On The NUS Banning Cross Dressing Sisters

I am furious today. I am furious at this article and it is going to show in this post.

It is going to be sweary and it is going to be raw and it is going to use shocking transphobic language to make points against transphobia.

You have been warned. If you are still reading, buckle up. It is going to be a bumpy ride.

Now.

Imagine being a woman who most of the world considers 'born a man'. Or a 'chick with a dick'.

Now imagine that you have braved going out in a dress, You have taken a long time getting ready and though you are nervous, you are in an environment that is more welcoming than those times you hid at the back of the bus or took a train hours later than you could have just to miss rush hour and the inevitable stares of people who think you are a freak and are playing a barely mirth suppressed game of Guess The Gender.

This is where people come to be educated and you are starting to feel at home here. So you go out in your dress and your carefully done make up. You may pass, you may not, but for this moment you feel good and it doesn't matter.

Hold that thought. Hold that feeling of feeling as good about yourself as you get.

Got it? Good.

Now imagine a bunch of rugby players crash past you wearing lurid dresses, bad make up, worse wigs and full facial hair.

Wow are you not going to feel good about yourself. Damn, you are not going to feel safe because this is what they think you are. This is what they think you look like. They think your gender identity is a vulgar, ugly joke. They think you are a man in a dress. A chick with a dick.

And bless their stupid fucking misogynist stockings they think they are being enlightened. Not for them the fear of being called gay! They are comfortable in their sexuality (until they 'accidentally' get off with a trans woman, 'realise' then beat the shit out of her) and wearing a dress proves it.

(And in the weirdest bit of whatabouttery I have EVER seen it is rugby players that the article sticks up for. Not the women of NUS conference who are trying to include all women and non binary people. WTAF?)

Now you are hiding again. A woman that no one protects. One that is more likely to commit suicide. One that is more likely to self harm. One that doesn't want to leave the house because everyone is looking.

So, what should we do about it?

A good start is to highlight the issue and make sure that women and men are aware that their actions might hurt others to the point of causing them actual harm. To try to take steps to make sure that a man wearing a dress as a drag act is not seen as a funny thing but as art. To try to take steps to make sure that trans women are not scared. To try to take steps to make sure that University is a safe space.

And that is exactly what Women's NUS conference was doing. And rather than applaud that (either by clapping or using jazz hands, and seriously it really isn't that big a deal why they went to it, if it helped delegates feel more comfortable about being present or speaking, wave those digits!) they have been ridiculed and lambasted by their elders and 'betters' about the contents of the motions.

For fuck's sake grow up.

That they will no longer say sisters as it excludes non binary people is a good thing and goes a long way further than anyone else has done to encourage safe spaces and rather than have a go at them for it the rest of the movement, both trade union and feminists should be embarrassed about it.

'BUT THEY ARE STUDENTS, WHY ARE THEY NOT DEBATING EDUCATION STUFF?' I hear some cry.

They have shown us right up by daring to question how education is accessed. They have dared to question the status quo. They have dared to insist that all people get an equal shot at it. That EVERYONE gets to participate.

If this isn't Education 101 I don't know what is.

I keep hearing that the young people are our future. They just blew this trope out of the water and showed us that they are not waiting, that the future is now and they can't be bothered to wait for the rest of us to put it through 1000 committees before we make a decision.

They may not be able to enforce it on campus but they can sure as hell make sure that it is talked about and seen as a bad thing, It also means that they will be able to more easily challenge behaviours and language in their own and other people's meetings. PCS has policy on abortion, does this mean that they can enforce it on everyone? No. But does that mean they shouldn't have the policy? No. We know how this works. We steer the conversation by having these policies and you know this.

Good fucking on them I say. They give me hope. They are actually walking the walk.

And I will wave my jazz hands for them all day every day.

Deeva xxx

ps. If What about the rugby players is what you are using to put women down then hand in your feminist card. Really. Do it now. You fucking irrellevance.

Male gaze in not-the-solution-to-girls’-poor-body-image shocker! - Guest Post

This guest post is a response to a... well, I will let Shona and Glen explain it.

Today the BBC and Telegraph reported that a Psychologist, Dr Aric Sigman, has used the run up to the Easter teachers’ unions conference season to promote his idea for a role for boys in addressing the poor body image of girls. This idea involves introducing classes in schools where older boys explain to girls what it is they find attractive in girls:

“It would be helpful for them to explain that what they find attractive is not just physical qualities but also qualities like caring, the sound of a girl’s voice and her body language.

“Boys don’t have in any way near as rigid a view on what an attractive figure should be and they value many other physical qualities, including eyes, hair, and body language.”

There are so many things wrong with Sigman’s suggestion that it’s hard to know where to start, so let’s break it down:

1. The assumption that male desire is desired by girls and women
The entire basis of Sigman’s rationale is a common but drastic misconception that girls’ and women’s poor body image and disordered eating is due to a misunderstanding with regards to what boys and men find sexually attractive. This assumption is understandable to an extent, from a man in a society where women’s reasons for existing are usually represented through a male-centric lens, from Eve being created from Adam’s rib to every film that fails the Bechdel Test. However, the reality (like all social phenomena) is a much more complex interplay within and between:

Social structures (i.e. capitalism’s use of women’s unpaid reproductive labour – cooking, cleaning and caring)
Culture and ideology (i.e. media representations of femininity)
Individual factors (i.e. experiences of bullying or abuse, or biopsychosocial sensitivities)

Attempting to teach girls a marginally-expanded definition of desirable femininity through the lens of the male gaze could be hugely counterproductive. Many girls begin to develop eating disorders around puberty and one explanation for this is fear and anxiety associated with the sexualisation that comes with developing a sexually mature body. Furthermore, eating disorders are higher amongst girls who have experienced sexual abuse, and sexual harassment of girls by boys has become normalised as ‘teasing’ in many schools. Now in the context of these factors – imagine again the effect that Sigman’s intervention could have on girls. The fact is that most women and girls are not interested in the sexual attentions of most men and boys. This assumption ties into a wider discourse that defends street harassment as complimentary, and measures the plausibility of women’s rape allegations by their appearance.

2. Appealingness as a source of self-worth
A second assumption of Sigman’s intervention is that girls can gain self-worth or resilience against poor body image and eating disorders through seeing themselves as appealing to boys. First of all, this is simply inaccurate, and many interventions to improve body image resilience focus on encouraging self-identification and -affirmation of one’s positive characteristics not about body shape, size, or appearance (i.e. kindness). In fairness, Sigman does mention some non-body characteristics which boys might mention they find appealing in girls, but the ones he does mention are heavily gendered (i.e. caring) – more on that later, first let’s focus on the two core problems with this approach:

Firstly, it casts girls’ self-worth as contingent on male approval. This promotes an external locus of control – encouraging girls to seek external validation, and putting the power over their self-esteem firmly in the hands of boys and men, who outside of Sigman’s classroom context are unlikely to cast their objectification of girls’ bodies in a consistently positive light. This in turn creates girls and women who are more receptive to advertising subtexts which imply ‘no one will love you unless you buy our product’ – a profitable but harmful side-effect of Sigman’s approach.

Secondly, the focus on girls’ attractiveness and appealingness to boys as a source of self-worth undermines the possibility of girls building pride and self-confidence in otherwise positive characteristics which boys either don’t recognise as important, or find actively threatening or unappealing.

Focusing on the approval of boys as a path for girls to build positive body image and resilience against eating disorders is a poison chalice.

3. What’s ‘attractive’, why, and why is that a problem?
The things that Sigman lists as possibly non-body-shape related characteristics that boys might find attractive in girls are all, by their very nature, problematic. The very act of picking out characteristics like a shopping list, rather than treating people as whole, is steeped in consumer ideology. Desire is also mediated socially, culturally and structurally, and is tied up with prevailing norms of what is valued in terms of masculinity and femininity (and sexuality, race, and class). So what do we end up with in Sigman’s intervention? Well, boys might find girls attractive for their “caring, the sound of a girl’s voice and her body language” or their “eyes, hair, and body language” – we can read into this a perpetuation of several sexist norms which are incredibly unhelpful ideas for girls to internalise any more than they already do:

Women as carers – the ones who are expected to the emotional labour and self-sacrificingly support others’ development at the expense of their own
Women as soft, passive, and submissive – talking softly (and so are easy to ignore, interrupt, or talk over in meetings) and being physically accommodating, taking up as little space as possible
Women as “naturally” beautiful – spending a lot of time and money trying to accentuate their features in a way that is subtle enough to be imagined natural (beauty standards are also often steeped in racism due to histories of colonialism)

Furthermore, if we leave girls self-worth up to boys to determine based on their own socially-mediated desires, what things might be excluded? Girls have many characteristics from which they should derive pride and self-worth which boys may find unattractive; a lot of these characteristics are considered unattractive because they fall into the ‘masculine’ side of the gender role binary, and to some degree girls who exude these characteristics could present a masculinity threat to some boys who feel they are not as capable of embodying these aspects of the gender role.

Some ‘masculine’ coded characteristics, potentially unattractive to boys, include intelligence, independence, physical strength, and unruliness – all things in which girls should take great pride, and which will help them grow into women who have exciting, fulfilling and productive lives. The masculinisation of characteristics conducive to wellbeing and liberation encourages girls to actively avoid developing themselves in these areas, for example we see teenage girls ‘dumbing down’ in school in a way that teenage boys just don’t – the long term effect of girls not being encouraged to develop their strengths regardless of the opinions of boys is an alarming thought, and its role in upholding unequal gender relations is surely significant.

4. Heteronormativity
Finally, we have the issue of heteronormativity. This is really very low-hanging fruit with regards to criticising Sigman’s intervention, but it must be mentioned. A significant minority of the girls and boys involved in any such intervention would be homosexual, and even in the context of more and more children coming-out at an early age, many of these teenagers are likely to still be in the closet, and potentially subject to experiencing a degree of internalised stress at attempting to ‘pass’ as straight during and following these sessions. Furthermore, girls who don’t attempt to perform femininity and teenagers assigned female who do not identify as such, might be subject to additional internal distress or external bullying and harassment due to the gender and sexuality norms deeply embedded in the ideology of Sigman’s intervention.

In the Telegraph article, Sigman is quoted as saying "Men are often surprised to discover how even the most intelligent, capable, rational and empowered women can be laid low by body dissatisfaction. Many of us just don't get it." Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Sigman is on the money here – he just doesn’t get it. A lot of boys and men just don’t get it. Sigman has undertaken to find a solution not to the actual problem(s), but to his biased and erroneous misunderstanding of the problem, and in doing so has come up with an intervention which could cause actual harm. The path to addressing girls’ body image problems should instead involve listening to girls and women, looking at evidence from critical research in this field, and working towards structural, cultural, and interpersonal solutions to a culture which perpetuates and profits from toxic femininities.

This is Shona. Couldn't find a picture of Glen.

Shona and Glen are post-grad students researching Marxist sexual politics and body image respectively. They work together at a university in Leeds and talk about feminism loads.

Short Stories And Tall Tales - Guest Post Collaboration

Something a little bit different this time. My lovely friend Tina is really tiny. I am pretty tall "!for a girl" (ew, fuck off)

It occurred to me that these were two sides of the same Traditional Beauty Ideals coin.

So, I am posting her thoughts about being short and then mine about being tall.

Amazing the parallels... One might almost posit that the problem is Patriarchy.

Short Stories - Appearanceism

The brilliantly written guest post that Deeva published recently about fat shaming made me think about the shaming, taunting and general bullying that occurs about not only being fat, but one’s appearance in general.  I have thus invented the word “appearanceism”.

I have heard and seen people being berated for all manner of appearance “defects” in my life.  Big nose, big ears, short, tall, fat thin – you name it, someone’s got something to say about it and it’s hardly ever good.  It’s none of anyone else’s business what you look like.  If they don’t like it, they don’t have to look.

I have come across a lot of stick in my life for my size.  I am now, as a fully growed up adult (allegedly) 4’10” tall.  Yes, that’s short.  I know that.  I don’t need to be told on a daily basis with a gasp of incredulity that I’m small.  Being small has its advantages but also a lot of disadvantages.

When I was at primary school, it quickly became the case that I couldn’t go outside at playtime and interact with the other kids.  This is because they insisted on picking me up and swinging me around – just because they could.  This was extremely dangerous for me in case I was dropped so I had to go and stand outside the staff room each and every break time.  Fun?  No, absolutely not.  Even now, people will pick me up and hold me aloft like a rag doll.  It’s really, really annoying!

I am always being asked if I buy children’s clothes.  The reaction when I say no is often an angry “why not?”  Er, well, because firstly they LOOK like children’s clothes and secondly, children do not have boobs and hips so they simply do not fit!  And you simply wouldn’t believe how many people will argue this point!

On a daily basis, people think it’s funny to continually go on and on about my height.  Even people I consider to be close friends just will not let it lie.  It’s boring, it’s tiresome, it’s annoying and often very upsetting.  I’m a person, not a measurement and not a figure of fun for others’ amusement.  I try to take it all in good part but I’m 50 years old now and I think it’s about time I was treated like an adult and not like a child simply because I am the height of one.  If I react badly, I’m told I have no sense of humour.

Another bone of contention is weight.  I don’t like to say what I weigh because people say it isn’t enough.  However, I am in proportion and my BMI is within the normal range for whatever that’s worth (a whole different topic!).  I follow a careful eating plan – I won’t call it a diet.  If I refuse cake, biscuits, dessert etc, once again the hostility often appears: “Pah! You don’t need to lose weight!  Look at you!  You can eat what you like” (usually said whilst waving the contraband under my nose).  No, I can’t eat whatever I like.  I am the shape I am because I eat carefully and I exercise. A lot.

I am lucky to be relatively “normal” looking, height notwithstanding.  Some poor folk are unlucky enough to have some sort of prominent birthmark or, as I say above, ears or nose rather larger than average.  These “faults” come under a huge amount of fire from those who consider themselves perfect enough to be able to pass judgement.  In my youth I knew one poor lass who was universally called Splodgeface due to a birthmark on her face.  I didn’t know her very well but I saw her in tears more than once.

Another target for a lot of people is ginger hair.  What?  Why?  What is wrong with having red hair?  It’s beautiful and yet, somehow, it’s perceived as wrong.  I just don’t get it and I hate the fact that these gorgeous looking people are persecuted for it.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture.  A person’s appearance is not what they are about.  What they are about is the personality inside.  That person has feelings and emotions and does not deserve, for example, to have “Oi, Big Ears, where’s Noddy?” yelled after them.  Stop. Engage brain before opening gob.  Then maybe take the time to find out what the “weirdo” is really like before you go insulting them.

Tall Tales - Internalising Being Unfeminine

My height has long been an issue for me. I am the tallest one in my family. A family of petite women.

I'm taller than both my parents and all of my siblings. Including the boys.

I'm taller than my female cousin.

I'm taller than most women.

And boy, have I felt it.

Why? Because society makes tall women feel unfeminine. Other.

There are exceptions of course, supermodels are tall and held up as bastions of beauty. But what if you're as tall as one, but not as slim or 'beautiful'? (don't get me started on body policing and definitions of beauty) Then you have failed at being feminine. Again.

And heaven forbid you are taller than your man! This is still noteworthy in a society that sees tall women as less feminine. I tower over The Lovely when I am in heels. Should it matter? No. Have I been conditioned to believe it does? Yes. Do I let it stop me wearing heels? Sometimes.

So I buy beautiful shoes then just look at them.

As a teenager, surrounded by petite feminine women I was referred to as gangly and lanky. I have always had quite a deep, husky voice too, and hence was called manly. I was ungraceful, a tomboy, not a proper girl. That I walked around stooped over at the shoulders in a vain attempt to disguise my height just added to this.

There were those (usually men) who referred to me as Amazonian and Statuesque, but as I had already internalised the messages from my family this felt like a polite way of saying unfeminine. A bit like saying big boned instead of fat (don't even start me on fat shaming).

And what of being an Amazon? What images does that word bring? Strong? Sassy? Warrior like? Sexy? You know what, not only is that a hell of a thing to live up to, but it suggests that tall women can't have their insecurities just like everyone else. It also enables the patronising and infantalising of short women who struggle to be taken seriously. My friend Wendy put it best when she said 'when people can look down on you physically they do it mentally too.'

Sometimes my height has been fetishised. There are men and women who positively drool over my height. That made me feel like an object, a freak and contributed to my feeling of otherness.
ROLL UP! ROLL UP AND SEE THE TALL WOMAN IN HER HEELS WITH HER LONG LEGS AND MASSIVE BOOBS! TWO TICKETS FOR A POUND!

Just no. I'm not here to be objectified or fetishised.

This may be a shock, but our height does not define our personality any more than our hair or eye colour. Redheads are not more fiery, green eyes don't mean you are more passionate. And I say this as someone with green eyes.

It's just genetics. I'm tall. Society should just get over it. I know I will.

And I will wear the beautiful shoes.

So if you really feel you must describe me in terms of my height, how about just saying tall. That'll do, you know.

And fuck anyone who is threatened by my being tall. It says more about you than it does about me.

On Consent - Guest Post

This guest post is anonymous for a reason. Enjoy is the wrong word. Read and weep. Better still, learn and teach.

On Monday the 2nd of March 2015 I was raped. I wasn’t down a dark alleyway. I wasn’t attacked. I wasn’t in any of the godawful stereotypical situations that society associates with being raped. I was celebrating a friend’s birthday at a club, I met somebody, we went back to my house. I repeatedly said that the invitation did not extend to a cosy conversation between his sexual organs and mine. When my vocalisations weren’t heard I said no. I said stop. Multiple times I said these words. I still wasn’t listened to. I lay there, staring at my ceiling (there’s a crack which I noticed and put getting it fixed on my mental to do list). Giving up my protestations, realising that it wasn’t going to stop and that no wasn’t going to be taken for an answer I waited for it to be over.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t shout. I didn’t fight. I said no and I wasn’t listened to. I was used as a vessel for his sexual gratification. A means to an end. I was the one left to deal with the consequences of his actions. I paid for emergency contraception and I will have to book an appointment for an STI check. I will do all this while he continues with his day to day life, perhaps not even recognising what he did.
I decided to write about this, not only to try and figure out my own feelings about it all but to tell people that rape, that non-consensual sexual acts, don’t always happen to people in the way television, films and the media would have you think. I haven’t cried. I haven’t shouted or screamed. I don’t even really dislike him, after all he seemed like a ‘nice’ enough guy for me to invite him back in the first place.

So I’m writing this partly as a tool to sift through my own feelings but also to demand a more open and realistic dialogue about consent and about rape culture.

After a couple of day’s reflection I’m bloody angry. I’m angry that I don’t feel comfortable taking this to the police, I’m angry that I’m sat here stewing and he probably has little recognition for what he’s even done, I’m angry that had this happened to me two years ago I wouldn’t have recognised it for what it was.

There is no right or wrong way for survivors to deal with this sort of situation. I want people who read this and who can potentially recognise that they have had a similar sexual experience to me, that they have nothing to feel guilty about. That if you didn’t really realise at the time that your voice wasn’t being listened to, that your body was being violated it’s not your fault. The blame is on the perpetrator.

The blame is on the patriarchy.

We live in a society where for centuries upon centuries men have been viewed as the gender with sexual desires that need to be sated at whatever cost. That women function as tools for their pleasure. This has changed somewhat over the last 50 years. People are actually open to discussing women’s sexuality, that women have sexual desires too, and despite some men not knowing the difference between a woman’s clitoris and her nose (jabbing is not a thing gents!), society as a whole realises that no matter your gender you can have lots of sexual desires or simply none at all.

As a society we recognise this but we don’t recognise the need for comprehensive education about consent from birth. As a society we don’t recognise that consent can be rescinded at any moment. That an invitation to my room is not an invitation into my vagina. It is these thoughts and attitudes that silence survivors, that make them even doubt what actually happened to them.

We blame the survivor. We tell them to be more careful, to not drink as much in future, to learn their lesson about bringing people they don’t know back to their house. When did it become okay to say this instead of insisting that people Do. Not. Rape. Of course, in an abstract way we all know this is wrong but a sense of entitlement makes perpetrators act differently.

We need to make sure that young boys and men know that pressuring a woman into having sex with them is not okay. That if someone says no once, they mean no. They should not have to repeat themselves. We need to make sure that young boys and men do not indulge in selective hearing. If your sexual partner says no or stop, guess what? You fucking well stop. If you then get angry because you’ve been told to stop and your pissed because you didn’t get to finish, take a step, raise your hand and slap yourself across the face hard because you’re being a douche and why would you even want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to anyway? Your male entitlement and what you perceive as your right to sexual gratification whenever and however you want does not outweigh, my feelings, my body and my right to say no at any point.

I’ve had conversations with women where they’ve had sexual experiences that they did not want to have. That they’ve felt guilty for not providing sex and so have done it anyway. This makes me sick. It makes me sick to think that my friends have done this, that our sisters, mothers and daughters may also have done this. That they’ve felt a man’s sexual desire has outweighed their right to say no. That they have felt bad for not wanting sex but have done it anyway.

Our conversations about consent in society have to change. We have to take the focus away from survivors and onto perpetrators. We need to be teaching our children consent, be talking to our teenagers about consent, be having a dialogue with our partners. We must talk about consent in our individual spheres but we must also demand that the rhetoric about consent and rape culture changes in the media and wider society. We must be demanding that our police service does not ask a survivor what they were wearing, how much they had to drink or doubting whether they gave consent or not. We must be demanding that people, our institutions and our government believe the survivor and vow to change our culture and societal attitudes towards rape and consent.

Rape doesn’t just happen to people in the dark as an attack. Rape is the result of a society which perpetuates ideas of male entitlement. It is not necessarily a pre-meditated act. It is an act where someone decides to, quite simply, not listen.

On My Experiences As A Minority In The Metal Community - Guest Post

Now, this one is from a very good friend of mine called Erica. He is awesome and funny and ridiculously talented at art and being an all round good egg.

This made me shout FUCK YES! on a packed train today. Enjoy!!

I am a metalhead. I am also queer (a more accurate description would be something like “bisexual and genderqueer”, but I prefer to just use the word queer*). These are two aspects of my identity and they are both very important to me. Within myself, I know the two are compatible. Outside in the world, I feel like an irregularity, a weird lump in a wooden carving that quickly gets glossed over.

The “metal community” is a weird one. I guess it’s pretty comparable to a nerd culture in many ways- a group of people brought together by a shared interest (in this case, a type of music). People celebrate their affiliation with this subculture through the way they dress, going to events like gigs and festivals, etc.

The “metal community” also has a history of supposedly “supporting the underdog” as it were. Many people who feel drawn to the subculture felt “different” growing up, or felt like outsiders, and I think many would agree there is a feeling of solidarity, co-operation, openness and tolerance within the community as a result of this. The S.O.P.H.I.E. campaign (Stamp Out Prejudice, Hate and Intolerance Everywhere) for example was set up to promote tolerance following the tragic death of Sophie Lancaster, who was attacked for the way she dressed. On the whole, it is a space which is largely accepting of anyone who is “different”.

But that’s not the whole story. Fuck knows how this happened, but the metal community somehow manages to be super lovely and welcoming, and simultaneously the most disgustingly hyper-masculine dick-worship fest you could ever imagine. It’s nothing new, really- just a different colour of patriarchy. A very fucking loud and obvious one. In ways I like it, because it’s so blatant. No one’s trying to deny how male dominated metal is (unlike people constantly claiming there is equality in the rest of society la la la the patriarchy’s a myth la la la protect my privilege please).

So what does this mean for me as a queer person? How do I exist in this space? With difficulty, is the answer. For example: how do I act in a way that reflects my gender, so that others see me the way I want to be seen? Part of me really wants to engage in the hyper-masculine dick worship fest, because it’s really fun, and I really enjoy getting thrown around by massive men and chugging pints of cider out of some drummer’s disgusting walking boot (no, really, I do). I like being a boy. But I know I shouldn’t have to do this to prove my masculinity, and this sort of attitude to masculinity actively supports oppressive structures (hint: ones that oppress me). I don’t like that.

I dare to exist in this space as genderqueer, and that alone is pretty fucking subversive. I want people to SEE my gender, but they don’t. People are conditioned to ask “are you a boy or a girl?”, to do a quick calculation in their head (“well that hair is pretty short… but then there’s those legs… not much breasts or hips… the face shape… soft arms…. Make-up? Hmmm I’ll go with girl” (No you fucker my body is not some fucking puzzle for you to solve)). It makes me feel so conspicuous. And people let me know I’m conspicuous.

If you’re not familiar with mosh pits, it’s like a very rough version of the hokey cokey. I thoroughly recommend them. Very cathartic. But I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had men run into issues with my gender in the pit (Note: their issues). It is scary for them to see a queer body transgressing the roles of its perceived gender in a space normally for white, cisgender, straight, able-bodied men. It would be easier for them if I didn’t exist, because they could continue their hyper-masculine dick worship fest without questioning what’s going on. People try very hard to ignore the existence of queer bodies. We’re made invisible. But they can’t ignore me when I physically fall into them. So they panic and say things like “wow, good on you for being in the pit!” and “Don’t see many people like you in the pit!” or give me patronising high-fives. They panic because they realise the tolerant community they prided themselves so much in is completely alienating to that queer kid and they start choking on their own hypocrisies. Save your breath. I don’t need you to tell me how much you accept me in the pit. I will mosh because I fucking want to, not to validate your desire to appear accepting. I know you’re trying to be nice, but I’m here to get drunk and fuck about, not have a nice equality and diversity chat (hint: I’m not nice, I’m angry).

But at the same time, I relish this split second of visibility, uncomfortable as it is, because it’s all I get. I think I have had one conversation with a trans metalhead, ever. I saw his home made back-patch that said “Fuck heterosexuality, yes homo, hail satan” and thought FINALLY my sort of person! We had a nice chat about how it’s very uncomfortable moshing in a binder, how it’s hard to look metal when long hair makes you dysphoric, and other trans metalhead problems. It was great, y’know, getting to talk to someone with similar experiences. That one time. For five minutes.

I am sure there are loads of us out there. It’s just hard to find each other when we’re silenced, made invisible, ignored, avoided or excluded. If the metal community wants to continue to claim to be inclusive and tolerant, it’s time it did more for minorities. Don’t give me that “but we can’t help it, there are so few women/queer/trans/people of colour in the subculture” bullshit. There are loads. You just don’t want to look at us.

*NOTE: I self-identify as queer, and wish to be referred to as queer, but not all LGBTQIA+ people do. The word has a history as a slur. In this case, I am giving you permission to call me this. Please do not suddenly start throwing the word around willy nilly if it’s not yours to use.

Erica, 18. Likes: Cats, art, cycling, toilet humour. Dislikes: Cheese, underwear, trimming my toenails.