new investments that they make in the years beyond
their youth. As both Halberstam (2005) and I (see Taylor, J., 2010, 2012)
have previously argued, queer subcultures, which exist largely outside
traditional kinship notions of family and community, are hotbeds of
post-adolescent music and style-making activity. Indeed, the people I
interviewed in this study represent a diverse range of ages, from late
teens to late forties, and thus fall outside the definition of youth.
Another point of criticism levelled at subcultural theory that war-
rants attention relates to issues of gender and sexuality. Preoccupied with
the more spectacular of leisure pursuits and grand public displays of
stylised deviance visible at a street level, subcultural theory effectively
precluded certain forms of participation from mattering. Overlooking
those participants whose commitment was modulated, or whose alliances
were less public, compromised an understanding of the functions that
subcultural style assumes in more mundane and everyday ways such as
within domestic settings, or bedroom cultures (McRobbie & Garber,
1976). Since the leisure-time and cultural practices of young women of-
ten occurred in the home and thus less visible, girl-centred teeny bopper
culture was relegated to being interpreted as part of the passive main-
stream, and girls were disregarded as private consumers. According to
Angela McRobbie (1980), in the absence of empirical data to tell us how
style produces meaning in quotidian lives, we are left with an uncriti-
cally masculinist bias of what subcultural style means, a bias that reflects
both subcultural machismo and the selective tendencies of subcultural
researchers themselves. However, as Susan Driver (2007, p. 205) notes,
in attempting to respond to subcultural theorys sexist orientations,
feminist youth culture approaches have often reified gender parameters
in their attempts to promote female alternatives, structuring girls musi-
cal tastes in binary gender terms. Such an approach, Driver argues,
leaves little room to consider girls who defy heterosexual expectations
and feminine norms, excluding those girls who take up masculinity as a
site of identification. Remarkably, among the numerous criticisms of
56 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

the CCCS approach to subcultures, there has been little concern about its
failure to account for the styles of sexually deviant subcultures.
Queer subcultures illustrate vividly the limits of subcultural theo-
ries that omit consideration of sexuality and sexual styles, argues
Halberstam (2005, p. 161). Queer subcultural members routinely prob-
lematise straightforward distinctions in relation to established socio-eco-
nomic and cultural indicators such as sexual identity, gender, age,
locality, race, ethnicity and class. They share a tenuous relationship with
the mass media and because they espouse a form of sexual desire that is
still so abject to the norm, they are far less likely to be absorbed into the
mainstream intact, but rather are poached for their style like pop cul-
tures appropriation of camp while the significant political work that
occurs at the site of style is discarded. This is not to say that queer sub-
cultures are beyond media influence or do not interact with it in
interesting ways. Queer cultural forms such as drag, for example, regu-
larly poach aspects of commercial culture pop star identities, songs,
dance moves, style and put them to use in ways that do not neatly oc-
cupy either a space within subcultural semiotic rebellion or the
commodified cultural mainstream, for they can often operate within both
simultaneously. Further demonstrating the invalidity of a CCCS ap-
proach in relation to theorising sexual minority cultures, Halberstam
goes on to argue that:

Queer subcultures cannot be placed in relation to a parent culture, and they tend to
form in relation to place as much as in relation to a genre of cultural expression,
and ultimately, they oppose not only the hegemony of dominant culture but also the
mainstreaming of lesbian and gay culture. (2005, p. 161)

Therefore, theorising the ways in which music functions as a critical


stylistic resource in queer social lives necessitates the establishment of a
theoretical framework that accommodates these parameters. For this
purpose, I turn to critical work on scenes.

Scenes

Many post-CCCS reworkings of subculture, such as Paul Hodkinsons


(2002) study of goth, have proffered sophisticated theoretical alterna-
tives while maintaining the usefulness of subculture as a term that differ-
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 57

entiates those groupings which are predominantly ephemeral from those


which entail far greater levels of commitments, continuity, distinctive-
ness, or, to put it in general terms, substance (p. 24). Indeed, in the
context of goth subculture, stylistic substance and continuity are more
easily identifiable than in the context of queer subcultures, which I will
come to argue are far more ephemeral and stylistically promiscuous.
Others, however, have disavowed the term subculture altogether. Two of
the prominent alternatives to subculture offered by scholars with a
popular music focus on youth cultural formations include clubcultures
(Redhead, Wynne & OConnor, 1997; Thornton, 1995) and neo-tribes
(Bennett, 1999, 2000). The former can be employed substantively to refer
to localised youth cultures centred around dance music who construct their
own hierarchies of authenticity in term of taste and for whom dance clubs
and their eighties offshoots, raves, are the symbolic axis and working
social hub (Thornton, 1995, p. 3). Meanwhile, the latter, grounded in
Michel Maffesolis Time of the Tribes (1996) and developed by Andy
Bennett (1999, 2000) in relation to urban dance music, is characterised by
temporal gatherings, superficial affiliations and the fluid stylistic boun-
daries of contemporary youth music taste cultures. Again, both terms offer
a useful framework for thinking through the social practices, sensibilities
and collective identities of young people in relation to music consumption.
However, neither is suitable in the context of this study as neither can ac-
count adequately for music performance, production and consumption
beyond the clubbing experience.
Thinking about cultural identity and musical production and con-
sumption with the concept of scenes is one of the more recent endeav-
ours in the post-subcultural debate. In contrast to the approaches men-
tioned above, the scenes perspective offers much greater scope to
account for queer experience, and I argue that it is the most suitable
theoretical alternative for examining queer music practice and music-
orientated collective formations, and for thinking about sexuality and
sexual style. Influenced by work in the fields of cultural studies and
cultural geography, scene has transpired out of the reductiveness and
inflexibility of subcultural theory and the necessity to be able to theorise
beyond the spectacular leisure pursuits of youth, thus situating it as a
useful alternative to subculture for some popular music studies scholars.
Scene constitutes a theoretical and empirical critique of the relationship
that music and associated forms of cultural style assume in everyday
58 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

contexts and, in contrast to subculture, allows for a greater range of


styles, sensibilities, practices and forms of participation to be counted as
meaningful. According to Bennett (2004), thinking in terms of scenes
suggests that membership is not necessarily restricted according to
class, gender, or ethnicity, but may cut across all of these (2004,
p. 225). But as is evident in Bennetts statement and in the work of the
majority of subcultural and post-subcultural researchers upon which
Bennett draws he too fails to consider sexuality, and through exclusion
one only serves to reinforce and naturalise heterosexuality as a default
category, the presumption being that it is internally coherent within a
scene. To counter this normative critical approach, in the remainder of
this chapter I pay particular attention to the way in which a scenes
perspective can indeed accommodate sexual non-normativity and queer
style, an assertion that I test in my empirical research in Chapter 7.
The scenes perspective has its roots in two prominent texts: Barry
Shanks book Dissonant Identities: The RocknRoll Scene in Austin,
Texas (1994) and Will Straws article Systems of Articulation, Logics
of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music (1991). In
Shanks study, he advocates for an understanding of a scene that is
rooted in localised communities of music-making and spectatorships
where a plurality of styles that are often contradictory all circulate within
the same networks, drawing on the same localised knowledges; thus all
achieve recognition as authentic within a local context. Grounded in an
understanding of musics significance to the local, Shank suggests that a
scene is an overproductive signifying community (1994, p. 122),
which, through music and extra-musical style, interrogates and ex-
changes a discourse around local politics and identity in parallel yet
incongruous terms. By way of example, Shank points to the multiple and
conflicting ways in which Texan masculinity is expressed within the
same local context (Austin) via the contrasting genres of cowboy songs
and punk rock. Borrowing from Shanks earlier work in a suggestive
conference paper, Straw (1991) offers a different perspective though a
complementary one on the conceptualisation of scenes. He formulates
an understanding of scenes as distinct from a community or subculture
where particular social differences are articulated within the building
of audiences around particular coalitions of musical form (p. 384).
Within these cultural spaces, a large range of musical practices coexist,
interacting with each other within a variety of processes of differenti-
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 59

ation, and according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross-


fertilization (p. 373). Straws argument centres primarily on the inter-
play between local and global music communities and the degrees of
cosmopolitanism evident in locally specific systems of articulation. In
other words, Straw offers a way to theorise stylistic forms of differenti-
ation that occur within a given cultural space (such as a musical form)
beyond fixed boundaries of locality that is, translocally. Drawing on
Straws (1991) theoretical approach, Keith Harriss (2000) study of ex-
treme metal scenes is a useful example of the way that thinking with
scenes can help illuminate the practices of music-making and consump-
tion in particular generic, temporal and spatial contexts. Harris
emphasises the terms flexible application to musical spaces and prac-
tices, and offers a way to examine local/global relationships beyond
logics of homology and stylistic symmetry. For Harris, scenes include
everything, from tight-knit local musical communities to isolated musi-
cians and occasional fans, since all contribute to and feed off a larger
space(s) of musical practice. It follows, then, that everything within a
scene, and indeed scenes themselves, may exist within a number of other
scenes (2000, p. 25).
While both Straws and Shanks original arguments are grounded in
different logics of locality, what we can deduce from their work is that a
scene produces an array of signifiers that filter through local sites, dy-
namically mediate and synergise local and global aesthetics and, in a
given cultural context, contest homologous cultural structures and coher-
ent narratives of identification. Such scenes may either be local,
occurring in a specific geographical location, or translocal, thus orien-
tated around stylistic and/or musicalised associations across
geographical boarders. It is also necessary to mention here that there is a
third dimension to the scenes argument put forward in Andy Bennett and
Richard A. Petersons edited volume, Music Scenes (2004), which
examines scenic formations not only in the local and translocal contexts,
but also in virtual contexts. In summary, they define these three types of
scene as follows. The local refers to clusters of people in a delimited
space who share common musical tastes and collectively [distinguish]
themselves from others by using music and cultural signs often appropri-
ated from other places, but recombined and developed in ways that come
to represent the local scene (Peterson & Bennett, 2004, p. 8). The
translocal refers to the ways in which music and styles produce affective
60 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

communities that, while situated within the local, interact and connect
with groups of kindred spirits many miles away (Peterson & Bennett,
2004, pp. 89) who exhibit parallel expressions of musical taste, cultural
identity and style. Like translocal scene participants, those in virtual
scenes are widely separated geographically, but unlike them, virtual
scenes participants around the world come together in a single scene-
making conversation via the Internet (Peterson & Bennett, 2004, p. 10).
This could include online chat-room groups and fanzines that share
common stylistic sensibilities, and trade music and images online (e.g.
see Lee & Peterson, 2004). By Peterson and Bennetts definition, virtual
scenes are controlled primarily by fans rather than cultural producers.
However, in the advent of collaborative audio and video performance
software that allows people to generate and perform audio and video
over the internet in real time, it would be remiss to presume that virtual
scenes are exclusively discussion based. These three ways of interpreting
scenes are not discrete, but necessarily overlap, as one type of scene will
inform another, which in turn will inform another across the categories
of style and spatial contexts.

Queer Scenes: Translocality, Sexual Distinction and World-making

The emphasis on locality that preoccupied many of the early ethno-


graphic studies of music scenes and associated lifestyles has since been
challenged for over-emphasising the separation between the local and
the global. Shared tastes cut across geographical boarders, making
localised cultural networks difficult to contain within delimited space.
As illustrated in this quote from Simon Reynolds, a noise band in Man-
chester can have more in common with a peer group in Austin, Texas
than one of its neighbours two blocks away (1990, p. 174). Indeed,
with regard to the local queer performers who inform the case studies in
this book, it is evident that they identify and interact with queer histories,
musics and styles that cannot be confined narrowly to their home town
of Brisbane or even contained within national borders. While all the
local artists I interviewed responded to various localised social circum-
stances and national political debates, their sense of what is stylistically
appropriate is as much informed by a desire to express their gender and
sexual subjectivities and their queer world-views. Moreover, in doing
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 61

this, they draw on the queer and political histories of a wide range of
cultural forms and styles, thus connecting them to and locating them
within existing scenes and forms of culture-making that are neither dis-
cretely local nor discretely style-based. Rather, their scenic connections
hinge more radically on their identification as queer and on their desire
to affect queer social critique by musically and stylistically traversing
conceptual boundaries around gender and sexual norms both hetero
and homo age, race and class-based norms and, in some instances, the
stylistic norms that have come to signify mainstream lesbian and gay
culture. Ultimately, their experiences of gender and sexual Otherness
imbue their cultural production with personal, social and political
meaning in multiple and unique ways that defy spatial limitations and
stylistic coherence.
To account for the interplay among the global communities of taste
on which queers draw, contribute to and redefine, as well as their
weighty political histories and local vernaculars of style, the approach to
queer scenes that I advocate here is grounded in translocality. However,
the notion of a translocal scene needs some adjustment to account for
queerness. As we will see in the localised case studies of queer musi-
cians and performers presented at the end of Chapters 4, 5 and 6, these
people who are all from the same local scene draw on an excessive
array of styles, sensibilities and aesthetics that collectively contribute to
an understanding of a queer scene as musically and stylistically promis-
cuous. In an article entitled Queer Aesthetics, Daniel Williford (2009)
examines queer aesthetics in visual arts conjuring the notion of a pro-
miscuous image, where queerness is something that embodies excessive
aesthetic enunciations. He writes: the political force of queer aesthetics
lies not in a specific announcement but in an effort that keeps ambiguity
at play in relation to social subjectivity (p. 7). Queerness, he goes on to
argue, reminds us that aesthetic ambiguity is possible; that queer politics
see the ordering logics of normativity as a sign that there is always the
possibility of reordering meaning and that meaning is always in excess:
excess is the language of queer logic (p. 13). Style such as that asso-
ciated with being a bear, a leatherman, a queen, a dandy, a twink, a butch
62 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

1
or a femme, for example is a way for queer individuals to distinguish
themselves, to signal their sexual desires and criminal intimacies
(Berlant & Warner, 1998, p. 558), and to locate themselves within queer
communities of desire and social resistance. The signification of queer
desires through style has a long history, one that surpasses any of the
post-war subcultural formations, and as Williford would have it, queer
culture-makers see the possibilities of reinterpreting and reordering the
meaning of style in endless ways. Just as there are multiple ways of be-
ing queer and signifying ones sexual desire or gender identity through
cultural symbols, the stylistic modalities of queer scenes are also multi-
ple. For the cultural histories and meanings of a range of styles that can
all be called queer are radically different in character. Queer scenes,
then, are not typified by stylistic continuity or substance; rather, their
distinctiveness is evidenced by their stylistic excess.
At the beginning of this chapter, I pointed to DeNoras (2000) ideas
on music as a resource for utopian imaginations and a means for creating
alternative worlds and institutions, and I would argue that a lack of
scenic coherence and stylistic excess bespeaks alternative worlds that are
queerly imagined: amorphous, ambiguous and adaptable. Because heter-
onormativity dictates public culture, the sites of queer world-making are
often marginal, ephemeral and subterranean, constructed in the counter-
public sphere through embodied social practices such as music, dancing
and performance. The covert transmission of queerness and the nebulous
points of entry that make queer worlds ephemeral and difficult to recog-
nise have everything to do with the fact that leaving too much of a trace
has often meant that the queer subject has left herself open for attack
(Muoz, 1996, p. 6). The queer world is not made clear for us; rather, we
come to feel it, find it and know it as selves that have already been
shaped by other aspects of culture, style and taste, and we bring these
with us into our queer worlds. The routes that we take to find queerness
are often varied and unconventional, requiring us to traverse the cultural
spaces that might otherwise contain us if we were not, as queers, seeking
to inhabit a queer world.

1 These are vernacular terms commonly used to describe certain somatotypes,


fashions, taste cultures and gender presentations. These terms are defined in the
relevant chapters that follow.
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 63

In their article Sex in Public, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner


(1998) argue that a queer world is a space of entrances, exits, unsys-
tematized lines of acquaintance, projected horizons, typifying examples,
alternate routes, blockages, incommensurate geographies (p. 558).
Queer scenes structure and make public a common language of self-
cultivation, shared knowledge, and the exchange of inwardness through
mobile sites of drag, youth culture, music, dance, parades, flaunting,
and cruising (p. 561). The tactics of queer world-making involve
transformation of the self and the social in a way that makes queer
pleasures possible and desirable. Queer scenes are attempts to make
worlds within which queerness is legible. Music is a strategic resource
that both aids self-fashioning and sustains world-making attempts. What
music, style and performance can offer in terms of world-making is the
promise of transformative agency, grounded in everyday life practices
and locations (Jagose, 2000, para. 37). For Warner, the idea of queer
world-making is centred around:

the activity we undertake with each other, in a kind of agonistic performance in


which what we become depends on the perspectives and interactions of others,
brings into being the space of our world, which is then the background against
which we understand ourselves and our belonging. I find this a compelling account
because it stresses historical activity and human creativity, but without falling into a
naive view of individual agency or intentionality. The world made in public action
is not an intended or designed world, but one disclosed in practice. It is a back-
ground for self-understanding, and therefore something not purely individual. It is
also immanent to history and practice, unlike ideas of community or identity, which
tend to be naturalized as stable or originary. And it is a language of performativity
that is necessarily contextual and multi-perspectival, rather than the somewhat de-
contextualized picture of performativity that we often find in queer theory, where
the only scene of enunciation is the relation between the subject and a norm. (War-
ner cited in Jagose, 2000, para. 38)

In the next section of this book, I chart the emergence of a select range
of queer sensibilities, styles and musical cultures by first outlining the
translocal histories of these styles and then examining the ways in which
they are taken up in the everyday local context of Brisbane, Australia.
This study is by no means an exhaustive endeavour, and it is not in-
tended to be one. The purpose of the case studies in Chapters 4, 5 and 6
is to provide rich insights into musical modalities of queer gender and
sexual self-making; to provide a snapshot of the kinds of activities that
64 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity Selves, Sexualities and Scenes

are occurring in one particular and localised site of queer world-making;


and to illustrate how these local sites draw upon translocal histories of
queer style. Then, in Chapter 7, I return specifically to this scenes ap-
proach and make sense of how, in practical terms, queer scenes generate
meaningful order out of musical and stylistic excess.

Coda

It would be remiss of me not to mention a nagging concern I have with


the terms this chapter has critiqued and defended: subculture and
scene. To this end, I must point out the reccurring incongruences I have
noted in the application of these terms inside and outside the academy.
The vernacular use of these terms works largely with exactly the
opposite logic on the streets, so to speak. While in the context of schol-
arly analysis, I find that the scene perspective is more plausible, within
the scene itself, this word is rarely used as a form of collective reference.
Instead, among the queer scenes I have studied, subculture is the most
favoured term of collective self-reference. This is because the scene
or, as one might say, to be on the scene appears to imply a level of
visibility now associated with mainstream gay culture and commercial
gay club spaces, while for those who participate in more underground,
DIY counter-publics, subculture connotes the more subversive qualities
of queerness; thus it is this term that is favoured and more commonly
employed in self-reference. For many of the queer-identified people I
interviewed, queer functions as a subculture in the sense that they col-
lectively see themselves as resisting both the stylistic norms of the
commercial gay club scene and the heterosexual norms of dominant
culture. While I do not believe that this is a reason to turn our attention
back to subcultural theory and, as I have argued, the scenes perspective
offers greater theoretical and epistemological flexibility, it is neverthe-
less a terminological dissonance worth mentioning so as to avoid later
confusion.
Part II

Translocal Styles, Sensibilities and


Local Representations
CHAPTER 3

CAMP A Queer Sensibility

CAMP is cross-dressing in a Freudian slip


CAMP is gender without genitals. (Core, 1984, p. 7)

Philip Cores statement is testimony to camps witty approach to gender


and sexuality, while its ambiguity and playfulness suggest that camp is
perhaps resistant to definition. Concise explanation of camp is made all
the more difficult because camp like queer has multiple linguistic
functions, acting as a noun, a verb, an adjective and an adverb, and also
as a subject, object and modifier. Conventionally understood as an aes-
thetic sensibility, a subject or object can be read as camp while a subject
can also act camp. The act or gesture of camp is thought to have origi-
nated from the French se camper, meaning to posture or to flaunt.
During the mid-twentieth century, novelists, journalists and scholars of
various disciplines began writing on the topic and origins of camp, not-
ably positioning camp in relation to Western male homosexual culture.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gay men have been
camps vanguard; to recall Altmans memorable phrase, camp is to gay
what soul is to black (1972, p. 141).
On occasions, camp has received criticism for its seemingly mi-
sogynist slant due to its association with a form of gay spectatorship that
privileges feminine excess (Case, 1999; Robertson, 1996). But as I and
others before me (e.g. see Meyer, 1994; Shugart & Waggoner, 2008)
propose, through the reclamation of camp as a performative critique of
social normativities and as political praxis, camp offers a commentary on
gender construction, performance and enactment, thus situating camp
within a queer rather than exclusively gay male discourse. Moreover, it
releases camp from its historically limited signification of gay male ef-
feminacy and introduces it into the political and transgressive repertoire
of queer style and logics of excess.
While camps association with a variety of historic and contempo-
rary queer identities remains constant, popular culture has appropriated
68 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

camp as part of its discourse, and as a result camp is sometimes confused


with apolitical parody and pastiche, and other poor taste aesthetics such
as kitsch or schlock. This has incited contention over the integrity of
camps meaning and function, and resulted in a fractured array of defini-
tions and applications. In the context of this research project, camp is
fully acknowledged as a proliferation of what was originally homosexual
wit and aestheticism what has now become part of a critically queer
discourse. As the (sub)cultures of sexual minorities have evolved, so too
have the meanings and functions of camp. As Chuck Kleinhans notes,
the conditions and contexts for Camp differ in pre-Stonewall, post-
Stonewall, post-AIDS, and contemporary Queer moments (1994, p.
182).
Given the difficulty and dispute surrounding definitions of camp,
this chapter begins by identifying the origins of camp and broadly ex-
ploring its sensibility and association with homosexual practice and gay
male culture. Camp is then positioned within queer discourse, and its
function as a politicised form of queer parody, pastiche and performance
is also broadly identified. Camp is used extensively by many of the
musical performers who receive close examination in the chapters to
follow. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a general understanding of
camps functions before attempting to identify and analyse the applica-
tion of camp to specific musical performances.

Sex and Sensibility

Camp once belonged to the idiolects of those who populated Londons


underbelly during the latter half of the nineteenth century namely the
prostitutes, the sexually perverse, those in show business and other prac-
titioners of the arts. A literal definition of camp first appeared in the
1909 publication Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of
Heterodox English, Slang and Phrase. This text defined camp as ac-
tions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis used chiefly by persons of
exceptional want of character (Ware, cited in Cleto, 1999, p. 9). Al-
though there is no official definition recorded prior to 1909, personal
letters exchanged in 1869 between famous British transvestites Lord
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 69

Arthur Clinton and Frederick Park (also known as Fanny Park) make
reference to camp as an embodied style or manner of conduct. In a not-
able letter to Clinton, Park writes: My campish undertakings are not at
present meeting with the success they deserve. Whatever I do seems to
get me into hot water somewhere (cited in Bartlett, 1988, p. 168). These
examples suggest that camp was used colloquially during the late Vic-
torian and Edwardian eras, referring predominantly to the mannerisms
and gestures of wanton individuals.
Camp was introduced into literary discourse almost a century later
in 1954, when Christopher Isherwood published his novel The World in
the Evening. For the first time in a literary context, this text attempts to
provide a loose explanation of camps schematic workings in a conver-
sation between two of the novels characters, Charles (a homosexual)
and Stephen. Charles explains to Stephen:

You cant camp about something you dont take seriously. Youre not making fun
of it; youre making fun out of it. Youre expressing whats basically serious to you
in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is largely camp about reli-
gion. The Ballet is camp about love Mozarts definitely a camp. Beethoven, on
the other hand, isnt. (1973, p. 125)

While this is only a short excerpt from a much longer conversation, it is


evident from this passage that by the mid-twentieth century, camp had
evolved into something much more than descriptive colloquial terminol-
ogy. Camp was not simply a manner of gesture, but a sensibility a
1
system of meaning and a method of perception. Further testimony to the
definitional ambiguity of camp is Isherwoods distinction between high
and low forms of camp. The division of camp into multiple forms is a
continuing trend resulting from camps various operative modes and
representational effects. Isherwood distinguishes the two forms by iden-
tifying the underlying seriousness of high camp, typified by the ballet
and baroque art, in contrast to the unrefined silliness of low camp, ex-
emplified by a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a
picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich (1973,
p. 125).

1 Isherwood expressed a somewhat similar idea in 1938 when he published his first
novel, Lions and Shadows (1963). Although he did not specifically define camp in
this instance, camp motifs can be traced in the cleverly disguised discussions of
homosexuality in this text.
70 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

Isherwoods novel consequently inspired scholars to further investi-


gate the history and function of camp, and to attempt more lucid
explanations. The most influential and recurrently cited discussion of
camp is Susan Sontags Notes on Camp, which originally was pub-
lished in The Partisan Review during 1964. This detailed collection of
fifty-eight notes that attempted to explain the nature, quality and princi-
ples of camp sensibility has since been reprinted in Sontags book
Against Interpretation: And Other Essays (first published in 1966), and
also in numerous anthologies on the topic of camp and a variety of texts
concerned with gay and queer discourses. Recognising the necessity for
a critical analysis of camp, Sontag was the first scholar to seriously ad-
dress the camp phenomenon, and her success in doing so launched camp
into the mainstream.
Immediately following Sontags publication, camp found its way into
heterosexualised popular discourse, appearing frequently in major publi-
cations from Britain and the United States, such as the New Statesmen,
Time, Holiday, the Observer, Art News and the New York Times (see
Cleto, 1999). Notes on Camp is widely recognised as the seminal at-
tempt at defining the esoteric nature of camp as a sensibility and logic of
taste. At her most concise, Sontag suggests camp is, in essence, a love for
the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration (1982, p. 275). However, like
many critics who followed in her footsteps, Sontag did not achieve strict
definition but rather posited suggestive criteria for determining instances
and functions of camp taste and sensibility.
In this essay, Sontag endeavours to locate the origins of camp, posi-
tioning it historically within an eighteenth century appreciation of artifice
2
and nineteenth century dandiacal self-indulgence and debauchery. To-
wards the end of her essay, she briefly reflects upon the affinity and
overlap between modern camp taste and homosexuals. Although Sontag
acknowledges that gay men are generally accepted as the most articulate
audience of camp, she downplays the significance of this by arguing that
if homosexuals hadnt more or less invented Camp, someone else would

2 The term dandy originated in late eighteenth century Britain, and was used to
describe a man who placed particular importance upon aestheticism, fashion,
linguistic refinement and the pursuit of leisure. Such a person was seen as
attempting to emulate aristocratic refinement while usually being of middle-class
background. A notable example of dandyism is expressed in the work and persona
of Irish literary figure Oscar Wilde (18541900).
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 71

(1982, p. 291). Richard Dyer and Jack Babuscio strongly disagree with
this. Dyer takes a more assertive approach than Sontag to the role gay
male identity has played in establishing camp, arguing:

It is just about the only style, language and culture that is distinctively and unam-
biguously gay male. In a world drenched in straightness all the images and the
words of society express and confirm the rightness of heterosexuality. Camp is the
one thing that expresses and confirms being a gay man. (Dyer, 1999, p. 110)

Furthermore, Dyer (1986) proposes that, prior to times of gay liberation,


camp was a means of coming out or going public in straight society, a
way to reduce the risk of detection or persecution. Thus camp is a pro-
duct of gay oppression, a faade to hide ones gayness and protect
oneself from mainstream alienation. Consequently, gay men became
well versed in role-playing, developing an eye and an ear for surfaces,
appearances, forms style (Dyer, 1999, p. 114). Camp uses irony,
parody and to a lesser extent pastiche to negotiate the conditions of
dominant morality and its imposed subordination. And, with an acute
sense of style, camp blatantly undermines authenticity by performing
with a strong sense of exaggerated theatricality.
Similarly, Babuscio proposes that camp is a gay male response to
the polarisation of hetero- and homosexuality as natural and unnatural
respectively. Camp expresses a relationship between activities, indi-
viduals, situations and gayness (1999, p. 118), and camp is unable to be
understood fully unless attention is given to the heterosexist attitudes
that produced camp in the first place. Framing camp within the context
of a gay sensibility, Babuscio identifies four basic features of camp per-
formance: irony, aestheticism, theatricality and humour. Since Babuscio
first published these ideas in 1977, camp has been recontextualised
within queer discourse, outgrowing its origins as a strictly gay male sen-
sibility. However, these basic features of camp performance have
maintained their validity, and continue to offer a constructive insight into
the qualities of contemporary (queer) camp performance. According to
Babuscio (1999), camp irony is any highly incongruous contrast be-
tween an individual/thing and its context/association. The most common
of incongruous contrasts is that of masculine/feminine (p. 120). Camp
aestheticism involves the effective shaping and delivery of irony. As a
practical tendency in things or persons, camp emphasises style as a
means of self-projection, a conveyer of meaning, and an expression of
72 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

emotional tone In terms of style it signifies performance rather than


existence (p. 122). Theatricality is the perception of life-as-theatre or
being-as-playing-a-role, and implies that roles are superficial a
matter of style (p. 123). Finally, humour is a means of dealing with a
hostile environment and, in the process, of defining a positive identity
(p. 126).
Of course, there are those who challenge these functions of camp as
well, arguing that camp is now an embarrassment to post-Stonewall gay
culture; it is an artefact of the closet that only works to limit the ways in
which one can perform gay identity (Britton, 1978; Melly, 1984). In a
notable essay entitled For Interpretation: Notes Against Camp, An-
drew Britton strongly argues against the effectiveness of camps
challenge to heterosexist society. Instead, Britton sees gay camp as a
kind of anaesthetic, allowing one to remain inside oppressive relations
while enjoying the illusory confidence that one is flouting them (1978,
p. 12). From this perspective, camp lacks definition without the primacy
of societal norms; thus camp reinforces this primacy, and fails to offer
any kind of radical critique of the norm itself. Thus, in relative isolation,
Britton claims that camp does not challenge, but rather reinforces, the
authority of dominant gender and sexual roles.
Camps association with gender and sexuality, specifically in per-
verse forms, is an underlying current of its sensibility one about which
Sontag (1982) is obviously cautious in her earlier examination. Briefly
flirting with this issue in her ninth note on camp, she remarks on the an-
drogyne as being one of the greatest images of Camp sensibility (p.
297). She further remarks:

Camp taste draws on a mostly unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined form
of sexual attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual pleasure) con-
sists in going against the grain of ones sex. What is most beautiful in virile men is
something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something mas-
culine. (p. 297)

In this passage (which is not contextualised within her discussion of


homosexuals), Sontag has discreetly identified one of camps most poig-
nant features that is, the attractive interplay of gender performances
and the detachment of gender from sexed bodies. While Sontags notes
do not deal with either gender or sexuality in a critical manner, they do
hint at camps disruptive potential.
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 73

Camp as Queer Parody, Praxis and Performance

Like Isherwood did previously in his distinctions between high and low
camp, Sontag similarly deduces two forms of camp: nave (or pure)
camp and deliberate (or wholly conscious) camp. While these categories
do not replace or correspond directly with Isherwoods distinctions, they
are considerably intertwined, suggesting the activity of producing camp
is evident both in the performance of camp and in the perception of it.
According to Sontag, the essential element [of nave camp] is serious-
ness, a seriousness that fails which has the proper mixture of the
exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the nave (1982, p. 283).
Nave camp is the perception of failed seriousness, which Sontag sug-
gests can be found in opera, in particular Bellinis operas. Moreover,
nave camp necessitates a parodic or perverse perception of something or
someone that emphasises an artificiality passing as natural, in which case
the perception debunks the intended seriousness of the object or subject.
Deliberate camp is produced by a self-conscious act or performance
of self-parody that intentionally reveals a failed seriousness through ar-
tifice. In the absence of a concise definition of deliberate camp by
Sontag herself, I refer to Fabio Cletos explanation of Sontags notes in
which he suggests:

As to deliberate camp, the focus is not in the perverted decoding, but in the very
act of performance, intentionally, as paradoxically so, producing a failure of seri-
ousness, acknowledging its essence in the unnatural, in the inessential and the
contingent, and privileging form and style over message or content in self-
(re)presentation. (1999, p. 24, emphasis in original)

Camp juxtaposes seriousness and paradox to reveal the unnatural state of


something that is often perceived as real or essential, such as gender or
sexual desire. By making fun out of themselves that is, performing
themselves incongruously with their supposed essence doers of camp
are exposing the performative qualities of identity, and by blatantly em-
phasising performance style over content, camp draws further attention
to this while also exposing the tendency for society to privilege a cultur-
ally appropriate performance over sincerity of self-presentation.
Sontag also suggests that to perceive Camp in objects and persons
is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in
sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theatre (1982, p. 280). This camp
74 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

criterion further highlights camps unorthodox approach to self-repre-


sentation. To camp or to perceive camp is to draw together antithetical
qualities: it is to unite artifice and realism, theatricality and authenticity
(see Dyer, 1986). Camp reconfigures our notion of an authentic self by
arguing that one is constructed and exists in a variety of performing roles
roles that essentially are all artificial. The ability to perceive or act out
roles, exemplified by camps common (but not exclusive) association
with effeminacy, does not simply invert social roles but displaces them
altogether. The displacement occurs by exposing the aesthetic artifice
present in the role itself, dissolving its presumed truth or naturalness and
replacing it with a paradoxical essence. In relation to gender roles,
Jonathan Dollimore notes:

In a sense [camp] renders gender a question of aesthetics. Common in aesthetic


involvement is the recognition that what seemed like mimetic realism is actually an
effect of convention, genre, form, or some other kind of artifice. (1999, p. 225)

Camp, then, provides a potential method for gender transgression. More-


over, as Sontag points out, camp is aesthetically mobile: camp doesnt
reverse things. It doesnt argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good.
What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different set of standards
(1982, p. 286). Thus camp can be understood as an enactment of queer, a
way of bringing the queer subject into being through playful irreverence
for the established order while functioning as a cultural critique and a
non-violent form of social protest (see Bronstein, 1994; Meyer, 1994;
Spargo, 1999). Although camp is partially defined in opposition to
dominant culture, this does not automatically position camp as radically
oppositional (Kleinhans, 1994). Camps refusal to reverse things or ar-
gue the good as bad or the bad as good further highlights its resistance
towards binary logics and its contempt for absolute judgement values.
Moreover, camp does not simply reverse dominant binary logics or di-
rectly oppose binary value systems. Instead, it transforms binary
signifying structures through oblique (and often dramatised or aesthetic)
operations.
In the light of camps performative qualities, camp cannot fully be
understood as a mere logic of taste or a sensibility. As Moe Meyer pro-
poses, when a concept of performance is used to establish the existence
of a knowledgeable social agent who signifies through Camp, then the
conventional interpretation of Camp can be overturned (1994, p. 13,
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 75

emphasis in original). When we overturn this conventional notion, camp


becomes what Kerry Mallan and Rod McGillis describe as an opposi-
tional critique (of gender and sexuality) embodied in a queer
performative identity (2005, p. 1). Thus, in addition to understanding it
as a purely aesthetic sensibility, camp can also be thought of as an oppo-
sitional critique and a performance-centred method for the articulation of
identity as role-play and life as theatre. This suggests that camp can be
located within a system of queer praxis.
One of Sontags shortcomings was to suggest that, due to camps
association with frivolity and aestheticism, camp is disengaged, depo-
liticised or at least apolitical (1982, p. 277). Camp, particularly in a
queer sense, is in fact a highly political form of aestheticism, especially
in its critical and subversive use of postmodern parody (see Hutcheon,
1989; Meyer, 1994; Robertson, 1996). According to literary theorist
Linda Hutcheon, postmodern parody is defined as a value-proble-
matizing, denaturalising form of acknowledging the history (and through
irony, the politics) of representations (1989, p. 94). Moreover, it is
typified by an ironic playing with multiple conventions [and] ex-
tended repetition with critical difference (Hutcheon, 1985, p. 7).
Postmodern parody marks difference as opposed to similarity because it
moves beyond ludicrous or comedic imitation and instead assumes a
critical distance from the texts and/or ideologies engaged in the inter-
pretation. Camp uses parody to critique the ideologies of the dominant
class and expose multiple manifestations of gender and sexuality that are
often considered poor taste. Parody in this instance becomes a queering
process as opposed to an apolitical form of farcical interpretation or
copying of dominant culture. As Kleinhans suggests:

This kind of parody reveals a greater sense of the range of life and its possibilities,
and awareness of the grotesque, of carnival, and of anger, sensuality, and sexuality.
Camp, as parody, has an ability to expose what the powers-that-be would like to keep
neatly hidden and out of sight. Instead of acquiescing in the ideology of a disposable
culture that wants to flush away its social problems, Camp can insist on a determined
recycling of political agendas as well as aesthetic diversity. (1994, p. 199)

Therefore, a camp use of parody can be understood as a process of criti-


cally revealing the power relationships between, and representation of,
social agents and cultural texts in which queer social agencies become
76 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

visible through parodic representation of what is perceived to be the


norm, legitimate or original.
The annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Australia is a
useful example of a political protest that employs a camp strategy in its
execution. Beginning in 1978, Mardi Gras was first held to commemo-
rate the Stonewall riots, as a civil rights protest against the
discriminatory laws that criminalised homosexuality and the police bru-
tality faced by many lesbians and gays. In Mardi Gras first year,
approximately a thousand people marched and fifty-three people were
arrested. Those arrested were publicly named and outed in the Sydney
Morning Herald. In the following year, 3000 people marched in soli-
darity and today around ten thousand people still participate in the
parade, while hundreds of thousands travel to Sydney to watch the spec-
tacle each year and millions more view it on television. The Mardi Gras
is a cross between a political pride march and carnivalesque spectacle,
exhibiting an array of queer identity performances spanning a range from
the glamorous to the grotesque. Over the years, the Mardi Gras parade
has provided a highly theatrical platform for drag queens, leather dykes
and numerous other queer types to march in solidarity (see Carbery,
1995). The parade features a number of themed floats dedicated to a
particular social group or political cause. For example, it is quite com-
mon for the parade to feature parodic representations of political and
religious leaders who are seen as oppressive to queers, such as members
of parliament, the prime minister, bishops or the pope. Moreover, much
of the music used in the parade is likely to have been borrowed from
3
mainstream pop culture, such as the music of Kylie Minogue in more
recent years. The camp readings of popular songs produced in these car-
nivalesque performances can be understood as a contestation of
hegemonic cultural readings, and the compulsory association of popular
culture with heterosexuality a critique of the implicit heterosexuality of
the popular. Mardi Gras provides a critical insight into the non-essential
state of queerness, and highlights the multiple manifestations of gender

3 Although popular Australian musician Kylie Minogue does not identify as either
gay or queer, her music and image have been appropriated by the mainstream gay
community throughout Australia and Europe, and she is widely acknowledged as a
popular gay icon.
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 77

and sexual identities especially those that are often hidden away from
public view or considered poor taste.
During the early 1980s, camp began to emerge as a political strategy
4
of queer parody employed by queer activist groups such as ACT UP,
5 6
Queer Nation, OutRage and the Radical Faeries. These and other per-
formance-based protest groups have used camp as a signifying practice
in the constitution of publicly visible queer identities and as a theatri-
calised form of guerrilla activism (Meyer, 1994; Tatchell, 1999). For
example, members of ACT UP have famously staged numerous public
die-ins at which people congregate and perform a fake death in protest
at the lack of appropriate health care for people living with HIV and
AIDS. In 1990, OutRage staged a public kiss-in, which saw a large
group of queer people displaying affection in Londons Piccadilly Circus
in protest at the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, which stated that homosexu-
ality must remain a private matter under British law. This act blatantly
disrupted any lingering notion of camp as an artefact of the closet by
challenging the distinction between public and private space, while also
providing a valuable commentary on puritan morality. In another in-
stance, during 1992 OutRage protested the ban of homosexuals in the
armed forces by draping a pink feather boa over a military statue and
posting the slogan For Queens and Country underneath the memorial to
Admiral Mountbatten. In these instances, camp is employed as a sign of
a repressed alterity, which is transformed through parody, theatricality
and carnivalesque spectacle into an empowering queer critique of domi-
nant morality and social exclusion.

4 ACT UP (or the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed in New York
during 1987 and later spread to other US, European and Australian cities. ACT
UPs aim is to raise awareness of the AIDS crisis and demand effective and
affordable drug treatment. It does this through a variety of methods including
political negotiation and non-violent dramatic acts of civil disobedience (see
Bateman, 2005).
5 Founded in Britain in 1990, OutRage is a civil disobedience group dedicated to
artistic forms of social protest (see Tatchell, 1999).
6 The Radical Faeries emerged in the United States during the late 1970s in
opposition to the assimilatory agendas of gay liberationists. Informed by neo-pagan
ritual, Marxism and gender fluidity, they are now a widespread counter-culture of
queer men who often live in fringe communities (see Bonck, 2007).
78 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

A Note on Music and Camp

In queer terms, camp is both an approach to performance putting on a


show and a method for revealing the performativity inherent in all
social roles. Camp performance is political in that it acknowledges the
power afforded to normative social roles, while simultaneously disem-
powering them by mocking (through parody) their false claim to
authenticity. As Allan Thomas suggests:

Camp has strong links with a notion of performance which asserts its truth whilst
simultaneously contradicting it, undercutting it, calling it into question, a performance
which works to articulate the performers ambivalent relation to cultural and eco-
nomic power. (1996, p. 105)

Camp, as I demonstrate in Chapters 4 and 5, is particularly useful for


analysing the ways in which performances of femininity by women and
performances of masculinity by men can be considered critical and sub-
versive. However, since the performances with which I am concerned
here involve music, in the remainder of this chapter I offer a brief dis-
cussion of camps relationship to music.
As we saw in an earlier quote by Isherwood (1973), Mozart is camp
while Beethoven is not. In Sontags (1982) original notes, she too offers
up some random musical examples of what could be considered part of the
camp canon. These include Bellinis operas, French pop music (y y) and
the majority of Mozarts work. She also points out that camp can be iden-
tified in Strausss operas but certainly not Wagners, and the music of Tin
Pan Alley and Liverpool but not jazz presumably because the former
examples are marginal and the latter are too good or serious to qualify
as camp. There are also a small number of texts on camp and popular
music that demonstrate the camp sensibilities evident in acts such as Suede
and The Cure (Geyrhalter, 1996), Madonna (Robertson, 1996), Macy Gray
and Gwen Stefani (Shugart & Waggoner, 2008), Annie Lennox, (Piggford,
1999; Rodger, 2004a) and genres such as musical theatre (Clum, 1999;
Cohan, 2005) and disco (Ortiz, 2011). However, the usefulness of these
studies in helping us to determine what might be camp sounding is
limited, as there is a tendency here to focus primarily on reading an artists
persona or the visual elements of a performance as camp. Indeed, as Freya
Jarman-Ivens notes, [t]he ways in which music might be camp is some-
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 79

thing that has received very little attention in comparison to camp in visual
and written cultures (2009, p. 189).
In Susan Fasts (2006) discussion of Queens performance at Live
Aid in 1985, she goes beyond the more obvious associations of camp
with Freddie Mercurys image and stage persona in search of camp aes-
thetics operating in the music. Offering Queens infamous mock operatic
hit Bohemian Rhapsody by way of example, Fast draws on Dyers
assertion that camp is a way of prising the form of something away
from its context, of revelling in the style while dismissing the content as
trivial (1999, p. 113). Here, Fast identifies Queens use of operatic
musical conventions in Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) for example, its
verbosity, phraseology and bombastic chorus in terms of camp: Some
of the defining elements of opera are present, but they work as surface,
as de-contextualized artifice. She argues that this is in opposition to
musical cachet (2006, p. 146). Similarly, Kay Dickinson (2001) speaks
of campness in music as the skewed appropriation of form or style. Of-
fering an insightful intertextual reading of Chers voice and the use of
the vocoder as a camp strategy in the recording of the song Believe
(1998), Dickinson demonstrates how camp can be about appropriation
and a usage of popular culture which might not accord with the mascu-
linist status quo, despite any notion of original intent or authorship
(2001, p. 345, emphasis in original).
In Jarman-Ivens (2009) work, she suggests that certain pieces of
music quite strongly resonate as camp. By way of example, Jarman-
Ivens points to musical theatre numbers such as Big Spender (1966),
lounge tunes such as Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps (1947), torch songs
such as You Dont Have To Say You Love Me (1966) and disco hits
such as Tragedy (1979). In search of the specifically musical qualities
of camp, Jarman-Ivens goes on to provide a reading of three musical
performances in which she locates a camp quality that is sonically dis-
cernible. These are via an overworked system of tension and release
(2009, p. 202) evident in the sharper attacks and long decays of a melo-
dramic performance of Tchaikovskys Piano Concerto No. 1 by
Liberace; in Liza Minnellis exaggerated vocal manipulations evident in
her performance of Auf wiedersehen mein Herr in Cabaret (1972);
and similarly, in a 1964 performance of Dont Rain On My Parade by
Judy Garland and daughter Minnelli. However, as Jarman-Ivens herself
suggests, the overtly campish contexts within which these texts exist
80 CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility

Liberace, Minnelli and Garland, all deeply entwined in queer music his-
tory necessarily impact upon our reading, and thus there are textual,
contextual and performance elements that must be taken into consider-
ation when identifying the thread of camp in the fabric of the music
(2009, p. 203). Her musicological analysis, although sophisticated in its
execution, emphasises that the music cannot be dislocated from its con-
textual and performance elements when attempting such a reading. Both
the extra-musical elements that lie outside the music, such as visual
style, as well as the para-musical elements, such as lyrics and perform-
ance gestures, necessarily need to be considered alongside those
elements that are strictly musical.
Also concerned with camp as hyperbolic vocal delivery and musical
performance in his book The British Pop Dandy (2009), Stan Hawkins
offers a few final points I would like to consider before moving on.
Upon analysing the vocal qualities and lyrical phraseology of famous
British male popular singers David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Steven Morris-
sey, Justin Hawkins, Robbie Williams, Neil Tennant, Paul Draper and
Jarvis Cocker, Hawkins finds that, at least in their recordings, all of these
performers express campness in their vocal delivery and production.
Through musical coding, a range of melodic articulations ornate, re-
bellious, frivolous or conversational and the technical qualities of their
recordings, these performers exude a camp sensibility that reveal[s] the
artists own notions of self-aestheticization (p. 150). In other words, the
ways in which they choose to express or can be read/heard as camp are
uniquely their own. While Hawkins doesnt raise this comparison, Dyer
too has said that we are not all camp all the same (1999, p. 112). If
camp is tied to form and stylisation in music, endorsing the performa-
tive self as a stylised act (Hawkins, 2009, p. 150), then it will
necessarily sound different depending on the kind of self to which a
performer is gesturing in their camp expression.
In this chapter, I have charted the emergence of camp and unpacked
key arguments that elucidate its functions and meanings. Contrary to the
assumption that camp is nothing but a frivolous and depoliticised pop
cultural sensibility, I have demonstrated how, in the context of queer
political praxis, camps parodic, exaggerated, allusive and provocative
characteristics work as an oppositional critique, and as a strategy for
undermining power and challenging notions of authenticity. In relation
to music and the case studies that will be presented in Chapters 4, 5
CHAPTER 3: Camp A Queer Sensibility 81

and 6, I am mindful of the work of Jarman-Ivens (2009), who suggests


that campness in music remains critically tied to the extra-musical and
para-musical aspects of a performance. Moreover, I take heed of the
work of Hawkins (2009), who urges a reading of camp that is relative to
a performers self-aestheticisation.
The next chapter takes up a discussion of camp in the context of drag
culture. In relation to the case study, I demonstrate how female drag kings
and bio-queens employ a camp sensibility in their theatrical performances
and song choices, and how this relates to their self-stylisation on stage and
their oppositional critique of gender and sexual norms.
CHAPTER 4

DOING DRAG, (UN)DOING GENDER


Gender Subversion and Musical Performance

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a
womans garment: for all those that do so are an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5)

This biblical verse suggests that clothes are a powerful signifier of gen-
der and a marker of the sexed body, further demonstrating that
inappropriate gender dressing has disturbed social norms and moral
codes for millennia. In more recent times, similar codes of gender con-
duct remain true. In late modern Western society, we commonly see
infant boys and girls wearing blue and pink clothes respectively. While it
is accepted that females may dress in shirts, skirts, frocks or trousers,
males are only permitted to wear shirts and trousers. These conventions
of gendered dressing are not fixed; rather, they have changed over time
in accordance with social norms. For example, it only became acceptable
in the post-World War II era for women to wear trousers, and it was not
until the 1960s that womens trousers became a fashion item. Moreover,
in Western societies prior to World War I, the conventions for colour-
appropriate gender dressing were reversed, thus boys were dressed in
pink and girls in blue. According to literature at the time, pink was
thought to be a stronger and more decided colour while blue was con-
sidered delicate and dainty (cited in Garber, 1992, p. 1). Also, up
until the early twentieth century, small children of both sexes were
dressed in ornate frocks. It was not until boys became of age and entered
the masculine rite of passage known as breeching that they were first
permitted to wear short trousers, followed a little later by longer ones.
Considering these changing trends in sex-appropriate dressing, it is
surprising that in the twenty-first century this kind of inappropriate be-
haviour can still cause such moral outrage yet it does. This is because
the act of adorning ones body with clothing and accessories culturally
assigned to the opposite sex draws our attention to the inherently per-
formative qualities of gender. Moreover, cross-gender dressing is often
84 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

read as a sign of ambiguous sexuality. Cross-dressing in real life can be


dangerous, often provoking negative criticism, and in some cases a
physically violent response. However, the perceived unreality or fan-
tasy of musical performance can offer a unique way to frame these
gender commentaries while still maintaining their power of subversion.
Employing camp sensibility, drag can provide insightful social com-
mentary, cleverly masked by jocular entertainment.
Arising from the popular theatrical traditions of pantomime, min-
strelsy, burlesque, variety and vaudeville, the art of drag is an historical
example of musically embellished gender subversion and genderfuck,
where genderfuck plays (or fucks) with normative images of gender, and
in the process of play, drag destabilises gender norms and subverts the
logic of the sex/gender/sexuality paradigm. In recent times, drag per-
formances have once again crept into the realm of popular culture. This
is exemplified by the commercial success of transvestite- and drag-re-
lated films and television series such as Tootsie (1982), The Dame Edna
Experience (19891993), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Priscilla, Queen of the
Desert (1994), To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
(1995), The Birdcage (1996), Connie and Carla (2004), Kinky Boots
(2005) and Hairspray (2007, originally a 1988 cult classic).
Yet even in the most popularised and commercial displays, drag is
by no means a wholly frivolous or futile pursuit. Drag ultimately is a
form of queer self-expression that transcends entertainment and offers a
valuable critique of gender as performance, potentially (though not al-
ways) subverting dominant gender norms and creating new gender and
sexual categories (see Butler, 1990, 1993; Halberstam, 1998). Butler
argues that the power of drag lies in its ability to show that gender itself
is like drag. She suggests:

To claim that all gender is like drag, or is drag, is to suggest that imitation is at the
heart of the heterosexual project and its gender binarisms, that drag is not a secondary
imitation that presupposes a prior or original gender, but that hegemonic heterosex-
uality is itself a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations In this
sense, then, drag is subversive to the extent that it reflects on the imitative structure by
which hegemonic gender is itself produced and disputes heterosexualitys claim to
naturalness and originality. (1993, p. 125, emphasis in original)

Of course, there are those who contest Butlers argument. Some feminist
scholars claim that men in drag (drag queens) are making a mockery of
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 85

womanhood, and that by performing dominant stereotypes of privileged


white femininity they are simply reifying hegemonic gender norms and
power relations (Feigen, 2000; hooks, 1992; Phelan, 1993; Schacht,
2002). Sociologist Steven Schacht (2002), for example, argues that drag
queens are themselves the perpetrators of oppression against women by
exploiting femininity and reinforcing gender binaries.
This chapter situates drag as transgressive performance, which sub-
verts rather than authenticates rigid gender binaries. A brief history of drag
provides the necessary background to enable a complete understanding of
drag performance and politics. This is then followed by a contemporary
overview of drag performances, leading into a focused discussion sur-
rounding the roles and identities of female drag kings and bio queens. The
choice to focus on drag king and bio queen performances has been made
partly to counter feminist assertions that drag makes a mockery of women,
but primarily because they reflect a greater range of gender identities and
performances than the conventional and popularised drag queen. Further-
more, drag king and bio queen performances have received minimal
popular and scholarly attention in comparison with their more widely
examined counterpart, the drag queen.
This discussion shows how music and musical performance have
contributed significantly to drag cultures, and it repositions music as a
central contributor to the subversion of gender and the articulation of
queer identities. For, even in some of the most notable volumes discussing
drag cultures to date (Ackroyd, 1979; Baker, 1994; Halberstam, 1998;
Newton, 1972; Richardson, 1995; Senelick, 2000; Troka et al., 2002; Vol-
cano & Halberstam, 1999), the musicality of drag performance is often
ignored, and the songs that are performed and the methods of vocalisation
appear largely inconsequential to many scholarly observers. Although
Elizabeth Kaminski does offer some scholarly examples detailing the song
choices of drag performance (see Kaminski, 2003; Kaminski & Taylor,
2008), they focus on the music of drag queen performances, identifying
these activities as a form of queer agency and instructive oppositional
protest. In the local case study presented at the end of this chapter, I simi-
larly conceptualise drag as a form of queer agency and instructive
oppositional protest. However, my examination is conducted with regard
to female-identified drag king and bio queen performances.
86 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

The Origins of Modern Drag: From Cross-dressing to Queers

The ancient cross-cultural practice of transvestism exhibits similar char-


acteristics to contemporary Western drag, as the cross-dressing act is a
key component of drag performance, visually blurring gender categories
and normative behaviours. Marjorie Garber explains transvestism as a
space of possibility structuring and confounding culture: the disruptive
element that intervenes, not just a category crisis of male and female, but
the crisis of category itself (1992, p. 17, emphasis in original). A di-
verse array of cultural traditions, such as the Khawal dancers of Egypt,
Japanese Kabuki and Indian Kathakali dance drama, historically have
exhibited transvestism as ritualistic and culturally sanctioned behaviour
(see Hanna, 1988). In the Western traditions of the medieval Christian
church during the Feast of Fools, laymen and clergymen would dress up
in womens clothes and mock the rituals of the Christian Mass (see
Ackroyd, 1979). This particular tradition exhibited anarchic and parodic
qualities similar to radical drag, in which class structures and gender
roles were the target of mockery. Furthermore, indigenous Canadian and
American culture offers an intriguing disruption to binary ways of
thinking about sex and gender. It is understood that native tribes had a
1
special category of men and women known as Berdaches, or two-spir-
ited people. Male-bodied two-spirits would dress in female attire, have
sex with other men and partake in activities traditionally gendered as
feminine, such as pottery or weaving. Female-bodied two-spirits simi-
larly dressed in male attire, took on male roles such as hunting and had
sex with other women. Most importantly, they were not thought of by
their tribes as deviant or defective men or women, but rather hon-
oured by their tribe as a third gender and given a spiritual almost
sacred role within the community (see Lang, 1998).
While these examples point to the long history of cross-dressing and
its significance in multiple cultures, none of them can be called drag as
such, because drag relates specifically to modern Western practices. To-
day, drag is commonly understood as a conscious, flamboyant,

1 Berdache was not the traditional name for these people, but rather the French
colonial term used by anthropologists: it is now considered derogatory. The native
term for these people would most likely have varied between tribes.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 87

hyperbolised and embodied performance of femininity by a male or of


masculinity by a female, in which the man or woman who does drag is
presumed to practise homosexuality. As some of the above examples sug-
gest, the assumption made in regard to a drag performers sexuality is not
necessarily surprising or new. Leila Rupp and Verta Taylor similarly note
that this association between gender transgression and same-sex desire
can be found throughout time and around the globe (2003, p. 181).
Popularised (and frequently sanitised) images of contemporary drag
performances often depict lesbians in top hats and tailcoats or gay men
in elaborate gowns, often singing, acting and dancing; the doers of drag
rarely escape the confining and depoliticised social role of an entertainer.
It is uncertain why contemporary cross-gendered performances are
called drag. It has been suggested by some that drag was a colloquial
term originating in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras when male actors
dressed in womens clothes to perform female roles in transvestite the-
atre (Ashburn, 2004). It has also been suggested that drag was a
nineteenth century term of British slang that, according to one source,
referred to the swishing or dragging of a womans gown as she walked
(Richardson, 1995). Yet another source posits it as a description of a
petticoat worn by men who played female roles in the theatre (Baker,
1994). Whatever the origins of the term, the history of modern drag is
firmly located in dramatic role-playing and theatrical style.
Historically, both men and women in drag have played a central role
2
in mainstream theatrical performances. In mid-nineteenth century Brit-
ish pantomime, for example, men often graced the stage in womens
attire to perform the role of the dame. A satirical and often grotesque
display of ageing femininity, the role of the dame crossed various theat-
rical traditions, with the role appearing in dramatic plays, comedic farces
and Savoy Operas (Baker, 1994). During the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the theatrical styles of minstrelsy, burlesque, variety and vaude-
ville began developing throughout Britain, the United States and parts of
Europe and Canada, and remained one of the most popular forms of en-
tertainment with audiences until the early 1930s. With a keen sense of

2 It was not until 1660 that English theatre permitted women to act on stage, and until
such time a culture of skilled female impersonators flourished. During the rule of
the Puritan Commonwealth, however, it was decided that men acting as women was
morally offensive; thus women were granted the right to publicly perform on stage.
88 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

parody, each craft incorporated its own stylised form of cross-gender


performance, allowing for insightful social commentary cleverly masked
by comedic frivolity.
In the US tradition of minstrelsy, male actors would sometimes as-
sume the theatrical role of the prima donna or the wench, and in singing
roles of this kind would tailor their voices to mimic feminine qualities.
Another of the minstrel characters also performed by a man was the co-
medic funny old gal role. Similar to the dame, her character required a
ridiculous costume on a fat and highly unfeminine male body, employing
unsophisticated satire and parody to humorously illustrate social condi-
tions and stigmas (Ackroyd, 1979; Hamilton, 1993; Rodger, 2004b). Not
all theatrical female impersonation at this time was farcical. The perform-
ances of famous American vaudevillian female impersonators Francis
Leon (performing c. 1860s1900s) and Julian Eltinge (performing c.
1900s1930s) celebrated traditional womanliness and received national
acclaim for their highly skilled and respectable embodiment of Victorian
femininity (Hamilton, 1993).
In the tradition of burlesque, the principal boy and second boy roles
provided a space for women to theatrically perform masculinity. Assuming
the character of a rascally adolescent or young adult male, women would
playfully curse and spit onstage. However, unlike the costumes worn by
male actors impersonating women, the costumes of the principal and sec-
ond boy were highly unrealistic and often tailored to expose the legs and
accentuate the curves of the female body (Rodger, 2002, 2004b). As the
song and dance tradition of burlesque evolved, scantily clad female bodies
became a staple means of entertaining audiences; thus a believable mascu-
line performance or the sincere embodiment of masculinity by a female
actor was extremely rare in this case.
During the early twentieth century, the less sexualised American
theatrical traditions of variety and vaudeville, as well as the British
music halls and some European cabarets, gave women greater freedom
to perform masculinity without resorting to sexual exploitation. How-
ever, it should be noted that female performances of masculinity were
usually of a boyish nature; plausible representations of mature mascu-
linity by a woman were not encouraged, and as such manliness remained
an exclusive performance of the male body (Halberstam, 1998; Senelick,
2000). In a routine known as the sister act, two female performers (usu-
ally sisters) were required to sing romantic duets to each other, one
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 89

dressed as a young man and the other as a young woman. Sister act per-
formances relied upon quality vocal stylisation and intelligently
dramatised impersonation (Rodger, 2004b). The musicality of these
performances is an illustration of how music in the same way as cos-
tume and gesticulation can enhance the gender-bending effect.
Similarly, solo male impersonators with masculine vocal qualities who
dressed in male costumes and performed male repertoire were popular in
the traditions of variety and vaudeville. According to musicologist Gil-
lian Rodger (2004b), this well-paid style of performance was highly
favoured among male working-class audiences because their act mer-
cilessly parodied middle-class values, while glorying in the excess of
leisure alcohol, women and fine fashion (2004b, p. 265).
In the Queer Encyclopaedia of Music, Dance and Musical Theatre,
Rodger (2004b) who has written extensively on gender impersonation
in variety and vaudevillian traditions points to two other musically
embellished gender-troubling performances: the female multi-instru-
mentalist who defies gender norms by playing traditionally male
instruments such as trumpet or saxophone; and the role of the double-
voiced vocalist. According to Douglas Gilberts American Vaudeville:
Its Life and Times (1963), female multi-instrumentalists were not strictly
gender impersonators; however, they often appeared dressed as young
men when taking on traditionally male instrumental roles. As an exam-
ple of such a talent, Gilbert refers to the work of Lillie Western
(performing c. 1880s), who was known for her expertise on the concer-
tina, banjo and xylophone. The double-voiced vocalist is known to have
costumed half of her body in male attire and the other half in female at-
tire, turning the appropriately costumed side of the body to the audience
as necessary. Double-voiced vocalists skilfully switched between male
and female vocal ranges, portraying both in song and appearance two
genders at once. In some performances, however, the double-voiced en-
tertainer may have been made up to appear as one gender at a time,
changing costume between songs. It was acceptable for double-voiced
acts to be performed by either men or women, providing they had the
necessary vocal range and skills. Notable performers in this tradition
included American variety performer Miss Dora Dawron (performing c.
1870s) and British music hall performer Bert Errol (performing c. 1900
1930s), both acclaimed for their ability to sing proficiently in either so-
90 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

prano or baritone, and soprano or tenor ranges respectively (Busby,


1976; Rodger, 2004b).
The rise in popularity of cinematic entertainment during the 1920s
and 1930s consequently reduced public interest in variety and vaudevil-
lian theatre. Many of the old theatrical crafts did not translate to film,
and an increase in the number of travelling film companies and cinema
houses slowly put numerous stage actors and those from drag-like per-
formance traditions out of work. With the exception of highly acclaimed
talents such as Julian Eltinge, female impersonators rarely became
screen actors, while male impersonators virtually disappeared altogether.
Increasing social awareness of the homosexual as a sexual category and
as a psychologically deviant gender invert saw cross-gender performan-
ces lose favour with morally respectable middle-class audiences. Until
such time, the sexuality of a cross-gender performer had remained within
the private domain, receiving only vague commentary from theatre
critics or audiences if the performer in question was not married (Baker,
1993; Roger, 2002). Furthermore, the passing of the Hays Hollywood
Motion Picture Production Code in 1930 (lasting until the 1968) banned
all screen performances that were deemed sexually perverse, which in-
cluded realistic gender impersonations.
While female impersonation continued its tradition within main-
stream theatre in newly developing forms of all-male revues, male im-
personation was largely forced underground. During the 1940s, all-male
revues became increasingly popular among live theatre-goers, with this
popularity lasting until the mid-1950s. These shows usually consisted of
an all-male performance troupe of singers and dancers who performed a
variety of roles, ranging from comedic mimicry to glamorously cos-
tumed hyper-feminine impersonations. While the revue attracted a
largely heterosexual audience, it became commonly accepted that its
male performers were of homosexual persuasion. As Roger Baker notes,
the only people eager to strut their stuff in drag were camp young ef-
feminate lads who felt they had nothing to lose and everything to gain
(1994, p. 196). It is argued by some scholars that male impersonation did
not make the transition into lesbian drag in a similar way to female im-
personation transitioning into gay male drag and the all-male revue show
because the aesthetics of camp which at that time was perceived as a
gay male sensibility did not serve the needs of lesbian theatre (Halber-
stam, 1998; Kennedy & Davis, 1993; Newton, 1996). Moreover, lesbian
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 91

sexuality was subordinated by the patriarchy of gay male society. This


issue will be addressed later in this chapter. During the 1950s, homo-
sexuality and its associated performances of male effeminacy were
increasingly frowned upon. Legal persecution of homosexuals was on
the incline, and male revues became the targets of moral reformists, con-
sequentially decreasing the popularity of drag amongst heterosexual
audiences and forcing the tradition off mainstream stages and into
underground gay bars and clubs (Baker, 1994; Chauncey, 1994).

Gay Culture and Drag in the Twentieth Century

Drag, as it is situated within gay culture, diverges somewhat from its origins
within the theatrical traditions of gender impersonation, and as some schol-
ars have previously noted, the two should not be conflated into a single
history (Halberstam, 1998; Newton, 1996). In large cities such as London
and New York, drag is known to have been a vibrant part of gay (and to a
lesser extent lesbian) communities since the late nineteenth century, and the
theatrical traditions of gender impersonation and mainstream socio-cultural
practices such as masquerade balls are thought to have been a necessary
precursor to twentieth century gay drag (Chauncey, 1994; Halberstam,
1998; Kennedy & Davis, 1993; Rupp & Taylor, 2003). As George
Chauncey (1994) points out in his history of gay world-making in New
York during the 1920s and 1930s, the drag queens or fairies on display
at the balls embodied camp culture in their inversion (and often burlesque)
of gender conventions (p. 297). Furthermore, he suggests that it was at the
drag balls, more than any place else, that the gay world saw itself, celebrated
itself, and affirmed itself (p. 299).
In the gay tradition of drag balls and supper clubs, drag queen per-
formances generally were organised into two different performance
styles commonly understood as high camp and low camp drag. In rela-
tion to Isherwoods distinctions discussed in the previous chapter, high
camp drag is best described as maintaining an underlying seriousness of
the performance, while low camp drag reproduces its performance as an
entertaining (and often self-parodying) hysterical failure (Zervigon,
2004). Drag performances in both high and low camp styles often draw
from and transform popular culture. Traditionally, many drag queens
chose (and some still do) to impersonate a famous female singer/actor
92 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

with which gay men identified, such as Ethel Merman, Joan Crawford or
3
Judy Garland. And even those who did not choose to do specific
impersonations of female stars would usually source the songs for their
musical routines from mainstream culture.
In the style of low camp drag, there is a tendency to emphasise the
performers fraudulent femininity through grotesque or absurd repre-
sentations of women. Acts in this style often resort to crass humour
and/or musical performances that mock the original sincerity or meaning
of a song through over-articulation of seriousness or the exaggeration of
flaws. In contrast, high camp drag strives for sophistication and authen-
ticity in its delivery. High camp drag is a skilfully crafted artistry that
aims to tastefully and respectfully recreate an idealised performance of
femininity. In the high camp style, a drag queen may choose to imper-
sonate Judy Garland, for example, but unlike low camp drag, this
performance is never intended to mock Garlands particular style of
femininity or exaggerate the flaws in her character. Instead, high camp
performances generally pay homage to the original performer, stressing
with great detail the exact quality of her voice, appearance and gesture.
During the 1950s and 1960s in Britain and America, gay bars and
establishments where drag queens often performed were targeted by law
enforcement agencies; homosexuality was a crime and the frequency of
police raids escalated. For many gay performers, being a drag queen was
an increasingly political role in that drag performances had become an
affirmation of ones sexuality and cultural identity (Baker, 1994). The
most famous of all police raids occurred in the early hours of the morn-
ing of 28 June 1969 at a New York bar frequented by drag queens called
the Stonewall Inn. Emotions were particularly heightened at this time, as
many of the bars patrons were mourning the death of Judy Garland and
had attended her funeral the day before. According to some of the vary-
ing historical accounts, drag queens and butch lesbians were at the

3 These women and others belong to what is known within queer cultural studies as
the cult of the diva. The diva may be an opera singer, stage performer or film
actress who is appropriated as a role model. She is generally someone with
extraordinary talent who, either in her personal life or stage roles, embodies the
heartache and suffering felt by many marginalised homosexuals (Dyer, 1986). In
more recent times, opera and popular singers such as Barbra Streisand, Cher, Renee
Fleming, Kathleen Battle and Madonna have acquired diva status among
predominantly gay male audiences.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 93

forefront of the retaliation against the police, fighting fiercely amongst a


violent confrontation with an estimated four hundred police officers
(Duberman, 1993). As previously discussed in Chapter 1, the now
legendary Stonewall riots marked the dawn of the gay liberation move-
ment.
During the 1970s, a new and more extreme style of drag began to
develop. It was distinctive from the forms of drag that had preceded it in
that it employed a camp sensibility in the queer parodic sense, assuming
a more radical and politicised role within emerging queer cultures. Fac-
tions of the Gay Liberation Front began using drag performances in their
street theatre groups as a public act of empowerment and confrontation.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, radical performance
4 5
troupes such as The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, The Cockettes,
6 7 8 9
Angels of Light, Hot Peaches, Bloolips and Split Britches took to the
streets and stages, offering audiences a variety of newly stylised, politi-
cised, radical and more anarchic gender-troubling performances. These
acts parodied hegemonic cultural norms and social values, as well as the
gay cultural traditions of high and low camp drag; many of them also
began exploring concepts of genderfuck in their shows. Acts such as the
all-male troupe known as The Cockettes sensationally dressed in gaudy
female attire, wore full beards and performed outrageous theatrical rou-

4 The New York-based Ridiculous Theatrical Company was formed by Charles


Ludlam in 1967. It performed a ground-breaking style of avant-garde theatre that
drew upon drag and queer culture until 1987.
5 The San Francisco-based performance troupe The Cockettes performed between
1969 and 1972. Their shows blended song and dance with performance art and
radicalised drag with a unique style of psychedelic gender-bending.
6 Angels of Light was formed in 1971 and continued performing until 1980. After
some disagreement between members of The Cockettes, Hibiscus (the founding
member) left The Cockettes to form a new radical drag troupe that was similar in
style but differed in the way it was managed.
7 Performing during 1972 and 1979, Hot Peaches was a New York-based troupe that
performed a variety of radical street drag and theatrical works.
8 The London-based theatre troupe Bloolips performed between 1981 and 1991. Its
shows aimed to parody hegemonic Western society and provide entertaining social
commentary on a range of topics, including gender, sexuality, consumerism and
politics.
9 Split Britches is a lesbian feminist theatre company, which performs gender-
bending queer satire. Formed by Americans Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver in 1980,
it has have toured major US and European cities and is still performing today.
94 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

tines that Mark Thompson describes as a pastiche of every used-up


myth, fable, and lie they had ever watched, read, or been taught (1995,
p. 449). New radical performers challenged the conventions of drag as
apolitical entertaining mimicry, lowbrow farce and stylised gender im-
personation, focusing instead on drags potential as political commentary,
sex role exploration and entertaining social confrontation. As one radical
American drag queen and ACT UP activist, Lurleen, suggests:

Traditionally drag has been a form of escapist entertainment, like the alternative
version of TV-sitcoms for fags What we do reflects the mentality of our genera-
tion. We approach serious causes with humor and react to whats going on in our
culture and society. (cited in Hilbert, 1995, pp. 46465)

Emerging out of a punk sensibility in the early 1980s, the radical drag of
10
the Wigstock generation was yet another evolutionary marker in the
history of drag as queer activism: they have read all the feminist and
queer theory, boned up on hagiography, and behave in a postmodern
manner with quotations marks around their drag, writes Laurence Se-
nelick (2000, p. 434). Queens of the Wigstock generation were a stark
contrast to the impoverished 1980s Harlem Voguers depicted in Jenny
Livingstons documentary film Paris is Burning (1991). Where the poor
black and Hispanic gay men and transgenderists as depicted by Living-
ston employed drag as an attempt at gender realism a way of
compensating for their low status and embracing a cultural elitism asso-
ciated with the white capitalist hegemony that oppressed them
Wigstock was firmly grounded in camp irony and parody. Queens such
as Lurleen and her contemporaries, Lady Bunny, RuPaul and the black
power advocate Vaginal Crme Davis, acknowledged the important role
that drag had played in the fight for gay civil rights during the late 1960s
and 1970s, and as such they attempted to politically mobilise drag for a
new generation of queers who were currently in the midst of an AIDS

10 Pioneered by the notorious radical drag queen Lady Bunny in 1984, Wigstock is an
outdoor drag festival that was first staged in New Yorks East Village on Labor
Day. Since then, Wigstock has grown into an annual event, and 2 September, was
officially declared Wigstock Day by Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger
in 1991. In her speech, Messinger declared that the Wigstock experience, a
celebration of music, peace, love, drag and gay pride, helps New Yorkers realize
the celebration of difference makes us all richer (cited in Senelick, 2000, p. 436).
For a detailed depiction of this event, see Wigstock: The Movie (2003).
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 95

crisis: AIDS has forced gay people to think about who we are and what
our relationship with straight society really is, said Lurleen. Im no
strident Marxist, but when there is a reactionary government in power,
its kind of hard to get up onstage and lip-synch Barbra Streisand and
then say, drink up, everybody (cited in Hilbert, 1995, p. 463). More-
over, the Wigstock generation of queens fashioned their own drag
personas, rejecting the culture of mimicry and impersonation that had
preceded them and instead choosing to create their own cultural capital.
For example, Lady Bunny launched the Wigstock festival in 1984; she is a
deejay and has released disco singles such as Shame Shame Shame
(1996) and The Pussycat Song (1996). RuPaul has released numerous
singles and studio albums (the latest, entitled Glamazon, was released in
2011), starred in many films, such as RuPaul is: Starbooty (1987), and has
both appeared on and hosted an array of television shows. Meanwhile,
Vaginal Crme Davis fronted punk and thrash concept bands such as
Pedro, Muriel & Esther, The Female Menudo, Black Fag and the Afro
Sisters and is the editor of the queercore zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson.
Through political engagement and the self-fashioning of individual drag
identities, the radical drag of the 1970s and the Wigstock generation of the
1980s produced a queerer modality of drag performance.
In its recent history, certain forms of drag have championed queer
politics through drags role in gay liberation, its anarchic display of
social disobedience and its tactical performances of genderfuck. As such,
drag can be read a form of social commentary, specifically a queer the-
atrical marker of heterosexualitys false claim to gender authenticity and
a way to perform queer imaginings of the self and the social. While it is
clear from this concise history that not all drag intends to be subversive,
Butler argues that drag can be read for the way in which hyperbolic
norms are dismantled as the heterosexual mundane Norms, taken not
as commands to be obeyed, but as imperatives to be cited twisted,
queered (1993, p. 237). It is the incongruences that arise out of the act
of citing, twisting or queering that produces a queer mode of gender
performance, unsettling gender normativities.
Most of the writings on drag and camp are one-sided in that they
often address the performance of femininity by males, but largely ignore
the performance of masculinity by females. This has produced a large
body of literature around the culture of queening, but at the same time
rendered theatrical forms of female masculinity largely obscure. Very
96 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

little scholarly or popular criticism of drag kings existed before the late
1990s (see DiFrance, 2004; Halberstam, 1998; Troka, Lebesco & Noble,
2002; Volcano & Halberstam, 1999), and to date less has been published
in regard to the drag role of the bio queen.

Drag Kings and Bio Queens

As discussed, the contemporary drag queen has originated from a long


theatrical tradition of glamorous and parodic female impersonations that
in recent history have become a more radicalised and politicised form of
queer performance. Yet male impersonators did not make the transition
into performing the role of the drag king within lesbian communities
until the latter half of the twentieth century. As Elizabeth Kennedy and
Madeline Davis (1993) highlight in their history of lesbian communities,
the rise of the drag queen in gay culture does not parallel the rise of the
drag king within lesbian culture. And, while performances of gender
transgressions were significant in the formation of lesbian communities
11
(reflected in the construction of butch and femme roles), a notable lack
of anything similar to drag queen performances within lesbian culture
could be observed up until the 1990s hence the relatively new schol-
arly attention to the topic. According to Halberstam, lesbians seem not
to have cultivated the same kinds of drag cultures that gay men have
(Volcano & Halberstam, 1999, p. 39). Kennedy and Davis point to a
puzzling lack of camp (1993, p. 62) in the lesbian butch role during
the 1940s and 1950s as a possible reason for this. They suggest, as do

11 References to butch/femme lesbian gender roles date back to the 1920s and can be
explained in the simplest sense as equating to an overtly masculine or overtly
feminine performance of gender. During the 1970s, lesbian feminist identity
politics criticised butch and femme identities for reproducing a false and
dichotomous representation of lesbianism within the hetropatriarchys system of
oppressive gender norms. However, butch and femme gender roles continue to be
(re)made and celebrated in queer circles. Butch and femme roles are highly
complex and variable, taking many forms for example, stone butch, stone femme,
power femme, daddy, girl, mummy and boy among others. For detailed discussions
of these roles, see The Persistent Desire (Nestle, 1992), Boots of Leather, Slippers
of Gold (Kennedy & Davis, 1993), Female Masculinity (Halberstam, 1998),
Butch/femme (Munt, 1998), Lesbian Sex Scandals (Atkins, 1999) and Femmes of
Power (Volcano & Dahl, 2008).
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 97

Kate Davy (1994) and Halberstam (1998), that a gay camp aesthetic was
unable to serve the needs of lesbian theatre in the same way as it did gay
male theatre because true masculinity is considered original, authentic
and non-performative in contrast to the artificiality of feminine gender
roles. Therefore, in order for a woman to pass as a true butch that is, to
present herself as authentically masculine her performance must not be
perceived as artificial. She must not appear to be acting a role, but in-
stead her physical portrayal of masculinity should be perceived as the
embodiment of her true self. This suggests that the theatrical roles of the
drag king and the drag queen as they are understood today do not share a
joint or symmetrical history, and as such the role of the drag king de-
serves to be attended to separately in order to avert confusion.
Drag kings can broadly be defined as anyone (regardless of gender
and/or sexual preference) who turns masculinity into an act through a
conscious performance of the signs of maleness. Such acts may include
the wearing of facial hair, male clothing, a prosthetic penis, stylised de-
portment and other physical mannerisms normatively deemed male. Just
like drag queening, the nuances of drag king acts are highly varied; how-
ever, it should be noted that the literature on this topic identifies two
specific sub-types of kinging: butch or male-identified drag kings; and
female-identified or androgynous drag kings. Halberstam (1998) and
Elizabeth Ashburn (2004) distinguish the two sub-types by suggesting
that the butch kings elaborate in their acts their off-stage female mas-
culinity (Ashburn, 2004, p. 88), often maintaining a male gender identi-
fication offstage by wearing and performing masculinity as part of her
quotidian gender expression (Halberstam, 1998, p. 232). In contrast,
female-identified drag kings are often involved in a parody of mascu-
linity, assuming masculinity merely as an act in which they expose the
theatricality of maleness. Annabelle Willox, a contributing author to The
Drag King Anthology (2002), summarises the contemporary emergence
of the drag king as a queer role, suggesting that the drag king has em-
erged out of recent moves towards gender blurring as a subversive act
that denaturalises categories of gender advocated by queer theory
(2002, p. 274). As I will soon demonstrate, local drag king and bio queen
performance troupe the Twang Gang falls into the latter category, and I
argue that a camp sensibility favouring parody and artifice is available to
these female performers a sensibility that they employ extensively both
in their drag king and bio queen performances.
98 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

The role of the bio queen is a recent development in drag perform-


ance, and in 2001 a Bio/Femme Queen Manifesto was submitted to the
International Drag King Community Extravaganza Board, calling for
greater acceptance of this role within international kinging communities
(Bylaws, 2007). Bio queens are biological females or female-identified
individuals who consciously perform hyper-femininity and can crudely
be described as female drag queens. The term bio queen has developed
from the previously contested term bio faux queen, an abbreviation of
biologically faux drag queen. Members of the international drag king
and queen community are cautious of the term bio faux queen, prefer-
ring instead terms such as bio queen, femme drag queen or simply
drag queen because it is felt that by naming this behaviour as faux one
is suggesting that it is a lesser imitation of true or original queening. The
authors of the Bio/Femme Queen Manifesto thought that by using the
word bio, they could challenge and expand upon notions of biology
(Eve et al., 2004). However, some transsexuals still regard the word
bio as problematic, instead preferring the term femme drag queen.
In her examination of bio queening, Rachael Devitt has noted the
lack of scholarly consideration given to this emerging role, a role that
she argues is unique in its ability to out gender as performative because
it does not depend on an assumed incongruity between actual and
staged gender (2006, p. 30). The role of the bio queen, then, is ex-
tremely important in articulating the nature of gender as performative
because she does not rely upon the displacement of the imagined
authentic gender and gender as it is being performed on stage. Devitt
goes further to suggest that a rigid sex-based notion of kinging or
queening defined as a performative gender crossing leaves little
room for women who choose to perform variations of femininity to be
included in the paradigm of drag:

If drag must entail a cross to the opposite of ones true identity, then that origi-
nal, that biological sex-based identity becomes normalized and immobile, thus
denying both the validity of the performers self-identified gender and the power a
drag performance has in questioning gender realness. (Devitt, 2006, p. 30)

Furthermore, drag performances of this nature demonstrate a resistance to-


wards the privileging of masculinity within both heterosexual and homosex-
ual cultures. As Eve Shapiro notes in her discussion of US drag king and bio
queen troupe the Disposable Boy Toys, many members chose to perform
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 99

femininity as a feminist act. They viewed performing girl drag as one way to
claim space for and empower femininity (2007, p. 264).
Because the roles of the drag king and bio queen are presumed to be
lesbian roles (although this is not always the case), drag king and bio
queen performances make further commentary on lesbian sexual identity
that is, that lesbians perform gender in a multiplicity of ways. Thus the
recent emergence of lesbians performing masculine parody and hyper-
femininity has complicated the lesbian butch stereotype the butch be-
ing the most dominant image through which society has judged and
comprehended lesbian sexuality for decades (Willox, 2002). Moreover,
the execution of gender hyperbole that is crucial to both these roles
would further suggest that camp as theatrical political praxis is, in the
present day, available to lesbians who perform drag in these ways.

Genderfuck, Lip-synching and Vocalisation

The self-fashioning of radical drag identities that are not based solely on
the performance of gender-crossing or gender-passing can be located
within the an expression called genderfuck. Genderfuck is a postmod-
ern term used to describe a person or performance that plays/fucks with
or mocks normative images of gender, and in the process of play desta-
bilises the gender binary and subverts the logic of the sex/gender para-
digm. For Stephen Whittle, genderfuck is concerned with practical en-
actments of the theoretical premises of queer theory: it is a full frontal
theoretical and practical attack on the dimorphism of gender- and sex-
roles (2005, p. 117). In June L. Reichs highly cited article on this topic,
entitled Genderfuck: The Law of the Dildo, she proposes that gen-
derfuck structures meaning in a symbol-performance matrix that crosses
through sex and gender and destabilizes the boundaries of our recogni-
tion of sex, gender, and sexual practice (1999, p. 255). In this article,
Reich goes on to suggest that genderfuck could be conceptualised as the
effect of unstable signifying practices in a libidinal economy of multiple
sexualities (1999, p. 264). Thus genderfucks multiple symbolic per-
formances of gender, which separate the performers anatomy (sex) from
genders semiotics, produce a visible array of sexual subjectivities that
lie outside the heterosexual matrix.
100 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

Cultural studies theorists Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman (1995)


support Reichs definition, agreeing that genderfuck is all about the destabi-
lisation of subject positions via symbolic play and performance. They argue
that in playing with binary opposition it [genderfuck] moves towards a
model of gender as simulacrum (without an original) (1995, p. 49). Unlike
early examples of drag, a performance that employs genderfuck does not
attempt to pass as authentic or believable. Instead, it deliberately mixes gen-
der cues in an attempt to subvert the logic of the sex/gender/sexuality para-
digm by exposing the false dualities that lie at the heart of heteronorma-
tivity. For Christopher Lonc, genderfuck is not a theatrical attempt at female
or male impersonation; rather, he sees it as a way to ridicule and destroy
the whole cosmology of sex roles and sexual identification (cited in Berg-
man, 1993, p. 7). Thus genderfuck directly coincides with Butlers previ-
ously discussed notion of gender trouble. Moreover, genderfuck can be
understood as a way of causing gender trouble or as an anarchic theatrical
enactment of the concept of gender trouble.
To successfully achieve genderfuck in a drag performance, one
clearly requires the right combination of costume and gesticulation.
However, there is another key element that contributes to the genderfuck
effect but that often is overlooked in studies of drag: aural signifiers. In
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Butler alludes to
this arguing that signs work by appearing (visibly, aurally) (1993,
p. 68, emphasis in original). While Butler refers primarily to language in
her statement and does not extend upon this argument to incorporate
theories of vocal register or timbre, she does make the point that vo-
calisation signifies the material body. Similarly, Peraino (2007) claims
that the voice plays a primary role in gender determination, highlighting
how gender-coded vocal mannerisms such as register and timbre operate
(like genitalia) as an attribute of biological sex. Given this, discussions
around music and the voice specifically song choice and methods of
12
vocalisation are largely absent from studies of drag. While many
scholars make passing mention of the prevalence of lip-synching in con-

12 A notable exception is Halberstams (2007a) essay on the Queer Voices and


Musical Genders in which she connects the queerly gendered performances and
vocal styles of black female performers Big Manna Thornton and Sylvester.
Additionally, while her study doesnt focus specifically on drag, Jarman-Ivens
(2011) work on the queer voice provides an excellent account of uncanny female
vocalities and sexual identities in popular music.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 101

temporary drag, none thus far have theorised its effect in relation to
drags genderfucking potential, or what it may signify about the sub-
version and/or articulation of the body and gender identity of drag per-
formers. Therefore, I give this specific consideration in the case study of
the Twang Gang to follow.
What the majority of studies have shown in passing is that, in the
long tradition of both gender impersonation and drag, music has always
been a necessary feature. In earlier times before the prevalence of re-
corded music performers would always sing in their acts, usually ac-
companied by live music. However, the introduction of recorded music
into clubs (most notably during the 1960s) allowed for a new style of
drag performance to emerge, which became known as a recorded vo-
calist or lip-synch performance. In Esther Newtons famous text Mother
Camp: Female Impersonations in America (1972), she notes that the
introduction of lip-synching in drag performances caused contention
amongst performers. A prestige was afforded to those who sang, and as
such singers were revered as stage performers while lip-synching was
considered to be a more amateur style of street performing. In the ma-
jority of drag performances today, those who sing live are not necessa-
rily held in higher esteem than those who lip-synch, as lip-synching
currently appears to be the most common method of song delivery
among nightclub performers.
In relation to performances of sex and gender through the body, I
suggest that lip-synching potentially can be theorised as an act of gen-
derfuck. In Cusicks essay On Musical Performances, she proposes
that:

Voices stand for the imperatives of sex because, unlike the behaviours we might
agree are performances of gender (clothes, gestures, ways of walking), voices or-
iginate inside the bodys borders and not on the bodys surfaces. We assume that
physical behaviours originating within the bodys borders (in the bodys cavities)
are determined by their site of origin, by the body itself. Thus, they cannot be
performances, in that they seem not to be choices. We believe that the voice is
the body, its very breath and interior shapes projected outward into the world as a
way others might know us, even know us intimately I believe one key element to
the usefulness of Song as a medium for the performance of gender and sex is the
relation of Song to the borders of the body: all voices, but especially singing voices,
perform the borders of the body. (1999, p. 29, emphasis in original)
102 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

If, then, we are to agree with Cusicks summation that voices necessitate
and articulate the sexed body, I would argue that lip-synching is one way
in which drag performers can subvert the bodys borders. If the voice
produced in the act of singing reveals without choice an intimate truth
about the performers body, then a performance of lip-synching reclaims
the right of a performer to choose what they reveal about their bodies,
and thus confounds this intimate physical truth. In essence, lip-synching
is the ultimate subversion of the vocally codified sexed body. If, for ex-
ample, a female performer chooses to wear male drag and sing in her
natural female sexed voice, her vocal performance is inescapably sexed
as female and may consequentially be gendered feminine because, ac-
cording to Cusick, the natural voice signifies her sexed body. We be-
lieve, she says, that the voice is the body (1999, p. 29, emphasis in
original). Therefore, whatever the extent to which a female performer
might go to subvert the bodily markers of her femaleness, she ultimately
is reduced to them via singing. Lip-synching breaks down the physical
given of the body. The vocal incongruences that occur in a lip-synching
performance when a female is perceived to be producing a male voice
or vice versa is one example of the way music can be used to subvert
the borders of the body, demonstrating that things are not always as they
seem or sound, thus queering the vocal production of sex and gender
signification and genderfucking with the vocal cues of sex and gender in
the process.
It is clear from the preceding discussion that the histories, styles and
functions of drag are many and varied. To some, drag may have ap-
peared simply as an entertaining charade; however, here I have shown
that the power of drag extends beyond the comedic image of a man in a
frock or the sensual image of a woman donning top hat and tails. Since
the 1970s, drag performance increasingly has served a disruptive agenda,
one that is grounded in a recent history of camp as a theatricalised form
of political praxis. We see this particularly in the self-fashioning of radi-
cal drag identities that are not based solely on the performance of
gender-crossing or gender-passing: drag that employs genderfuck; drag
that purposefully troubles gender, upsetting heterosexual hegemony. The
style of drag that is most commonly associated with contemporary queer
culture is drag that mixes multiple signs of sex, gender and sexuality,
engaging in symbolic play and performance, both visually and aurally.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 103

What has been missing thus far from scholarly discussions of drag is
the significance of music and other aural signifiers such as lip-synching
and vocalisation. It would appear that the songs that are performed and
the methods of vocalisation appear largely inconsequential to many
scholarly observers; therefore, I address this with priority in the case
study of local drag troupe the Twang Gang. I also pay close attention to
the use of camp within Twang Gang performances, as I believe that a
camp sensibility favouring parody and artifice is available to these fe-
male performers, which they employ in an attempt to be both entertain-
ing and political, engaging and empowering their audiences and troupe
members while denaturalising categories of gender and performing
parodic social commentary.

Kings and Queens at Play:


A Case Study of Drag Act the Twang Gang

Contextualised within a history of drag, the following case study draws


upon the previously discussed theories of camp, genderfuck, lip-synch-
ing and vocalisation in an examination of the queer performance style
and song choice of the Brisbane-based drag troupe the Twang Gang. The
Twang Gang exemplifies the use of musical performance as a means to
unsettle gender, sexual and musical normativities, while offering an in-
sight into the world of drag king and bio queen performance. This case
study demonstrates how the Twang Gang employs multiple drag king
and bio queen identities in its live shows, and uses these roles to execute
a queer critique of gender and lesbian sexualities. Moreover, this exam-
ination focuses on how the music used in Twang Gang performances
increases the gender-troubling effect.
The Twang Gang was formed in August 2000 by Dita Brooke and
Mary Alexander, and grew to become known as a travelling fantasy
cabaret (The Twang Gang, 2002). It should be noted that in June 2006
the Twang Gang changed its name to the Gang Stars; however, I refer to
it as the Twang Gang throughout this discussion for the purpose of con-
tinuity. Since its beginnings, the Twang Gang has had numerous mem-
bers. According to Brooke, between August 2000 and November 2005,
104 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

the Twang Gang had approximately 130 members of the local gay, les-
bian, trans and queer communities performing with it at one time or an-
other. In November 2005, I interviewed six of these members: Dita
Brooke, Mary Alexander, Jo Lieven, Kylie McGill, Analea Holmes and
Melissa Hall. In their daily lives, all members of the Twang Gang with
whom I spoke suggested that they self-identified as queer/lesbian fe-
males. On stage, however, they perform a variety of drag king and bio
queen roles, which they have named and nurtured throughout their per-
forming careers: Brooke performs as drag king Rock Hard and bio queen
Mitzee Burger; Alexander performs as drag king Tricky and bio queen
Boom Bang; Lieven performs as drag king Bonn Apiteet and bio queen
Elektra Fying; McGill performs as bio queen Mystery Bound; Holmes
performs as drag kings Mr Frisky Bob and Inspector Muff; Hall
performs as bio queen Miss Match. Pictured from left to right in figure 1
are Electra Fying, Rock Hard and Tricky.

Figure 1: Twang Gang performers


Twang Gang 2005. Photo By Hillary Green.

Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Performance

The Twang Gangs unique style of drag cabaret welcomes female- and
male-identified performers of all ages, races and sexual persuasions to
join and experience what Brooke refers to as empowerment through
entertainment (personal communication, 29 November 2005). While
the Twang Gang has at times had both cis and trans male troupe
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 105

members, there were none regularly performing with the troupe at the
time of this research. On the odd occasion that male performers did
participate in Twang Gang shows while I was observing the troupe, they
were usually guest artists rather than actual troupe members. The Twang
Gang members stressed that this was not because they did not welcome
men; rather, it was an indication of the gender segregation that is preva-
lent in lesbian and gay culture, which they are still trying to overcome.
The ages of troupe members varied from people in their late teens to
those in their early forties. The racial identity of troupe members was not
exclusively white; Brooke is an Indigenous woman.
Twang Gang members use their bodies, via singing and dancing, to
perform a part of themselves that is often restrained in their daily lives.
This idea of empowerment is central to the Twang Gangs ethos, as
troupe participants explicitly claim that one of their primary motivations
is to provide members of the queer community (especially women) with
an accommodating space for self-discovery, specifically a space that is
drug and alcohol free. The Twang Gang stressed that members always
perform free from the effects of drugs and alcohol, as they feel the queer
communities often resort to excessive drug and alcohol consumption in
social situations. Therefore, in the interest of promoting an alternative to
this, the Twang Gang encourages its members as well as its audiences to
gain confidence from the spirit not the substance (personal communi-
cation, 29 November 2005).
The Twang Gang has a playful, almost celebratory, feel to its per-
formances, maintaining that self-empowerment, entertainment and
community engagement are integral parts of its show. When I inter-
viewed the members of the Twang Gang, Brooke commented, and the
other members agreed, that:

From being on stage it [empowerment] now overlaps into our real lives. It [per-
forming] gives you the space and the freedom to express yourself in any way you
want the confidence of doing it on stage starts coming into your real life and the
level of empowerment is phenomenal it helps you stand on your own two feet
and be more confident with who you really want to be. You dont have to fit into a
pigeon hole of any sort, you dont have to conform to society, you can make your
own rules and so long as theyre cool and groovy within yourself you can do and
achieve whatever you like. (personal communication, 29 November 2005)
106 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

This idea of non-conformity is related primarily to modes of gender and


sexual expression. By employing a pert camp sensibility, and invoking
their capacity for gender trouble, Twang Gang performers create a sense
of gender and sexual identity anarchy on stage, and intentionally subvert
and critique gender and sexual normativities in their shows. From the
numerous shows that I attended, it was clear that the Twang Gang con-
sciously troubled gender and questioned the performance of lesbian sex-
ual identity. The troupe achieved this in two highly powerful ways: first,
by being female and performing masculinity in the role of the drag king;
and second, by being female and also performing femininity in the role
of the bio queen, thus demonstrating that gender itself is performative
and not limited by or attached to the physical body. Most members of the
Twang Gang choose to perform both masculine and feminine roles, and
in doing so they increase their capacity to critique these gender roles ra-
ther then merely exposing gender as pretence. By using female bodies to
campishly parody both masculinity and femininity, the Twang Gang is
able to offer its audience a critique of the connection between female
biology and feminine gender in ways that are not available to performers
who only perform cross-gender roles. Furthermore, performing both
masculine and feminine roles allows the Twang Gang to explore the
multiple manifestations of lesbian sexual identity and desire. As lesbian-
identified women, they demonstrate that lesbian sexuality does not ne-
cessarily imply a gender crossing to the butch or masculine, but rather
allows one to freely assume multiple gender performances. Therefore, it
is through various performances of female masculinities as well as fe-
male femininities that the Twang Gang executes its critique of normative
gender performance and sexual identity as it is organised with hetero-
sexual hegemony.
When I spoke with these women, they identified a number of con-
cerns they had about gender and sexual identity rigidity, particularly
within the lesbian community. Brooke made reference to a recent per-
formance in which Mr Frisky Bob (a female drag king) was onstage
wooing a male drag queen who was performing with them on this occa-
sion. The act was called A Whole Nude World and was a genderfuck
camp parody of the Walt Disney film musical Aladdin (1992), which
featured a song called A Whole New World. Holmes, who was per-
forming as Mr Frisky Bob, was partially naked, wearing only a long
hairy beard, thick pubic hair and a small lap-lap, protruding from which
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 107

was an excessively large prosthetic penis and testiculi. The penis was
made out of stocking material and continued to unravel, like a giant
erection, through out the performance. During this act, a number of fe-
male audience members got up and walked out of the performance,
clearly offended by what they had witnessed on stage. It was unclear,
however, whether they were offended by the phallus or by the fact that a
known lesbian was wooing a gay male in drag. When I asked Brooke
and Holmes about this incident, and specifically why they thought the
women had left, Brooke remarked:

There are a lot of hardcore dykes who are anti-men and they dont know how to
take us because they think that we want to be men and yet we are women who are
very out and in touch with our own sexuality. Were portraying men affectionately,
we dont take the piss out of guys, were just embracing a part of the world and
having fun with it. Weve lost a lot of dykes from our audience because of this.
(personal communication, 29 November 2005)

While Holmes agrees with Brooke regarding the Twang Gangs por-
trayal of men and masculinity, she goes on to comment that she feels
very natural when performing as a man, and does not understand why
some women may take offence at this:

Its strange because I felt particularly comfortable in that male role. When Im be-
ing a bloke on stage I feel, well, there are facets of your personality that are latent
in everyday life but when you get up there its a licence to let them go, and for me
theyre naturally there During the show I was sitting down at one point and I had
fake balls under my lap-lap and it just felt so nice. It felt really comfortable on my
body and there was nothing that felt awkward about it. You can get up there and be
tough and dirty and silly and really have a lot of fun and it comes through naturally
because its already there inside. (personal communication, 29 November 2005)

When I questioned other members regarding their use of phallic props on


stage, Alexander commented that for her, performing as Tricky (her drag
king character) is not something she equates with feeling natural; ra-
ther, she thinks of it as a way to explore her different selves. She said:

For me its not about pretending I have a dick, its got nothing to do with that. Its
interesting its really empowering, it feels fantastic and its such a release
when youre on stage its another world, its my world I like the androgyny of it
too. Its quite sexy. To me it really doesnt feel like Im trying to be a boy. (per-
sonal communication, 29 November 2005)
108 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

Lieven and McGill stressed that they prefer performing as bio queens,
and they do not care much for wearing a dildo or any other kind of male
phallic symbol. For forty hours a week I drive a forklift, said Lieven,
and to get up on stage with a pony tail wig in fishnets and little hotpants
feels fantastic. For me, it gives me a chance to be a woman (personal
communication, 29 November 2005). McGill remarked that: Im ex-
tremely femme and I dont enjoy being a boy, I just dont get off on it.
Id rather be in a corset. Youre suppose to have short hair if youre a
dyke and you cant wear lipstick. She sees her role within the Twang
Gang as challenging that stereotype through the overt expression of her
femininity (personal communication, 29 November 2005).
The self-made worlds created by each troupe member on stage are
many and varied. Performances of femininities, masculinities and an-
drogyny point to the diverse and deeply personal expression of gender as
it is experienced, lived and enacted by each troupe member, thus ac-
counting for the multiple experiences and expressions the individuality
of queer female sexuality. Further discussion on this topic revealed that
the Twang Gang members see themselves as pioneers of queer sexual
politics; specifically, they feel that they challenge the norms of lesbian
gender and lesbian sexual identity, but they also suggested that this was
quite often a difficult task to undertake. The gay press is killing us,
Brooke said, because they often refer to us as an all female produc-
tion. Moreover, the gay venues wont hire us because they think were
not attractive to the men (personal communication, 29 November
2005). Similarly, Alexander remarked:

We still suffer the stigma of being only for women, even though our audiences are
mixed. Because most of our shows are at Options13 and it has been a girl bar for so
long, guys still have that assumption. Even with our advertising its hard to get the
gay press not to market us for the girls. The local papers will refer to us saying
come on girls or go on girls and we havent even put that in our info sheet. (per-
sonal communication, 29 November 2005)

Lesbian stereotypes and gender segregation among Brisbanes lesbian


and gay audiences are some of the things the Twang Gang strives to
overcome. Considering themselves pioneers of queer politics, the Twang

13 Options was a gay and lesbian bar located in the inner city Brisbane suburb of Spring
Hill that regularly ran a women-only club night called The Birdcage. Options has
since closed down.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 109

Gang performers suggest that through their form of drag entertainment


they aim to create a nurturing space that welcomes those who feel dislo-
cated from the heterosexual as well as the lesbian and gay mainstream.
As Brooke said:

We dont discriminate against age, race, sex, gender we want to embrace everyone,
especially those who are generally outcast within our community. The more odd you
are, the more well like you. (personal communication, 29 November 2005)

For the Twang Gang, drag performance functions as a site of experimen-


tation, an inclusive space that allows people to play with and try on
different genders and celebrate incongruous expressions of sex, gender
and sexuality. Moreover, it is a transformative space, acknowledged by
troupe members as empowering and affecting, transforming bodies and
perceptions on stage as well as in the troupe members everyday lives.

Gender, Sexuality and Musicality

Since its beginnings in the music halls of Great Britain and on the
vaudeville circuit throughout the United States, drag has involved musi-
cal performance to some degree. However, the musical styles and song
choices of drag artists have received very little critical attention to date.
During the time I spent observing the Twang Gang, it became apparent
that the music was given just as much consideration in the design of the
troupes acts as the costuming and choreography. Furthermore, it is evi-
dent that the musical style and song choices of the Twang Gang contri-
bute significantly to the troupes capacity to cause genderfuck, further
aiding its enactment of a queer camp sensibility.
As popular music studies has shown, rock music is synonymous
with the conventional concepts of authentic, heterosexual masculinity,
while pop music, disco, dance music and dancing have been tagged as an
effeminate, feminised and in some cases gay pursuit (Currid, 1995;
Dibben, 2002; Dyer, 1995; Frith & McRobbie, 1990). Recognising this,
the Twang Gang plays with, or queers, these conventions by drawing on
a range of musical styles across genres of rock and pop. In particular, the
Twang Gang seems to favour musical styles that are seen as contrary to
mainstream gay and feminine musical sensibilities. When asked specifi-
cally about the Twang Gangs musical choices, Brooke remarked:
110 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

When we first started, one of our catch phrases was if it aint got a twang, it dont
mean a thang, so every song that we chose has to be different from the disco clubs.
Because we were always performing in nightclubs, we decided that every song had
to have some twang in it. Twang meant a bit of guitar, which you didnt find [in
gay clubs] back in 2000. Everything was dance or techno there just wasnt any
guitar being used in dance clubs, so when our songs came on, and we often used
classic type rock songs, it separated us from what was happening in nightclubs.
(personal communication, 29 November 2005)

In this instance, the masculine/feminine binary is blurred by the incon-


gruity in the sonic information and visual spectacle. The nightclub space
usually filled with dance music is gendered feminine. Femininity is
further authenticated via the elaborate costumes of the bio queens as well
as by the dance routines used in the Twang Gangs performances. As
McClary notes, the mind/body-masculine/feminine problem places
dance decisively on the side of the feminine body rather then with the
objective masculine intellect (1991, p. 153). Therefore, by setting its
choreographed drag routines to classic guitar-driven rock music, which
is gendered masculine, the Twang Gangs performance consequently
becomes gender troubled, confusing the feminisation of the nightclub
space and the dance spectacle with the masculinity that is culturally sig-
nified by rock music. Brooke went on to explain that the Twang Gang
did not limit its song choices strictly to rock anymore. The reason she
gave for this was that we [Alexander and Brooke] are getting older but
our newer members who are in their twenties are drawn to different
types of music so sometimes we have to let it in (personal communica-
tion, 29 November 2005). Although the Twang Gang now chooses to use
a variety of musical styles in its shows, this does not make its choice of
rock music any less significant.
The troupes conscious decision to use guitar-based rock music in a
female drag context can be read as a musical execution of genderfuck. For a
performance to qualify as genderfuck, it must be seen (and heard) to be cre-
ating multiple symbolic performances of gender, separating the performers
sexed body from the visual (and auditory) signs of gender. Through the or-
chestration of both drag king and bio queen performances to guitar-based
rock music, the Twang Gang effectively is genderfucking both rock music
hegemonies and its members own female sexed bodies and lesbian sexuali-
ties on multiple levels. In playing with binary oppositions and mixing both
visual and auditory gender cues, the performers effectively are destabilising
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 111

their own gender subjectivities. They are enacting a subversion of gender


role rigidity (both in a musical and socio-cultural context) by using female
bodies that are performing a variety of genders to theatrically critique the
false dualities that govern gender as well as musical normativities. More-
over, since rock music is considered a marker of heterosexual masculinity,
the use of rock music in a queer/lesbian drag context presents itself as
14
somewhat contrary to both gay and lesbian musical norms. As such, the
introduction of rock into a predominantly lesbian sexual space can be read
in two ways: first, the heterosexuality of rock is queered through its per-
formance by genderfucking lesbians; and second, lesbian musico-norma-
tivities are queered through the conscious decision to employ rock music
styles in a genderqueer, lesbian drag troupe.
A further example of musically facilitated and auditory genderfuck
can be identified in the vocalisation style of the Twang Gangs perform-
ances. Previously, it was suggested that the human voice is a fundamen-
tal signifier of both gender and the sexed body. This is because vocal
register and timbre are gendered, and thus operate (much like genitalia)
as an attribute of biological sex. In the Twang Gang shows I observed, it
was very clear that all members of the troupe were lip-synching to the
music. As an observer, this created a rather perplexing audio/visual dis-
play of sex and gender. In any given show, the troupe would usually
perform between four and six songs, and these songs were generally a
mixture of rock and pop styles sung by both male and female vocalists
and then lip-synched by an array of masculine and feminine (female)
bodies. What was particularly queer about these performances was the
constantly shifting and morphing spectacle of sex and gender cues that I,
as an audience member, witnessed. One moment the audience was hear-
ing a male-gendered voice that appeared to be coming out of the mouths
of both masculine and feminine female bodies. Then, a few minutes
later, the audience heard a female voice being performed by the same
assortment of both masculine and feminine female bodies.
Through the juxtaposition of the recorded voice against the per-
formers voice in this ever-shifting way, the voice (or absence thereof),
coupled with the performers physicality and gender cues, creates an
audio/visual spectacle that appears to subvert the biological imperatives

14 Refer to discussion of gay and lesbian musico-normativities at the beginning of


Chapter 5 and to the discussion of womyns music in Chapter 6.
112 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

of the sexed body. Subverting the sexed body in this way problematises
the last bastion of hegemonic sex/gender logic: the supposedly inescap-
able signs of our biology, signs upon which gender is constructed. Ac-
cording to Cusick (1999), as discussed earlier, we commonly perceive
the voice as the body since it originates inside the body, from within the
bodys borders. Moreover, Cusick suggests that all voices but the
singing voice in particular, due to its unmistakable timbre are perform-
ances of the bodys borders borders by which the natural singing
voice is ultimately limited. Therefore, in instances of lip-synching, the
rejection of the performers natural singing voice may also be under-
stood as a rejection of the limitations attached to a biologically sexed
body and a means of transgressing the supposedly fixed borders of the
sexed body. Here I am not suggesting that these performers are rejecting
their female bodies, as they quite openly admit to embracing them, but
rather the act of lip-synching queers in this case, certain physical im-
peratives of the female body.
In addition to genderfuck, a camp sensibility is employed exten-
sively in Twang Gang performances. Observing the Twang Gang, it was
clear that they appeared very comfortable with camp, and agreed that a
camp sensibility was particularly evident in their costuming, song choice
and musical sketch comedy performance style. Previously, the relation-
ship between lesbian drag king performances and camp sensibility was
identified by Davy (1994), Halberstam (1998) and Kennedy and Davis
(1999) as awkward and unaccommodating, the reason being that camp is
inherently a performative sensibility that favours parody and artifice. As
such, camp is incongruous with acts of masculinity because masculinity is
generally perceived as original, authentic and non-performative. In con-
trast to this, the Twang Gangs use of camp marks an attempt at revealing
the inherent theatricality of masculinity (through drag king performances)
as well as femininity (through bio queen performances), and suggests that
Twang Gang performers have no desire to appear as authentically masculine
spectacles or pass for men. As female-identified drag performers who per-
form a variety of masculine and feminine identities in an exaggerated man-
ner, camp becomes an exceptionally useful device that aids in the denatu-
ralisation of gender categories as advocated by theories of camp as a form of
queer political praxis. Furthermore, the Twang Gangs reclamation of drag
and camp, once reserved for gay men, can be read as a feminist act through
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 113

the troupes reinvention of these to accommodate expressions of lesbian


femaleness.
Alexanders drag king character, Tricky, is remarkably camp in his
attention to artifice and in his parody of hegemonic rock masculinity.
15
Tricky is a playfully arrogant rock god, so when Alexander performs as
Tricky she chooses the music that best represents Trickys personality.
The music is what really inspires me, Alexander said. Its about finding
the right song. I start with a song and work the routine out from there
(personal communication, 29 November 2005). Alexander went on to say
that both the lyrical narrative and the sound had to suit Trickys style of
masculinity thus suggesting, in part, that Tricky derives his particular
performance of masculinity from the music. Tricky is hyper-masculine in
his physicality and mannerisms, he has excessive facial hair and he often
sports an exaggerated phallus. In one particular performance I attended
16
during 2005, Alexander chose the Spiderbait cover version of the song
Black Betty as the soundtrack to one of her drag routines. According to
Alexander, the heavily distorted guitar-driven rock arrangement of this
song musically authenticated Trickys masculinity. During this perform-
ance, Tricky was onstage in a prop car, cruising to this song while a
chorus line of femme dancers hung off the sides of the car swinging their
long hair around. In this instance, Alexander employed a camp sensibility
as a strategy for undermining both heteronormative and rock music gender
roles via over-articulation and artifice. Trickys costume, gesticulations
and musical soundtrack appear to parody the stereotypical image of rock
god masculinity. The dancing girls further authenticate this parody, fulfil-
ling the role of the objectified female groupies who lustfully pursue their
rock god. Moreover, the tight-fitting clothes Alexander had chosen to wear
left her breasts very noticeable; thus it remained clear to the observer
throughout the routine that Tricky was in fact a woman.
As we saw earlier in a campish play on the theme song from Dis-
neys Aladdin, camp can be used in other instances as an entertaining
political device whereby songs are appropriated from popular culture,
twisted and inscribed with a new meaning that resonates specifically

15 The rock god is an iconic figure of rocknroll subculture. This status is generally
reserved for men who achieve great success and fame from playing rocknroll.
16 Spiderbait is an Australian rock band that had a number one hit in Australia with a
cover of an African-American working song, Black Betty in 2004. This song was
originally made famous by Ram Jam in 1977.
114 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

within a queer context. In response to religious and political oppression


of queer lifestyles, the Twang Gang developed a show it called Our
Tribe, which was performed at Lez Vegas and Brisbanes annual Pride
Fair in 2005. This performance reflects Babuscios definition of camp as
a creative energy reflecting a consciousness that is different from the
mainstream; a heightened awareness of certain human complications of
feeling that spring from the fact of social oppression (1999, p. 118).
Our Tribe queerly recontextualises Christian iconography and values;
Alexander describes the show as signifying to the audience that this is
our church (personal communication, 29 November 2005). The over-
arching narrative of Our Tribe was revealed through a medley of popular
music, drag and musical sketch-comedy, incorporating choreography
and elaborate costuming. The costumes were bastardised versions of sa-
cred religious garments, redesigned with a stylistic fusion of fetish and
punk fashions, and the show serves as an example of queer aesthetic re-
contextualisation and cultural synthesis (see Figure 2).
The songs used as the soundtrack to the show were arranged in such
a way that the narrative of Our Tribe was articulated both musically and
literally. Contrasting musical styles, including industrial rock, pop, dance
and house remixes of gospel music, created a shifting musical energy
that reflected the incongruence and bricolage symbolic of queer culture.
The Twang Gang told me that each song in the medley was chosen to
articulate a specific idea about spirituality and self-discovery. For these
women, music facilitates self-discovery: it provides a crucial framework
that supports their physical and emotional experiences of gender and
sexual difference. Some of the lyrics in the chosen songs made literal
reference to the thematic of the show, while other songs were chosen for
their sentimentality or their evocative musical attributes.
CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender 115

Figure 2: The Twang Gang performs Our Tribe at Pride Fair in Brisbane, 2005
Twang Gang 2005

Our Tribe opened with Closer (1994), by industrial rock band Nine
Inch Nails. The narrative of this song refers to debauchery, temptation
and sexual desire as a means for bringing one closer to god, themes
that are further authenticated by the dark sexual undertones and grinding
mechanical rhythms of industrial music. During this song, Brookes drag
king character Rock Hard was being tempted by one of the bio queens
who put Rock Hard in bondage. The second song in the medley was
Like a Prayer (1989) by Madonna. This song was chosen as a repre-
sentation of the inner turmoil many queers experience as they are com-
ing out to their friends and family. While the lyrics of this song do not
make any specific mention of such a situation, the music video that ac-
companied this song when it was released in 1989 told the story of a
woman who had witnessed a crime and a false criminal accusation made
against a black man. The woman, who was very conflicted about what
she should do, decided to pray. Once she had looked deep inside herself,
she realised that there was only one right course of action and that was to
testify so that the wrongly accused man would be free. By using this
song, the Twang Gang was drawing on the theme of inner conflict and
the idea that we all need to testify to our true feelings, even if our true
feelings may bring some hardship upon us.
The third song in the medley was a remixed version of Aretha
Franklins (Pride) A Deeper Love (1993). Since the first release of this
song in 1993, it has received notable attention from gay audiences, and
116 CHAPTER 4: Doing Drag, (Un)Doing Gender

has been appropriated as an unofficial gay anthem. The lyrics, up-


tempo disco rhythm and gospel vocals of this song encapsulate notions
of self-respect, personal strength and determination. The fourth song in
the medley was another dance track called Rise Up (1998), by The
Sun Kids. Brooke suggested to me that this song was about choosing the
right path in life. She said: To me, this song indicates whatever you
choose in life just make sure its right within yourself. It might be bad it
might be good but make sure its the right thing for you (personal
communication, 29 November 2005). The show ended with the gospel
chorus and pounding dance rhythm of Sing Hallelujah (1992) by Dr
Alban. According to Brooke, this song was selected because of its pow-
erful, celebratory feel, and because the Twang Gang wanted to end the
show with a song that celebrated the queerness and diversity of both the
performers and the attending audience.
Sedgwick (1990) reminds us that one of camps great pleasures is
the recycling and reinvention of pop cultural artefacts, which is particu-
larly evident in the Twang Gangs song selection. Thus the song selec-
tion of Our Tribe demonstrates an explicitly camp sensibility. Recalling
the words of Sontag: camp doesnt reverse things. It doesnt argue that
the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and
life) a different set of standards (1982, p. 286). As Brooke previously
suggested, this is precisely what the Twang Gang was trying to articulate
through the music and performance of Our Tribe. In this instance, a
camp sensibility is functioning as an oppositional response and non-vio-
lent form of social protest enacted through dramatised and aesthetic op-
erations.
Popular songs are strategically incorporated into Twang Gang per-
formances to signify character identity, articulate queer subjectivity, and
for aesthetic appeal and continuity. Music assumes a crucial role in
Twang Gang performances, and facilitates multiple positive outcomes: it
provides accompaniment and a valuable support in the exploration and
articulation of queer gender and sexual identities; and it has facilitated
criticism of and oppositional responses to dominant social morality. The
appropriation of popular songs in Twang Gang performances reinscribes
queerness on the margins of popular culture. The queering of popular
songs in this way (re)claims queer space and contests the privileged po-
sition that heterosexual narratives have assumed within popular cultural
forms such as rock and pop music.
CHAPTER 5

QUEER PUNK Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

A life of listening to disco is too high a price to pay for your sexual identity.
(T-shirt slogan cited in Spencer, 2005, p. 281)

To identify as both queer and punk is to simultaneously resist the cul-


tural norms of gender, sexuality and musicality associated with both
queer and punk rock cultures. Marginality thus forms a crucial aspect of
a queer punk identity. While gender-bending fashions and sexual ex-
perimentation were features of 1970s punk (Hebdige, 1991; Laing, 1985;
OHara, 1999), the majority of contemporary punk rock scenes as well
as society at large continue to uphold heterosexist values. As such, queer
punks are marginalised both in relation to the dominant sexual practices
associated with contemporary punk rock idioms and in relation to the
dominant musical tastes and styles associated with mainstream lesbian
and gay culture. Being a queer punk musician forces one to problematise
not only punk rock music practices, but also the set of available cultural
practices and identities associated with mainstream lesbian and gay cul-
ture. As Mark Fenster suggests:

To be a queer punk or fan of hardcore means, in many local music scenes, being
outside the dominant sexual orientation articulated to a music practice; to be a
queer punk means having taste and style that lies outside dominant notions of what
music mainstream adult gays and lesbians perform, listen and dance to. (1993,
p. 73, emphasis in original)

Identifying as lesbian or gay does not necessarily presuppose affiliation


with a particular music scene or (sub)culture. However, there are unde-
niable musical norms that are associated with mainstream lesbian and
gay cultural identity, to which Fensters preceding quote alludes. The
simple slogan above screen printed on t-shirts and worn by a select few
queer punks in Chicago in the early 1990s similarly draws our atten-
tion to the gay musical norms. For example, there is an anecdotal under-
118 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

standing (albeit a commodified and homogenous one) that gay music


equates to some category of dance music such as house, disco or pop,
while lesbian music usually implies some form of folk music, particu-
larly by female singer-songwriters. Such musico-sexual affiliations are
highly generalised, serving as a way to package and sell lesbian and gay
cultural identity. A brief perusal of track listings on so-called lesbian and
gay music compilation discs testifies to these generalisations of taste.
A compilation titled Lesbian Favorites: Women Like Us (1997) fea-
tures a selection of female singer-songwriter tracks by popular lesbian
icons such as k.d. lang, Jane Siberry and Ani DiFranco. Furthermore, these
artists are regularly discussed and/or interviewed in Australias leading
lesbian lifestyle magazine, Lesbians on the Loose, and in the glossy British
lesbian publication Diva, thus substantiating their status as lesbian music
icons and further perpetuating the notion of a dominant lesbian music taste
culture. Similarly, there is an extensive selection of gay music compi-
lations available for purchase. Albums such as Gay Dancing (1997) and
compilation series such as Gay Happening (vols 118), Lets Hear It for
the Boy (vols 17), Gay Classics (vols 112), Glad to Be Gay (vols 13)
and Gay Anthems (vols 13) are just a small selection of the available ti-
tles, all of which exclusively feature electronic dance music (usually
house) and pop music styles and exhibit a preference towards 1970s and
1980s disco remixes. Cited in Homocore: The Loud and Raucous Rise of
Queer Punk (Ciminelli & Knox, 2005), queer musician Gina Young af-
firms this point, noting that lesbian and gay cultures have stratified their
musical tastes in very particular ways:

Lesbians have gravitated towards folk-rock, whereas the gay boys are all about that
pumping house music I know tons of out musicians, but very few who gravitate
towards the harder, punk edges of sound. (cited in Ciminelli & Knox 2005,
pp. 116117)

Mainstream lesbian and gay music cultures appear to be not only genre
specific, but gender specific as well. Iconic music festivals that attract
high levels of interest from the international lesbian press and communi-
ties of lesbian festival attendees, such as the Michigan Womyns Music
Festival, Wiminfest, Ladyfest and Lilith Fair, are patronised predomi-
nantly and in some cases exclusively by women. Gay male dance
music scenes, which are typically located in gay-identified nightclub
spaces such as the Wickham Hotel in Brisbane, G.A.Y in London,
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 119

Splash in New York, Rage in West Hollywood or Arq in Sydney, attract


a predominantly male clientele.
In contrast, queer punk music and queer punk scenes supposedly
promoted gender inclusivity in all areas of music production, as well as
in other participatory musical activities such as concert attendance, pro-
motion and technical production. In her writing on the emergence of
queer punk, Amy Spencer suggests that one of the aims of the queer
punk movement was to create an alternative to the cultural norms of the
gay mainstream:

In creating their own alternative to the gay culture they saw around them they could
employ their own values concerning gender, money and censorship [T]hey were
opposed to the prevailing attitudes of mainstream gay culture, which was often seen
as sexist They attacked the idea that due to your sexuality you should be offered
only one choice of social scene, challenging one particular aspect of gay culture:
the idea of separate gay and lesbian bars. Through Homocore events, they aimed to
create a space for men and women to be together, as opposed to the sense of gender
segregation which was the norm in mainstream gay culture. (2005, p. 281)

According to Spencer, sex, gender and sexual pluralism became defining


characteristics of queer punk and a central motivation in the establishment
of queer punk scenes. While ideologically I do not disagree with Spencer,
there is evidence to suggest that masculinity was still privileged within
queer punk or at least within the way it was presented to the rest of gay
culture. As Fenster (1993) argues, early writing on the movement, espe-
cially within the gay press, spoke mostly of the male participants and
players, ignoring the female bodies on stage and in the crowds. And as I
take up in the following chapter, much of what has been written about
queer punk tends to ignore its links to riot grrrl.
This chapter maps the emergence of queer punk, focusing particu-
larly on the relatively obscure culture of homocore, later known as
queercore. To begin, a brief history of punk provides the necessary in-
sight into punk style and ideology. This is followed by a discussion on
the emergence of queercore, outlining its motivations, musicality, poli-
tics and sensibilities. Focusing specifically on queercores musical and
extra-musical features, this chapter draws on the earlier work of
D. Robert DeChaine (1997), who critiques queercore in terms of its
playful sensibility. Building on DeChaines argument, I demonstrates
how queer punks use play as well as a highly developed camp sensibility
120 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

to problematise the binary logics of heteronormativity and enact their


queer punk identity.

Out of the Ashes of Punk

Punk was originally a cultural phenomenon that emerged in Britain and


1
New York during the mid- to late 1970s, encompassing musical styles,
fashion, art and ideology. In its original context, punk was a culturally
mutinous and playful response to political and social conservatism
(Laing, 1985; OHara, 1999). Punk methods of cultural production were
emphatically DIY, anti-professional and anti-virtuosic, intent on under-
mining what punk saw as the arrogant and unnecessary musical com-
plexities of progressive rock as well as the overblown production styles
of glam rock and disco. Punk, suggests Laing, stressed the need for
directness of self-expression unhindered by the sophisticated consider-
ations of [previous] music traditions (1985, p. 26). Early on in its evo-
lution, punk rejected the mechanisms of the music industry, instead
favouring independent music production, distribution, staging and pub-
licity. Punk was a self-fashioning mode of expression, a way of creating
a cultural alternative to the mainstream and in the process subverting
rock music hegemonies and commercial models of music production.
Drawing inspiration from the cultural fringes which is evident, for ex-
ample, in the sado-masochistic undertones of punk fashion or the situ-
ationalist undertones of punk art the punk ethos activated an aggressive
challenge to the bourgeois norms of preceding generations, revolting
against the aesthetic and political establishments of the time.
Punks were passionate about music, and the potential to express
themselves through its form (Spencer, 2005, p. 229). As such, punk
stressed musical and narrative self-expression, placing little emphasis on

1 The original punk movement was fairly short-lived, lasting in its original form for
only two years between 1976 and 1978 before diversifying (Laing, 1985; Steward,
1984). The term, however, is still used frequently, and has come to signify a variety
of hybrid musical styles and subcultures within contemporary popular music
discourses such as hardcore (Blush, 2001), anarcho-punk (Gosling, 2004), post-
punk (Reynolds, 2006) and straight edge (Haenfler, 2006), to name a few.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 121

musical formalism or conventional lyrical tropes. The punk sound was


largely raw, technically unsophisticated, loud and fast, requiring little
more than elementary musical skills. Songs were generally constructed
around two or three chords, accompanied by a loose 4/4 rhythm with
simple often shouted homophonic melodic lines over the chords.
These uncomplicated musical features allowed almost anyone who so
desired to engage in and express themselves through punk music per-
formance. Lyrically, punk was abrasive and antagonistic, privileging
social and political themes over romantic or lustful accounts. In Laings
authoritative account of punk, One Chord Wonders (1985), he notes in a
comparative study of punk and British Top 50 lyrical themes of 1976
that punk dealt with social, political and sexual themes to a far greater
degree than mainstream pop music. He shows that 25 per cent of punk
subject-matter focused on society and politics compared with 4 per cent
by Top 50 artists. Moreover, none of the Top 50 songs broached the
topic of sexuality compared with 15 per cent of punk lyrics, which ad-
dressed sexuality in some way.
Punks long-standing association with social marginality and sexual
perversity is evident even in the etymology of punk, which was origi-
nally prison slang referring to a homosexual catamite. Although this po-
sitions punk well as a useful vehicle for the articulation of queerness,
specific accounts of queer gender and sexualities within the original
punk rock scene are somewhat vague. As such, caution must be taken
not to over-emphasise the ambiguity or queerness of punk genders and
sexualities during the 1970s and early 1980s because a working-class
male-centricity prevailed. However, some historians and sociologists
such as Sue Steward argue that punk sexuality was angry and aggres-
sive, implicitly feminist (1984, p. 158), rejecting the conventions of
traditional gender and sexual appropriateness.
Others, such as Craig OHara, more boldly posit homosexuality has
been a visible part of the Punk movement since it first began (1999, p.
115). Hebdige suggests that punk represents a phase of polymorphous,
often wilfully perverse sexuality, obsessive individualism, [and a] frag-
mented sense of self (1991, p. 28), citing Mick Jagger and David Bowie
as precursors to this. Indeed, a range of British and US glam rock and
proto-punk musicians from the late 1960s and 1970s (and those who
later became associated with the form), such as David Bowie, Lou Reed
and The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the New York
122 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

Dolls and Alice Cooper, all contributed to the visual spectacle and outra-
geousness of punk performance and punks gender-bending subversive-
ness (Auslander, 2006; Hebdige, 1991; Laing, 1985; Thomson & Gut-
man, 1996). Bowies performances of ambiguous gender and sexuality
specifically transvestism and bisexuality along with the shock rock
tactics of artists like Alice Cooper, challenged the dominant cultural
standards of masculinity, thus paving the way for punks purposefully
shocking fashions and non-normative expressions of gender to come.
While these comments point to punks accommodating capacity for
gender and/or sexual experimentation, they do not suggest that punk was
predominantly (or even moderately) populated by queers; however, they
do tell us that the original punk movement was a cultural space that was
open to gender and sexual non-conformity. The connection between punk
and queer culture therefore lies in punks celebration of the social misfit;
its willingness to articulate dissatisfaction with social normativities and
cultural hegemonies; and its gender-bending potential.
Since the late 1980s, punk culture has diversified, sprouting a
variety of hardcore and alternative sub-genres, each with distinctive
musical and ideological qualities that deviate from punks original sound
and ethic. As the global popularity of hardcore and pop punk styles has
grown, subsequently becoming consumed by the major record labels and
gaining popular/commercial acceptance, punk in its various contem-
porary incarnations has been charged with abandoning its cause and
failing to extend the boundaries of its social critique. Elaborating on
Fensters (1993) remark cited at the beginning of this chapter, punk (in
particular, American hardcore punk) had become hostile towards
outward expressions of queerness. By the mid-1980s, skinheads (or
skins) had developed an affiliation with American hardcore which led, in
part, to increasing racism, sexism, heterosexism, nationalism, violence
and right-wing attitudes among scene participants (Blush, 2001; OHara,
1999). Queer punks thus became marginalised within the emerging
hardcore scenes. Self-identified queer punk and social activist Stephen
Donaldson (aka Donny the Punk) addresses this in an edition of a street
2
zine called Homocore. He states:

2 Edited by Tom Jennings and Deke Motif Nihilson, Homocore was published between
1988 and 1991, and distributed in San Francisco. An extensive selection of back issues
is now available to view online at <http://www.wps.com/archives/HOMOCORE>.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 123

When punk made the transition from the classic style to Hardcore, there started a
new emphasis, not part of the original idea of Punk, on being hard, and this was
identified with being macho. Given the popular image of homosexual activities as
unmanly, it was not surprising that homophobia soon became a part fortunately
a very controversial part of the Punk scene. (cited in OHara, 1999, p. 120)

Therefore, it was in response to this resurgence of homophobia among


punks as well as to the genre and gender specificities of gay culture, that
queer-identified punks sought to create a cultural space of their own, leading
to the rise of the distinctly queer punk (sub)culture known as queercore.

Queercore Music and Anti-gay Anarchy

Representing a convergence of punk rock music and queer politics,


queercore is a cultural and political movement that first emerged in
North America, specifically around Toronto, Canada, San Francisco, and
in areas of the Pacific Northwest. It has since evolved into an interna-
tional community that expresses itself through a variety of media such as
music, literature, zine publications, visual arts and film. With its origins
in the mid-1980s, this loose coalition of radical anarchist and/or punk
queers, as Sullivan names them (2003, p. 45), articulates an intense dis-
satisfaction with gay sexual politics, believing that the mainstream gay
agenda has diluted the complexities of queer desire in order to broaden
its respectability and placate its conservative elements. Queercore par-
ticipant and writer Dennis Cooper (1996) describes it as a punky, anti-
assimilationist, transgressive movement on the fringe of lesbian and gay
culture (p. 292) which, like punk, is an ideological response to past-
radicals who abandoned their cause for what Cooper refers to as the
pleasures of a compromised but stable Left (p. 293). Furthermore,
queercores loosely anarchic and somewhat ambiguous rhetoric rejects
the notion of cultural unity or cohesion among sexual minorities, and
irreverently attacks the established figureheads, symbols and codification
of mainstream gay culture. In an interview with the San Francisco
Chronicle, Jon Ginoli, the lead singer of the internationally renowned
3
queercore band Pansy Division, states: Ive always felt that mainstream

3 Formed in San Francisco in 1991, Pansy Division is the most commercially


successful example of a queercore band. In 1994, the band was billed as the support
124 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

gay culture not only didnt include me, it was antagonistic to me. People
were, like, You like rock? You dont like Judy Garland? (cited in Ar-
nold, 1995, p. 25).
In 1985, gay filmmaker and pornographer Bruce LaBruce and les-
4
bian filmmaker and musician G.B. Jones published a zine titled J.D.s,
which is widely acknowledged to be the zine that launched the queercore
movement (Ciminelli & Knox, 2005; Fenster, 1993; Spencer, 2005). On
the pages of J.D.s, LaBruce, Jones and others rant about the prevailing
heterosexism and gender segregation that has become typical of punk
rock (sub)cultures as well as the orthodoxy and assimilationist attitudes
of the Western gay mainstream. Expressed in the pages of J.D.s, queer-
core enacts a conscious move away from lesbian and gay specificity,
which is further reflected in a manifesto that featured in the first issue of
J.D.s zine (1985) titled Dont Be Gay. LaBruce explains:

Were tired of the gay scene, which even in the 80s was starting to get assimila-
tionist and conformist, so we turned to punk rock because it seemed more glamor-
ous and political and aesthetically pleasing. But we quickly discovered that punk
had become sexually conventional and boring, betraying its early roots. The
original punk movement, like the early gay movement, was about embracing all
sorts of nonconformist behaviour. Early punks experimented with homosexuality,
bisexuality, transsexuality, and trisexuality theyd try anything. But by the mid-
80s, with the advent of hardcore and the mosh pit, a new era of machismo and het-
erosexual rigidity was ushered in We started J.D.s as a reaction against the in-
creasing sexual conformity of both the gay and punk movements. (cited in
Ciminelli & Knox 2005, p. 8, emphasis in original)

It was through J.D.s that this scene and its associated punk rock
musical style first became known as homocore; however, the prefix
homo was soon replaced by queer in order to better represent the di-
versity of scene participants and to distance the movement completely
from lesbian and gay conventions. Homo or queercore was an emerging
(sub)culture and an ideological space articulated first and formally

act on the national tour of commercially successful American punk rock band
Green Day. For a more detailed discussion of Pansy Division, see DeChaine (1997)
and Cynthia Fuchs (1998).
4 Some accounts suggest J.D.s ran for eight issues between 1985 and 1991 (Spencer,
2005), while others propose that there were nine issues starting in 1986 and
finishing in 1991 (Ciminelli & Knox, 2005). A selection of J.D.s back issues is
available through the Queer Zine Archive Project at <http://www.qzap.org>.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 125

through J.D.s dedicated to deviant cultural expressions that were seen


as necessary enactments of queer social justice and queer cultural iden-
tity construction. An editorial by Jones and LaBruce states that:

J.D.s is dedicated to the furtherance of homo-core It is our belief that freedom of


communication shall not be denied to any segment of our society even though that
group may be anathema to the so-called normal majority. If we were wise en-
ough, we might know that communication may have greater therapeutical value
than any sermon that those of the normal community can offer. And if the com-
munication is of value to the so-called deviant community, how can it be said to
be without any redeeming social importance? (1989, p. 24)

Following the emergence of J.D.s other queercore scenes began to take


shape. Communication networks expanded through zine publications such
as Homocore, Bimbox, Holy Titclamps, Chainsaw and Fertile La Toyah
Jackson. Punk rock-sounding music by queer bands such as Fifth Column,
Tribe 8, Team Dresch, God Is My Co-Pilot, Third Sex, Sister George,
Phranc and Pansy Division (all of which were championed in the afore-
mentioned zines) became synonymous with the queercore sound.
Methods of queercore cultural production generally maintain punks
DIY ethic, favouring experimentation and bricolage over proficiency and
cohesion. This is most evident in the proliferation of queercore zines
5
originally in paper form and more recently as online archives many of
which exhibit a handmade, cut-and-paste aesthetic. Intent on maintaining
queercores independence from the mass marketing approaches of the
music industry, queercore operates within the cultural underground and
has established queer-owned and operated music labels such as Outpunk,
Candy-Ass Records, Chainsaw and Queer Control Records, dedicated to
promoting and distributing queer artists of various music styles. This do-
it-yourself approach affords queercore artists the freedom to speak di-
rectly to their audience about issues that they feel are relevant to the
lives and identities of queers. Furthermore, it is considered by some
members of the queercore community to be the only way queers can
maintain creative control over their product and avoid compromising
their subject-matter in order to broaden their appeal or appease heter-
onormative sensibilities. Jody Bleyle, guitarist and singer from Team

5 See the Queer Zine Archive Project at <http://www.qzap.org>.


126 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

6
Dresch and founder of Candy-Ass Records, expresses her anger towards
major labels that often advise queer artists to use heteronormative pro-
nouns in their lyrics, claiming that queer narratives limit the marketing
potential of an artist. Why arent straight people limiting themselves
[when they sing about being straight]? Bleyle argues. I didnt live Bob
Dylans songs, and I didnt live the Guns n Roses shit, but I still got
their records and listened to them (cited in Ciminelli & Knox 2005, p.
56).
In its beginnings as a musical genre, queercore was akin to punk:
this is signified by the suffix core, which is indicative of its punk rock
extraction. Originally, queercore was distinguished by its loud, fast and
raw sound, its physically energetic and interactive performance style
and, most significantly, its lyrics. Queercore lyrics are typically queer-
centric, remorselessly vulgar, antagonistic and political, relying heavily
on a balanced mix of both anger and humour. Notable queercore bands
7
such as the gay punk Pansy Division and the dyke punk Tribe 8, for ex-
ample, brashly tackle a range of sexual themes in their songs including
fisting, oral sex, masturbation, transgenderism and S/M, to name a few,
while also attempting to incite commentary on political and social con-
ditions that result in gender and sexual oppression. However, defining a
queercore sound has become somewhat problematic because, according
to various published accounts from queercore participants, the music is
defined largely by its extra-musical qualities such as its politics, themat-
ics and queer narratives rather than by its musical qualities. Gina Arnold
suggests that queercore should not be thought of as a genre; rather, its
a subculture. The bands involved may be allied with one another in their
goals, but they sound entirely different from one another (1997, pp.
8
161162). A definition posted on the official Queercore Blitz website
characterises queercore as:

6 Team Dresch is a queer punk rock band that also shares strong ties to the riot grrrls
movement. The band formed in Portland, Oregon in the early 1990s.
7 Tribe 8 formed in the early 1990s in San Francisco, California. The band takes its
name from the lesbian term tribade, which means a woman who partakes in the
sexual practice of tribadism.
8 Queercore Blitz was a festival showcasing queercore bands that toured the United
States in 2004 and 2005.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 127

A subgenre of punk originally spawned out of the politically explosive environment


of the Reagan years. Lyrically, and in performance, queercore rawly and honestly
addresses queer desire, societal prejudice and the price of being true to ones own
self. (Queercore Blitz, 2004)

This statement points to the primary significance of lyrics and physical


performance in defining queercore. Furthermore, pointing to queercore is
a musical vehicle for expressing a queer identity, a style celebrated by its
practitioners and fans as an ideological response to oppressive social
conditions. While a punk rock sound is most commonly associated with
the queercores musical aesthetics, statements from scene participants
show that bands that align themselves with queercore are by no means
limited to the punk sound. In some cases, their musical characteristics
may be located across a range of popular music idioms, including sub-
genres of metal, rock, pop, electro and more recently hip hop. Matt
Wobensmith, founder of the now defunct queercore label Outpunk and
new label A.C.R.O.N.Y.M., states: Ive been saying since 1995 that
queercore is more than queer punk. My vision includes other styles of
music, other mediums, and other communities (cited in Spencer, 2005,
p. 291). Queercore is multi-subcultural, argues Wobensmith; it is not
just about an indie rock or punk thing but rather about creating new
aesthetics (cited in Vale, 1996, p. 118, emphasis in original). This char-
acteristic of queercore its loose musical styling is further highlighted
by Beyle, who acknowledges that the music is important but the music
is not the defining characteristic of this scene. You can play any musical
style. If you feel like you belong in this scene, you belong (cited in
Ciminelli & Knox, 2005, p. 53). Queercore is defined more specifically,
says Beyle, by its focus on the individual stories of the people involved
than by the specific kind of music they play (cited in Ciminelli & Knox,
2005, p. 55).
The primacy of self-narratives and political agency within queercore
suggests in line with previously discussed theories on music, identity
and queer scenes in Chapter 2 that the queercore movement uses music
as: a technology of the self; a strategic resource in the production and
transmission of self-narrative; a means of questioning and negotiating
queer subjectivity and its relationship to the dominant as well as main-
stream lesbian and gay cultures; and a symbolic means of resisting com-
mercial modes of production. Furthermore, Wobensmiths claim that
queercore is multi-subcultural situates it within the framework of styl-
128 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

istic excess. Queercore effectively is a dialogical scene that values reflexive


musical production over the confines of musical formalism. For that rea-
son, I would argue that queercores narrative qualities, its non-prescriptive
sound and its DIY methods of cultural production could be understood as a
simulacrum of radical queer politics. As previously argued in Chapter 1,
queer is an identity that hinges on disidentification, where disidentification
is a performative process that refutes collective behavioural descriptions
and classifications, and strategically attempts to transform cultural logic by
overtly confusing and compounding identity categories. As such, queer is
going to mean something, and sound, different for each person who identi-
fies in this way. Queer is an ambiguous and excessive descriptor, both in
terms of identity and in a queercore context; it defies strict genre definition
as well. Queer is inherently subversive, experimental and self-administered
characteristics indicative of queercores focus on individual narratives
that are expressed in a variety of popular musical styles and forms via DIY
methods of cultural production. What is particularly intriguing about queer
punks and queercore scenes generally is the way that these subversive ef-
fects are achieved through the use of highly sophisticated aesthetic ap-
proaches and sensibilities.

Queercore Sensibilities: Play, the Carnivalesque and Camp

In addition to queercores distinctive narrative qualities and liberal musical


stylings, it also exhibits an underlying sensibility of carnivalesque play.
According to DeChaine, whose perspective I find particularly useful, play
endows queercore participants with a space in which to resist and subvert
the materials of the dominant culture (1997, pp. 89). Looking at the
work of Pansy Division, DeChaine demonstrates how queercore per-
formers evoke carnivalesque playfulness, vulgarity and comic mockery to
upset, provoke, defy and entertain. In Deanna Shoemakers (2010) more
recent article, she too locates queercore within a carnivalesque celebra-
tion, demonstrating how Tribe 8 salaciously and provocatively turns
normative femaleness and lesbian stereotypes upside down and provides
insight into a reconsideration of gender power relations and lesbian sex-
ual practice.
Compared with the extensive theorisation of drag, for example, less
has been done on queercore. Of the valuable scholarly discussion avail-
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 129

able, most examine the actions and cultural products of queercore musi-
cians and scene participants, locating these within discourses of punk,
queer activism and queers disidentificatory (or anti-identity) politics (e.g.
see Ciminelli & Knox, 2005; Cooper, 1996; du Plessis & Chapman, 1997;
Fenster, 1993; Fuchs, 1998; Spencer, 2005; Wiedlack, 2011). Here, I too
draw on these connections but I also use DeChaines (1997) work on
queercores sensibility of play, as it proves useful for theoretically
framing the case study of queer punk band Anal Traffic that is presented
at the end of this chapter. Moreover, I build upon this to argue that
queercore also exhibits a highly developed sense of camp. To do this, I
draw on an earlier discussion of camp from Chapter 3 suggesting that
camp is an operative modality of queer subjectivity, a way of bringing
the queer subject into being through playful irreverence for the estab-
lished order and cultural norms. Moreover, camp is a theatricalised form
of queer political praxis, functioning as a cultural critique and a non-
violent form of social protest.
The conditions of play outlined by DeChaine are strongly grounded
in Mikhail Bakhtins (1984) notion of the carnivalesque. As the argu-
ment by Kleinhans (previously cited in Chapter 3) suggests, camp as
queer parody similarly exhibits awareness of the grotesque, of carnival,
and of anger, sensuality, and sexuality (1994, p. 199). Therefore, before
attending directly to queercores sensibility of play, a preliminary dis-
cussion of the carnivalesque is required. Within a context of humour and
jest, the carnivalesque exhibits qualities of parody, mockery, playful an-
archy and grotesque realism. A carnival atmosphere favours vulgarity
and profanity; it displays a total lack of reverence towards systems of
power and through ritualised social theatrics; it encourages criticism and
subversion of standard social hierarchies. The carnival offered its par-
ticipants an escape from the social norms that governed appropriate or
acceptable behavioural conduct, affording them an imaginary and tem-
porary reality or, as Bakhtin describes it, a second world and a second
life outside officialdom (1984, p. 6), in which the oppressed could tem-
porarily escape the conditions of their oppression by inverting, mocking
and parodying the norms of the ruling class. The essence of grotesque
realism within the carnival atmosphere is further described by Bakhtin
as degradation the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal and
abstract (1984, p. 19). He specifically points to this in relation to the
body, which has long been organised in negative binary opposition to the
130 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

mind and/or spirit. To degrade means to concern oneself with the lower
sanctum of the body, the life of the belly, the reproductive organs; it
therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, preg-
nancy and birth (1984, p. 21). Within the carnival context, the body is
emphasised and exaggerated, bodily pleasures are stressed and the body
becomes a playful site of public spectacle.
According to Attali (1985), music plays a significant role in social
organisation: its order stimulates social order, and its dissonances ex-
press marginalities (1985, p. 29). Through the channelling of noise and
social disobedience, music gives order to bedlam. For Attali, the origins
of music that is, music as it first existed outside systems of economic
exchange and value can be located in the ritual sacrifice of the scape-
goat and carnival. Music channelled disorder: it accommodated tempo-
rary chaotic episodes and the transgression of social order masked by the
exhibition of carnival, which in turn marked the limitations of social
normativities and affirmed boundaries of social respectability. Music
operated as both a mirror of mainstream sensibility and power relations,
and a strategic resource in the disruption of order. Attali suggests that
musics primary function under this system is not to be sought in aes-
thetics but in the effectiveness of its participation in social regulation
(1985, p. 30). Under a system of economic exchange, music behaves
quite differently: once valorised, music is no longer able to remain a
pure, uncensored social affirmation. Much like punk, which in its origi-
nal form resisted social conservatism, appropriate gender and sexual
conduct and commercial modes of production via a DIY ethos, the ori-
gins of music itself and the value of its function, according to Attali, can
be located in the potential for music to facilitate disobedience and affect
the central ideologies that govern society.
Queercore shares a particular affinity with Bakhtins carnival and
Attalis system of music as ritual sacrifice. Like the carnival, queercore
does not operate in isolation from the mainstream, but rather playfully
and critically interacts with it from the margins. For the most part,
queercore is resistant to mainstream commercialisation, not only due to
the ethos that underpins it, but also because its themes generally are too
controversial to be marketed to conventional audiences. Then, thinking
through Attali, queercore potentially retains its power of subversion and
its capacity to effect social organisation and affirm the existence of the
queer outside the dominant social order. The queercore movement may
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 131

be thought of as a secondary world that provides for its participants a


means of escaping mainstream (gay and straight) prejudices, assimilation
and heterosexist conventions, as well as a space in which to critique
dominant cultural and social norms that is enacted primarily through
subversive forms of cultural production. According to DeChaine, a dis-
course grounded in a carnivalesque, playful sensibility provides the sub-
altern participant opportunities for various tactical deployments (1997,
pp. 1415). The tactics of play to which DeChaine refers are identified
as appropriation, parody, pastiche and bricolage.
In this context, appropriation is the process of resignification. To
appropriate is simply to borrow or steal cultural materials that are not
your own, and in the process reinscribe them with a new meaning that
serves the agency and identity of a secondary group in this case, the
queer resignification of punk. Appropriation, I would argue, is also an
underlying feature of camp because the enactment of camp usually in-
volves an object or idea that originated within dominant culture, which is
appropriated then queered to reveal an alternative meaning one that
relates more specifically to queer lives and desires a meaning that co-
vertly reveals what is queer or what lends itself to being queered.
Parody, suggests DeChaine, marks the presence of carnival laughter
(1997, p. 15). It is a playful attempt at imitation that mocks or pokes fun
at the original meaning or context of an object, act or work. I would also
suggest that parody is, within a queer context, inherently critical and
subversive and marks not only carnival laughter, but also the presence of
a politicised camp sensibility. Referring back to Hutcheons (1989) and
Kleinhans (1994) earlier statements in Chapter 3 regarding camp as a
form of queer parody, for queercore participants parody marks not only a
play tactic but also a camp tactic that draws our attention to the politics
of representation in new, critical and aesthetically diverse ways.
Like parody, pastiche is also concerned with the imitation of an ob-
ject, act or work; however, pastiche differs in that it lacks the humorous
undertones of parody and is devoid of any satirical impulses. Pastiche, as
DeChaine identifies it, is concerned with disorganising and reorganising
artistic forms, and for this reason it appears largely apolitical, function-
ing instead as an aesthetic mechanism relating to form rather than as an
aesthetic means of critique. Pastiche shares a tenuous relationship to
camp. While camp has been described in terms of pastiche (Sontag,
1982), it is also argued that pastiche relates to a pop cultural or straight
132 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

notion of camp (Dyer, 1999; Meyer, 1994), and does not serve as a
function of camp within a queer context because camp within a queer
context is always a property of queer visibility and is thus inherently po-
litical. However, I would argue that the incongruity of pastiche, its
ability to disrupt linearity and completeness (1997, p. 16), as
DeChaine puts it, shares some resonance with queer camp because pas-
tiche, in this way, problematises notions of cultural authority and
authenticity, particularly the authority of high culture, which privileges
authenticity. As such, pastiche acknowledges the false truth of authen-
ticity in terms of a work of art and also in terms of the self, which in
Foucauldian terms may also be considered a work of art pointing to the
inherent theatricality and incompleteness of identity and of self that is
recognised through queer perception.
The final tactic of play identified by DeChaine is bricolage, which
closely relates to appropriation and has always been a particularly im-
portant feature of punk. Punk exemplifies most clearly the subcultural
uses of these anarchic modes. It attempted through perturbation and
deformation to disrupt and reorganize meaning, argues Hebdige (1991,
p. 106). Punk like queercore is notorious for its bricolage of form,
genre and style in that it often appropriates the musical qualities of reg-
gae, industrial, electronic and pop idioms in the creation of its own
musical artefacts. Moreover, punk again like queercore employs
elements of parody and pastiche in the construction and performance of
musical bricolage, and in its fashions and artwork. In his explanation of
bricolage, DeChaine draws on Hebdiges often-cited argument that cer-
tain subcultures can be considered bricoleurs in the way that they ap-
propriate another range of commodities by placing them in a symbolic
ensemble which served to erase or subvert their original straight mean-
ings (Hebdige, 1991, p. 104). It is in this subversion of original or
straight meaning that bricolage exhibits qualities of camp, particularly
a campish perception of an object in which the process of perception and
recontextualisation of the object comes to signify queer agency. As such,
I would argue that while bricolage can be posited as a tactic of play as
DeChaine suggests, it along with the other stylistic elements of parody
and pastiche, and semiotic and/or ideological appropriation and resig-
nification can also be considered tactical ways of enacting a queer
camp sensibility. Therefore, while I do not dispute that a sensibility of
play remains central to queercore, I do extend upon the sensibility of
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 133

play as mapped by DeChaine, and suggest that play forms a part of a


broader queercore sensibility a sensibility that also draws heavily on
camp.

Sensibilities at Play:
A Case Study of Queer Punk Band Anal Traffic

To recap the preceding arguments, punk is an idiom of the social misfit,


the freak, the gender and sexual outlaw. It is raw, aggressive and favours
candid self-expression over technical prowess. Punk can be subversive and
highly critical of hegemonic social and cultural institutions. It is often
cautious of commercial modes of production, giving preference to DIY
methods of creation and distribution. Since the late 1970s, punk has
provided a musical aesthetic and a sensibility of expression that have been
particularly accommodating to the marginalised. During the 1980s, this
form of expression was appropriated by queer youth and became a
hallmark of queercore culture, distinguishing queer punks from main-
stream lesbian and gay cultures as well from dominant punk cultures of
the time. Queercore sees itself as an antidote to homonormativity, evoking
gender and sexual anarchy and promoting an alternative to commodified
lesbian and gay cultures and their logics of musical taste. By
acknowledging the value of deviant cultural expressions and giving voice
to the fringe-dwellers, the unrepresented and the perverted, Queercore
carves out a cultural space where queers can be queer
Drawing on the work of DeChaine (1997) and theories of camp,
queercores distinctive sensibility relies heavily on the tactical use of
anger, humour and sexual vulgarity. In this case study of Anal Traffics
musicality, visual imagery, lyrics and performance style, I refer to and
expand upon this, demonstrating how this Brisbane-based queer punk
rock ensemble draws upon both punk and queercore sounds, aesthetics
and sensibilities to form its own blend of queer punk rock. Moreover, I
position the work of Anal Traffic within a politico-sexual discourse that
is attentive to matters of queer sexuality advocating for unrestrained
representations of desire as well as broader social justice issues. Sup-
porting material gathered from interviews conducted with the founding
134 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

members of the band, observations of Anal Traffics live shows between


2005 and 2006 and analysis of their recordings provide the basis for a
localised examination of queer punk, demonstrating the ways in which
these local queer musicians use music as a vehicle for gender and sexual
identity construction, negotiation and critique.

Figure 3: Anal Traffic promotional image


Anal Traffic 2006. Photo by Matt Ditton.

Anal Traffic is the collective efforts of keyboardist and vocalist Paul


Jones, guitarist Shane Garvey, vocalist Blintz Darfur and bassist Cian,
who began writing together in 2004 with the input of drummer Samantha
Downs and vocalist Paul Rollo. Since its formation, Anal Traffic has
played numerous gigs at local queer events in Brisbane and has inde-
pendently released a self-titled, six-track, EP compact disc in August of
2005 that is referred to throughout this investigation. Following this, in
2008 the band released its second EP entitled Dump. Before I proceed, it
should be noted that Darfur and Rollo ceased performing with Anal
Traffic in 2007; however, they still maintain close ties with the group
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 135

and feature on the bands 2005 EP. Therefore, material gathered in an


interview with Darfur in November of 2005 has been kept in this inves-
tigation because the continuing band members felt that Darfurs com-
ments remained representative of the bands style and politics. Figure 3
is a promotional image of the band. Pictured from left to right are Gar-
vey, Downs, Jones and Cian.

Approach, Style, Sound and Themes

Strongly resisting alliance with mainstream gay culture and homogen-


ised gay identity, Anal Traffics members define themselves as queer in
the most radical and fluid sense of the term, employing punk rock as a
vehicle for queer sexual and political expression. When I spoke with
Jones in 2005, he specifically signalled Anal Traffics association with a
queer agenda, describing the bands sound and aesthetic as raw, fun,
filthy and very queer (personal communication, 12 December 2005).
Furthermore, on the bands website, its music is described as queer
punk rock in a latex glove to the shoulder a mix of punk, rock, synth,
filth all mashed together for your listening pleasure (Anal Traffic,
2007). The playful rhetoric colourfully describing the bands sound and
style points to aspects of bricolage, emphasising a bricolage of musical
forms. The latex glove to the shoulder can be read as a cryptic parody
of queer sexual pleasures (fisting), while the qualities of fun and filth
more generally mark Anal Traffics playful vulgarity.
Evoking a punk/queercore interactive performance style, members
of Anal Traffic use their bodies to create a playful, almost anarchic at-
mosphere on stage. They throw themselves around, encourage audience
interaction and dancing, and employ poses that blatantly parody conven-
tional rock stage behaviours, such as the guitarist simulating sex with his
guitar, or the singer using the microphone as a phallic prop. Their cloth-
ing is mismatched and draws inspiration from a variety of distinguish-
able styles ranging from conservative to casual to fetish wear. This lack
of consistency can be seen as a marker of each band members personal
style and an example of pastiche and bricolage by way of disrupting
aesthetic cohesion through employing multiple clothing styles. Looking
at each band member individually on stage, their visual styles are often
quite distinct; thus their collective association appears rather unobvious.
136 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

The music is loud, fast and rhythmically driven, with an emphasis


on heavily distorted guitars. Their lyrics, which are delivered in an ag-
gressive war-cry tone, are uncompromisingly provocative, political and
sexually explicit. Such a physically dynamic, fashionably diverse and
musically vociferous performance is highly reminiscent of punks disor-
derly aesthetic. However, Anal Traffic skews or queers this aesthetic by
juxtaposing the raucousness of punk against a clearly articulated vocal
line, synthesiser solos (often using an organ sound), and a tight rhythm
section that does not conform to the punk rock style. And, while most
songs typical of punk are in a simple 4/4 metre, occasionally there
are metric shifts into compound 6/4 time, which is particularly uncom-
mon in traditional punk style.
Musically, Anal Traffic draws on punks stylised mayhem and in-
tensity, while also incorporating synthesiser pop influences into its sound
to create a musical mlange that is unique to the band and indicative of
queercores loose musical styling. On occasions when Anal Traffic plays
with the musical forms of punk evident in songs such as Two Pumps
and a Squirt and Shit for Dickheads both of which feature synth
pop elements that sit unusually high in the mix there is, I would argue,
a campness that can be detected in the music itself. Drawing on earlier
discussions of music and camp in Chapter 3, in both these songs we hear
an overwhelming presences of excess and exaggeration in the music. If
we stripped the synthesiser lines from the arrangements, they would sit
firmly in the form of punk. However, by adding them the band creates a
sense of melodrama that is uncommon in punk. Moreover, in Shit for
Dickheads the synthesiser is used to double the melody carried by the
voice. This attempt at unison quite obviously fails, as the synth and vo-
cals never quite manage to lock in time. The exaggerated imperfection of
this attempt, further underscored by sharp (out of time) attacks on every
beat of the bar, sets itself up to fail. The musical proficiency of the band
members is also quite diverse. For some, Anal Traffic has provided an
induction into musical composition, performance and lyric writing; for
others, the band has provided a necessary means of musical expression,
allowing members to draw on their years of musical training. The mix of
skilled and amateur technique, quite noticeable in the bands live per-
formance and to a lesser extend on its recordings, creates a somewhat
disorderly aesthetic effect that further contributes to the distinctiveness
of the groups sound.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 137

In true queercore style, Anal Traffics visual content and lyrical


themes are purposefully vulgar and provocative. The bands preoccupa-
tion with queer sexuality can be noted in its album artwork, presented in
Figures 4, 5 and 6. The cover of Anal Traffics 2005 EP (Figure 4) fea-
tures a chocolate-covered donut used as a barely concealed pictorial
representation of an anus. On the back cover of the EP (Figure 5), the
same donut is featured, but in this instance the donut is broken in half
and semi-destroyed. Lying beside the donut is a used condom, thus giv-
ing the impression of penetrative, yet safe, anal sex. The inlay artwork
(Figure 6) similarly demonstrates the bands sexual playfulness. It fea-
tures a man at a urinal who appears to be urinating on (or near) a yellow
rubber ducky, as well as a slide that resembles a medical or anatomy text
that depicts a hand examining the prostate. Additional inlay images and
disc-face artwork (not featured) include items from a public toilet such
as a condom-vending machine and wash-basin; a medical examination
chair; medical slides of objects used for anal penetration; and a cartoon
penis wearing a leather cock-harness.
The album artwork exhibits a particularly DIY punk cut-and-paste
aesthetic. The text fonts are designed to appear handwritten; a substance
that resembles chocolate sauce is used to write the bands name on the
album cover; inlay images are presented off-centre, with tattered or torn
edging, and what looks like sticky tape is used to bind the images to-
gether. This points to aspects of pastiche in the bands work, as the torn
and mismatched images are arranged in such a way to disrupt the linear-
ity of design and distort (then reorganise) the meaning or significance of
the images presented.
138 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

Figure 4: Front cover of Anal Traffic EP


Anal Traffic 2005. Photo by Matt Ditton, design by Kylie Downs.

Figure 5: Back cover of Anal Traffic EP


Anal Traffic 2005. Photo by Matt Ditton, design by Kylie Downs.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 139

Figure 6: Album inlay from Anal Traffic EP


Anal Traffic 2005. Photo by Matt Ditton, design by Kylie Downs.

Moreover, it suggests a campish perception in which the process of per-


ception and recontextualisation of a particular object comes to signify
queer agency a donut, for example, is not merely a donut; rather, it sub-
stitutes for an anus. Similarly, a medical slide is presented in a highly
sexualised context, thus misrepresenting the original purpose of the image.
When I spoke with Darfur, Garvey and Jones, they all suggested that
the band collectively shares both a sexual and political consciousness
that is overtly present in and transmitted through their lyrics. Both in the
bands live performances and on the EP, the vocal lines sit high in the
mix, which suggests there is an explicit intention for the content to be
heard and understood by the audience. Darfur comments:

Weve got multiple agendas there are a lot of expressions of queer sex, lots of
sex, but were a politically conscious bunch with a lot to say about society as a
whole so in the best traditions of punk were trying to do a bit of commentary at the
same time. (personal communication, 22 November 2005)

The lyrics of songs from Anal Traffics 2005 EP, such as Six Beer
Queer, In Past Your Wrist, Daddys Chocolate Kisses and Two
Pumps and a Squirt, exemplify Anal Traffics preoccupation with sex-
140 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

ual acts, specifically acts that defy normative sexual practice and are, in
many circumstances, deemed unnatural or morally corrupt. The sexual
content in each of these songs is unashamedly explicit, broaching such
controversial themes as anal sex, oral sex, fisting, coprophilia and
voyeurism. In an attempt to make queer sexual acts publicly visible,
Anal Traffic uses excessive sexual profanity to intensify its argument
and over-articulate sexual perversions. These linguistic tropes used to
describe casual and hedonistic queer sexual encounters can be seen as an
example of Bakhtins (1984) carnivalesque grotesque realism. That is,
these lyrics represent a playful subversion of social and sexual norms
and make constant references to the lower sanctum of the body (p. 21),
in particular stressing acts of sexual perversion and defecation. In Two
Pumps and a Squirt, for example, we hear Darfur shout with unyielding
fervour, I dont want you to love me / Just take your cock and stick it
right up me / Ill hold on tight and if you do it just right its just / Two
pumps and a squirt. While in Daddys Chocolate Kisses, Rollo sings
with a self-knowing sense of irony: Im ready and waiting on the floor
with my mouth wide open / Just squeeze it out, dump your sweet love on
me / Ive got the taste for something brown and warm.
Here we see Anal Traffic engaging with carnival play through stressed
bodily pleasure and sexual vulgarity. Moreover, the band uses terms of play
for example, playing inside someones body, as noted in the song In Past
Your Wrist to describe gratifying sexual encounters. Garvey defends
Anal Traffics sexually explicit content, arguing: Anal Traffic is all about
exploring our inner filth, weve all got it (personal communication, 30 June
2006). Jones supports this argument, suggesting that:

Its all about dirty disgusting sexual things that people are probably doing this very
minute and we make no judgement of it. I want listeners to get into the heads of
people who get off on things that others dont find very savoury. Ive always
wanted to write something about shit and people who are into scat [coprophilia] be-
cause I find it really fascinating. Its like the best and worst things you can think of
are happening right now and someone is into it, thats human nature. People seem
so surprised when they hear these things but really if they understood themselves
theyd know that nothing is surprising. (personal communication, 12 December
2005)

Band members acknowledge that these lyrical tactics are also a means of
antagonising mainstream (and particularly straight) sensibilities. As such,
the lyrics are camp in the way that they problematise acceptable or nor-
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 141

mative sexual representations within the heterosexist conventions of


popular music. While punks association with social deviance is com-
monly cited, Anal Traffic intentionally pushes the boundaries of conven-
tional punk rock themes. In doing so, Anal Traffic employs a camp
sensibility by excessively articulating sexual gratification in a parodic and
playful tone, queering punk rock and critiquing the politics of sexual rep-
resentation within popular (or popular alternative) music discourses.
While personal experience is a catalyst for much of Anal Traffics
lyrical material, Darfur, Garvey and Jones note that not all the sexual
narratives and practices articulated in their songs are autobiographical. In
some instances, lyrics are written with humorous intent and are aimed to
stimulate thought around a particular sexual taboo and encourage the
listener to question the limitations they place upon what society con-
siders normal or acceptable sexual behaviour. In a review of the
bands 2005 EP that featured in a local entertainment newspaper, Time
Off, the journalist had this to say of the band: In these torrid times of
fake gay antics at local indie clubs, its nice to see that Anal Traffic sing
it with a sense of sincerity and comedy in equal parts (Tahiraj, 2005,
p. 26). This reviewers summation of Anal Traffic poignantly reflects the
sentiment of queercore. Arnold argues that queercore artists politically
charged music explores aspects of being gay with a defiant mixture of
humor and anger (1997, p. 160). Similarly, DeChaine suggests queer-
core demonstrates that queer issues are not limited to categories of
sexuality and sexual preference, and that anger and humor are but
discursive tactics played out, as it were, yet anchored in real issues
which impact the lives of human beings (1997, p. 22). Together with
camp, comedy, sincerity, anger and humour form part of the bands dis-
cursive toolkit, enabling it to critique human sexuality more generally.
Garvey and Jones previous comments emphasise their desire to draw
attention to sexual deviancies that they believe are a part of the human
and not exclusively queer condition. By drawing their audiences
attention to these perceived deviances and then celebrating them through
song, the band is playfully engaging its camp sensibility of outrageous-
ness and over-articulation as a tactical response to angering and oppres-
sive socio-sexual norms. During my interviews with the band members,
Jones openly acknowledged Anal Traffics lack of female-centred
content, and suggested that this was something members would like to
address in the future. Their current failing to do so, suggested Jones, was
142 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

simply because Darfur, Garvey and Jones the primary lyricists lacked
experience upon which to draw. However, Jones told me of a song that
he had written for the ladies titled Minge Binge, which the band is
planning to work into future sets (personal communication, 12 December
2005).
Anal Traffics socio-political consciousness, referred to previously
by Darfur, is particularly evident in the remaining two songs from the
bands six-track EP. These songs, titled Shit for Dickheads and
Scapegoat, form the basis of a critical parodic commentary on a range
9
of issues including John Howards conservative government, inflation,
environmentalism and urban sprawl, sweat-shop manufactured goods,
10
the 2001 Children Overboard affair and social prejudice towards
queers. In Shit for Dickheads, Darfur executes a lyrical polemic
against consumerism, shouting: I went down to shit for dickheads, and I
bought ten kinds of crap / Its all plastic made in sweat-shops and I cant
take it back / All that shit from shit for dickheads costs four-fifty, beg
you pardon / It will only last a weekend but it gives me a consumer hard-
on. Meanwhile, in Scapegoat, Rollo chants: Got my foot right to the
floor / Jonnys getting really bored / Throw some children overboard /
Sit back take note queers are the scapegoat / Go straight for the throat.
As evidenced by these lyrics, Anal Traffic use camp parody and
irony extensively in a musically facilitated commentary on a range of
political issues and social conditions, demonstrating that queer issues
and concerns reach far beyond matters of sexual preference. These songs
in particular mark the use of camp as a theatricalised form of queer po-
litical praxis, functioning as a cultural critique and a non-violent form of
social protest. In this way, Anal Traffics members can be seen as queer
cultural activists (in the tradition of groups such as ACT UP and Out-
Rage), using music and a sophisticated camp parody, with its critical and
ironic undertone, as a means of critiquing the flaws they identify within

9 John Howard was the leader of the conservative Liberal Party and Prime Minister
of Australia from 1996 to 2007.
10 The Children Overboard affair was an Australian political controversy. The Howard
government, which at the time was up for re-election, claimed that asylum seekers off
the coast of Australia had thrown their children into the water in a plea for them to be
rescued. Howard then suggested on radio that genuine refugees would not do this. A
Senate inquiry into the matter was launched, as it was later proven that there was no
evidence to suggest that children had ever been thrown overboard.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 143

the dominant social order. Moreover, in discussions with the band, the
performers stressed their distance from what Darfur described as the
appeasement lobby of the gay community (personal communication,
November 22, 2005). This comment further emphasises Anal Traffics
desire to challenge both hegemonic as well as mainstream gay politics:
for example, [gay] marriage rights, says Darfur, are not on my ag-
enda (personal communication, November 22, 2005). This attitude is a
hallmark of both punk and queercore in that it situates the band as being
anathema to both straight and gay mainstreams. This marginal position is
one that the band revels in and uses as political leverage to execute its
musical contestations of sexual and social normativities.
When I questioned Darfur, Garvey and Jones with regard to Anal
Traffics reception, they suggested that the band had received mixed
audience responses. Darfur commented:

What weve found is that most people find it amusing and the people that dont like
it dont say much about it so weve heard indirectly that theres a few people, in
fact interestingly, most of the feedback is from other queer people who find it a bit
too extreme, although there have been various straight people who get a bit squirmy
and find it hard to deal with but mostly they think its amusing anyway. I guess
were not really getting out there to a very mainstream or straight audience so Im
sure if we played at a regular punk night we might find that some people are a little
more put off, maybe not with punks, I dont know. So weve had a surprisingly
positive reaction even though people dont identify with what theyre hearing all
the time. Theyre okay with it, they find it amusing, and the material we sing about
is so diverse and so extreme that we dont identify with all of it either and so for us,
its just putting out another character or story thats not necessarily about us. (per-
sonal communication, 22 November 2005)

Darfurs comment gives further credence to the humorous, amusing and


playful nature of Anal Traffics music and its delivery. Moreover, he
suggests that the bands humorous intentions are, for the most part, per-
ceived as such by audiences. The following remarks by Jones offer a
slightly less sympathetic view. He states: We [Anal Traffic] are still
something that they [their gay/queer audiences] think is dirty and filthy
but after a while I think theres going to be a bit of desensitisation among
the supposedly desensitised community (personal communication,
12 December 2005). To qualify Jones remark, I turn to an example of-
fered by all three interviewees. On different occasions, Darfur, Garvey
and Jones all raised the point that the selection committee for Brisbanes
144 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

2005 Pride Fair rejected Anal Traffics proposal to play at Fair Day. The
reason the committee gave for rejecting the band was that Anal Traffic was
too offensive and not family friendly. Later in the interview, Jones went
on to suggest that it was potentially a good thing that Anal Traffic was not
widely embraced by the entire community because while the band remains
on the fringes of queer culture it is free to keep pushing the boundaries of
acceptability without agitating the morals of too many people. Jones
pointed out that popularity brings with it certain expectations:

Because then you get people waving fingers if you put a foot or a flap out of line
and thats something I dont want. I just want to play a few bits and bobs here and
there and keep the subversiveness in the subversive queer community. (personal
communication, 12 December 2005)

Jones went on to clarify what he meant by this, offering an example of a


gig Anal Traffic did at Brisbanes Powerhouse in 2005. At the Power-
house gig, Anal Traffic played a song called Age of Consent. This
does not feature on their 2005 EP; the reason was the negative feedback
the band received when playing this song live. However, they finally
decided to include it on the 2008 release. This song draws attention to
the unequal age of consent laws in Queensland, which currently prohibit
consensual anal sex until the age of eighteen, yet permit consensual va-
11
ginal sex at the age of sixteen. The live performance of this song was
met with contention; some audience members left while others appeared
visibly upset by the songs theme. Jones suggested that the disturbed
audience members clearly misconstrued the songs narrative and
wrongly concluded that the band was singing about engaging in under-
age sex. Jones elaborated:

A lot of people, especially in our queer audience, take this song the wrong way. The
chorus goes Im nineteen I want a cock up my arse, Im eighteen I want a cock up
my arse, etc. all the way down to Im thirteen I want a cock up my arse, twelve,
and thats where the chorus ends. And thats all that people hear. People hear
twelve and they go, theyre singing about fucking twelve year olds up the arse.

11 As the law currently stands in Queensland, anal intercourse under the age of
eighteen is punishable under the Sodomy Law ( 208209 of the Criminal Code of
1899) with up to fourteen years imprisonment. Queensland is the only state that
still holds an unequal age of consent law, which potentially puts young people at
greater risk of harassment, impedes strategies for HIV and AIDS prevention and
hinders the provision of support services for Queenslands queer youth.
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 145

But it isnt, its sung in a fashion that suggests that there were quite a few of us
who, when growing up, knew what we wanted at a very young age. (personal
communication, 12 December 2005)

Garvey, who wrote this song, reiterated that it is based on personal ex-
periences of sexual maturity and is intended to stress to the listener that
in developing their sexual self-concepts, queers are fully capable of
making the decision to engage in penetrative anal sex at the same age at
which straight people are deemed legally capable of making the decision
to engage in vaginal intercourse.
The negative reception of this song, particularly by members of the
queer community, highlights an underlying fear that queer sexuality is,
in some instances, associated with paedophilia. Jones concluded that:

This song is easily misconstrued because people just pluck at the thing they find
most fearful. I think specifically in the queer community they pick up on that sim-
ply because there have been so many incorrect allegations about homosexuality and
paedophilia, and they think oh you cant sing about that because youll undo all
our good work. (personal communication, 12 December 2005)

The reception of this song highlights the negative images of queer sexu-
ality, and in turn the damaging effect that these misassumptions have upon
the self-image and collective identity of many queers. Anal Traffics per-
sistent interest in matters of sex, politics and governance evident in the
song Age of Consent, among others suggests that the bands music
infringes the public/private dichotomy, which has reinforced queer sexual
oppression. This bold mixture of in-your-face sex and political commentary
highlights the potential for queer cultural practices to deconstruct the binary
and opposing spheres of personal and political, intimate and public. Anal
Traffics lyrics thus challenge and subvert the oppressive institutions and
social hierarchies that reinforce these dichotomies.

Performing Queer Identities

As previously outlined, queercore culture maintains a critical distance


from institutionalised homosexual culture, preferring instead to play
with alternative gender conventions and representations of sexual iden-
tity. In keeping with this ethic, Anal Traffic attempts to campishly desta-
bilise dominant images of gay male sexual identity. This is achieved
146 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

primarily via the physicality of the bands performance and through the
juxtaposition of the performers bodies and gender identities against the
sexual themes explored in their music.

Figure 7: Anal Traffic chocolate tea party photograph


Anal Traffic 2007. Photo by Matt Ditton.

Figure 7 shows a promotional photograph of the band, featuring, from


left to right, Garvey, Downs, Jones and Cian. This image shows the band
in a domestic setting, wearing mismatched attire and drinking tea.
Downs is eating chocolate while Garvey, Jones and Cian are pictured
with chocolate smeared all over their faces. In the middle of the table sits
a copy of Inches magazine.
Inches is pornography marketed to a gay male audience. The poses
assumed in the photograph appear audacious and slightly mischievous;
the clothing is odd and out of place in a tea party setting; and the
smeared chocolate is particularly symbolic of the bands celebration of
fun and filth, as previously articulated by Jones. In discussion with
Jones, he jokingly suggested that the chocolate could be read as a cryptic
euphemism for faeces. Although the magazine cover is slightly obscured
in Figure 7, to those in the know, this is clearly gay male pornography
and serves as a discreet reference to the bands thematic and its preoccu-
pation with male homosexuality. Both the male and female bodies in this
image the same bodies that appear on stage in their live performances
CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal 147

are rather incongruous with the image on the cover of Inches that is,
none of them appears to resemble the tanned, buffed, hairless, scantily
clad and sexually suggestive image of homosexual masculinity pictured
here. In fact, this image on the cover of Inches is juxtaposed with the
physicality of the band members.
Another contradiction between the bands physical image and a
homosexual stereotype is evident in the bands lyrics. Anal Traffics
sexual narratives, most of which deal with themes of overtly aggressive
homosexual masculinity and sex contextualised in sex club spaces, sug-
gestively position Anal Traffic within a hyper-masculine perhaps
leathermen and/or bear culture. Such cultures emphasise a butch rug-
gedness, are male-centric and place an emphasis on hyper-masculine
somatic ideals such as leathermens preference for acute muscle tone and
bears preference for large, hairy bodies and facial hair. Leathermens
fashion is typified by tight leather, uniforms and fetish wear, while bears
tend to preference denim and flannel (e.g. see Hennen, 2008; Suresha,
2009). However, the somatotypes, fashions and physical gesticulation
normally associated with hyper-masculine sexual identities are playfully
undermined by the collective physicality of the band. Parodying such
gay stereotypes, Anal Traffic juxtaposes the overt sexual vulgarity and
aggression associated with hyper-masculine gay men, against slender,
boyish, non-muscular and even female bodies, thus causing incongru-
ence between the lyrical narratives and physical spectacle on stage and
in the image in Figure 7. As Jones remarks:

I find that some of the gay men, like the rough trade who are into leather, will turn
up to see us and because Im a skinny little thing and Shanes tall and slim, and
Sams a woman, we dont fit their ideal of what dirty filthy shit pigs and bears
should be so they put their guard up. Ive felt it a few times when people like that
look at us and go oh [with a confused expression], then walk off because were
not the big rough brooding masculine men they thought wed be. I find it hilari-
ous. I think theyre too busy upholding the image of masculinity theyre trying to
attract. (personal communication, December 12, 2005)

The bands incongruous physical image troubles stereotypes of male


homosexuality and the association of sexually gratuitous homosexuality
with hyper-masculinity, as the hyper-masculine spectacle one would
typically associate with Anal Traffics lyrics and, to a lesser degree, with
their punk rock sound is remarkably absent in the image presented in
148 CHAPTER 5: Queer Punk Identity Through a Distortion Pedal

Figure 7 and in their physical performance. Instead, the male and female
bodies that perform the music of Anal Traffic present a fractured array of
gender identities encompassing masculinity, boyishness, androgyny and
femininity. These multiple and incoherent representations of sexuality
expressed by Anal Traffic through the bands lyrics, physical presenta-
tion and promotional imagery point to the broader project of queer. That
is, by demonstrating the multiple manifestations and representations of
male homosexuality, the band is in effect queering homosexuality, dis-
mantling the idea of a homogenous or universal homosexual male gender
in the process.
The bands on-stage antics further point towards its members desire
to be confronting and to challenge the conventions and exceed the boun-
daries of both punk and local queer performance styles. While the simula-
tion of masturbation and male-to-male fellatio are common features of an
Anal Traffic show, it is these same stage antics, as well as the bands lyr-
ics, that both visibly and audibly position the group outside of Brisbanes
alternative and punk scenes and on the edge of local queer culture as well.
By locating the band in this marginal space, Anal Traffic has created a
new position one that is unique in the context of local queer and local
punk cultures. Drawing on the rhetoric and style of queercore, it is a posi-
tion that problematises sexuality within a punk rock context, and a posi-
tion that playfully undermines and confuses gay male stereotypes through
punk rock. Akin to the zeitgeist of queercore, Anal Traffic uses playful
tactics and its members keen sense of camp to negotiate the politics of
sexual identity, to subvert categories of hetero- and homonormativity, and
to resist the musical trappings of mainstream gay culture. Through musical
composition and performance, the band members have found a means of
expressing themselves, emphasising their sexual, social and musical devi-
ancies that they embrace as queer individuals. Anal Traffic marks a site of
queer and musical identity production; it constitutes a way for these indi-
viduals to enact their contestations of the normal and to aesthetically cri-
tique the hetero-normal/homo-deviant dichotomy. In doing so, the band is
calling into question the truth, stability and normativity of sexual identity
in general, and putting in its place campish parodies that celebrate all the
fun and filth that its members suggest are at the core of all human
sexual desires.
CHAPTER 6

WOMYN, GRRRLS AND SISTAS


Queer Agendas in Feminist Music-making

There are women of many descriptions


In this queer world, as everyone knows.
Some are living in beautiful mansions
And are wearing the finest of clothes.
There are blue-blooded queens and princesses
Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls:
But the only and thoroughbred lady,
Is the rebel girl
For its great to fight for freedom with a rebel girl.
(Lyrics from 1916 song, The Rebel Girl by Joe Hill)

This 1916 labour song, written as an ode to American labour leader act-
ivist and feminist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, could, with the right musical
accompaniment, just as easily work today as unruly punk or anarcho-
pop. While the rebellions impetus (and indeed the meaning of queer)
may have changed, women still rebel and songs continue to be written to
give voice to, celebrate and memorialise womens struggles, and to in-
cite other women to do the same. In queer times more akin to our own,
women musicians have defended their right to express anger towards a
patriarchal hegemony that continues to quash assertions of femininity,
femaleness and woman-centre sexuality, and they have conveyed these
expressions though various forms of popular music-making employing
music as forum of self-expression and self-experience. Popular music-
making especially rock music discourses has long depended on the
reiteration of gender normativities. Rock in particular, suggests Norma
Coates, is indeed a technology of gender in that masculinity is re-
inforced and multiplied in its many discursive spaces (1997, p. 52).
Moreover, rock musical spaces are constructed as pre-eminent represen-
tations of largely white, heterosexual masculine supremacy (Bayton,
1993; Coates, 1997; Dibben, 2002; Frith & McRobbie, 1990; Whiteley,
150 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

1
2000). In the spirit of womyns music and lesbian feminist culture,
recent iconoclasms within popular music discourses, such as the
development of the riot grrrls movement and dykecore, have reignited an
awareness of both feminist and queer issues within popular music, chal-
lenging the impossibility of female articulations within phallocentric
popular music discourses.
The music and associated cultural styles to be discussed in this
chapter are locatable across two cultural and political forms that are both
complementary and, some would say, at odds: queer and feminism. The
connections between feminist and queer cultures and activist forms are
broadly acknowledged, however directly or indirectly, outside scholar-
ship. Yet within scholarly theoretical frameworks, queer theory has often
been charged as exclusionary, erasing lesbian specificity, rewriting
feminism, implicitly referring to the queer subject as white, gay and
male, and advocating a false sense of identity fluidity that does not re-
flect the lived realities of lesbians and gay men (Edwards, 1998;
Escoffier, 1990; Jeffreys, 2003; Walters, 1996; Weed, 1997). From a
lesbian feminist perspective, Sheila Jeffreys claims that queer theory is
largely hostile towards lesbians, and disputes its claims of inclusivity.
Moreover, she believes that queer theory is dangerous to women because
it is founded upon and primarily supports articulations of masculinity,
which she defines as the behaviour of male dominance (2003, p. 7).
Suzanne Walters posits a slightly more positive relationship between the
two paradigms, noting the usefulness of theorising beyond gender rig-
idity, as queer does, while also acknowledging that queer sometimes
forgets the very real and felt experience of gender that women, particu-
larly, live with quite explicitly (1996, p. 844). While it is important to
be aware of these tensions, I do not wish to add to the theoretical debate
here; rather, I suggest that outside of the academy, women musicians
have enacted, and continue to enact, a politic that borrows from both
feminist and queer discourses. Drawing on riot grrrl-style third-wave
feminism, since the 1990s a younger generation of women have largely
rejected the overtly intellectualised debates around gender and sexual
identity (be it explicitly feminist or queer). Many riot grrrl spokeswomen

1 The term womyn (or wimmin) is an alternative spelling of women, and has been
used largely by feminists as a means of removing the reference to men from the
category of women.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 151

have acknowledged their distrust of institutionalised knowledges and


their fear of misrepresentation by both media and academic critics, pre-
ferring instead to represent and speak of themselves through DIY zine
publications and songwriting.
With a decidedly queer agenda (but perhaps less explicitly so than
queercore), many young women turn to music as a feminist site for self-
expression and collective action. Many others still turn to the music made
by queer women as a site for inspiration and guidance, as music more
than film or magazines accommodates more diverse representations for
femaleness beyond mainstream ideas of feminine (hetero)sexualised
sameness. As Drivers study of queer girls and popular culture attends, a
profoundly embodied sense of interaction through music is conveyed by
girls who crave engagement beyond the consumption of manufactured
entertainment images (2007, p. 198). Although the music industries may
contradict this, music itself offers women a site for expression, empower-
ment and critique a space to cite and incite each other.
Borrowing partially and selectively from womyns music and riot
grrrl traditions, this chapter looks at pro-female music-making and queer
female political activism. At the end of this chapter, the information pre-
sented here is woven into a case study of an all-women, queer,
funk/reggae/ska band, Bertha Control. This case study demonstrates how
a younger generation of women (or sistas, as Bertha Controls members
often call themselves) can incorporate both queer and feminist politics
into music-making, production and performance. Contextualised within
a broad history of feminist popular music-making, this chapter argues
that in recent times we have seen the emergence of a new queer agenda
across feminist popular music production an agenda that is rarely given
due attention.

Women Sounding Out

The position of women within Western popular music cultures has often
been a subordinate one. Since the 1950s, the patriarchal power structures
of rock music in particular have succeeded in most instances in regulat-
ing the role of women to little more than that of the fan, the consumer,
the subservient follower, the sexual object or the groupie. While pop and
152 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

folk traditions have generally been more accommodating to female per-


formers than rock music, the roles available to women within these
forms of music-making have chiefly been those of vocalist and not in-
strumentalist (Bayton, 1993; Whiteley, 2000). Women who have been
successful in overcoming rocks patriarchy and phallocentricism are
usually acknowledged by the mainstream rock music press under the
collective label of women in rock, and as such are identified primarily
(and inescapably) by their sex and secondarily by their proficiency as
musicians. As Mary Celeste Kearney (1997) points out, the women in
rock label is used to defuse the threat that these women pose to rocks
male supremacy. Through the labelling of female musicians as women
in rock, a secondary space is created that only women can occupy, and
because this space is constructed outside of rocks masculine sphere, it
poses no threat to the authenticity of rock masculinity. The binary gen-
der categorisations that circulate within and are sustained by a popular
music discourses such as the masculine rock/feminine pop dichotomy
that privileges heterosexual articulations (Dibben, 2002; Frith &
McRobbie, 1990) point to the fundamental inequalities in the way that
male and female music-making is valued and to the prevailing heter-
onormativity within both traditions.
Politically grounded in second-wave feminist and lesbian feminist
discourses, womyns music began to emerge in the late 1960s and early
1970s as a direct reaction against the domination of men within popular
music traditions of the time (Bayton, 1993; Garofalo 1992; Quimby,
1997). As Mavis Bayton illustrates:

Feminists created an alternative musical world of their own. This world offered the
chance to rewrite the rules: of lyrics, of band membership and organization, of the gig,
of the stage, and even of the music itself. Feminists enthusiastically and optimistically
promoted alternative values: collectivism and co-operation instead of competitive indi-
vidualism; participative democracy and equality instead of hierarchy. (1993, p. 179)

The womyns music movement sought to create a style and culture of


explicitly female music incorporating women in all parts of music-making,
including songwriting, performance, production, promotion and sound
reinforcement.
Music was a necessary process in the institutionalisation of lesbian
culture and the creation of lesbian visibility within broader public culture
(Quimby, 1997). Favouring a DIY separatist approach, women such as
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 153

Alix Dobkin and Cris Williamson created original music and their own
alternative musical institutions as a means of combating the patriarchy
and misogyny of the music industry. In 1973, Dobkin released Lavender
Jane Loves Women, which was ground-breaking in its attention to les-
bian feminist themes. Dobkin wanted lesbians to have tangible musical
proof of their existence (1979, p. 12). In the same year, Williamson
launched Olivia Records, the first label dedicated solely to the recording
and marketing of womyns music. Olivia Records was a separatist or-
ganisation that employed a feminist business model, as it not only pro-
duced womyns music but also solely employed women. For female
musicians of this kind, the personal was intensely political, and this was
reflected in their musical style and lyrical content. The message and
politics of the womyns movement were articulated primarily through
folk music styles because folk was already imbued with political themes
and its sound was considered softer, less aggressive and therefore less
masculine (Bayton, 1993; Kearney; 1997). Lyrically, womyns music
dealt with issues of suffrage, lesbianism, domesticity, motherhood, the
female body and other explicitly female themes.
As womyns music continued to position itself in opposition to male
music styles such as rock, punk and metal, its focus on gender differ-
ences within music proved to be somewhat problematic for future gen-
erations of feminist musicians. Some women were frustrated by the
tendency of womyns music to downplay female sexuality and to re-
define lesbianism as a sensual rather than sexual experience. Peraino
recalls that, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation of
lesbians inspired by third-wave feminism, queer theory, punk rock cul-
ture and AIDS activism flatly rejected womens music as part of a
reevaluation and critique of cultural feminisms construction of wo-
maness and women identification (2006, p. 175). As younger women
grew sceptical about second-wave feminism and the gender rigidity of
womyns music traditions, new musical cultures began to emerge, most
notably the movement know as riot grrrl.
Riot grrrl is a DIY feminist punk movement that first emerged in the
early 1990s in Americas Pacific Northwest region, initially around
Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Drawing inspiration from
earlier female punk musicians such as The Slits and Poly Styrene from
154 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

2
the X-Ray Spex, the riot grrrls evoked a renaissance in angry, loud, ag-
gressive and bratty female music-making. Much like the queercore
movement, the riot grrrls were angered by the gender orthodoxy and ma-
chismo prevalent in the American hardcore punk scene, with its violent
forms of audience interaction in the mosh pit and its sexist attitude to
women musicians (Schilt, 2004). The name riot grrrl signals the vitality
of youth implicit in the term girl as opposed to woman, while adding
energy, rage and a growl to the idea of girl by spelling it in this par-
ticular way. The riot grrrls, suggests Kearney, were:

Often highly critical that second wave feminism operated like a fundamentalist
religion with prescriptions on how to dress, behave and think, young feminists such
as the riot grrrls [began] infusing feminist politics with forms of confrontational
cultural activism which relied less on exposing gender differences than on decon-
structing them. (1997, p. 224)

Although critical of second-wave fundamentalism, riot grrrls demon-


strate ties with both second and third-wave feminism and lesbian feminist
cultures. In some instances, they exhibit the separatist practices asso-
ciated with womyns music such as female-only bands, all-female gigs
or female-only mosh pits. Yet they also demonstrate a particularly third-
wave interest in popular cultural forms such as rock and punk, which
they use as a means of self-expression and as a way to mobilise their
cause (Kearney, 1997; Leonard, 1997, 2007; Spencer, 2005). It should
be noted, however, that not all riot grrrls are in favour of a gender sepa-
ratist approach, as many of the iconic riot grrrl bands such as Bikini Kill
and Bratmobile have had male band members.
Like the womyns movement, the riot grrrl movement is both a musi-
cal and political phenomenon that sprang from feelings of oppression and
a lack of access to musical participation. Unlike womyns music, however,
riot grrrls flexible forms of self-identification meant that the movements
participants were free to embrace a range of femininities, be it playful
girlishness or militant lesbian feminism. The riot grrrls pro-female stance
allowed for the celebration of femaleness without the necessary rejection
of traditionally masculine attributes; thus it does not rely on an exclusive

2 Forming in London in 1976, both The Slits and X-Ray Spex were forerunners in the
punk scene. X-Ray Spex most notable single Oh Bondage, Up Yours! (1977) can
be described as a riot grrrl premonition due to its attention to feminist and anti-
capitalist themes (Leblanc, 1999; Lee, 2002).
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 155

system of gender identification. Instead, riot grrrls rejected prescriptive


performances of gender and critiqued normative constructions of the
feminine by celebrating multiple manifestations of femaleness, positing
that women too can be angry, aggressive, loud and edgy musicians. More-
over, the riot grrrls sought to include and speak to adolescent women, a
group that was generally excluded from forms of popular music-making
(see Downs, 2007, 2012; Friskics-Warren, 2005; Kearney, 1997; Leonard,
1997, 2007; Spencer, 2005): a group that at a time in their lives when
girls are taught to be silent, Riot Grrrl demands that they scream (Rosen-
berg & Garofalo, 1998, p. 810).
Adopting the catch-cry revolution girl style now, riot grrrls sought
to establish womens equality within masculine musical spheres while at
the same time tackling broader social issues. According to pioneering
riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna of the band Bikini Kill, sexism, heterosexism,
racism, classism, ageism, thinism and capitalism were also key targets
on a list of social ills that the riot grrrls movement sought to quash (cited
in Rosenberg & Garofalo, 1998). In an interview with Celina Hex for
Bust magazine, Hanna and feminist writer Gloria Steinem were each
asked to comment on their definition of feminism. Hanna articulated her
view positing that she saw feminism as as a broad-based political
movement thats bent on challenging hierarchies of all kinds in our soci-
ety, including racism and classism and able-body-ism, etc. etc. (cited in
Hex, 2000, para. 5). Agreeing with Hanna, Steinem remarked that femi-
nism was a transformation because once you take away the basic first
step in a hierarchy, which is the passive/dominant of female/male, it chal-
lenges everything (cited in Hex, 2000, para. 5). According to riot grrrl
and author Julia Downes, feminism in the 1990s was seen by many of the
riot grrrls as a politic that belonged to, and served the needs of, university-
educated, heterosexual, middle-class women. It was the riot grrrls, sug-
gests Downes, who rewrote feminism and activism into a punk rock re-
bellion and youth-centred voice (2007, p. 26).

Riot Grrrl and Queer Crossovers

Often overlooked in discussions of riot grrrls are the ties between this
movement, queercore and the history of lesbian feminist culture more
generally. Although many riot grrrls were queer punks and vice versa,
156 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

there appears to have been an obvious attempt at positioning riot grrrls as


heterosexual in the mainstream and gay press, infantilising their girl love
in the former, and keeping queercore gay and male in the latter (see Fen-
ster, 1993; Kearney, 1997). According to Beyle, it was the lesbian grrrls
who propelled queercore in the beginning, and any male-centric accounts
of queercore were fuelled by the gay media rather than the scene itself
(see Ciminelli & Knox, 2005, p. 142). For many riot grrrls, lesbian visi-
bility was as much desired in the 1990s as it was by women like Dobkin
in the 1970s. Val Phoenix notes that for some queer women, Riot Grrrl
provides a refuge from a homophobic punk scene and a conformist gay
culture (1994, p. 40). As such, queer female musicians have contri-
buted, and in many cases expanded upon, riot grrrl-style feminism, in-
corporating a decidedly queer politic into their music-making. In Melissa
Kleins work on feminism and alternative music, she illustrates how
younger feminist and alternative music communities became a space for
queer and questioning girls (2002, p. 415) to discuss their feelings of
isolation and their experiences of sexuality. Bill Friskics-Warren argues
that the riot grrrls were about creating a space for women to be free to
love each other (in every respect) to discover new and unforeseen
physical, emotional, and spiritual possibilities for their lives (2005, p.
202).
Riot grrrl-style music and pro-female advocacy reached their popu-
larity peak in the late 1990s. Today, those artists who have persisted in
this vein are given little attention by the mainstream music press. How-
ever, the riot grrrls movement remains active, as do the connections be-
tween riot grrrls and queer (sub)cultural activity generally. In a 2008
interview in Cherrie magazine, Elena Jeffreys spoke with Gina Mamone,
who is the founder of one of the worlds largest GLBTIQ record labels,
Riot Grrrl Ink. Mamone spoke about the support the label offers to
GLBTIQ political movements and its radical capitalist approach, which
she suggests borrows partially from existing business models but
strongly resists conventional mass marketing approaches. Instead, Riot
Grrrl Ink. chooses to trade advertising space, participate directly in
community action projects and offer its artists access to graphic design-
ers and publicists free of charge. We make art at the intersection of
social justice and change, suggests Mamone (cited in Jeffreys, 2008, p.
13). Like queercore, contemporary queer/riot grrrl culture has produced
a stylistically diverse array of artists, and as such riot grrrl is no longer
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 157

exclusively associated with punk. Riot Grrrl Ink., for example, produces
and supports artists across a variety of popular genres. On its website,
the label avoids stating that it has an affinity with a particular style of
music. Instead, it claims to provide resources and financial support for
political, radical and revolutionary art it all forms art that defines and
inspires contemporary queer culture and its ongoing revolution and
evolution (Riot Grrrl Ink., 2008). Thus Riot Grrrl Ink. further points to
the expansion of riot grrrl-style feminism and its attentiveness to queer
issues and queer cultural production.
The combining of queer politics and theory with riot grrrl feminism
has largely been responsible for refocusing musical presentations of fe-
male gender and sexuality, encouraging women to celebrate a variation
of gender roles, deconstruct sexual and bodily normativities and create
new modalities of female genders, and alternative performances and
articulations of female sexualities. And in doing this, queer female artists
have evoked and invigorated a broad range of musical styles. Musicians
like the self-proclaimed queercore/dyke punk rock outfit Tribe 8 employ
a unique style of feminist politics in their lyrics while addressing and
critiquing queer dyke gender, sex roles and desires in songs such as
Masochists Medley (1996), Tranny Chaser (1996), Neanderthal
Dyke (1995), Estrofemme (1998) and Femme Bitch Top (1995),
among others. In doing so, Halberstam suggests that Tribe 8 is producing
a taxonomy of queer lives and a dissonant record of dyke punk and
dyke genders (2007b, p. 57). Team Dresch the de facto riot grrrls of
the queer rock scene (Ciminelli & Knox, 2005, p. 182) interweaves
queer and feminist themes in its music. On albums such as Captain My
Captain (1996), Team Dresch critically explores issues of sexism and
heterosexism, aiming to educate younger fans on the history of lesbian
political struggle as well as addressing current anxieties around lesbian
sexual freedom and public expression. Discussing this album and the
lineages of dykecore more generally, Angela Wilson explains how, in
terms of lyrical themes and liner note text, this album gives a direct nod
to the earlier generations of lesbians like those involved with Olivia Re-
cords stress[ing] the importance of remembering the struggles les-
bians have faced through time (2008, p. 53).
158 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

3
Explicit in both its lyrics and music, electroclash ensemble Le Tigre
pays homage and makes multiple references to various queer and femin-
ist artists, musicians and writers who have inspired the band both cre-
atively and politically. The song Hot Topic from Le Tigres self-titled
1999 debut album serves as a notable example of this as it recites an
extensive list of female musicians, critical thinkers and performers such
as Joan Jet, Gayatri Spivak and Yoko Ono, among many others. On the
4
Butchies album We are Not Femme (1998), this queer punk outfit per-
forms a cover of Cris Williamsons iconic womyns anthem Shooting
Star; the Butchies rocked-up rendition of this folk song is noted by
Halberstam as a way for riot dykes to build a bridge between the rau-
cous spirit of rebellion and the quieter, acoustic world of womens music
from the 1970s and 1980s (2006, p. 18). Queer dyke duo Bitch and
Animal similarly perform an act of intergenerational connectivity in the
making of their 2003 album, Sour Juice Rhyme. Here, while also lyri-
cally signalling many great queer women and feminist thinkers, they
teamed up with June Millington to co-produce and co-record the album.
Millington, a godmother of womens music, was in one of the first all-
female rock bands, Fanny (formed in 1970). In this instance, the folk
stylings of Bitch and Animals album could be seen as building a styl-
istic bridge in the opposite direction a further feminist deconstruction
of the soft/hard, folk/rock, female/male dichotomy.
Selecting from a history of dyke music, queer electronic/dance
quartet Lesbians on Ecstasy have re-recorded and thematically reinter-
preted lesbian folk, country, rock and punk favourites from artists such
as the Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge, Team Dresch and k.d. lang. On
their self-titled 2004 album, Lesbians on Ecstasy covered langs Con-
stant Craving (1992), transforming it from a romantic ballad into an
anti-consumerist manifesto. Meanwhile, the disco/soul/punk stylings of
The Gossip and its self-proclaimed fat femme queer dyke front woman
Beth Ditto make multiple lyrical references to queer and feminist issues
in songs like Standing in the Way of Control (2006). Meanwhile,
through their music, one can hear echoes of earlier female artists like

3 Le Tigre was formed in 1998 by riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna, formally of Bikini Kill.
Currently, its members include Johanna Fateman and JD Samson.
4 The Butchies is a punk rock lesbian feminist band that formed in 1998 in Durham,
North Carolina. Some of the bands members have also played in Team Dresch, as
well as other notable riot grrrl and queercore bands.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 159

Siouxsie Sioux, Grace Jones, Mama Cass and Janis Joplin. Often pro-
claimed as by the press as carrying the riot grrrl torch, Ditto says in an
interview with Diva magazine:

Riot Grrrl as a look is gone, but as an ethic and a code of behaviour, its still very
much alive because of the way pioneers like Kathleen Hanna behaved and changed
females in music. Artists like Peaches and Uffie can exist in the way they do, and
enjoy it too; the message is the same, in a new package. The doors are now open for
all kinds of messages and motives, like if you wanna sing about fucking a guy in
the ass, you can. (cited in Coope, 2007, para. 7)

This ethic to which Ditto refers is evident in a number of other post-riot


grrrl female artists who have not only reached back into the history of
feminist music-making, but also out to traditionally non-feminist forms
such as mainstream pop. Here I am thinking particularly of lesbian and
transgender advocate and performer J.D. Samson of the bands Le Tigre
and Men. Samsons recent collaboration with Christina Aguilera on her
2010 album Bionic seems at first a peculiar pairing in terms of both
genre and political fit. However, Samsons decision to work with Aguil-
era (at the pop stars request) reflects an acknowledgement of the im-
portance of female camaraderie within the music industry, bridging both
the indie/alternative and hyper-commercial mainstream, and pointing to
possibility of allying Aguileras straight hyper-femininity with Samsons
queer female masculinity.
A final point that must be highlighted in this discussion of a queer
feminist music consciousness is the role of music in what Driver (2007)
might term healing rituals or Ann Cvetkovich (2003) would locate
within an archive of feeling. Both of these authors have argued that
queer feminist music-makers and fans acknowledge that, through the
celebration of the vulnerable, invisible and marginalised, queer feminist
musics have the capacity to mediate psychic trauma, collectively express
and process emotional pain, and envisage hope for future pleasure, ful-
filment and social justice. While this was also very much a part of earlier
womyns music cultures, today it manifests in a way that permits more
varied modalities of expression, in terms of both female, lesbian and
queer genders, and musical genres.
These performances call for a different model of history, one capa-
ble of making connections between different forms of queer community,
different kinds of voices, and different historical moments, writes Hal-
160 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

berstam (2007b, pp. 5758). Although she writes this with specific refer-
ence to the work of Lesbians on Ecstasy, among others, this notion,
grounded in a somewhat stylistically schizophrenic logic of queer tem-
porality and (sub)cultural (de)construction, is broadly applicable to the
riot-grrrl style ethic that, as Ditto pointed out, is still very much alive and
well in contemporary queer feminist music. Artists such as those dis-
cussed in this chapter bands and performers who borrow from both
feminist and queer cultural styles and political discourses suggest that
during the 1990s a cross-pollination of feminist and queer politics within
and outside of the riot grrrl movement produced a new politico-musical
discourse that has produced, and continues to produce, different forms of
queer feminist music-making.
Today, women continue to seek expression through genres and forms
that traditionally have been reserved for men forms like reggae and/or
funk that often relegate femaleness (particularly queer forms of femaleness
and female sexuality) to the margins. Many women demonstrate a re-
tainment of female solidarity and continue to perpetuate broad-scale social
justice and healing through music-making. In the following case study of
Bertha Control, I refer to and expand upon this. I demonstrate the ways in
which these women execute their challenge to patriarchy, sexism, hetero-
sexism, racism, ageism and capitalism. Moreover, I argue that both queer
and feminist agendas remain central to their work.

Sistas at Play:
A Case Study of Queer Feminist Band Bertha Control

Drawing upon queer sensibilities and feminist politics as well as ele-


ments of funk, reggae and ska musical styles, this case study of the all-
female Brisbane ensemble Bertha Control offers a critique of their musi-
cality, visual imagery, lyrics and performance. Supporting material gath-
ered from interviews conducted with members of the band and
observations of Bertha Controls live shows in 2005 and 2006 provide
the basis for this examination, demonstrating the ways in which these
local queer women use music to express their gender and sexuality, and
to critique the flaws they identify within the dominant social order.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 161

Bertha Control is currently a five-piece ensemble (pictured in Fig-


ure 8), featuring the musical talents of Patty Bom (percussion and vo-
cals), J.C. Nimble-Fingers Bassey (bass and vocals), C.C. the Cat (gui-
tar, flute, keyboard and vocals), Fretmaster Flawless (guitar, trumpet and
vocals) and maTHRILLda (saxophone and vocals).
The band formed in 2003 with a sixth member, Mona Verdour, who
has since left the group. In November 2005, I interviewed three of these
women: Clare Cottone (C.C. the Cat), Matilda Alexander (maTHRILLda)
and Patty Preece (Patty Bom). At the time of these interviews, Verdour
was still recording and performing with Bertha Control, hence the constant
reference to six women by the interviewees. Since the bands formation,
Bertha Control has released three independent albums. In 2005, the band
released a six-track EP titled Youre a Bertha Control Yourself and a full-
length, thirteen-track album titled Out of Control. In 2007, the band re-
leased a ten-track album titled Songs of Sedition.
Throughout the bands live performance career, Bertha Control has
gigged extensively in Brisbane and in numerous towns and cities along
the east coast of Australia. The bands performances at a remarkably
diverse array of events, festivals and political rallies signal Bertha Con-
trols alliance with multiple music scenes, social causes and political
movements, such as reggae, funk and to a lesser degree punk culture;
environmental, refugee, Indigenous and anti-corporate activism; queer
and womens movements. The bands participation in the following se-
lection of events during 2004-2007 exemplifies this: Stradbroke Island
Reggae Festival, Rasta Funk Blasta, Joyfest, Punkfest, Environmental
Awareness Week, Wollumbin Dreaming Festival, World Refugee Day,
Brisbane Social Forum, Funk U CEOs fundraiser, Brisbane Pride Festi-
val, The Fruit Tingle Queer Cabaret, Ladyfest, International Lesbian
Day, International Womens Day and Reclaim the Night.
162 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

Figure 8: Bertha Control promotional image


Bertha Control 2006. Photo by Melly Niotakis.

Approach, Style, Sound and Themes

In an online biography from Bertha Controls official website, the women


describe themselves as an all-woman funk/reggae/ska outfit, which is on
a quest to heal the world and its people through music (Bertha Control,
2006). This description goes on to suggest that Bertha Control is representa-
tive of the sistahood. The recurring use of this term, which the women
employed regularly in discussions with me, highlights the centrality of fe-
maleness to the collective identity of the band, and points to their extended
sense of camaraderie and the romanticised ideals of affinity and fraternity
among all women. The spelling of sista in this way further signals the
female music traditions womyn and grrrl that preceded them.
When I asked Alexander, Cottone and Preece to describe the sound
and style of Bertha Control, they all agreed that it could be characterised
first by the fact that they were all women and subsequently by their
revolutionary themes and their funk and reggae sound. Cottone pointed
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 163

out that, like rock music forms, reggae and funk traditionally are male-
dominated genres, thus their approach to the formation of Bertha Control
is firmly grounded in their experience as women, particularly women who
are trying to make their way in a male-dominated musical style. Preece
commented that the band members aim to be role models for young
women coming through, or just women generally who want to play music
If they can see six women doing it maybe theyll think, wow, its actu-
ally possible (personal communication, 30 November 2005).
Bertha Control takes great pride in its members role as mentors to
other women, encouraging female participation in all aspects of per-
forming and promoting their music. Alexander stated that:

We try and skill up women in all the different aspects of it cause in a way having a
band is like having a small business; there are all these auxiliary things attached
like the cover artwork and the graphic design on the website and the live sound. We
make sure that all these roles are filled by women when we can. And if we could
find appropriate recording studios which were working on, wed have women in
that role as well. For example, at the last gig we had two trainee sound mixers
watching over the woman who does our sound. These were two women who were
wanting to learn how to do sound and I love giving people the opportunity to do
that kind of thing. Its [live sound] another area where there arent many women.
(personal communication, 30 November 2005)

Cottone added that this idea of nurturing was something that the band
fostered internally as well:

When we started out we werent the best guitarists or drummers or anything in


Brisbane. Jewels just picked up her bass when we started Bertha and Matilda
started playing sax in Bertha and my keyboard work was all classical in the past so
weve really supported each other to grow musically by nurturing each other. Even
though we started out as beginners weve nurtured each other to grow and become a
lot more professional. (personal communication, 30 November 2005)

This approach to the groups organisation and management locates it


firmly within the tradition of feminist music-making, where competitive
individualism and hierarchy are rejected in favour of participative de-
mocracy, equality, inclusivity and opportunities for self-growth.
Inspired by their political commitments, Bertha Controls members
believe they play a significant role in awareness-raising and in healing
hence their suggestion that they are on a quest to heal the world and its
people through music (Bertha Control, 2006). Although I discuss their
164 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

role as awareness-raisers in more detail in the following section, it is a


role that the band members feel is deeply connected to musics ability to
heal. In a song from the groups album Out of Control titled Music is
the Weapon of the Future, Patty Bom raps the words music is the
weapon of the future, music is the language of the soul yeah, music is the
healer of the people. When I asked the band members to elaborate on
this, Cottone explained:

I think our role is awareness-raising. I feel really conscious when were playing that
yeah were all having a great time and having a great party but firstly were on sto-
5
len land, having this great time at other peoples expense. I think we need to be
aware of that but without dampening the situation because another role I think we
play is a healing role. We offer healing to people doing really hard work and we
support a lot of activist movements so when everyone gets together to listen they
can all relax and celebrate and have healing though music. (personal communica-
tion, 30 November 2005)

The notion that music is both a weapon and a healing tool is a central
theme in Rastafarian reggae music, marking the cohesion between the
bands post-colonial politics and musical style. Moreover, as previously
noted, queer feminist music is highly attuned to its healing capacity.
In terms of the bands musicality, Bertha Control exhibits a rather cu-
rious, or possibly queer, approach to style. I posit this because the bands
sound specifically its rejection of rocks whiteness and misogyny in-
corporates elements of funk, reggae, ska, rap and occasionally punk styles,
thus situating the group queerly within the discourses of typical feminist
music production and also within the dominant styles of queer cultural
production, as funk, reggae, ska and rap are not genres traditionally asso-
ciated with either feminist or queer cultures. Bertha Controls sound is
typified by funk guitar, bass grooves and interlocking 4/4 rhythms. In the
style of funk, many of the melodic instruments often take on rhythmic
qualities, contributing equally to the percussive drive of the music, and to
its timbric and tonal qualities. Songs frequently incorporate the off-beat
sounds of reggae with its recurring accents on the third beat of the bar,
intricate vocal harmonies, freestyle rapping, and classic ska-style key-

5 Cottones reference to stolen land is an acknowledgement that the Indigenous


peoples of Australia are the true custodians of the land, pre-dating British
settlement, and that the British violently and immorally stole the land from its
Indigenous peoples.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 165

board, saxophone and trumpet riffs. The bands occasional use of flute
melodies, and Latin rhythms and harmonies, suggests that the band draws
on a vast array of non-white musical influences, further distinguishing it
from a standardised rock or pop sound.
A recurring phrase employed by the women in my discussion with
them was the Bertha vibe. The women used this phrase in reference to
both their sound and their stage performance. When I asked them to
elaborate on its meaning, Cottone and Preece suggested that it was a
feeling or atmosphere that the group created on stage, a type of exchange
between the band and the audience. The women also agreed that there
was a political aspect to the vibe. Cottone explained:

Its all part of the vibe, theres definitely a political side to it, theres also a per-
formance aspect to it and I think just simply having six women on stage playing all
the instruments is quite new and different for a lot of people, it has its own feel to it.
One different thing about Bertha from the other bands is the traditional thing of
focusing on the lead vocalist and everyone supporting the lead vocalist, but we
equally share the stage, which is pretty different in general. But theres definitely a
political element to it as well. (personal communication, 30 November 2005)

Again, Cottones remark points to the strength that the band members
draw from their identity as women, and also from their identity as female
instrumentalists. Furthermore, it is strength and an energy that the band
members exchange with their audience in a live context. As an attendee
at many Bertha Control gigs, I can attest that this exchange is evident
most notably in their positive and encouraging dialogue with their audi-
ence, their playful personas and colorful stage attire, and their ability to
rouse their audiences enthusiasm through dance.
As Cottone pointed out above, Bertha Control does not have a desig-
nated lead singer: vocal performances are shared between the band members.
This idea of equally sharing the stage and the role of vocalist is a central
performance aesthetic of the band. It is a marker of the members equality as
individuals and their collective resistance to hierarchical power structures
again reminiscent of a second-wave approach to musical organisation. Bertha
Controls members acknowledged that when they made this decision it was
difficult to find a similar performance model from which to work. Generally
in popular music formations, the lead singer is accompanied by the rest of
the band. This is reflected in all aspects of stage design, press photography
and even credit listing, as the lead singer is generally named above all others
166 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

in album credits and in band biographies. Bertha Control has made a


conscious decision to subvert this hierarchy, with Cottone arguing: I
genuinely think we feel that we are trailblazing (personal communication,
30 November 2005). Alexander further commented: We try and reflect this
in our band photos as well, you know what I mean, we are all the same size
in the image, there is never someone in front view and someone up the back
(personal communication, 30 November 2005). The cover photograph from
Bertha Controls EP Youre a Bertha Control Yourself (see Figure 9) is a
pertinent example of Alexanders remark, while also evoking the bands
energy and playful aesthetic.
In contrast to the other queer artists discussed here, Bertha Controls al-
bum artwork and publicity photography (refer to Figure 9 and Figure 10
above) do not exhibit an overtly sexualised tone or a particularly queer sensi-
bility. While the rainbow on the cover of Out of Control (Figure 10) could
6
potentially be read as soft reference to queer pride, this is not made explicit.
Moreover, given the sizable body of work (currently over thirty songs) that
Bertha Control has recorded and performed in the bands relatively short
career, only a small percentage of its songs, like The Rap Against Homo-
phobic Crap for example, explicitly reference queer sexualities. While much
of the bands music implicitly offers commentary on issues that are of direct
concern to, or can be directly translated as queer, the groups implicit rather
than explicit iterations of queerness suggest that Bertha Controls agenda
extends beyond matters of queer gender and sexual identity and that its po-
lemical messages are intended to reflect the bands commitment to broader
social justice issues a strategy not uncommon within riot grrrl as well.

6 The rainbow flag is a widely recognised symbol of queer pride and has been in
global circulation since it was first designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker
in 1978 for use in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 167

Figure 9: Cover image from Youre a Bertha Control Yourself


Bertha Control 2005. Photo by Alicia.

During the first two years of Bertha Control, the band predominantly sup-
ported womens and queer events and movements, receiving the majority of
its airplay on local queer community radio programs. However, Cottone
pointed out that: weve always thought our music goes far beyond that and
we dont want to be limited to that audience because we think weve got a lot
to say to everyone (personal communication, 30 November 2005).

Figure 10: Out of Control album cover


Bertha Control 2005. Artwork by Ninishka.
168 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

Indeed, Bertha Control does have a lot to say on a broad range of issues,
and by mid-2005 numerous community radio stations on the east coast
of Australia had begun playing the bands music. Its songs have also
been included on various reggae and ska compilation discs, signifying
the diversification of Bertha Controls audience. While the women
maintain their loyalty to Brisbanes queer community for example, by
performing at Brisbanes annual Pride Fair and other queer fundraisers
the band exhibits a resounding social consciousness for a variety of top-
ics that do not exclusively pertain to queer matters.
Much of Bertha Controls musical output directly addresses themes
of social justice and governance, positioning the majority of the bands
work within the context of protest music. Arguing from a strong leftist
perspective, a range of contemporary political debates are voiced
through song. Lyrics that deal with Australian politics, censorship, ra-
cism, feminism, environmentalism, refugee rights, social pluralism, the
abuse of policing powers, anti-corporatisation and anti-capitalism domi-
nate their agenda, fulfilling the bands role as minority spokeswomen
and awareness-raisers. This is evident, for example, in songs such as
Fight, from Bertha Controls 2005 album Out of Control. This acoustic
guitar-driven funk tune is accompanied by a rapped vocal line uttering
the words, Hey Mr. Howard can you hear us when we scream / We
dont want a war, we wanna free the refugees. Time, a song from the
same album provides a useful example of their attention to feminist
themes. For Bertha Control, feminism is always located within a broader
anti-capitalist and environmental context. This percussively elaborate
salsa-inspired track speaks of the boys club that rules the world, and
arrogantly prescribe to women what that can and cant do with their
bodies: the same White upper-class men are making our laws / Ma-
nipulating the media to believe in their wars, sing Bertha Control.
Alexander made mention that, in the past, Bertha Control had been re-
7
jected from a gig in the Queen Street Mall for being an anti-capitalist
band, which Alexander suggested was one of our proudest political
moments (personal communication, 30 November 2005). Elaborating
on the bands politics, Alexander said:

7 The Queen Street Mall is the central shopping area of the Brisbane CBD.
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 169

We all have our individual politics and I guess the recognition and support of each
others politics is anarchist in a lot of senses. I personally identify as an anarchist
and I think we all would identify as anti-capitalist. (personal communication,
30 November 2005)

Reaffirming the bands gender and sexual politics, Cottone followed


Alexanders comment by adding that these identifications were strongly
linked to feminist and queer politics as well, while Preece agreed with
both their assertions.
Indigenous reconciliation and the black history of Australia are also
a thematic focus of Bertha Control. Previously, Cottone acknowledged
that when they are performing the women remain conscious of the lands
history and the injustices perpetrated against Australias Indigenous peo-
ples from the time of European settlement. A key example of this can be
found in the bands song Reconciliation, which originally appeared on
Youre a Bertha Control Yourself (2005) and was later re-recorded in
2007 on Songs of Sedition. The accentuated off-beat rhythm (called the
skank), vocal style and punctuation, and instrumentation of Reconcili-
ation are distinctively reggae, as is the thematic of the song in its deal-
ings with anti-colonial politics. The songs narrative evokes both the
protesting and healing qualities of the genre, and is testament to the
bands stylistic astuteness and music/lyric confluence. The lyrics of this
song offer a counter-dominant historical narrative of white settlement in
Australia, highlighting some of the historical untruths perpetrated by
white Australia with regard to Aborigines. In this song, referring to what
Australians celebrate as Australia Day, Bertha Control sing: In 1788, 26
of January / They stuck a flag in the land and called it British colony /
Pretend black people had not been here for six-hundred centuries / Slit
the throats of their children and deny-a them a treaty. The bands ex-
plicit criticism of white history marks Bertha Controls attempt at
countering dominant historical narratives and hegemonic perceptions of
Indigenous Australians. According to Sullivan, the troubling of (hege-
monic) race(ist) perception and of the public fantasies that (in)form it
and are (in)formed by it could be said to constitute queer practice
(2003, p. 78). Here, Bertha Control is offering a queer perspective of
white settlement in Australia, redefining what has historically been
termed settlement as invasion. In the process, the band is restructur-
ing its members own identity as white Australians through a musical
critique of white Australian history.
170 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

Bertha Control is not merely offering a token nod to past racially


motivated injustices, but through its continuous rigorous examination of
whiteness in both the bands lyrics and its members musical relation-
ships with the largely non-white styles that the band employs in its own
practice, it can be said that Bertha Control is challenging the tedious
white normativity of queerness and feminism on multiple levels: theo-
retically, politically and aesthetically. Perhaps most importantly, the
group is challenging the whiteness of queer and feminist musical dis-
course. Rather than recycling the musical styles of womyns or riot grrrl
culture, the members of Bertha Control reinvigorate them with funk,
reggae and Latin rhythms. Both the folk sound of womyns music and
the punk sounds of the riot grrrls movement encapsulated a sense of
musical and political whiteness. Halberstam refers to this as the em-
phasis on white womanhood, or the exclusive focus within lesbian femi-
nism on issues of gender and sexuality, and the disinterest in a politics of
race and class (2005, p. 180). Thus the multiple non-white influences
evident in the bands performance and sound would suggest that Bertha
Control is also attempting to confront the legacy of racial exclusivity
among feminist music traditions.
A camp sensibility in the music of Bertha Control is, for the most
part, absent or at least difficult to detect. While Alexander, Cottone
and Preece made no mention of camp to me when we discussed the
band, I resist suggesting that they are totally lacking a sense of camp
because their juxtaposition of multiple musical styles would imply an
element of musical pastiche, and to a lesser extent parody. The song
Love Triangle from Youre a Bertha Control Yourself (2005), with its
lyrical references to polyamory and playful celebrations of queer sexu-
ality, provides an example of what could be termed a campish pop
parody with political resonance. This song plays on familiar musical
themes such as Anita Wards number one disco hit from 1979, Ring My
Bell, and the predatory semi-tonal motif that has become synonymous
with the film score from the movie Jaws (1975). We even find a campish
play on the notion of triangle in both the lyrics and the printing of the
song title on the back of the album. Printed as Love T on the album
cover, triangle in this sense refers to the badges used in Nazi concentra-
tion camps to label prisoners. The black triangle marked people deemed
anti-social and work-shy which included, among others, homeless
people, prostitutes, the mentally ill and lesbians. The black triangle has
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 171

since become a symbol of lesbian pride. In the songs narrative, how-


ever, the political history of this symbol is not referenced directly but
instead turned into a celebration of queer desire and relationship struc-
tures. The once oppressive notion of the triangle now signifies lesbian
sexuality and a queer erotic configuration.
In a live context, Bertha Control supplements hard-line left-wing
political views with an exceptionally playful visual performance, also
somewhat suggestive of camp. Colourful costumes, jumping around,
dancing and assuming silly poses are a regular feature of the bands live
sets. On occasion, humour is also used as a discursive tactic that draws
the listeners attention to an underlying seriousness. The song Go Go
Nana from Out of Control (2005) is a fine example of this. In this song,
Alexander pays homage to her nanna and sings: look inside and find
that rockin shakin nanna / In your rockin chair with your rockin pur-
ple hair, yeah. The lyrics of this song, while playful and funny, also
point to societys negative stereotyping of the ageing women and the
misconception that the elderly are without vitality and individualism.

Performing Queer Identities

As previously discussed, womyns music traditions placed an emphasis


on lesbian feminist politics and feminine musical forms. While they
promoted participative democracy, they also downplayed female sexu-
ality and gender diversity. Advocating a softer folk sound over more
masculine musical forms, womyns traditions inadvertently limited the
musical expression of women and forced them to enact a kind of musical
gender rigidity. In contrast to this, the riot grrrls movement promoted
flexible forms of self-identification and rejected prescriptive gender and
sexual identity performances, encouraging a harder punk rock sound.
While the participative democratic staging, management and organisa-
tion of Bertha Control closely resemble these aspects of the womyns
music tradition, the bands approach to gender and sexual identity, and
its harder, masculine, funk and reggae sound, can more accurately be
described as an amalgamation of riot grrrl-style feminism and queer
politics.
Alexander, Cottone and Preece pointed to their attempts at negoti-
ating the stereotypes of femininity and lesbianism, and the difficulties
172 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

that such negotiations encompass. Speaking about her gender and sexual
identity, and her expression of this in Bertha Control, Alexander pointed
out that:

[On stage] I feel that I clearly come across as a lesbian, I love it when I sing I hope
your daughters gay and have a good fucking day, but even Mona does that and
shes queer I see us all as being sistas, so it [sexuality] is kind of linked to a
family identity of the band. But Ive always felt a bit of conflict in how to express
gender identity because as a lesbian if you do something like have hairy armpits or
wear a tank top youre conforming to societys idea of what a lesbian is but if you
wear a dress youre conforming to societys idea of what a woman is so you just
have to get past that. Either way youre conforming to someones stereotype of
something. So I really enjoy playing around with different kinds of costuming. I
personally identify as a woman, but I enjoy wearing things that would shock people
and conflict with being a woman but at the same time conflict with being a lesbian
too We all have hairy armpits and hairy legs but at the same time we dont look
like standard dykes, but to a lot of people who look at us they just look straight at
those armpits and go youre all a bunch of lesbians. It all depends on your subjec-
tive view of someone. Like you [indicating me, the interviewer] would be used to
seeing images of lesbians who dont look like lesbians but to a straight man that
comes along to our gigs we are really confronting. Even that there are six women
on stage and the stereotypes attached to that, like the fact we have women drum-
mers. (personal communication, 30 November 2005)

After hearing what Alexander had to say, Preece, with a slightly sur-
prised tone, admitted that she had not really thought about it to such a
degree. She commented that in her experience gender and sexuality are
about what Im feeling and whats right for me, and the music she cre-
ates is an expression of that (personal communication, 30 November
2005). Preece gains a lot of personal strength from being a female
drummer, and remarked that she feels both her femaleness and drum-
ming abilities are central to her self-image. Cottone added that she finds
the performance and musical space of Bertha Control to be generally
accepting of, and accommodating to, her multiple gender and sexual
identity performances:

I think Im definitely a woman but I also think Ive got a really strong boy spirit
that I have a lot of fun with I actually got recruited halfway through Bertha
Controls life into being a lesbian so Im a cross-over case, so I identify mostly as
queer but also as bisexual and lesbian and heterosexual, so I identify as lots of dif-
ferent things and Im not afraid to express all of those different identities on stage
or musically. Patty and I do a song called The Rap Against Homophobic Crap
CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas 173

which we wrote together, and were out there saying, were gay and if you dont
fucking like it fuck off. But a lot of my songs are about men that Ive been in love
with too. (personal communication, 30 November 2005)

While only a small percentage of Bertha Controls subject-matter deals di-


rectly with issues of sex and sexuality, the women I spoke with all agreed
that being in Bertha Control reaffirms their gender and sexual identity; it
allows them to express a sexy persona, increases their self-confidence and
enhances their outrageousness (personal communication, 30 November
2005). Bertha Control provides an accommodating musical space for
sexual and seductive expressions that are often unavailable to these
women in their everyday lives. Alexander suggested that when she ex-
presses herself through music, she finds that people are more accepting
of her difference and what she has to say. Cottone then responded to
Alexander, saying: Thats part of our trick, to seduce people with these
wicked tunes So theyre busy being seduced by the music but at the
same time getting into the message (personal communication, 30
November 2005). For Alexander and Preece (who work as a solicitor and
therapist respectively), their jobs often require them to be more subdued.
Precce commented: In my daily life where Im a therapist, the attention is
never on me, its all about giving that to someone else. So when Im on
stage its like, woohoo! Now you can look at me! (personal communica-
tion, 30 November 2005). Cottone added that she finds playing in Bertha
Control a cathartic experience that helps her overcome day-to-day chal-
lenges and allows her to reconnect with her sistas: Sometimes we might
be a bit disconnected before we go on [stage] but then well go on and
start playing and make beautiful friendship love on stage and its really
therapeutic, and that happens in rehearsals as well (personal communica-
tion, 30 November 2005). Thus playing music affords these women a
space not only to perform their gender, sexuality and individuality, but
also to connect more deeply with each other.
All three women admitted that they do not spend too much time
interacting with mainstream lesbian and gay culture. Moreover, they do
not feel that their music is particularly suitable to mainstream lesbian
sensibilities, which they defined as Top 40-style taste. Preece delineates
between what she feels is the mainstream lesbian community and the
more alternative queer feminist community in which she and the others
locate themselves. She says:
174 CHAPTER 6: Womyn, Grrrls and Sistas

Haircuts, the suburb [where you hang out] i.e.: New Farm versus West End, the
Adidas shorts, the sporting dykes. Ive been a part of that [the mainstream] com-
munity being an ex-sporting person and what I perceive to be the difference in the
cultures is that a lot of those women are chasing what I see to be a heterosexual
dream. Like wanting to own their own house, have a dog, go to Options every Fri-
day night, listen to Top 40 radio. They arent really politically aware, they would
question me being vegetarian, question my hairy armpits. Theyre just not as aware
as the West End crew or what you might call the alternative queer culture. (personal
communication, 30 November 2005)

Preeces comment reiterates Halberstams (2005) sentiment that queer


(sub)cultures tend to reject the mainstreaming of lesbian culture what
Preece refers to as chasing the heterosexual dream. These points of
distinction will be addressed in more depth in the following chapter.
In summary, Bertha Control demonstrates that lesbian and queer
sexualities produce a multiplicity of gender performances. By situating
themselves outside of the lesbian and gay hegemony, the women of
Bertha Control are enacting a particularly queer positionality, one that is
made clear through their multiple and distinct expressions of femaleness,
lesbianism and queerness; their commitment to broader issues of social
justice and social plurality; their celebration of cultural hybridity and
collective participation; and their keen interest in non-white musics and
traditionally male-dominated forms of musical expressions. While Ber-
tha Control displays a clear line of influence from earlier forms of
feminist music-making, the band has been careful not to directly repli-
cate them. Rather, it has borrowed selectively from them, producing a
distinct politico-musical discourse by interweaving feminist, queer and
broader political articulations into the non-white and traditionally mas-
culine sounds of funk and reggae.
CHAPTER 7

MAKING A SCENE Locality, Stylistic Distinction


and Utopian Imaginations

The gay community want to have fun, we want to be taken somewhere and feel a
good energy and music is a big part of that so what would we be if it wasnt for
the music? I wouldnt be anyone if it wasnt for the music. (DJ Neroli, personal
communication, 8 March 2006)

In the above quote, taken from an interview with deejay and producer
1
DJ Neroli, who began and developed her career on the Brisbane scene,
she emphasises the centrality of music to the local scene. Indeed, music
is so central to the scene that she is unable to imagine what form it
would take in musics absence. Reinforcing the role of music within the
scene, she goes on to quote the lyrics from a track by Faithless entitled
God is a DJ. She says: this is a church, this is where I heal my hurts,
it really does say it all Ive always know that if I had a shitty week I
could go out dancing all night and Id feel better (personal communica-
tion, 8 March 2006). As we continued talking, she told me how music
derives its importance in the scene because it can be both a sexual and
spiritual experience. Furthermore, she gestures towards the idea that she
structures her own identity and place within the local scene in terms of
her musical role. Similarly, for local scene participant Peter, music
structures and gives purpose to scene gatherings and, depending on
whether the music is good or bad, can influence the way he experiences
his night out. He says:

Music has been the binder of the queer community over the years, because the
queer scene has been just that, a dance scene, a music scene. When people get to-
gether and go out for a night its music that they go to. You hear them say oh the
musics crap, or I had a good time but I couldnt dance to anything or I had a good

1 At the time of writing, Neroli was residing in London and held a residency at
Heaven (one of Londons most iconic gay superclubs).
176 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

time but they were playing really shit music. Music binds social outings especially for
the queer community because the scene was burgeoning in the clubs where you could
escape from the rest of the world. (personal communication, 12 December 2005)

For Neroli and Peter, as for the other musicians and performers that I
have introduced in previous chapters, music is essential to the collective
social expression of sexual difference. It can be a healing, structuring
and empowering form of expression for all sexual minority communities,
both in terms of what Neroli refers to as the gay community and what
Peter refers to as the queer community. In other words, music is not sim-
ply an addendum to pre-existing activities, but a crucial aspect of the
queer worlds constructed locally.
As Peter suggested, music and dancing as well as accompanying
styles of dress, gesticulation and even the sensibilities of drug and alco-
hol consumption are integral to scenic participation and identification.
However, the ways in which music and style become meaningful are
multiple and complex. Other scene participants often interpret the clubs
you go to, the clothes you wear and the kinds of music to which you like
to listen or dance to as indicators of your queer credentials. In other
words, these choices contribute to the kind of queerness twink, bear,
leather, punk, butch, femme, kink, and so on you stylistically perform.
Particularly when examining sexual minority culture in a local context,
music and style emerge as significant aestheticised markers of intra-
scenic distinctions. For example, in Chapters 5 and 6 I discussed how, by
aligning themselves with punk, both queercore and riot grrrl musicians
and fans initially rejected certain logics of taste regarding what they con-
sidered to be typical gay or lesbian music. Yet, as I also demon-
strated, queer scenes are not hermeneutically sealed from other forms of
lesbian and gay culture, but rather feed into and out of multiple cultural
sites predicated on gender and sexual difference. Up until this point, I
have focused on the stylistic histories and the practices of music makers
and performers. In this chapter, I turn to data I have collected not only
from these people, but also from local club organisers and scene partici-
pants in order to reconnect with an argument I made in Chapter 2 re-
garding the excessive musico-stylistic features of queer scene forma-
tions.
While queer scenes often emerge in particular places and exhibit
stylistic preferences, they cannot be considered discretely local or dis-
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 177

cretely style-based. Rather, I suggest that their scenic connections hinge


on the politics of sexual identification (or on disidentification with dis-
crete identity categories) and stylistic excess. Through messy and pro-
miscuous lines of articulation, queers envisage new selves and new
worlds worlds that defy both hetero- and homo-normalising logics of
gender, sexuality and style. Here, I examine local scene spaces and
translocally acquired style with the intention of illuminating these cha-
otic organisations. I discuss both queer musico-stylistic excess and what
some might call a mainstream gay aesthetic. To begin, I offer a con-
textual overview and broad mapping of local LGBTQ culture in Bris-
bane. I then proceed with a more focused discussion of local under-
standings of the intra-scenic divisions between what many informants
term the gay scene and the queer scene, and unpack the ways in
which music and style are employed as markers of both (dis)ident-
ification and distinction in relation to specific scene sites and collectives.
Finally, I turn to Berlins gay/queer scene, exploring issues of trans-
locality and the ways in which music, style and place function as a
resource for utopian imaginations (DeNora, 2000) of queer worlds.

Mapping the Local Scene(s)

As Whiteley reminds us, the search for social and cultural meanings in
popular music texts inevitably involves an examination of the urban and
rural spaces in which music is experienced on a day-to-day basis (2004,
p. 2). Thus far, I have offered detailed accounts of the cultural histories
and meanings of queer popular music-making and performance, so now I
want to consider the everyday urban spaces in which these texts are
made, and in which they circulate and are experienced. To date, little has
been written about Brisbanes LGBTQ scenes, especially in terms of
2
music and style. Therefore, I also write this chapter in the spirit of creat-

2 Clive Moores Sunshine and Rainbows: The Development of Gay and Lesbian
Culture in Queensland (2001) offers an historical account of Brisbanes lesbian and
gay culture. His book offers a particularly useful account of lesbian and gay social
scenes from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. However, Moore never discusses the
178 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

ing an archive of local queer practice. In this chapter, the empirical data
relating to Brisbane have been drawn from the following sources: par-
ticipant observations made while attending both commercial gay clubs
and DIY queer events in Brisbane between January 2004 and December
2010; in situ ethnographic conversations recorded in field journals; semi-
structured interviews conducted with scene participants, musical per-
formers and club organisers between November 2005 and December
2010; event posters, flyers and other ephemera collected in the field;
local gay newspapers and music street press; and online texts sourced
from websites of clubs, events, musicians and performers. In terms of the
broad overview of Brisbane clubs and scene spaces that I provide in this
section, where possible I have tried to make sure that details of venues
and scene spaces reflect the time of publication.
Following Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane is Australias third
largest city, and the capital of the state of Queensland. From 1957 until
1989, Queensland was governed by conservative politics. Serving as
state premier, the ultra-conservative National Party leader Sir Joh
Bjelke-Petersen governed between 1968 and 1987, condemning
Queensland to a time that progressive citizens saw as the states dark
ages. During this time, police brutality against queers was rife, and offi-
cial politics were unsympathetic to gay liberationist efforts that were
making changes elsewhere around the country (particularly in Victoria,
New South Wales and South Australia). Queensland was one of the last
states to enact homosexual law reform, finally decriminalising homosex-
ual activity in 1990 (followed by Tasmania in 1997); as previously noted
in Chapter 5, Queensland continues to uphold inequitable age of consent
laws that permit vaginal sex at sixteen, while the legal age for anal sex is
eighteen.
While strict legislation confined homosexual culture to discrete bars,
movie houses, coffee shops, beats and private properties for much of the
early and mid-twentieth century, queer events still managed to emerge
even in the more oppressive times of ultra-conservative governance. One

scene in terms of music and style. Additionally, in 2007 the Queensland Review
published a special issue on Queer Queensland, vol. 14(2). While some of the
contributing authors provide a contemporary account of lesbian/gay/queer scene
spaces in Brisbane (see, in particular, Thomson, 2007; McWilliam, 2007),
discussions of music and style remain absent. For additional empirical studies that
refer to music within Brisbanes queer scenes, see Taylor, J. (2010, 2012).
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 179

of the most significant events in Brisbanes queer history is the annual


Queens Ball, founded by locally renowned drag queen Dame Sybil Von
Thorndyke. Beginning in 1962 (and originally held at a private residence
about an hours drive from Brisbane at Mt Tamborine), this now-illustri-
ous event continues to be staged each year on the Queens Birthday holi-
day weekend, and claims to be the longest continuously running annual
gay celebration in the world (Moore, 2001, p. 135). Today, the Brisbane
scene continues to grow, accommodating a range of lesbian, gay, trans
and queer bars, nightclubs and cultural events such as cabarets, balls and
festivals that signal both the intra-scenic diversity within the local con-
text and the uptake of various translocal modalities of gay/lesbian/queer
culture and style.
Following the 1982 launch of Sydneys annual Sleaze Ball (a gay
fetish-style dance party), Brisbane began hosting its own annual Sleaze
Ball in 1989, with the last such event staged in 2007. Like hundreds of
other cities around the world, Brisbane is home to an annual Pride Festi-
val that has been running since 1990, which features a month-long cal-
endar consisting of dance parties, performing, social events and political
demonstrations. Beginning in 1991 to raise money for people living with
HIV/AIDS, Brisbanes Citizens Welfare Committee hosts a biannual
evening of drag and cabaret performance. Brisbanes Queer Film Festi-
val has been running since 2000, and generally incorporates an annual
dance party and around ten days of films and other cultural events. A
popular event on Brisbanes gay social calendar since it began in 2000;
the Big Gay Day is an annual summer street party/mini-festival whose
headline acts are often national and international mainstream pop ce-
lebrity performers. A decade after the formation of the club itself, local
gay bears society BrisBears launched its first annual Northern Exposure
festival in 2003, which features four days of social activities and night-
time dance parties. Celebrating Brisbanes drag kings, the first annual
Kings Ball was launched in 2004 and ran for six consecutive years be-
fore a brief hiatus in 2010. Marking International Lesbian Day in Octo-
ber, an annual celebration of local lesbian culture has been a feature of
the scene since 2007. Holes and Poles, Brisbanes annual queer and al-
ternative band fest, began in 2007 and has occurred annually ever since.
Featuring the annual Corium dance party (for men only), Brisbanes
Leather Pride Festival was inaugurated in 2009. Beginning in 2010 and
hosted by Brisbanes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBT social
180 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

group garbandjeelum, Brown Sugar is an annual hip hop/R&B dance


party and night of performances showcasing and celebrating local LGBT
Indigenous culture. In 2010 and 2011, the scene also incorporated a
queer youth cultural festival called Queeriosity, which was planned to
run annually.
Dispersed amongst the mainstream nightlife of the city, Brisbanes
gay/lesbian/queer precincts are located in the inner northern city suburbs
of Fortitude Valley and Spring Hill. West End, on the citys inner south
side, is also a popular entertainment destination, and while there arent
any commercial gay venues here, there are many alternative bars, cafes
and live music venues that are frequented by queers. West End and For-
titude Valley are often used as used as geo-cultural signifiers of politics
and style. For example, when locals refer to the West End dykes or
West End queers, they are often implying a grungy look, anti-capitalist
and activist politics and alternative lifestyles (share-housing, envi-
ronmentalism, veganism, etc.). This is understood in contrast to the once
sordid and disreputable but now gentrified Fortitude Valley and its
3
neighbouring suburb New Farm. Thus, in local vernacular, referring to
the New Farm gays or the Valley gays is often indicative of trendy
and designer fashions, neoliberal sexualities, modern apartment living
and middle-class consumption. In the opinion of one local scene partici-
pant, the Valley has become an illustration of what is happening to the
gay community in general Its been prettied up on the outside but its
turned rotten on the inside (personal communication, 12 December
2005). Of course, the gentrification and concomitant homo-normalisa-
tion of gay districts and culture is not a locally specific phenomenon
(e.g. see Binnie, 2004; Rushbrook, 2002). As Kath Browne and Leela
Bakshi state:

normalised gay (and lesbian) lives are often associated with leisure spaces, and
particularly the rise of commercial leisure spaces, as well as with particular
relationship forms, consumption patterns, housing choices and so on (2011, p. 181).

As inner city nightlife contracts and expands with the times and
trends, a number of commercial gay venues that feature prominently in
the memories of the people I interviewed venues such as the Terminus,

3 During an interview with members of Bertha Control, featured in Chapter 6, some


of the band members also referred to this distinction.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 181

the Hacienda, the Alliance and Options have come and gone through-
out the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. However, the closing of one venue of-
ten means the shifting of its clientele to another. As I write in 2011,
Brisbane has three commercial gay venues and each is a local institution
catering to specific demographics within the scene: the Wickham Hotel,
4
the Beat Mega Club and the Sportsman Hotel. The Sportsman Hotel or
Sporties, as locals call it is a small, friendly bar in Spring Hill fre-
quented predominantly by an older, less fashion-conscious male crowd.
Like the Wickham and the Beat, which I will discuss in depth later, it has
regular drag shows and a small dance floor where punters can dance to
an array of gay classics and Top 40 dance music. However, it is more
of a pub than a club, where people go to chat, drink and play pool rather
than to hear a deejay or dance. Sporties also incorporates the basement-
level space called the Mineshaft Bar, which is open on Friday and Satur-
day nights and regularly hosts special events such as Karaoke competi-
5
tions, Hellfire parties and regular men-only events organised by local
leather/kink collective Boot Co. and the local bear community, Bris-
Bears.
In April 2011, a new venue opened called The Royal Brisbane Boys
Club. It is yet another men-only club operating on Friday and Saturdays;
according to the local gay press, it features commercial dance music and
all-male revues. In addition to these men-only spaces and events, the
scene also features a regular men-only dance party called White Wolf,
which takes place four to five times a year. Inner-city Brisbane also has
four commercial saunas/cruise clubs the Den, Wet, Body Line and
Klub Kruise all of which cater exclusively to male clientele. Not only
are there many more spaces and events that cater exclusively to men, but
even those spaces that are mixed such as the Wickham, the Beat and
the street-level bar of Sporties are predominantly marketed to and fre-
quented by men.
In Clive Moores account of gay and lesbian history and culture in
Queensland, he states in reference to Brisbane venues in the 1990s that

4 An historic building dating back to the 1890s, the Wickham Hotel has been a
prominent gay venue since 1994. Local entrepreneur John Hannay reopened the
Beat, once called the Cockatoo Club, in 1984. The Sportsman Hotel is Brisbanes
only gay-owed and operated hotel, and became a gay venue in 1989.
5 Hellfire is an iconic BDSM and fetish club, with branches across the world. Hellfire
Brisbane welcomes people of all gender and sexual identities.
182 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

the commercialisation of the gay scene is aimed almost exclusively


at males and lesbians remain on the periphery (2001, p. 191). In Sheona
Thomsons (2007) more recent account of Brisbanes now-defunct Mint
lesbian bar, she too attests to the spatial marginalisation of lesbians and
the consequential unmarked-ness of lesbian culture in Brisbane. Of
course, this is not something unique to Brisbane, as the dominance of
men within the commercial gay scene reflects the unequal power rela-
tions between men and women that are indicative of a capitalist, sexist
and patriarchal Western society in general. As feminist and queer ge-
ographers have argued, male privilege and dominance within the public
sphere, and womens concomitant relegation to the private sphere,
means that lesbians often use space differently from gay men, placing
more emphasis on interpersonal and social networks, quotidian urban
space and unfixed territories (e.g. see Brown, Browne & Lim, 2007;
Casey 2007; Johnson & Valentine, 1995; Rothenberg, 1995).
While scenic distinctions in terms of gendered and sexualised modes
of spatial occupation are not the primary focus of this study, it is useful
to note that beyond bars, night clubs, balls, dance parties, festivals and
associated scene spaces, a number of gay/lesbian/queer social groups
also operate in Brisbane. A cursory scan of local gay press reveals a
number of womens, mens and mixed social group listings for motor
cycle clubs, bushwalking, camping, gardening and fishing societies,
book clubs, faith-based groups, race and ethnic-based groups, age-based
groups, sporting teams, dance classes, business and corporate network-
ing groups, food and dining groups and activist collectives, among oth-
ers. Not unsurprisingly, more of these groups are organised by and tar-
geted at women than they are men. Since lesbian women partake so
little in pubic sex cultures, we, much more than gay men, need to de-
velop counter publics for subcultural uses, says Halberstam (2006,
p. 22). In the absence of commercial lesbian clubs and women-only
saunas and cruise clubs, some womens and genderqueer groups also
have created their own sex-play spaces in private locations, as well as a
number of semi-regular lesbian and queer events that are outlined below.
Apart from the aforementioned commercial nightclubs the Wick-
ham, the Beat and Sporties, which generally are open seven days a week
and primarily market themselves to a gay clientele the Brisbane scene
also features a range of gay, lesbian, trans and queer club nights and
regular events that are held at various inner city clubs and bars. Fluffy, a
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 183

commercially successful weekly gay club night, is the most popular and
elaborate of these, and is hosted by The Family, one of Brisbanes larg-
est and most famous nightclubs. While the commercial scene, including
Fluffy, caters largely to gay men, there are a range of smaller club nights
and semi-regular events run by local collectives and social groups tar-
geted at specific scenes within the scene. Such events are temporally
and spatially distinct from the commercial scene in that they are usually
staged on an occasional or a semi-regular basis in smaller upstairs or
downstairs rooms of existing gay or heterosexual venues, and almost
never in premier commercial space. For example, the statewide HIV
support and advocacy group Queensland Positive People runs a quarterly
social event/dance party in Brisbane called Planet Positive, which over
the years has been held in various rooms-for-hire across the city. Cur-
rently, Brisbanes most popular lesbian club night, Scarlet, is a women-
only event run by a community group called City Lickers, and is held
monthly at St Pauls Tavern. Other less frequent womens events such as
Vu Du (a recent incarnation by a collective of women who have had a
long history of running womens events such as Lez Vegas and Grinder)
and Lady Bird also provide a scenic context for women to meet, dance to
commercial house and Top 40 music, drink and pick up. Promoted by its
organisers as the first inclusive and regular trans, genderqueer and gender-
6
diverse social event in Brisbane, T Bar began in October 2010 and has
been running ever since as a monthly event. As Paige Elliot (one of T
Bars co-founders and past organiser of the now-defunct lesbian event
called Club Phoenix) stated in an interview with local gay street press
QNews, trans and genderqueer people have limited social outlets, as they
are often excluded from men-only and women-only events: We encour-
age trans people to bring their friends which should see a refreshing
change for trans people who are often left at home because they dont fit
into many of the community spaces currently available (Elliot, cited in
Longhurst, 2010, p. 7).
Similarly to the queer politics of T Bar, and indicative of yet another
scene within the scene, Brisbane is also host to an array of semi-regular
queer and alternative events that dwell on the fringes of local gay and

6 While conducting field research, a number of people I talked to recalled attending


infrequent trans and gender-diverse events predating T Bar such as a DIY club
night called Transfabulous held in 2008.
184 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

lesbian culture. Since the early 2000s, the number of queer and alterna-
tive club nights and events staged by local DIY collectives and event
organisers in Brisbane has slowly been increasing. Selected examples of
such events include Omo (launched 2000), Black Fag (launched 2003),
Cut and Taste (launched 2006), Taboo (launched 2006), Skank
(launched 2008), Briefs (launched 2008), Decadance (launched 2008),
Lolly Factory (launched 2009), Qsesh (launched 2009) and most re-
cently, Show Your Bones and Queer to Queer (both launched 2011).
With the exception of Qsesh, which ran as a fortnightly live music and
burlesque event advertised as the Sunday session where sexuality
doesnt matter, these kind of events tend to occur at less frequent, and
often unpredictable intervals, as they are governed by the time and fi-
nancial restraints of small scene collectives, friendship groups or indi-
viduals. Distancing themselves from the scenes commercialised leisure
spaces, these events are non-commercial and not-for-profit ventures,
usually staged in legal available-for-hire or occasionally illegal fly-by-
night locations scattered around the inner-city suburbs of Fortitude Val-
ley, West End, South Brisbane and Spring Hill. Event advertising is gen-
erally done on tiny budgets in local street press or via zero-cost means
such as photocopied flyer distribution, social networking and word of
mouth. Door policies are usually relaxed and unrestricted in terms of
gender/sexual identity, and while the majority of these events charge
entry fees, this is usually only to cover costs and thus they are kept to a
minimum. Financial factors, venue availability and the people-power
required to stage these events tend to make DIY queer leisure spaces
unsustainable in the long term, so they often last only for a few years
before disappearing, sometimes never to be seen again and at other times
reincarnated under different names.
While, individually, the style and atmosphere of Brisbanes afore-
mentioned DIY queer events are varied usually attributable to the
music and stylistic preferences of an organising committee they share a
common distinction in that they all position themselves as an alterna-
tive to the mainstream gay scene, which queer event organisers com-
monly characterise as stylistically homogenised, apolitical, commodi-
fied, male-centric and body image obsessed. For example, in an
interview with a local street magazine, one of the organisers of Black
Fag, who calls himself Dead Man Talking, told the reporter:
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 185

We wanted an alternative for cool poofs and cool dykes to go to, where it wasnt
hands-in-the-air, awful, terrible music. Thats fun when youre coming out when
you 15, but its a whole different scene its not mine. And it bores me shitless. Its
the same with the gay press, in that its entirely beholden to its own stereotypes. Its
basically saying that gay men are no more complex than speedos, STDs and rules
about one night stands. We want to respect our punters give them something a bit
more complicated. (cited in Ape Sex, 2005, p. 9)

To the self-confessed angry queers who organised Black Fag, that


something a bit more complicated took the form of controversial drag-
like performances involving class and race-based critiques of contem-
porary Australian culture and politics, as well as live performances by
local indie bands such as I Heart Hiroshima and international experi-
mental musicians/performance artists such as Kevin Blechdom (Berlin).
Complementing the aesthetic of the space they created, the sound of
Black Fag was a kind of musical pastiche. At times, the event would bill
prominent interstate deejays such as DJ Sveta (Sydney) alongside ama-
teur local deejays who would mix schizophrenic but crowd-pleasing sets.
Often these purposefully genre-muddled sets by local deejays would leap
between tracks by the likes of Morrissey, The Knife, Pet Shop Boys, the
Russian lesbian pop-duo t.A.T.u., Peaches, Queen, Le Tigre and various
kinds of underground post-punk, indie pop and electro clash. So long as
the music and live performances were distinguishable from what was
happening in mainstream gay clubs, their policy was anything else
goes. We dont need a music policy. No one would turn up and play
two hours of shit house music. Theyd get lynched! said Dead Man
Talking (cited in Ape Sex, 2005, p. 9).
Similarly, more recent queer incarnations such as Show Your Bones
persist with this gay as commercial/slick/sameness versus queer as
alternative/DIY/schizophrenic sentiment. Promoting the club night via a
Facebook event page, organisers describe it as a monthly alternative
queer event where you can dance to music youll actually know and
love without it being commercial expect to hear a range of genres
from indie and rock to dubstep and electronic everything you love
about a night out without the top 40. As these two brief examples sug-
gest, gay and queer club spaces in Brisbane are distinguishable not only
by the style of music played, but also by the way the music and enter-
tainment programmed over the course of a night articulate a sense of
either coherence or disorder.
186 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

Recalling an earlier quote from Halberstam: queer subcultures


or, as I prefer, queer scenes tend to form in relation to place as much
as in relation to a genre of cultural expression, and ultimately, they op-
pose not only the hegemony of dominant culture but also the main-
streaming of lesbian and gay culture (2005, p. 161). Echoing discus-
sions around the mainstreaming of lesbian and gay culture in
international contexts (e.g. see Archer, 2002; Duggan, 2003; Schulman,
1998; Bernstein Sycamore, 2004; Warner, 1999), Australian scholars
have similarly noted that during the late 1980s and 1990s urban gay
culture in Australia became increasingly bourgeois and homogenised
(Wotherspoon, 1991; Moore, 2001; Reynolds, 2002). According to
Moores historical account of Queensland, here too the mainstreaming of
gay culture has given rise to deviant subcultures which have much the
same relationship to the mainstream gay culture as the earlier gay and
lesbian subculture once had to the mainstream straight culture (2001,
p. 191). As previously discussed, these deviations are grounded in dis-
cordant ideologies, lifestyles, values and identity politics. Two local
scene participants, Mandy and Peter, explained it to me as follows:

I reckon its the difference between buying into the capitalist heterosexual patri-
7
archy and not. The kind of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the Wickham, and all
that stuff about how perfect your abs are and how waxed your back is in the gay
male culture which translates in the female culture by women just wanting to move
into single couple households and have kids and a picket fence just like the heteros
do. I think as queers weve got the opportunity to expand beyond that because
were put outside that paradigm to start with and then we have to choose to go back
or choose to go somewhere else and I think thats where the chasm is. (Mandy, per-
sonal communication, 30 November 2005)

The gay community is like a condensed version of normal society with so many
straight lines running through it. Yet to the rest of the world theyre all going ac-
ceptance, peace, blah blah blah yet within themselves the racism, sexism and age-
ism is just rife. I find this really quite amusing, disturbing and disheartening at the

7 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was a television series that aired between 2003 and
2007. The premise of the show was to have five gay men make over a straight
man so he would be more appealing to his female partner. According to some (e.g.
see Sender, 2006), this show typifies the neoliberal project turning gay sexual
identity into a marketable commodity. Moreover, it perpetuates a stereotype of the
gay male as effeminate, fashion-conscious and image obsessed, concomitantly
limiting the range of socially acceptable gay masculinities.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 187

same time Thats the problem with the gay inverted commas scene now that
theyve homogenised and pasteurised themselves for public consumption. (Peter,
personal communication, 12 December 2005)

While a very small number of people to whom I talked while conducting


participant observation in gay clubs said they did not know there was a
distinction between the two scenes, the large majority to whom I spoke
in both commercial gay and DIY queer club contexts were aware of this,
and all the queer scene participants I interviewed in depth voiced similar
8
opinions in terms of intra-scenic distinctions. For example, Mark told
me that, although he does go to a lot of gay clubs, he prefers to go to
queer events when possible because he likes the music and atmosphere
better. He also said he feels like there is less pressure to look typically
gay, which he described as generally tanned, hairless and either thin and
chic or all pumped up on steroids. When I go to a queer event I feel
more comfortable, he said. I dont feel like Im going to get judged
because Im not wearing the latest fashion or t-shirts with designer labels
emblazoned on them, or because I want to talk about politics (per-
sonal communication, 12 September 2007). The look Mark described
which Mandy also signalled above is, in queer vernacular, what one
might call a twink. According to Shaun Filiault and Murry Drum-
monds (2007) study of the hegemonic gay aesthetic, twinks revere
young, toned, smooth, tanned and hairless bodies, and tend to be more
flamboyant, narcissistic and label conscious. The twink look is now
ubiquitous within Westernised gay scenes, and within contemporary
gay culture, embodying the Twink aesthetic is viewed as important for
accessing gay clubs and being accepted within gay social networks
(Filiault & Drummond, 2007, p. 181). Similarly, Sam told me that, as
someone who is now in his forties and has been active on various gay
and queer scenes (in Brisbane and in other cities) for the last twenty-five
years, he could definitely notice differences in terms of gay/queer style:
the queer scene is generally more accepting of difference and personal
scope than the gay scene. While both scenes are not mutually exclusive,
the queer scene seems less about, but not totally without, hierarchy and

8 It is useful to be aware that my informants did not always imbue words with the
same meaning as queer scholars: some informants used the terms gay/lesbian/dyke/
fag/poof/queer interchangeably and a number of people used the term gaystream
as a more specific reference to the mainstreaming of gay culture.
188 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

judgment. Also referring to twinks as a generic gay look, Sam went


on to say that while he finds twink an attractive look, he is aware that
style can operate as a form of exclusion in some gay club spaces:
Theres more freedom to look however you want [in queer spaces], you
know, you can go goth or leather or hairy or whatever (personal com-
munication, 12 September 2007).
Like Mark and Sam, all of my interviewees noted that they either
continued to attend, or had at some point in their lives regularly attended,
both gay and queer clubs and events. Approximately half of my inter-
viewees who liked to go out dancing/clubbing on a weekly or at least
monthly basis suggested that, given the limited availability of regular
queer events in Brisbane, they would always opt to go to one of the local
gay clubs rather than a straight club, primarily because acting queer was
more difficult in heterosexual club spaces. Others expressed their prefer-
ence for gay clubs because even if the music or the atmosphere of the
gay club scene wasnt to their liking, gay clubs were useful sites to pick
up when you were looking for casual sex and to score recreational
drugs, thus pointing to the multiple purposes that these scene spaces
serve. Some female respondents indicated that the dominance of men in
commercial gay spaces was also a major deterrent, particularly when
seeking the companionship of other women for intimacy and/or sex. The
other half said that if they wanted to go out and there wasnt a queer
event on, then they would much prefer to go to local indie clubs or live
music cafes than to a gay club. The two main reasons they gave for this
were, first, because they disliked the music at gay clubs and, second,
because they felt like they didnt fit in or have the right look. Stress-
ing the significance of music to his experience of the scene, Steven said:

Im so driven by music and I will go to places primarily because of the music and
not because of the decor. And not even sometimes for the people, its the music I
think its [music] one of the most important things, its not thee most important
thing, importance is shared with the venue and the type of people that attend but I
think that the music facilitates that and allows that to happen. Weve all been in
clubs before and said god this music is shit and that will ruin your night, it really
will. If its one handbag song after another then you feel like crap but if its some-
thing youre relating to then that will allow you to amplify the good time that
youre having. (personal communication, 30 June 2006)

To explore these scenic distinctions further, I now turn to a detailed


examination of three commercial gay clubs and four queer and alterna-
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 189

tive clubs in Brisbane. For this purpose, I have chosen to examine Bris-
banes three most popular gay clubbing destinations: the Wickham, the
Beat and Fluffy. Since the Beat is actually a mega club, in that it fea-
tures five distinct bar areas, each with its own dance floor and deejay
booth, when referring to the Beat I am talking primarily about the popu-
lar upper level dance floors incorporating the Cockatoo Club and Crys-
tals. The queer club events examined are Omo (queer and alternative
club), Cut and Taste (queer and alternative club), Taboo and Decadance
(both queer, alternative and fetish clubs). Here, I focus specifically on
the music that is performed and deejayed at these clubs and events, as
well as elements of extra-musical style, drawing out the relationship
between the music, style and the gay/queer sexual politics.

Thats So Gay: Creating Queer Alternatives

Nightclubs and club-style events, which are predicated on music and dan-
cing, are integral spaces in gay/queer social worlds, functioning as visible
entry points into select social scenes. Like straight club spaces, they are
suffused with sexuality and eroticism. As Phil Jackson proposes in Inside
Clubbing (2004), people of all sexualities go to dance clubs: some go in
search of sex and others to express their own sexuality, deriving pleasure
from displaying their bodies in a sexual way. Music provides a context for
erotic body manoeuvres through dancing, allowing us to outwardly ex-
press sexual energy simply for the independent joy of it or to signal our
lustful desires for a potential mate. Dancing, suggest Frith and McRobbie,
is both creative and physically satisfying and a socially sanctioned sex-
ual activity (1990, p. 388).
In Queer Noises, John Gill writes that the dancefloor has always
been a holy space but it is particularly so among men and women at-
tracted to their own sex (1995, p. 134). Similarly, in Fiona Bucklands
(2002) account of New Yorks gay club scene, she suggests that dance
music and dance spaces are vital sites for the construction of gay/queer
identities and communities. Since the 1970s, dance music genres like
disco, garage and house, and more recently contemporary electronic
dance music (EDM) genres such as techno, drumnbass and trance, are
played in gay/queer clubs around the world, providing a soundtrack for
all sorts of sexual encounters. While EDM and club culture remain
190 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

central to both the mainstream gay and alternative queer scenes in Bris-
bane (and elsewhere), intra-scenic distinctions frequently are articulated
in specific musical and stylistic terms that transform the notion of gay
and queer from sexual to aesthetic signifiers. For example, local scene
participants I interviewed would often speak in terms of liking/disliking
what they called gay music. To older generations (and perhaps for
some straight people), the idea of gay music may conjure an image of a
show-tunes queen campishly clutching at a Barbra Streisand album and
belting out an impassioned rendition of Dont Rain on My Parade
(1964). After all, musical theatre was (and for some still is) gay music
(e.g. see Clum, 2001). More commonly, however particularly given the
popularity of television programs like Queer as Folk, which regularly
featured scenes of shirtless, sweaty and drug-affected men dancing up a
frenzy at Babylon the association of gay culture with dance clubs and
9
the circuit party scene has become ubiquitous. Concomitantly, for many
people gay music has come to mean dance music, especially house
music.
House music is an up-tempo style of EDM, generally around 120 to
135 beats per minute. In its original form, it features a distinctive four-
10
to-the-floor rhythmic structure, repetitive drum loops, synthesised bass
lines, layered melodic keyboard riffs and sampled vocals. A product of
remix culture, house music often draws on pre-existing pop songs that
are manipulated and layered over the house beat, enabling deejays (who
often perform further manipulation on the dance floor) to mix tracks
seamlessly from one to another. With its sonic and stylistic roots in
disco, house emerged in North America in the late 1970s/early 1980s,
where it was extremely popular among and pioneered by African-
American, Latino and gay communities (for various historical accounts,
see Bidder, 2001; Currid, 1995; Rietveld, 1998; Reynolds, 1999). Taking

9 Generally a multi-day/night event, circuit parties are another name for large-scale
gay dance parties particularly popular among gay men in the 1980s and 1990s,
serving as celebrations of gay sexuality and community (see Lewis & Ross, 1995;
Weems, 2008). These events have often attracted negative attention due to their
links with sexual promiscuity and recreational drug use such as ecstasy (MDMA),
speed (amphetamine), crystal meth (methamphetamine), fantasy (GHB), acid
(LSD) and poppers (amyl nitrite).
10 Four-on-the-floor refers to the percussive elements of the music, indicating a
prominent kick drum on every beat.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 191

its name from a famous gay nightclub in Chicago called the Warehouse,
the style was pioneered by Frankie Knuckles, who deejayed at this club
between 1977 and 1983. Indeed, both disco and house music have been
the two forms most commonly associated with contemporary gay cul-
ture. In his celebrated article, In Defence of Disco, Dyer (1995) argues
that the whole body eroticism of disco has made it particularly appeal-
ing to gay male scene culture, validating aspects of gay embodiment and
community. For Brian Currid, house music can be read in part as a
narrative of gay community solidarity through time and place (1995,
p. 176). Since its emergence, the style has fractured into a plethora of
sub-genres deep house, progressive house, hard house, acid house,
tribal house, ambient house, tech house, New York house and French
house, among others reflecting stylistic variations, locally specific taste
cultures and niche marketing strategies.
In Brisbanes gay clubs, house music continues to dominate the scene.
The staple soundscapes on any given Friday or Saturday night at the
Wickham would best be described as uplifting vocal and progressive
house, particularly songs currently charting with the occasional classic gay
club hit thrown into the mix. The dominant sound at the Beat is also vocal
house but decidedly more pop than progressive. The Beats deejays tend to
favour classic gay anthems such as Its Raining Men (originally re-
corded by the Weather Girls in 1982) or I Will Survive (originally re-
corded by Gloria Gaynor in 1978) and twelve-inch remixes of commercial
pop songs by the likes of Kylie Minogue, Madonna or (more recently)
Lady Gaga. Similarly at Fluffy, house music rules the dance floor. How-
ever, Fluffy is where you are more likely to hear an ever so slight devi-
ation from the standard gay progressive/ uplifting/vocal/commercial pop
club sound as deejays here will occasionally experiment with tribal
house beats or the harder, faster edges of trance.
Generically, the style of house that is played at these gay venues is
often referred to as handbag house. Sometimes called diva house,
handbag is perhaps the sub-genre of house music that is most commonly
associated with commercial gay dance clubs. Featuring soulful or bom-
bastic diva-style female vocals, long piano breaks and uplifting chord
progressions, handbag generally has a jubilant, often anthemic feel to it.
The term is thought to have originated in Northern England, and ac-
quired its name from commercial dance clubs where, notionally, groups
of girls stereotyped as inauthentic ravers by certain participants in
192 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

scene would gather and dance around their handbags (Fritz, 1999;
Thornton, 1997). Handbag is often employed as a pejorative term, used
dismissively by serious makers and consumers of EDM when referring
to the mainstreaming of rave culture and the commercialisation of house
music in the early 1990s.
While this definition of handbag house has clearly arisen far from
Brisbanes gay and queer scenes, it is a term that was commonly used by
local gay/queer scene participants when referring broadly to the style of
music (mainly vocal house music) typically played in local gay venues.
Moreover, when I was talking about music with participants who fre-
quented queer events, they also referred to handbag to distinguish be-
tween the kinds of music that typified the commercial gay scene and
subsequently the kind of sound that you wont hear at queer and alterna-
tive events. As Sarah Thornton (1997) argues, the tendency for one
scene to distinguish itself in opposition to the mainstream positioning
the mainstream as other, homogenous and commodified can be
understood as a tactical discursive strategy in the struggle for power
between closely associated scene groupings. Thus the pejorative use of
the term handbag in the local context has a dual effect: it marks the
queer scenes resistance of what participants interpret as a monolithic
gay sound while also pointing to their albeit discriminating strive for
distinction, which is enacted by simply not sounding like a gay club. As
Roger, a long-time scene participant and queer event organiser told me:

I tend to go to small independently organised type events, and occasionally Ill end up
at a Sleaze Ball or the Wickham or whatever, but most of the time it is smaller, non-
profit, community based events, or political activist-type events In queer clubs the
music is more diverse and it just tends to be defined as alternative queer by not being
Kylie, Madonna etc. that you usually get at the gay venues When I went to uni in
my teens and early twenties there was still a clich around that gay clubs had the best
music, and Im sure it wasnt quite true but at least gay clubs had good dance music or
at least they werent playing just Top 40 pop stuff, and by definition the music they
were playing wasnt really charting well some of it was, the diva type stuff of
course. But really since the 90s gay clubs internationally have been playing the worst
kind of music in my opinion. So now you really have to go out to other events, and its
great going to somewhere like the Arena and see Kruder and Dorfmeister or going to
the Concert Hall and see Diamanda Gals and suddenly then you see the queer posse
who are interested in good music who go to those sort of things. And often at an event
like that, well maybe not in the Concert Hall but at a club type of thing, youll find
that the queers will organise themselves into a particular place on the dance floor or
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 193

something like that and youll get a little sub-community within the community. (per-
sonal communication, 22 November 2005)

Another musical/performance feature common to all of Brisbanes


commercial gay clubs is drag. The Wickham, the Beat, Fluffy and
Sporties (although I have not conducted sufficient observations of the
last of these) all have their own local celebrity drag queens in residence,
who perform glamorous lip-synching routines structured around popular
music on a weekly basis. Performances usually are inspired by pop or
show tune repertoires, and in rare instances can include live singing. At
the time this research was conducted, all of the resident drag performers
at these venues were drag queens. Moreover, in the majority of cases the
queen was backed by a chorus of young, tanned, buffed and hairless
male dancers. In conversations I had with scene participants about their
perceptions of the gay club scene, many of them made mention of this
performance style as being a hallmark of gay club culture. On weekends
at all of Brisbanes commercial gay clubs, the deejayed music was rou-
tinely interrupted at designated times when resident queens took the
stage for a ten- to fifteen-minute interlude, sometimes two or three times
over the course of a night.
While local opinions still overwhelmingly acknowledged the im-
portance of drag to gay/queer culture and recognised the significant con-
tributions made to Brisbanes gay/queer cultural history by local drag
queens, many who aligned themselves with the alternative queer scene
expressed their frustration with the continuing centrality of drag to local
gay culture at the expense of other forms of queer performance. Steven
expressed this as follows:

In terms of performance, drag is the only thing were offered up and I sometimes
dont find that the drag queens in Brisbane are exploring the notions and politics of
camp. Its like hearing the same tune over and over again and its not going anywhere
interesting for me. At Omo, they still put on performances it might be drag-ish or
that kind of gender bender stuff incorporating camp and incorporating drag but its
not drag like you get in the gay bars. And thats what Omo always was, a space for
people to do interesting performances. That may be live music, a performance piece
or a circus piece, or whatever. (personal communication, 30 June 2006)

Similarly, Peter told me that while he loves drag and thinks it has the po-
tential to be a radical form of queer performance, in his opinion it really
only represents and appeals to a small part of the community. Queers are
194 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

creative and good drag is good, but we have more to offer than just drag,
he said. Talking about one particular drag show he had seen around the
time of the interview, he went on to say that he was also sick of drag
queens slagging off at all the girls in the audience and making what he
called unnecessarily cruel jokes about female bits (personal communi-
cation, 12 December 2005). One night while I was at the Wickham talking
with a group of lesbians, a number of them also commented to me that
they were sick of cunt jokes, which they insinuated made them feel un-
comfortable particularly when some of the men in the audience would
grimace or verbally express disgust by booing or laughing in sympathy
with the performer. These remarks point to the complex gender relations
within the scene, and the embedded forms of misogyny that are often
played out in the context of drag performance.
The absence of drag king and/or bio queen performers in Brisbanes
commercial gay venues also frustrated a number of local performers. In
my interview with Dita Brooke, she revealed that when her troupe, the
Twang Gang, entered a drag competition at the Wickham in 2000, com-
ing second in the competition, she later found out from the judges who
admitted to her that the Twang Gang should have won that because her
troupe was female, they were unable to take first prize. Since the com-
petition organisers had expected that a drag queen would take the first
prize, they had arranged this to be an opportunity for a queen to perform
in Sydneys Arq nightclub. They had fixed it up for a drag queen to
perform there, said Brooke, so we couldnt win (personal communi-
cation, 29 November 2005). Eight years later, on 8 June 2008, the
Twang Gang (now renamed the Gang Stars) would, for the first time in
their performance career, take the main stage at the Wickham. In a post-
performance conversation with these women, one of them recalled this
and other instances as evidence of being ignored by the gay scene: As
dykes weve really had to fight to be taken seriously, you know, because
gay venues really just dont care that much about dyke culture (Brooke,
personal communication, 8 June 2008).
The waning appeal of the music and entertainment on offer at clubs
at the centre of Brisbanes established gay scene was the most com-
monly cited argument for staging/participating in queer events. Omo was
one of the first queer events in Brisbane, and was the longest running.
According to its organisers, the idea emerged when two scene members
were returning from Sydney after having just attended a dance party. On
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 195

the road-trip home, one of them said to the other: How can we go back
to Brisbane and have our entertainment limited to the Beat and the
Wickham? So it was decided that we should just start our own club
(personal communication, 22 November 2005). Built upon a strong DIY
ethic, Omo operated in Brisbane at semi-regular intervals between 2000
and 2006. In 2007, the organisers of Omo teamed up with other members
of the queer scene and launched a new event called Skank, which con-
tinues to be staged semi-regularly and has maintained Omos original
queer politic. Within a few months of Omos final event in June 2006,
two other queer events appeared: Cut and Taste launched its first event
in November 2006, Taboo was launched in December of the same year
and Decadance started in November 2008.
The activation of two new queer events so soon after the closure of
Omo would suggest that DIY queer events were becoming increasing
popular alternatives to the mainstream club scene. As one of the organis-
ers of Omo told me, one of the main reasons we started Omo was so
you could go out and be with queer people and not have to listen to that
Top 40 remix bullshit (personal communication, 22 November 2005).
Similarly, on their website, organisers of Cut and Taste claimed that
their event was an alternative to handbag dance parties and camp vocal
house for the Queer community of Brisbane (Cut and Taste, 2007). The
music deejayed at all three events was a variation of dance and rock
styles, including electroclash, tribal house, dirty house, industrial, dark-
wave, indie and punk. Omo and Cut and Taste were particularly keen to
encourage new and emerging deejays to the decks, and make a conscious
effort to accommodate as many tastes as possible, ensuring a variation of
musical styles over the course of an evening. Referring again to Cut and
Tastes website:

[Cut and Taste] is about sampling different flavours, and putting together some-
thing new each time for a really vibrant scene of creative people. We aim to please,
and every event is different. You can never know what to expect. But one thing is
for sure, the music is deep, phat, dirty, electronic and totally twisted. Handbag, this
aint! (Cut and Taste, 2007)

The aesthetic of both Taboo and Decadance was decidedly queer but
with a darker edge, tending towards BDSM and kinky fashions. The
music deejayed at both these events suitably matched this: Taboo fa-
voured the darker sounds of industrial, dance remixes of metal, and in
196 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

the latter stages of the evening the dance floor was kept alive with tribal
house and trance beats. Similarly, the sound of Decadance was darker
progressive house, electroclash, acid house and tribal house.
Where drag queens are the staple form of live entertainment in gay
clubs, queer spaces often define themselves by offering alternative forms
of live musical entertainment. For example, Omo regularly showcased
performances by local queer punk band Anal Traffic as well as featuring
circus performances and campish gender-bending cabaret routines. Cut
and Taste events featured live performances by local darkwave/ambient
band Dizzygotheca, electro rock singer/songwriter and bassist Zia and on
other occasions, roaming theatrical performers. Taboo featured fetish
fashion parades, drag king and bio queen performances, and BDSM
shows. Decadance also featured kinky sex shows and roving adult en-
tertainment.
When talking with the organisers of Decadance, Emily and Lucy, they
like the organisers of all of the aforementioned queer clubs acknow-
ledged that their impetus behind creating their event was to fill both a sexual
and sonic void in their experience of the local scene. Emily said:

Were both big on dancing and were both big on quirky bent queer stuff so if we
hadnt been out for ages then sometimes wed just go wherever there was queers
and music which might be at the Wickham or Scarlet or something that doesnt
generally fit our idea of good music or sexuality I mean theyre both great,
like I have fun at Scarlet and sometimes I like Top 40 and I like to go to support the
people who run it, but so we found a hole in the Brisbane market and it seemed
to be that if you wanted good music to dance to, and good obviously being subjec-
tive, but good dance music, you either had to do something like Sleaze Ball or a big
type one-off event I think Omo was the first kind of environment that I went to
that was a regular kind of that was where you could be anything or do anything
there. (personal communication, 31 March 2009)

Emily also referred to what she called a lesbian uniform and a lesbian
sound: You know, what we call the jeans and sneakers types, the
straight lesbian bars lets just say we dont get off on k.d. lang and
Melissa Etheridge. Lucy went on to express how at different times in
her life she had felt ostracised from other women and was never really
able to fit into the lesbian scene because she didnt like the right music,
wear the right clothes or do gender in the right way: People often have
this box youve got to fit in and if you dont fit then, well, you get
judged (personal communication, 31 March 2009).
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 197

Similarly, during interviews and field conversations with scene par-


ticipants in which I was predominantly seeking explanation of scenic
distinctions in musical terms, a number of informants also emphasised
distinctions in relation to the way people do gender and/or sexuality
within these spaces, pointing to a kind of synergism between music and
sexuality. I think you can play around with gender and sexuality more
at queer clubs. At least thats what I do, said Jacob. He went on to say
that he wouldnt feel comfortable going to a gay club in his favourite
genderfuck fashion, but feels totally at ease doing genderfuck in queer
spaces. Most of us know what you mean if you describe something as
gay these days, but its harder to say what queer looks like or sounds like
so its open to multiple interpretations whether thats music, gender
or whatever (personal communication, 15 March 2009). Peter said he
thought a queer scene was where youve got gay male-identified, les-
bian-identified, straight-identified, bisexual-identified and then youve
got interested other parties who just found their way in. People dont
really care cause theyre all queer and thats just it (personal communi-
cation, 12 December 2005). Natasha said:

If you look at sexuality in terms of what music gets played and where in my
opinion, in queer spaces you get music with more of an edge. In a queer space
youve got the room to be a lot more creative, a lot more experimental whereas in a
gay space youre limited and its frustrating sometimes gay stuff can be queer
but its also more open to being something different. (personal communication,
8 March 2006)

In John Connell and Chris Gibsons (2003) work on music, identity and
place, they offer various accounts of how music contributes not only to
the creation and maintenance of identity, but also to the gendering and
sexualisation of spaces. Indeed, a number of people to whom I spoke
maintained the notion that the sexuality of a scene space whether a gay
male, lesbian or queer scene space manifests as a quality intrinsic to
the musicality of that scene space. In other words, the monolithic sound
of commercial gay clubs bespeaks more uniformed sexual style or at
least this is how it appears to be interpreted by those who create and seek
out queer and alternative scenes in Brisbane. Scene spaces that were
dubbed queer and alternative rather than gay clearly demonstrated vary-
ing degrees of stylistic excess, and acquired meaning in tension with
commercial gay scene culture and its musical, stylistic and social norms.
198 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

Browne and Bakshi argue that relations between lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, trans and queer people are often structured around homonormativity:
in the gay/queer debate, it has been assumed that queer anti-normative
lives are resistant, transgressive and diverse in contrast to the homoge-
neity of gay privilege and the desire be the same or normal
(2011, p. 182). Indeed, some of my interviewees indicated that the preva-
lence of handbag house and Top 40 dance remixes in commercial gay
clubs was a marker of homo-normalisation, and so, for these interviewees
at least, the act of rejecting this kind of music functions as an oppositional
one: a semiotic mode of resistance to homogeneity. Of course, this
gay/queer homo-normal/transgressive dichotomisation is problematic, and
as Browne and Bakshi (2011) and Jasbir Puar (2007) argue, reliance on
these binary distinctions risks ignoring the complex power relations that
must be negotiated in the creation, performance and maintenance of all
non-normative identity positions. By producing a false understanding of a
coherent homo-normative centre, we obstruct more complex understand-
ings of the social lives of all non-normative gender and sexual subjects.
Music is intrinsically valuable to both gay and queer scenic structures and
the identities within them, providing a template for both counter-public
scenes. Indeed, the signification of any gender and/or sexual queerness
through music whether lesbian, gay, transgender, queer or otherwise
contributes to the project of queer world-making. Logics of taste aside,
even the most mainstream gay and commercialised megaclub is a site of
world-making, where punters labour to appropriate, manipulate and gener-
ate individual and communal narratives by queering cultural artefacts.
Yet, speaking in terms of aesthetic enunciations and the stylistic
parameters of this labour as I am doing here, queer musical style appears
to consciously acquire meanings that, while always multiple and contin-
gent, are in many ways distinct from gay style and socio-musical norms.
It is this tendency towards always being in tension with what is identifi-
able, coherent and hetero/homonormal and thus being disidentifiable,
incoherent and transgressive that appears to dictate the sound of queer
scenes. Moreover, to varying degrees scene participants use these styl-
istic tensions as a way of maintaining a sense of their own sexual differ-
ences and to distinguish between the multiple expressions of queerness
that occur intra-scenically. As Altman previously has suggested, queer
theory shares with much of contemporary postmodernism an emphasis on
representation as an aesthetic rather than a political problem, a desire to
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 199

deconstruct all fixed points in the interests of destabilising and decentring


our preconceptions (1996, para. 26). I would argue that, in terms of local
music scene culture, queer appears to be availed as a kind of aestheticised
rejection and deconstruction of the mythical homonorm.

Beyond the Local: Music, Sexuality and the Berlin Scene(s)

In Chapter 2, I situated music as a productive agent in the (re)making of


sexual selves, a point of coalescence for local gay/queer scenes that draw
on translocal styles, and as a medium through which alternative worlds
are imagined. I turn now to Berlin as a site that facilitates exploration of
the translocal style and one that is particularly suited to an exploration of
the queer world imagined through music. In Berlins summer of 2009, I
ventured to this curious city to undertake a routine ethnography of the
gay/queer scene. While I was in Berlin, I stayed in the once bohemian
and now quite gentrified gay district of Prenzlauer Berg with four en-
thusiastic clubbers (and friends of mine) from Brisbanes queer scene.
Having visited Berlin a number of times, they had friendship networks in
the city and were quite familiar with Berlins queer topography, and so
acted as my gatekeepers of sorts. My intention was to map Berlins
queer musical spaces and probe the relationship between music and
forms of sexual identification, much like I had been doing in the far less
idealised city of Brisbane. Admittedly, I was bewitched by the rumours
of musical, sexual and creative excess that has been relayed to me by
friends and other Brisbanians who had previously spent time in Berlin:
forty-eight-hour dance parties, sex clubs, polysexual back rooms, cut-
ting-edge and underground music scenes, DIY basement venues and ex-
perimental performance art.
On the rather long flight from Australia, my imagination was flush
with musical and cinematic visions I had inherited from Bob Fosses
Cabaret (1972) and John Cameron Mitchells Hedwig and the Angry
Inch (2001), and I romanticised the urban aesthetic that drew some of
my favourite musicians David Bowie, Nick Cave, Depeche Mode,
Peaches to this place. But officially I was there to investigate whether
comparable logics of style, musico-sexual distinction and musically re-
200 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

sourced ways of being were to be found among the citys queers. My


official reasons for being there, while fulfilled and accounted for below,
proved less remarkable than the queer world I had imagined and de-
scribed to myself in my field notes on the plane-ride over. I didnt think
much of these musings at the time in fact, I was simply filling in time:
writing because I enjoy the action of pen to paper; daydreaming because
I take comfort in the rampant pleasures of my self-made world. But the
more time I spent in Berlin, the more people I talked to, the more clubs I
visited, the more I started to realise that I was in fact strategically em-
ploying music to resource my own utopian imaginings and queer world-
making. Importantly, I wasnt alone in this endeavour.
Berlin has an unmistakable sexual aura. As discussed in Chapter 1,
during the late 1800s Berlin was home to the worlds first and the most
progressive homosexual advocacy organisations of the time. Hirschfelds
Scientific-humanitarian Committee was the first of these, followed by
Brands Community of the Peculiar and later the Institute of Sexology,
which was also founded by Hirschfeld. Despite nineteenth century laws
that prosecuted those, particularly men, who acted on their homosexual
desires under 175 of the penal code, Berlin had an emerging homosex-
ual scene, featuring networks of cafes, bars, balls and bathhouses fre-
quented by gays, lesbians and transvestites that, along with Hirschfelds
and Brands organisations, contributed to the mobilisation of a homo-
sexual movement (Herzer, 1995). But it was during the time of the
Weimar Republic (19181933) that Berlin achieved its phantasmic status
as a pre-eminent queer metropolis and became a place of pilgrimage for
pleasure-seeking gays and lesbians, progressive artists and intellectuals,
and those with penchant for the flamboyant from across Europe. With its
liberal approach to arts, politics, journalism, science and philosophy, the
vibrant culture of the Weimar era created a social and political climate
particularly apposite to a modern homosexual lifestyle. Historian An-
dreas Sternweiler writes:

In the 1920s Berlin became a buzzing centre of new ideas, social reform and other
vanguard positions At any given time, more than 100 gay and lesbian cafes or
bars existed. The homosexual scene was an integral part of the citys social and
cultural life, while heterosexual artists and writers explored the scene and found
new inspiration there. Important contributions to the arts, theatre and film also came
from proud, self-confident homosexuals. Bisexuality and a familiarity with gay and
lesbian lifestyles were fashionable. (2008, p. 81)
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 201

Bars such as the Eldorado in the Berlin borough of Schneberg, fa-


mously frequented by transvestites and favoured by actress Marlene
Dietrich, as well as literary portrayals of homosexual bars and culture of
Weimar Berlin, elevated the city to a new status in the cultural imagina-
tion and affirmed homosexual agency and identity (Prickett, 2011). Al-
though the penal code had not changed, during this time homosexuality
was more or less tolerated by law enforcement. However, this situation
was to change dramatically when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933
and subsequently set about closing bars, crushing scientific and social
organisations, burning publication archives and, under an amended 175,
severely punishing anyone who demonstrated the slightest of homosex-
ual proclivities (Sternweiler, 2008).
After recovering from war and following the reunification of Berlin
11
in 1989, the Berlin of today predicated on its trendy media-hyped
image, cosmopolitan culture and the mythic allure of bygone hedonism
once again delights the queer imagination. It could be said that Berlin is
imagined in terms which Dianne Chisholm (2005) calls a queer con-
stellation. Chisholm explains this notion in reference to literary imag-
inings, as dialectical images of (queer) city/space as represented
through a variety of optical and perceptual devices (p. 10). Queer con-
stellations image the city of late capitalism where the city itself be-
comes a commodity fetish-on-display, exhibiting and marketing its
historic sectors, and selling (selling-out) its alternative neighbour-
hoods and bohemian lifestyles (p. 11, emphasis in original). Although
saturated by commodity spectacle, the queer spatial practices that the
12
city accommodates suggest it is something of a queer heterotopia. Scat-
tered unevenly across every district in the city youll find rainbow flags
adorning the frontages of everything from entertainment venues, to res-
taurants, to music, book and clothing stores and even the odd curbside
food stand. If you believe the citys tourism bureau, it has re-established
the lustrous reputation it earned during the Roaring Twenties in an at-
tempt to reclaim its status as a queer world capital (Berlin Tourism,
2009). Berlin asserts an anything goes queerness. The city proudly

11 At the end of the Second World War, Berlin was divided up between the Allied
powers of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. A wall
divided East and West Berlin to keep citizens in Berlins communist East from
defecting to the West.
12 See Foucault (1986) for a theoretical discussion of heterotopia.
202 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

boasts that it is a place with an openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit; the
site of the worlds first LGBT history museum (the Schwules museum)
and memorial to LGBT Holocaust victims; the birthplace to the now in-
13
famous Love Parade and the Folsom Street Fair (the worlds largest
leather event); the home to one of the largest Pride/Christopher Street
Day Parades in Europe; and an exhausting list of gay/lesbian/queer
dance clubs, bars, parties, restaurants, sex clubs, saunas, cinemas, retail
stores, hotels, squats and other forms of accommodation. According to
the entertainment listings in Siegessule (Berlins queer magazine), Ber-
lins gay/lesbian/queer commercial clubs and bars alone are well in ex-
cess of a hundred and its queer population is estimated to be roughly one
in ten of the citys three and a half million people (Gay Berlin, 2009).
While gay/queer venues and events are able to be located in almost
every district, the most visible clusters of scene spaces are in three main
areas: the historically gay and glamorous western district of Schneberg;
the now hip and gentrified eastern district of Prenzlauer Berg and the
grungy western but ethnically diverse district of Kreuzberg (though each
scene spills into bordering neighbourhoods). At a superficial glance, gay
tourist marketing, local queer media, club soundscapes, event ephemera
(flyers, posters) and many of the stylised queer bodies that inhabit these
spaces collectively generate a cohesive triptych that narrates queer Ber-
lins stylistic palette or, more accurately, a cohesive triptych that sells
three kinds of ready-made youthful white gay masculinity to other
white gay men looking to quickly plug into the appropriate scene. For
14
example, on its cover, Schnebergs gay city guide features a waxed,
tanned, buffed guy in his early twenties. His hair is sitting flawlessly,
hes wearing Dolce & Gabbana underwear and an unbuttoned black
dress shirt, with an in vogue upturned collar. Mr Prenzlauer Berg is
represented on the cover of the districts gay city guide as a young, at-
tractive, clean-shaven, preppy-looking guy, wearing Diesel underwear (a

13 Beginning in West Berlin in 1989, the Love Parade was a famous EDM festival and
parade attended by hundreds of thousands of people annually, which was popular
among certain gay/queer audiences. In 2010 it was permanently cancelled when a
crowd rush killed twenty-one people and left hundreds of others injured.
14 Available in most LGBTQ establishments are pocket-sized district-specific gay
city guides published biannually by German company Queerline Media (see
<http://www.queerline-media.de>). The editions to which I am referring here were
from the second half of 2009.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 203

more affordable street brand) and a casual but hip green t-shirt and base-
ball cap. Mr Kreuzberg is represented on the cover of his districts gay
city guide as what you might call heroin chic thin, pale and sexy.
While still young, attractive and white, hes wearing a silver hipster neck
chain with a cassette-tape pendant, his hair is styled to appear unwashed,
he has facial stubble, his underwear lacks any distinguishing branding
and his grungy look is completed with an unzipped grey hoodie and
black leather jacket.
To a degree, these marketing stereotypes are carried over into
everyday fashion and self-stylisation visible on the streets and inside the
clubs. Moreover, in numerous conversations with Berliners, districts
were associated with certain kinds of queer style and used to demarcate
one scenic element from another in ways not dissimilar to the logics of
intra-scenic distinction employed in Brisbane. As well as locality and
class, scenic divisions across gender and ethnicity were also common
themes that emerged from conversations with queer Berliners. For ex-
ample, in a conversation with Prenzlauer Berg resident Phillip, he arti-
culated his particular gay style to me in terms of where he goes club-
bing and, importantly, where he doesnt go clubbing: I would never go
to Schneberg, he said. The scene there is yuck. Yuck! Prenzlauer
Berg is more cool it has the best clubs and hottest boys (personal
communication, 9 August 2009). Pascal, who has been running gay sex
clubs in Berlin for over twenty years, told me:

Even though the wall has gone, the wall is always there. East people go to clubs in
the east and west people go to the clubs in the west. Not much has changed except
the scene is cleaner overall, you know, gentrified, more touristic Many clubs in
the west are money-making from gay sex, you know more glitzy and popular, like
Berghain, but the music is too loud and people take too many drugs compared to dir-
tier clubs in the east, like Greifbar But Berlin is big, yes, so people have their own
places to go. I think of places for gay men, homosexual Arabs and Turks, women,
though I have not been, transsexuals, also have not been, hedonistic heterosexuals and
people with fetish, yes, the fetish scene is as big as the gay scene really Women I
would say not so big, they are more green, ah, political I think these clubs not so
much for fucking. (personal communication, 19 August 2009)

Self-declared anarchist dyke squatter Angela similarly said:

Berlin is quite divided. Most of the time, men and women do cruising, partying and
politics separately people seem to stay out of each others spaces, but queer squats
204 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

like Schwarzer Kanal [in Neuklln, which neighbours Kreuzberg] are different. The
parties and entertainment are much more mixed and political, generally better than the
mainstream shit Id say. (personal communication, 10 August 2009)

Jane, also a resident of Neuklln, told me: I guess Kreuzberg is the


queerest scene youll find in Berlin, its where I hang out. She went on
to say that, in her opinion, the mainstream gay scene is generic. Defi-
nitely Schneberg, you know, mostly white and male but its pretty
much the same all over, Prenzlauer Berg is going that way too. Janes
reason for identifying Kreuzberg as queerer was predicated on her in-
terpretation of it as more ethnically, stylistically and politically diverse:
Kreuzberg has a large migrant population and queer Turkish popula-
tion. It also seems more punky and alternative and leftist which is more
interesting to me (personal communication, 17 August 2009).
While it may be premature of me to draw conclusions from the lim-
ited data collected during my stay, it is interesting to note that both Phil-
lip and Pascal, who were both in their forties and had lived in Berlin
most of their lives, were less au fait with queer as a term that meant
something different from gay, and they did not employ it in the same
way that Jane and Angela did. Jane and Angela were both younger (in
their twenties or early thirties) and had spent time living and participat-
ing in activist culture overseas. Jane and Angelas use of queer seems to
resonate more with the deconstructive aesthetic project I similarly
identified in Brisbane. Indeed, an American colleague to whom I spoke,
who was living and working in Berlin, was quick to point out that in her
opinion the Anglophone use of queer, in the denaturalising sense,
didnt really circulate in Berlins white gay scene, but instead was em-
ployed more commonly as a trendy catch-all term. Moreover, due to the
differing trajectories of gender and ethnic identity, it cannot be applied to
15
Berlins Turkish gay and lesbian scene in the same way. However, as
we conversed as non-natives looking upon various sexual scenes, our

15 While in Berlin I attended the monthly homo-Oriental disco Gayhane at SO36 in


Kreuzberg. The music at Gayhane was a mix of Turkish, Arabic and to a lesser
degree Western pop and drag performances employed a distinctly Oriental style.
While I sadly lacked the cultural vocabulary and detailed ethnographic data to make
a full commentary on Gayhane, it seemed to accommodate a truly multicultural
queer scene experience that felt very inclusive. There was even wheelchair access
to the dance floor! For a more detailed discussion of Berlins Turkish queer scene,
see Jennifer Petzen (2004) and Kira Kosnicks (2004) accounts of Gayhane.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 205

own dialogue suggested that, even though local terminology and under-
standings may be different, scene spaces are certainly marked by cultural
logics of distinction that resemble translocal modalities of gay and queer
style. Therefore, it should be noted that here, unlike in my discussion of
Brisbane, my use of gay and queer only partially reflect local understand-
ings. Nevertheless, if we build upon the aesthetic enunciations of gay and
queer that I identified in Brisbane when examining the musical plurality of
Berlins queer scene, we see similarities between the musico-stylistic sen-
sibilities operating in both locations.
As one might expect of a queer world capital, there is an endless
availability of generic gay scene culture available to willing partici-
pants on every night of the week, and in almost every district. On my
first weekend in Berlin I went along to a club called GMF, which is situ-
ated in the eastern district of Mitte, close to the borders of Prenzlauer
Berg. The club occupies the twelfth and fifteenth floors as well as the
rooftop garden of a 1970s office complex. Phillip had told me that this
was the best gay party in Berlin on a Sunday. The crowd was predomi-
nantly young, male, white, body-beautiful and dressed in trendy street-
wear: jeans, branded t-shirts, designer sneakers. Upon entering the
twelfth floor, I was greeted by a room full of sweaty, alcohol- and drug-
affected men dancing to a c. 1990s vocal house remix of Blondies
Atomic (originally released in 1979), which was followed by a number
of unremarkable vocal and progressive house tracks. Making my way to
the fifteenth floor via a crowded lift in which I was the only woman, the
doors opened to a room full of people who looked identical to the crowd
I had just left. However, the music three floors up had a slightly harder
edge. It was hard house (no vocals, more distorted beats) and gradually
progressed into tech house (house music with elements of techno).
On my second weekend, I ventured across town to Schneberg.
Making my way to the very popular gay club Connections (popular be-
cause of its basement cruising labyrinth). I was promptly refused entry
on the grounds of my femaleness and told to come back on a mixed
night. When I did just that, I was again greeted by a room full of people
who looked very much like the people who were dancing at GMF the
week before. Again, the music was predominantly of the house genre:
some Top 40 vocal house as well as a few progressive house tracks
mixed in. Leaving Connections, I made my way to Toms Bar, a once-
famous leather bar-cum-cruising hotspot, also in Schneberg. While
206 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

technically the bar is open to women, I walked in, looked around and
saw that I was the only one in a crowd of a few hundred. The rugged
leather image Id imagined was in stark contrast to the predominantly
youthful buffed bodies and conservative casual fashions of Toms pa-
trons one of whom I noticed sitting near the entrance drinking a glass
of wine at a table with his two purebred dachshunds wearing diamante
collars on a leash beside him. Although I didnt stay at Toms for long,
and was unable to make my way into the bowels of the club due in part
to overcrowding but mainly because everyone was looking at me as
though my vagina was attached to my forehead I was surprised by the
juxtaposition of on-screen porn, camp music and table soccer.
The gay club sound and style with which I had grown familiar in
Brisbane seemed ubiquitous. Of the dozens of gay bars and clubs I vis-
ited while in Berlin both the iconic and the unremarkable I found
myself repeatedly presented with the same trademark gay club sounds of
vocal and progressive house while many of the smaller bars stuck with
tried and true camp pop of the Kylie and Madonna ilk. Even the popular
monthly lesbian party L-Tunes (held at SchwuZ in Kreuzberg) main-
tained this house/pop standard. One unassuming Wednesday night,
perched on a bar stool at Villis (a local bar in Prenzlauer Berg, across the
street from a popular mens cruising club, Greifbar) I took out my field
journal and began to write a description of this interesting little neigh-
bourhood gay bar.
The ceiling was covered in sparkly gold material, and hanging from
it were numerous gold-painted plaster cherubs and the obligatory mirror
ball taking pride of place over the main area of the bar. Looking around,
my eyes met those of the only other women occupying space: a group of
fifty-something butch dykes who looked back at me with disregard. Men
of various ages, sizes and styles some nondescript and other distinctly
bear-ish occupied all the other tables and stools. While I was in the line
to order a drink, some twinks walked in and approached the bar, spoke to
the bartender and gestured towards the sound system, which had been
playing an unfamiliar premixed dance music compilation at a volume
that made it almost impossible to make out over the raucous chatter.
Following their conversation, the bartender walked to the sound system
and changed the music immediately. With the press of a button, the
space was audibly elevated to a new level of gayness and the twinks took
to the floor and busted out a few moves to Kylie Minogues Better the
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 207

Devil You Know (1990). Watching the crowd, I sucked back on my


Caipirinha and settled into the familiarity of this seemingly global gay
aesthetic. While I had never been to this bar before, this scene could be
taking place in any neighbourhood gay bar in any number of cities
around the world, and not only would it look pretty much the same, it
would sound quite similar as well.
My first encounter with Berlins queerer sounding scene was at a
club night called Search and Destroy: Queer Noises, which is held
monthly in the basement of SchwuZ in Kreuzberg. Printed in capital let-
ters at the top of the flyer for this event were the words WE PLAY
GUITARS! Although at the time I was unfamiliar with any of the dee-
jays and bands listed on the flyer, this statement alone gestured towards
a different kind of sonic landscape a promise of something a little less
gay perhaps, something that interrupted the routine sounds of 1990s
dance pop and house music at least. On the bill that evening was French
band The Velvet Condoms, who described their sound as robot-noise-
pop and weird-wave as well as six local deejays spread out across a
number of musically themed rooms connected by passageways. Each
room had a distinct sound: one space was dedicated to the heavier
sounds of alternative rock, grunge, industrial and metal; another room
featured less heavy rock derivatives like blues-rock, glam, old school
and post-punk punk, goth and new wave; and yet another space dubbed
the queerulanten lounge featured a chaotic deejay set by Steve Morell
(the founder of Berlin Insane, an underground German music festival
and the Berlin-based independent record label Pale Music) and others
who played a range of styles including post-punk, krautrock and EDM
styles such as electroclash and synthpop. As the flyer said, the music was
heavily guitar-based, which distinguished it from the gay club scene. The
crowd was as gender, sexually and stylistically diverse as the music, with
punters employing and in many cases queering all manner of (sub)cultural
semiotics: goth, punk, mod, rocker, cyber, indie, hipster, butch/femme,
drag and S/M fashions. Looking around the queerulanten lounge as I en-
tered, my eyes were drawn to an older South Asian man wearing crisp
business attire and heavy gold jewellery making out with a twenty-
something pale and skinny punk boy; a trio of identically dressed girls
who could have just stepped off the set of Robert Palmers memorable
1988 video clip for Simply Irresistible; and a gender-ambiguous
Latino/a person dressed in what I interpreted as an homage to Frida Kahlo.
208 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

Time spent at other queer venues in Berlin similarly imaged the


queer aesthetic as excessive, stylistically transgressive and somewhat
disorderly. For example, on one particular night at a weekly club night
called Chantals House of Shame (organised by the transgender glam/
punk mistress Chantal and held at Bassy, a rhythm and blues/jive/
rockabilly club in Prenzlauer Berg), a few hours of minimal tech was
presented as a fitting precursor to a live set by an Australian queer post-
punk/electropop band The Blow Waves. On another occasion this time
at Caf Fatal (held at the legendary punk club SO36 in Kreuzberg) the
evening began with an open ballroom dancing session where Berliners of
almost every gender, sexual and (sub)cultural persuasion, race, ethnicity
and age partnered up in unconventional form to salsa, tango, boogie-
woogie, rumba and swing dance for a few hours preceding a variety
show that featured circus and cabaret entertainment followed by a more
familiar discothque. While Search and Destroy: Queer Noises and
Chantals House of Shame were queer events reminiscent of smaller
Brisbane events such as Omo, Caf Fatal was, for me at least, a rare
manifestation of a queer scene that many locals proudly stated was
unique to Berlin.
While Berlins scene is much larger and certainly more diverse than
Brisbanes (particularly in terms of queer ethnic identities), my experi-
ence in Berlin suggests to me that scene-based articulations of sexual
style both gay and queer intersect with particular patterns of music
consumption and self-stylisation in ways that produce an understanding
of gay and queer as translocally identifiable, but always mutable, scenes.
In both Brisbane and Berlin, particular kinds of translocal musics are
used collectively to construct and differentiate a range of sexual styles
that circulate locally and inform ways of being sexual within the local.
Not unlike the way that gay has come to signify and be signified by
certain scenic logics of music taste (vocal/progresssive house music and
dance pop), queer increasingly is becoming an aesthetic sensibility
with characteristics that dynamically mediate local scenes and translocal
understandings of queer as stylistically promiscuous. Overwhelmingly,
what my experiences in Berlin reinforced for me was that, in a musical
and extra-musical sense, queer appears to suggest a kind of meaningful
organisation generated out of sonic and semiotic excess: a continual
work-in-progress bricolage of sorts. In both Brisbane and Berlin, queer
has come to signify a particular stylistic approach to the way some gen-
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 209

der and sexual minority subjects structure scenic counter-publics, which


may include but necessarily exceed mainstream gay style. This kind of
scenic organisation, while grounded in identity work, is also a performa-
tive critique that exudes a camp sensibility due to its more eccentric style
of self-aestheticisation.
As Halberstam (2011) suggests in her recent work on failure, queer
aesthetics can emerge as a form of resistance through failure. Here we
find queerness embracing failure through its refusal to signify in specific
or standardised terms. Queerness encourages less certain, less knowable
ways of being, identifying and knowing, but queerness is not aimless or
even lax in the way it incorporates (sub)cultural materials into its scenic
constructions. Rather, the confusion generated through the excessive
stylistic utterances of queerness is at once a testimony to queers unruly
and troubling qualities and its formative state. To embrace this is to
realise the potential in thinking beyond our existing frameworks for
understanding (sub)cultural meaning-making operations; to understand
queer as a way to see, read, (re)use and (re)make culture; and, particu-
larly for studies of popular music production and consumption, to em-
brace queer possibilities for understanding sexuality through stylistic
articulations. In the final section, I turn to the ways that music and its
narrativisation of the translocal can resource utopian imaginings.

Music as a Means for Imagining Queer Utopia

In his provocative discussion of queer utopia, Muoz writes of cultural


production and places that hold utopian potentiality:

the distinctions between here and there, and the world that the here and now orga-
nizes, are not fixed they are already being undone in relation to a forward-dawn-
ing futurity. It is important to understand that a critique of our homosexual present
is not an attack on what many people routinely name lesbian or gay, but instead, an
appraisal of how queerness is still forming, or in many crucial ways formless.
Queernessess form is utopia. Ultimately, we must insist on a queer futurity because
the present is so poisonous and insolvent. (2009, pp. 2930)

Imagined through everyday cultural objects and practices such as music,


translocal scenes can become an augury of queer worlds, which may be
imagined as utopias when set against the backdrop of local spaces and
210 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

times that lessen queer possibility and encumber the search for pleasure.
While in Berlin I met and talked with a number of people who originated
from Australia: some were musicians, deejays and club enthusiasts now
living in Berlin; some were merely passing through. I was fascinated by
the way they were drawn to Berlin in the pursuit of sensual indulgence, in
terms of both the musical distinctiveness and sexual freedoms that many
saw as fundamental to the Berlin scene. Although Weimarian romanticism
and tourism marketing represent the city as a queer Mecca, what these
conversations suggested was more in line with a notion of Berlin as a sym-
bol of newness and the promise that there is always something new still to
come. The Berlin scene is mythologised as a queer future that is still, and
potentially will always remain, dawning, rather than one that exists in the
here and now. In Kevins opinion, music can be a prominent signifier of this:

Berlin provides a playground of sex, social engagement, dance, music, art and perform-
ance that I havent experienced anywhere else The music in the majority of queer
venues in Berlin seems to have consigned the clich of what I call the international gay
radio sound of diva-based pop/house music to the rubbish bin. Well to be completely
accurate, you will still hear that kind of music at some more traditional gay venues in
Berlin. But the music chosen by deejays at most Berlin queer events is constantly
changing, leading the trends of international dance music I have often noticed that the
styles and genres of dance music that I hear in Berlin tend to go mainstream internation-
ally a couple of years later, often reflected through mainstream appropriation and wa-
tering down of the style by major artists. For example, the electro trend in Berlin of the
early 2000s and the later harder electro-house styles of 20042006 have now reached
audiences in Australia in commercial gay venues. In the mean time a couple of years
ago, around 20072008, euro-crunk and fidget house have taken their place in Berlin but
are receiving minimal mainstream play in Australia. These styles are now [2009] being
replaced by minimal techno and bass-driven house styles in German venues as main-
floor material, with smaller and earlier dance floors being driven by rock/electro. (per-
sonal communication, 16 September 2009).

For Kevin, it appears that the Berlin scene captures his imagination as a
place where the future sound of queerness can be heard sounds that
may signal potential changes to the sonic landscape of his local scene.
Although the international gay radio sound, as Kevin calls it, was far
from defunct in many of the Berlin clubs I visited, Kevins selective way
of listening to the scene, which he partially acknowledges in his remark,
suggests that he uses music strategically to envisage new queer worlds
and that music can be emblematic of scenic transformation.
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 211

Like Kevin, Christopher told me that he thinks of Berlin as a city of


cutting-edge music, crazy hedonists and alternative thinking, where
queerness finds its natural place. His reasons for thinking this were
pieced together from historical notions of sexual liberation that he said
characterised Berlin between the wars, as well as more contemporary
accounts of music festivals such as the Love Parade. He went on to say
that while there were still plenty of mainstream gay clubs [that] play
boring music [where] the dark room is full of superficial body-beautiful
gay men who arent really doing anything, the scene also offered a range
of more experimental queer environments. By way of example, Christo-
pher relayed his experience of Berghain:

The music on the main floor was repetitive 4/4 techno, which contributes to the other-
world feeling, especially after wed been there long enough for our brains and bodies to
tune into the sound. At first it sounded harsh and repetitive, but once you start dancing to
it the layers in the sound become apparent and you can start to feel the music as its meant
to be experienced [it was] geared towards total hedonism. Berghain felt like a temple
to hedonism and a celebration of indulgence. (personal communication, 29 October 2009)

Here, Christopher suggests that music (and the club setting) can engen-
der feelings of otherworldliness, allowing him a glimpse of queer pleas-
ures beyond what he describes as the boring pleasures of the
mainstream gay club scene. Moreover, Christophers remarks also high-
light how his idyllic notion of cutting-edge queerness and feelings of
otherworldliness remain relational with the past.
Located on the boarder between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain,
Berghain has acquired international fame as a techno club par excel-
16
lence. While not strictly a gay/queer club, its links with the now defunct
gay and fetish club nights, and its reputation as a place that encourages
decadence and sensuality (particularly through the provision of a dark
room in which to have sex), attract queer clubbers for around the world.
In conversation with Rocky, another Australian visitor to Berlin, he
impressed upon me his experience of Berghain as one of the queerest
places ever. Once inside the club, he said:

16 As testament to the clubs fame, Berghain has its own mix series released on the clubs
Ostgut Ton label. Additionally, Berghain has long been a topic of conversation in
respected EDM press such as inthemix.com, and has been discussed in internationally
renowned mainstream press such as The Guardian and The New York Times.
212 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

It felt like security was invisible and no one policed you for smoking joints or
whatever While I was taking a break from dancing I was checking out some hot
guy and then I saw him go into a cubicle with a woman and I thought shed have no
chance with him. But then, the woman comes out, goes to the basin, pulls her dick
out of her pants and washes it under the tap and then restyles her hair. (personal
communication, 19 September 2009)

Rockys perception of Berghain reinforced his desire for a queer world


free from surveillance moreover, a world where pleasures are less re-
strained and where organisations of gender and sexuality are less bounded
and less knowable. Talking further with Rocky, he too stressed the musi-
cality of the Berlin scene as being more out there and not like stuff
youd hear in the clubs back home (personal communication,
19 September 2009). Although my own experiences of the Berlin scene
suggested that there were a number of musical similarities that could be
identified between many of the clubs in Brisbane and those in Berlin, it
would seem, for some at least, that the knowability of home (or the scene
in which one locates oneself in an everyday sense) makes it feel less out
there or less queer. A longing for queer scenic organisations beyond the
familiar and the act of imagining that other ways of organising queerness
exist (musically, sexually or otherwise), subsequently provokes a form of
resistance to the familiar and this refusal to be satisfied is what drives at-
tempts at queer world-making. These attempts, as Muoz (2009) has pre-
viously suggested, hinge on a performative mapping of the social world
imbued with utopian potentiality.
As I move toward a conclusion, recounting my time spent waiting to
enter Berghain provides an addendum to this narrative of utopian longing.
My visit found me standing in a line for over an hour waiting to get in, lis-
tening to accents and looking at faces originating from every continent
around the globe. The number of foreign visitors suggests that Berghain
attracts clubbers intoxicated by the possibility of an otherworldly experi-
ence. In front of me in the queue was a youthful and conservatively dressed
gay man from Brazil who was clearly hyped up on anticipation and, guess-
ing by his extreme talkativeness, amphetamines. I talked to him quite a bit
and he told me that his friends at home who had previously been to Berlin
on holidays had told him that this was the best club on earth (personal
communication, 22 August 2009). Given that Berghain is renowned for its
strict door policy, he was petrified that he wouldnt make it past the aggres-
CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene 213

sive scrutiny of the hard-faced and hulking Russian bouncers that run the
door.
Unfortunately for him, he was denied entry and never made it in-
side. About-faced, he was forced to walk back through a mass of still-
hopeful faces scattered across the fenced and dusty wasteland that sur-
rounded the club. To my mind, his disappointment punctuated the bleak-
ness of this landscape the landscape of the here and now. This, I
thought to myself, was a poignant allegory of how so many queer people
are driven by a longing to traverse such landscapes in the hope that we
will arrive at a queer(er) time and place the closest possible rendering
of a queer utopia that is situated within the here and now. Yet, for some
of us, the social and cultural systems of the white heteropatriarchy that
violently attempts to regulate, constrain or block our search for queer-
ness are impenetrable, forcing some to seek refuge within the confines of
a homosexual mainstream and submit to the tyranny of the homonor-
mative (Muoz, 2009, p. 26).
While some may get closer to glimpsing the imagined utopic spaces
of queerness than others via, as this book suggests, social music-making,
performance and consumption for all of us, utopia remains a fantasy
17
that cannot be sated. Nevertheless, in Muozs (2009) terms, the utopic
imaginary that presages a new queer world is crucial: it functions as a
reflexive critique of the limited pleasures offered in the here and now,
concomitantly mobilising desire for and striving towards queer(er)
horizons. While Berlin is not utopia certainly none of the locals or even
the visitors to whom I spoke described it in these specific terms, nor would
I imagine utopia to have an exclusive door policy the stories relayed to
me, particularly by people who were non-native to the Berlin scene, indi-
cated that both the musical and sexual excess gestured by the scene prom-
ised them a glimpse into otherworldliness. Predicated on echoes of a
mythologised queer past, a translocal queer scene like that of Berlin can
animate the utopic imaginary, encouraging a critique of what is accepted
as the mundane or familiar and illuminate the future potential of queer
worlds in the making. To those not from Berlin, the city signalled a form

17 Muozs discussion of the politics of utopianism, to which I am referring here, is a


queer reworking of utopian longing inspired by a printed dialogue between neo-
Marxist social and cultural theorists Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno (1988).
214 CHAPTER 7: Making a Scene

of queerness imagined through a liberal sexual past and cutting-edge


musics that bespoke the future sounds of local scenes.
If we accept music as a kind of prophecy (Attali, 1985), or as a tool that
we can employ to build new worlds for ourselves (DeNora, 2000), then the
promise and momentum provided by music appear vital in the pursuit of
queerness. When the worlds we inhabit are less than utopian, music can fa-
cilitate collective becoming: it offers us hope; it is testimony to our resil-
ience and survival; it soothes, pleasures and indulges us; it is a refuge from
an otherwise intolerable state. As Neroli and Peter suggested at the begin-
ning of this chapter, the queer scenic sphere is unimaginable without music.
Indeed, for the majority of music-makers, performers and scene participants
to whom I spoke while conducting this research, music was a fundamental
resource in the configuration of a queer utopic imaginary. In addition to mu-
sics transformative capacities and its vital role in self-making and collective
distinction, music organises local scenes, and generates and connects affec-
tive communities and scenic counter-publics beyond the local. As a technol-
ogy for identity-formation and an operative mode of expression, music has
been a tireless and faithful servant to queerness. And maybe, given musics
ability to propel us through time and affect relationships across the incom-
mensurate geographies of queer worlds in the here and now, music is the
cultural form best suited to the collective making of better queer worlds in
the future.
CHAPTER 8

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

As jesters and priestesses, our queer ancestors traded in the healing arts.
(Bronstein, 1994, p. 157)

In her book Gender Outlaw (1994), Kate Bronstein uses the analogy of
the jester as a link to queer people, acts and times past. The jester, she
argues, is our queer ancestor: an entertainer; a social commentator;
someone who played with gender and sexual roles; someone who
mocked authority and made visible their lies; someone who was laughed
at, often unkindly; someone who was humiliated and ridiculed; a profes-
sional fool. The rituals of the jester were those of healing: our ancestors
performed their rituals, their theatre, to heal themselves, and to heal their
tribes, suggests Bronstein (1994, p. 158). In the medieval British courts,
the jester was often considered a mentally and/or physically unsound
lunatic. Jesters therefore were allowed to speak freely with impunity be-
cause, by way of social ranking, the jesters absurdity preserved the su-
periority and dignity of the ruling class. Drawing on the work of Attali
(1985), Victoria Moon Joyce (1997) proposes a similar queer ancestry
regarding the jongleur. Joyce recalls how the jongleurs fulfilled a role
as social critics and used their compositions to reveal the ironies and in-
justices they saw in the various communities through which they trav-
elled and performed (p. 53). Through song, the jongleur would critique
the laws of the land because information flowed freely in musical forms
where it was otherwise restricted and segregated (p. 52). The role of the
jongleur was to entertain through music and through physical perform-
ance. The jongleur was both music and the spectacle of the body
(Attali, 1985, p. 14).
Jesters and jongleurs found a social niche accommodating their pe-
culiarities and a space for the creative articulation of their marginalisa-
tion. Because the ruling classes perceived jesters and jongleurs as lowly
and inferior, they were afforded a freedom of expression that was not
permitted to a normal person. They were a metic voice fulfilling the
216 CHAPTER 8: Concluding Thoughts

role of the entertainer, the subversive commentator and the political


trickster a role resembling that of the queer musical performer today.
Much like the jesters and jongleurs of old, the queer performers dis-
cussed in these pages are entertainers who have created a social niche
that allows them to challenge social norms and reveal the injustices and
fallacies embedded in dominant culture and politics through music.
Moreover, these present-day jesters and jongleurs remain familiar with
humiliation and ridicule: they know too well the disapproval of and dis-
gust at what they are and what they do behind closed doors. It is through
music that they both affirm and heal themselves and their people, and form
oppositions to heterosexist prejudice. In the medieval times of the
jongleur, music provided an escape from normative social restraints, just
as it continues to do today. For many queers who choose to work and play
in and with contemporary music idioms, music can facilitate an opposi-
tional space in which to imagine the possibilities of living, being and lov-
ing outside heterosexual hegemony.

Summary

The work that is undertaken in and through music is more than simply
the organisation, production and consumption of sound: it is identity
work, and it reveals world-making attempts. In all its capacities, music is
a means of narrating the self and the social. It informs the way we situate
ourselves within the social, and it functions as a resource that actively
constructs social worlds. Throughout this book, I have shown how queer
identities can be composed, performed, negotiated and revealed in and
through music-making, performance and consumption. I have endeav-
oured to introduce the musically minded reader to queer theories, de-
bates, cultural production and social organisation while also encouraging
the queer reader and the reader with an interest in sexuality to think and
feel through music. By tracing the emergence of a variety of queer
popular musical styles, modes of performance and aesthetic sensibilities,
and by unpacking the logics of queer scene organisation, I have shown
how queer world-making can occur in and through music and how we
must engage with queer musicalised world-making on queer terms. Ad-
CHAPTER 8: Concluding Thoughts 217

ditionally, by examining in detail the musical lives of local musicians,


performers and scene participants, I have illustrated various ways in
which music can be used as a tool in queer self-fashioning.
Unfortunately, this book does not come close to dealing with the
complete gamut of queer musical expression and scene culture. Although
this study is partial, the forms of musical participation and stylistic prac-
tices that have been taken up by the queer music-makers, performers and
consumers discussed herein suggests that it is not just one particular
style of music, but rather music and musical expression themselves, that
are apposite to articulations of queerness. As Peraino has argued before
me, music can be understood as resembling queer subjectivity (2006,
p. 113) a resemblance that she grounds in musics ineffability its po-
sition outside language, which is akin to the signification of subjectivi-
ties outside normative heterosexuality and by extension, I would sug-
gest, is also akin to the signification of subjectivities outside of norma-
tive homosexuality. In other words, music allows us to engage in
multiple and more fluid forms of self-representation because music does
not represent anything exact; rather, it represents the essence of subjec-
tivity: that which we love, desire and lust after without reason or logic;
that which is not expressible through words alone; that which is more
aptly expressed through sound, movement and listening choices.
Musicalised activities can be at once revealing, self-affirming and
healing; entertaining, humorous and playful; critical, oppositional and
defiant. It is through combining and exploiting these musical properties
that we may express our queerness, construct new realities, entertain and
empower audiences, formulate a challenge to heterosexual hegemony
and signal entry points to new worlds. Since music historically has been
tainted with moral ambiguity, it affords those who partake in musical
activities a degree of moral flexibility. In a musical context especially
in popular forms all manner of queer perversities can be explained
away as theatrical folly or dramatic effect, creating a space in which
queer bodies can tolerably skew the margins of socially acceptable gen-
der and sexual identity. Music provides a context for the (re)signification
of non-normative gender and sexual identities because musical expres-
sion is noted in both historical and contemporary contexts as being par-
ticularly accommodating to those who contradict the rules of social
propriety. Music is empowering, providing both performers and scene
members with a model of self-efficacy. Music can also facilitate a
218 CHAPTER 8: Concluding Thoughts

transformative space in which people may feel more at ease to experi-


ment with queer modes of gender and sexual performance, particularly
those restrained by quotidian social norms. Music mobilises oppositional
responses to heterosexual hegemony. It contextualises social critique and
facilitates resistance and subversion of gender and sexual norms, pro-
viding an accommodating space for the construction of alternative mod-
els of being and desiring and for the generation of new subjectivities.
Like any mode of representation, music brings with it a culturally
constructed history of signs and signification. When queers engage with
music in the ways discussed here, they are playing with these signs,
using them to point to, manipulate, destabilise, twist, bend and skew
those histories and declare mutiny on those who have occupied these
cultural forms to the exclusion of queers. Thus queer musicalised activi-
ties are seditious, embodying an outlawry mentality. They are provoca-
tive, transforming, rebellious, riotous and anarchic; never passive, obedi-
ent or contrite. Through performing and circulating a sense of this, queer
musicalised activity exhibits a subversiveness akin to the carnival, her-
alding a liberation from prevailing cultural and social norms. Queer
musicalised activities tactically employ both anger and humour, ex-
pressing both rage and wit. They are angered by social injustice and
attempt to allay the pains of injustice through amusement, pleasure and
playfulness, while also remaining critical of the conditions that cause
oppression. Queer culture-makers are social commentators and cultural
activists, who use music as a non-violent form of social protest. Queer
music cultures are characterised by significant interplay between global
music styles, translocal sexual counter-publics, local cultural knowl-
edges and personal narratives of queer self-making and expression. The
plurality of styles, sexualities, knowledges and narratives, which cannot
be contained within discrete modes of identification not sexual, not
musical, not local is the substance of the queer world-making project: a
marker of excessive enunciations, an indication of potentiality and the
promise of transformative agency.
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INDEX

A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.: 127 assimilation: 24, 25


ACT UP: 77, 142 Attali, Jacques: 48, 130, 215
Afro Sisters: 95 autoethnography: 13
ageing music fans: 545
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power: see Babuscio, Jack: 71, 114
ACT UP Baker, Roger: 90
AIDS: 68, 95 Bakhtin, Mikhail: 12930
Alexander, Mary: 10316 Bakshi, Leela: 180, 198
Boom Bang: 104 Barnard, Ian: 27
Tricky: 104, 1078, 113 Bassey, J.C. Nimblefingers: 161
Alexander, Matilda: 161, 162, 170, 171 Battle, Kathleen: 92
Allatini, Rose: 467 Bayton, Mavis: 152
Alliance Hotel (Brisbane): 181 Beasley, Chris: 323
all-male revue: 90 Beat Mega Club (Brisbane): 181, 182,
Altman, Dennis: 23, 67, 196 189, 191, 193, 195
American Psychiatric Association: 21 Bellini, Vincenzo: 73, 78
Anal Traffic: 9, 13348, 196 Benkert, Karoly Maria: 1819, 22
Age of Consent controversy: Bennett, Andy: 52, 57, 58, 5960
1445 Berdaches: 86
album artwork: 1379 Berghain (Berlin): 203, 21113
approach: 13545 Berlant, Lauren: 29, 63
clothing: 135 Berlin
distinctive sound: 1357 gay scene: see LGBTQ culture in
Dump EP: 1345 Berlin
humour: 143 as queer metropolis: 200, 205
lyrics: 135, 13942, 147 reunification: 201
performing queer identities: 1458 Weimar: 201
physical image: 1456 Berlin Insane: 207
punk influence: 136 Bertha Control: 9, 151, 16074, 180
sensibility of play: 140 album art: 166, 167
socio-political consciousness: albums: 161
1423 approach to female stereotypes:
use of bodies: 135 1714
visual content: 137 Bertha vibe: 1656
see also queercore black triangle: 1701
Angels of Light: 93 female instrumentalists: 1656
Arnold, Gina: 126 healing role: 162, 1634
Arq (Sydney): 119, 194 lyrics: 16870
Ashburn, Elizabeth: 97 mentoring role: 163
244 Index

musicality: 1645 C.C. the Cat: see Cottone, Clare


performances: 161 cabaret, European: 88
performing queer identities: 1714 Cabaret: 199
playful approach: 1701 Caf Fatal (Berlin): 208
social justice role: 1634, 16671 Cagle, Van M.: 53
see also feminist music-making; camp: 4, 6781
womyns music aestheticism: 70, 712
Big Gay Day (Brisbane): 179 as aestheticised political praxis: 9,
Bikini Kill: 154, 155 67, 75, 77
Bimbox: 125 appropriation by popular culture:
bio queens: 9, 85, 96, 989, 10316 678, 70
biological sex: 32 association with queer identity: 67
Birmingham School: see Centre for as critique of social normativities: 67
Contemporary Cultural Studies defined: 67, 68
(Birmingham) deliberate: 73
Bitch and Animal: 158 emergence of: 9, 67
Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Joh: 178 evolving meaning of: 68
Black Fag (band): 95 features of camp performance: 712
Black Fag (Brisbane): 1845 gender performance interplay: 72
Bleyle, Jody: 1256 gender transgression: 74
Bloolips: 93 high: 69, 912
Body Line (Brisbane): 181 humour: 71, 72
Bom, Patty: see Preece, Patty in literature: 6970
Boot Co. (Brisbane): 181 irony: 71
border crossing: 3 location within queer discourse: 68
Bowie, David: 50, 80, 1212, 199 low: 69, 912
Brand, Adolf: 19, 200 performative qualities: 74
Bratmobile: 154 as product of gay oppression: 71
Brett, Philip: 46, 47 as queer parody: 737, 131
bricolage: 132 relationship to music: 7881
Briefs (Brisbane): 184 sensibility: 80
BrisBears (Brisbane): 179 separation of gender from sexed
British Homosexual Reform Society: 22 body: 72
Britton, Andrew: 72 theatricality: 71, 72
Bronstein, Kate: 215 use of parody: 73, 756, 80
Brooke, Dita: 10316, 194 Campaign Against Moral Persecution
Mitzee Burger: 104 (CAMP): 22
Rock Hard: 104, 115 Candy-Ass Records: 125, 126
Brown Sugar (Brisbane): 17980 carnivalesque: 12930
Browne, Kath: 180, 198 Cave, Nick: 199
Buckland, Fiona: 189 Centre for Contemporary Cultural
burlesque: 84, 878 Studies (Birmingham): 516
Bust magazine: 155 subcultural model: 52
Butchies, The: 158 Chainsaw: 125
Butler, Judith: 304, 84, 95, 100 Chantals House of Shame (Berlin): 208
Index 245

Chauncey, George: 91 culture: 6


Cher: 92 see also dance music; house music
Cherrie magazine: 156 dance music
Chicago School: 516 in gay clubs: 4, 18990
Chisholm, Dianne: 201 dandyism: 70
Cian: 134, 135, 148 Darfur, Blitz: 134, 139, 141, 142
Citizens Welfare Committee Daughters of Bilitis: 22
(Brisbane): 179 Davey, Kate: 97
City Lickers (Brisbane): 183 Davis, Madeline: 96
Cleto, Fabio: 72, 73 Dawron, Dora: 8990
Clinton, Lord Arthur: 69 De Lauretis, Teresa: 26
clothes Dead Man Talking: 1845
gender-bending fashion: 117 Decadance (Brisbane): 184, 189, 195,
gendered dressing: 83 196
see also cross-dressing; drag DeChaine, D. Robert: 11920, 128,
Club Phoenix (Brisbane): 183 129, 1313, 141
clubcultures: 57 Deep Dickollective: 50
Coates, Norma: 149 Deleuze, Jacques: 34
Cockatoo Club (Brisbane): 181, 189 Den, the (Brisbane): 181
Cocker, Jarvis: 80 DeNora, Tia: 41, 43
Cockettes, The: 934 Depeche Mode: 199
Community of the Peculiar: 200 Der Eigene, 19
Connections (Berlin): 205 Devitt, Rachael: 98
Connell, John: 197 Dickinson, Kay: 79
Cook, Nicholas: 41 Dietrich, Marlene: 69, 201
Cooper, Alice: 122 DiFranco, Ani: 118
Cooper, Dennis: 123 Dillon, Matt: 138
Core, Philip: 67 Disposable Toy Boys: 99
Corium dance party: 179 Ditto, Beth: 158, 159, 160
Cottone, Clare: 161, 1623, 164, 167, diva, cult of: 92
170, 171 Diva magazine: 118, 159
counter-culture movement: 22 Dizzygotheca: 196
Crawford, Joan: 92 DJ Neroli: 176
critical insider research: 68 Dobkin, Alix: 153, 156
cross-dressing: 834; in films: 84, 90 Dollimore, Jonathan: 74
Crystals (Brisbane): 189 Donaldson, Stephen: 1223
Cure, The: 78 Donny the Punk, see Donaldson,
Currid, Brian: 191 Stephen
Cusick, Susan: 47, 1012, 112 Doty, Alexander: 36
Cut and Taste (Brisbane): 184, 189, Downes, Julia: 155
195, 196 Downs, Kylie: 138
Cvetkovich, Ann: 159 Downs, Samantha: 134, 135, 146
drag: 4, 83116
Dahl, Ulrika: 8 anarchic: 93
dance clubs: 4, 190 aural signifiers: 100, 103
246 Index

contemporary roles: 9 Fast, Susan: 79


criticism as sexist: 845 Female Menudo, The: 95
as critique of gender performance: feminism
84 lesbian: 152, 154
cross-gender dressing: 834 marginal position of lesbians: 245
disruptive agenda: 102 postmodern: 15
as form of queer agency: 85, 1934 second-wave: 15, 152, 154
in films: 84, 90 third-wave: 150, 153, 154
in gay culture: 916 see also feminist music-making;
importance of music to: 85 lesbian feminism; riot grrrl;
lesbian: 901 womyns music
masquerade balls: 91, 179 feminist music-making 9
origins of: 86103 queer: 4, 14974
poaching of commercial culture: 56 see also riot grrrl; womyns music
role in gay liberation: 95 femininity: 31
underground clubs: 91, 92 see also gender
use of term: 87 Fenster, Mark: 117, 119
see also bio queens; drag kings; Fertile La Toyah Jackson: 95, 125
lip-synching festivals, lesbian: 118
drag kings: 9, 85, 968, 99, 10316 Fifth Column: 125
drag queens: 196 Filiault, Shaun: 187
focus on: 85, 95 Fitzroy, A.T.: see Allatini, Rose
political role of: 92 Fleming, Renee: 92
Draper, Paul: 80 Fluffy (Brisbane): 1823, 189, 191,
Driver, Susan: 55, 151, 159 193
Drummond, Murray: 187 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley: 149
Duggan, Lisa: 379 Folsom Street Fair (Berlin): 202
Dyer, Richard: 71 Fosse, Bob: 199
dykecore: 150, 157 Foucault, Michel: 16, 26, 279, 43, 201
see also riot grrrl, riot dyke Franklin, Aretha: 115
Fretmaster Flawless: 161
EDM: see dance music Freud, Sigmund, 1920
Eldorado (Berlin): 201 Friskies-Warren, Bill: 156
Elliot, Paige: 183 Frith, Simon: 44, 45, 189
Ellis, Havelock: 1718 Fuller, Sophie: 46
Eltinge, Julian: 88, 90
empirical literacy: 6 G.A.Y. (London): 118
Errol, Bert: 8990 Gamman, Lorraine: 100
Etheridge, Melissa: 158, 196 Gamson, Joshua: 26
Evans, Caroline: 100 Gang Stars, see Twang Gang
extreme metal: 59 garbadjeelum: 17980
Garber, Marjorie: 86
Family, The (Brisbane): 183 Garland, Judy: 7980, 92
Fanny: 158 Garvey, Shane: 134, 135, 139, 141,
fashion: see clothes 142, 145, 146
Index 247

gay Gossip, The: 158


aesthetic: 1878 goth: 6, 54
marriage: 36; see also main- subculture 567
streaming of lesbian and gay Gray, Macy: 78
culture Grinder (Brisbane): 183
mobilization of term: 223 Grossberg, Lawrence: 42
music venues in Brisbane, see
LGBTQ culture in Brisbane
musical norms: 11718 Hacienda Hotel (Brisbane): 181
pride songs: 23 Hadleigh, Boze: 456
rights: 36 Halberstam, Judith: 4, 7, 49, 50, 55, 56,
scene, see LGBTQ culture in 96, 97, 100, 157, 15960, 174, 186,
Brisbane 209
gay liberation Hall, Melissa: 104
in Brisbane: 1789 Miss Match: 104
movement: 224, 71 Hall, Stuart: 51
theory: 23 Halperin, David: 16, 35
Gay Liberation Front: 23, 93 Hanna, Kathleen: 155, 158, 159
Gayhane (Berlin): 204 Hannay, John: 181
Gaynor, Gloria: 191 Hargreaves, David: 43
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen: 19 Harris, Keith: 59
gender Hawkins, Justin: 80
biological sex and: 323 Hawkins, Stan: 80
categorisation: 31 Hays Hollywood Motion Picture
doing: 33 Production Code: 90
norms: 32 heavy metal: 6
trouble: 30, 33, 100 see also extreme metal
as performance: 304 Hebdige, Dick: 52, 534, 121
socially constructed: 31 Hedwig and the Angry Inch: 199
subversion: 84; see also drag heternormativity 29: as fixed category:
voice in determining: 1003 2930; see also homosexual/
see also biological sex; sexed body heterosexual binary
genderfuck: 4, 9, 84, 93, 95, 98103, heterosexuality: 29
110, 112 heterosexual matrix: 32
multiple performances of gender: heterotopia: 201
99100 Hex, Celina: 155
Gibson, Chris: 197 Hirschfeld, Magnus: 18, 200
Giffney, Noreen: 35 Hodkinson, Paul: 6, 567
Gilbert, Douglas: 89 Holes and Poles (Brisbane): 179
Gill, John: 189 Holmes, Analea: 104, 1067
Ginoli, Jon: 1234 Inspector Muff: 104
glam rock: 50, 121 Mr Frisky Bob: 104, 1067
global communities of taste: 61 Holy Titclamps: 125
GMF (Berlin): 205 homocore: 119, 124
God Is My Co-Pilot: 125 see also queercore, dykecore
248 Index

Homocore magazine 1223, 125 intersex: 33


homogenization of lesbian and gay see also gender, sexed body
culture, see mainstreaming of Isherwood, Christopher: 6970, 73
lesbian and gay culture
homonormativity: 349 J.D.s: 1245
frames of: 49 Jagger, Mick: 47, 80, 1212
Homophile Movement: 212 Jagose, Annamarie: 22, 24, 26
homophilia: 212 Jarman-Ivens, Freya: 7881
homosexual rights movement: 15, Jay, Karla: 23
213 Jefferson, Tony: 51
homosexual/heterosexual binary: Jeffreys, Elena: 156
2930 Jeffreys, Sheila: 150
homosexuality Jennings, Tom: 122
attempts to cure: 18 jester: 21516
biological model: 23 Jet, Joan: 158
congenital: 1718 Jones, G.B., 1245
cultural triggers: 18 Jones, Paul: 134, 135, 139, 141, 142,
as deviant: 201 146
emergence of: 8 jongleur: 21516
as fixed category: 2930 Joyce, Victoria Moon: 215
history of: 15
inversion: 17 Kabuki: 86
medicalisation, 19, 28 Kaminsky, Elizabeth: 85
psychiatric classification: 21 Kathakali dance drama: 86
socially constructed: 1920 Kearney, Mary Celeste: 152
treatments and therapies: 21 Kennedy, Elizabeth: 96
see also homosexual/heterosexual Khawal dancers: 86
binary Kings Ball (Brisbane): 179
Hot Peaches; 93 Kinsey, Alfred: 20
house music, 1901 Kirsch, Max: 27
in gay clubs: 191 Kleinhans, Chuck: 68, 75, 129, 131
handbag (diva) house: 1912, 198 Klub Kruise (Brisbane): 181
see also dance music, dance clubs Knuckles, Frankie: 191
Howard, John: 142 krautrock: 207
Hutcheon, Linda: 75, 131;
LaBruce, Bruce: 1245
identity Lady Bunny: 94, 95
disidentification: 35 Lady Gaga: 48, 191
messiness of: 356 Ladyfest: 118
music and: 4164 Laing, Dave: 534
queer as 35 lang, k.d.: 50, 118, 158, 196
Inches magazine: 146 lavender menace: 24
Indigo Girls: 158 Le Tigre: 157, 159
Institute of Sexology: 200 Leather Pride Festival (Brisbane): 179
International Lesbian Day: 179 Lecklider, Aaron: 49
Index 249

Lennox, Annie: 78 Livingstone, Jenny: 94


Leon, Francis: 88 Lolly Factory (Brisbane): 184
Leppert, Richard: 47 Lonc, Christopher: 100
Lez Vegas (Brisbane): 114, 183 Lorde, Audre: 30
lesbian Love Parade (Berlin): 202, 211
feminism: 256 L-Tunes (Berlin): 205
music venues, see LGBTQ culture Lurleen: 94
in Brisbane Lyotard, Jean-Franois: 26
roles: 967
sexuality: 256
sound: 196 MacDonald, Raymond: 43
uniform: 196 Madonna: 78, 92, 115, 191
use of space: 1823 Maffesoli, Michel: 57
lesbian and gay studies: 15 mainstream society as mythical norm: 30
Lesbians on Ecstasy: 160 see also heteronormativity
LGBTQ culture in Berlin: 199214 mainstreaming of lesbian and gay
DIY venues: 199 culture: 37, 186
Kreuzberg: 2024 Malbon, Ben: 6
marketing stereotypes: 203 Mallan, Kerry: 75
Prenzlauer Berg: 199, 2024, 205, Mamone, Gina: 156
2067 Manson, Marilyn: 478
scene locations: 202 masculinity: 31
Schneberg: 201, 202, 205 see also gender
Turkish gay scene: 204 masquerade balls: 91, 179
use of queer in Germany: 204 see also Sleaze Ball
utopian potentiality: 20914 maTHRILLda, see Alexander, Matilda
white gay scene: 204 Mattacine Society, The: 22
LGBTQ culture in Brisbane: 17799 Mattilda: 38
alternative events: 1834, 187, McGill, Kylie: 104, 108
1945 Mystery Bound: 104
commercial venues: 1801, 185, McGillis, Rod: 75
187, 194, 196 McIntosh, Mary: 201
dance clubs: 1901 McLary, Susan: 45
DIY events: 184, 187, 1956 McRobbie, Angela: 55, 189
door policies: 184 Men: 159
Indigenous: 17980 Mercury, Freddie: 79
lesbian venues: 1823 Merman, Ethel: 92
locations: 180, 184 Meyer, Moe: 27, 74
preference for gay clubs: 1889 Michigan Womyns Festival: 118
Liberace: 7980 Miell, Dorothy: 43
Lieven, Jo: 104, 108 Millington, June: 158
Bonn Apiteet: 104 Minnelli, Liza: 1, 7980
Elektra Fying: 104 Minogue, Kylie: 76, 191
Lilith Fair: 118 minstrelsy: 84, 878
lip-synching: 9, 99, 1002, 11112, 193 Mint (Brisbane): 182
250 Index

Mitchell, John Cameron: 199 Ono, Yoko: 158


Mitchell, Juliet: 20 opera: 73, 78
Moore, Clive: 177, 1812, 186 Options (Brisbane): 108, 174, 181
moral panics: 478 Outpunk: 125, 127
Morell, Steve: 207 OutRage: 77, 142
Morrissey, Steven: 80
mosh pits, female only: 154 Pansy Division: 1234, 125, 126, 128
Mozart, Amadeus: 78 pantomime: 84, 878
Muoz, Jos Esteban: 1, 27, 35, 38, 48, para-musical elements: 5
62, 209, 212, 213 Park, Fanny: see Park, Frederick
music halls: 88 Park, Frederick: 69
music pastiche: 1312
affect and: 44 Peaches: 159, 199
arena for marginalised voices: 49 Pedro, Muriel & Esther: 95
class and: 445, 54 Peraino, Judith: 44, 100, 153, 217
as collection of interconnected performance
activities: 41 as challenge to social norms: 216
empowering role of: 218 gender as: 304
queerness and: 4550 ideas communicated through
self-expression through: 43, 217 bodies: 43
sense of self and: 43 of subjectivities: 44
sexuality and: 478, 50 performativity
social function of: 445 gender and: 33
as technology of self: 43 sexuality and: 304
theatrical qualities: 45 vs performance: 334
transcendence of everyday and: Peterson, Richard A.: 5960
489 Phelan, Shane: 30, 34
transformative agency: 218 Phoenix, Val: 156
womens role in, 1512 Phranc: 125
see also gay musical norms; Planet Positive (Brisbane): 183
performance; popular music play, sensibility of: 12833
musical theatre Poly Styrene: 153
camp and: 78 Pop, Iggy: 121
popular music
neo-tribes: 57 political role: 54
New York Dolls: 1212 significance to queer identity: 3, 42
Newton, Esther: 101 as system of social practice: 412
nightclubs, gay-identified: 11819 theatricality and: 445
Nihilson, Deke Motif: 122 as threat to social order: 48
northern soul: 54 working-class identity and: 445,
54
OHara, Craig: 121 see also subcultures
Olivia Records: 153, 157 power and sexuality: 279
Omo (Brisbane): 195, 208 Preece, Patty: 161, 162, 164, 170, 171
One Inc.: 22 Presley, Elvis: 47
Index 251

Pride Fair (Brisbane): 144, 168 sensibilities: 12833


punk: 9, 534, 58, 117, 1203, 153 as subculture: 126, 127
anarcho-punk: 120 theorisation: 1289
DIY production: 120 zines: 125
focus on self-expression: 1201 see also Anal Traffic; punk; queer
gender accommodation: 122 punk
hardcore: 120, 122 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: 186
homophobia: 123 Queer Film Festival (Brisbane): 179
musicality: 121 Queer Nation: 13, 77
post-punk: 207 queer punk: 4, 9, 117, 122, 48
sexuality: 121 as alternative to gay culture: 119
social marginalisation and: 121 identity: 120
see also queer punk marginality and: 117
see also punk; queercore
QNews 183 queer scenes: 62, 176214
Qsesh (Brisbane): 184 emergence of: 1778
Queen: 79 local: 9, 176
Queens Ball (Brisbane): 179 performative critique and: 209
Queensland Positive People: 183 relationship to place 186
queer role of music in: 176214
as aesthetic quality: 1415 sexual identification and: 177
challenge to normalization: 14, 38 translocal: 9, 208, 20914
counter-publics: 9 transnational 54
culture: 367 utopian potentiality: 20914
deconstructive tendencies: 36 see also LGBTQ culture in
defined: 13 Brisbane
discourse: 279 queer self-making: 10
as identity: 15, 35 Queer to Queer (Brisbane): 184
improvisation: 345 queer world-making: 9, 38, 216
multiple levels of functioning: 14 role of music: 10, 4950
as perspective: 15 sites of: 62
as political approach: 14, 36 tactics of: 63
purpose: 14 Queer Zine Archive Project: 125
studies: 26 Queercore Blitz: 1267
subjectivities: 36 Queeriosity (Brisbane): 180
theory: 9, 15, 2639, 153 Queerline Media: 202
use of term: 1314, 27
Queer as Folk: 190 Radical Faeries: 77
Queer Control Records: 125 Rage (West Hollywood):
queercore: 4, 11920, 1238 Redhead, Steve: 52, 53
carnivalesque approach: 12833 Reed, Lou: 121
DIY production ethos: 125, 128, 130 Reich, June L.: 99
focus on self-narratives: 127 remix culture: 190
lyrics: 126 Reynolds, Robert: 23
power of subversion: 1301 Reynolds, Simon: 60
252 Index

Rich, Adrienne: 25 sexual deviance: 8


Ridiculous Theatrical Company, The: 93 history: 1626
riot dyke: 9, 157-8 sexual identity
riot grrrl: 9, 1501, 15360 labelling of: 34
flexible self-identification: 154 Sexual Offences Act 1967 (UK): 77
outreach to adolescents: 155 sexuality
pro-female stance: 154 as performance: 312, 34
separatist practices: 154 biological: 1718
views on feminism: 154, 155 history of: 16
zines: 151 Kinsey scale: 20
crossover with queercore: 15560 liberation movement: 24
Riot Grrrl Ink: 1567 music and: 478
Rodger, Gillian: 89 psychiatric interest in: 1617
Rofes, Eric: 37 sexual labels: 1617
Rollo, Paul: 134 Shank, Barry: 589
Royal Brisbane Boys Club: 181 Shapiro, Eve: 99
RuPaul: 94, 95 Shoemaker, Deanna: 128
Rupp, Leila: 87 Show Your Bones (Brisbane): 184, 185
Rycenga, Jennifer: 3 Siberry, Jane: 118
Siegessule: 202
Samson, J.D.: 159 sister act: 889
saunas and cruise clubs: 181 Sister George: 125
Scarlet (Brisbane): 183 Skank (Brisbane): 184, 195
scavenger methodology: 4 skinheads: 122
scenes: 9, 5660, 176214 Sleaze Ball (Brisbane): 179
incongruences: 64 Slits, The: 153
local: 59, 60 social protest
translocal: 9, 5964, 208 music and: 3
types of: 5960 Sontag, Susan: 701, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78
virtual: 60 Spencer, Amy: 119
see also queer scenes Spivak, Gayatri: 158
Schacht, Steven: 85 Splash (New York): 119
SchwuZ (Berlin): 207 Split Britches: 93
Scientific-humanitarian Committee: Sportsman Hotel (Brisbane): 181, 182,
200 193
Search and Destroy: Queer Noises: Stefani, Gwen: 78
207, 208 Steinem, Gloria: 155
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky: 13, 116 Sternweiler, Andreas: 200
Seidman, Steven: 23 Steward, Sue: 121
self-aestheticisation: 9 Stirner, Max, 19
self-articulation: 9 Stonewall riots: 22, 68, 76, 923
Senelick, Laurence: 94 Stooges: 121
sexed body: 323 straight edge: 120
ambiguous: 33 see also punk
intersex: 33 Straw, Will: 58, 59
Index 253

Streisand, Barbra: 92, 95, 190 experimentation: 109


style: 612 gender anarchy: 106
stylistic commodities: 53 gender-troubling performance: 110,
subcultural theory: 50, 5164 111
critiques of: 52, 534, 56 musicality: 10911, 116
gender and sexuality: 55, 56 Our Tribe: 11416
masculinist bias: 556 playful feel: 105
queer music and: 51 political role: 108
see also Centre for Contemporary queering of popular songs: 116
Cultural Studies reclamation of camp and drag:
subcultural capital: 6 11213
subcultures: 42 use of rock music: 11011
incongruences: 64 twinks: 187
as modalities of resistance: 42 two-spirits: 86
see also scenes Uffie: 159
Suede: 78 Ulrich, Karl Heinrich: 17, 18
Sullivan, Nikki: 14, 18, 23, 27, 334 utopian potentiality: 20914, 218
Sycamore, Matt Bernstein, see Mattilda
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Vaginal Crme Davis: 94, 95
767 variety: 84, 878
gender impersonation in: 8990
Taboo (Brisbane): 184, 189, 195, 196 vaudeville: 84, 878, 10
Taylor, Verta: 87 gender impersonation in: 8990
T Bar (Brisbane): 183 double-voiced vocalists: 8990
Team Dresch: 1256, 157, 158 Velvet Condoms, The: 207
technologies of the self: 44 Velvet Underground, The: 121
Tennant, Neil: 80 Verdour, Mona: 161
Terminus (Brisbane): 180 Villis (Berlin): 2067
Third Sex: 125 vocalisation: 99103
Thomas, Allan: 78 see also lip-synching
Thompson, Mark: 94 voice
Thomson, Sheona: 182 role in gender determination: 1001
Thornton, Sarah: 192 Von Krafft-Ebing, Richard, 17, 18
Toms Bar (Berlin): 2056 Von Thorndyke, Dame Sybil: 179
transnational culture Vu Du (Brisbane): 183
impact on music: 54
transvestitism: 86 Walters, Suzanne: 150
see also drag Warehouse (Chicago): 191
Tribe 8: 125, 126, 128, 157 Warner, Michael: 29, 37, 63
Twang Gang: 9, 97, 101, 10316, 194 Weinstein, Deena: 6
camp sensibility: 112, 116 Western, Lillie: 89
concerns about sexual identity Westphal, Karl: 17, 18
rigidity: 106, 108, 111 Wet (Brisbane): 181
drag cabaret style: 104 Whiteley, Sheila: 3, 177
empowerment: 105 Whitesell, Lloyd: 46
254 Index

Whittle, Stephen: 99 womyns music: 150, 151, 1523, 171


Wickham Hotel (Brisbane): 118, 181, DIY ethos: 151
182, 189, 193, 194, 195 see also feminist music-making;
Wigstock: 945 riot grrrls
Wilde, Oscar: 70 Wowereit, Klaus: 202
Williams, Robbie: 80
Williamson, Cris: 153, 158 X-Ray Spex: 154
Williford, Daniel: 612
Willox, Annabelle: 97 y y: 78
Wilson, Angela: 157 Young, Allen: 23
Wiminfest: 118 youth, as contested category: 545
Wissenschaftlich-humanitres
Komitee, 18 Zia: 196
Wobensmith, Matt: 1278

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