The Manics and Gender Identity, Part 1
There is a lot to unpack in Nicky and Richeyâs early lyrics pertaining to gender, particularly in terms of identifying with women. Richey approaches the subject â as he is wont to do â with regard to the exploitation and degradation of the female image, while Nickyâs attitude is more inquisitive and casual. Both use lyrics to express their own personal âWhat if?â
Make no mistake: Iâm not claiming that either Nicky or Richey is/was non-cis or trans or anything other than curious. But itâs clear from their personal lyric struggles and hard-won lifestyle choices that this was a different time they were living in. In the 1990s, gender identity was not a topic with any kind of mainstream recognition, at least beyond those who wanted a âsex changeâ or girls who were considered âone of the boysâ. I think itâs fascinating, at least from my perspective, to go back and examine the themes of gender dysphoria, identity, and frustration in lyrics written before any of it was part of popular conversation, and in a way that emphasized the then absolute cultural disconnect between desire and society.
Also, itâs important to note that both Nicky and Richey have presented gender in ways that donât have anything to do with lyrics. Nicky is comfortable in traditionally female clothing and wears dresses on and off stage; both band members wore makeup and feathers on a regular basis. Iâve tried to write about gender in terms of lyrics only, but at times I do take examples from visual media.
Finally, keep in mind that yours truly is non-binary, and the discussion will hopefully not reek of a cis person watching queer men from behind bars in a zoo.
Special thanks to @sinisterrouge for vetting this before I posted <3
Although Richey seemed to find comfort in claiming that his lyrics were about the larger world â in the case of Little Baby Nothing, feminism and the way women are perceived in media â a closer look usually reveals a personal stake. When I discussed the meaning of this song previously, I emphasized that the âLittle baby nothingâ in question is clearly Richey himself, writing in the first person and deconstructing his own image to align with a kind of mindless female groupie used for sex.
My mind is dead, everybody loves me
Wants a slice of me
Hopelessly passive and compatible
Need to belong, oh the roads are scary
Hold me in your arms
I wanna be your only possession
Richey often refers to himself as a âslutâ and a âprostituteâ and uses self-referential porn star imagery in his lyrics (So Dead: âYou need a fix Iâm your prostituteâ, Yes: âthereâs no lust in this coma even for a fiftyâ), aligning the industries of pornography and music performance in very vivid ways most often pertaining to exploitation. Appropriately, singing pivotal stanzas on this track is none other than Traci Lords, arguably most famous (especially in the early 90s) for an underage porn scandal. Â
Whatâs more, in the lyrics booklet for Generation Terrorists, there is a quotation or excerpt included for each song. The following corresponds to Little Baby Nothing:
âThe male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.â -Valerie Solanos.
Ninety percent of what the Manics said and did in their early years was intended to be shocking and/or ironic. Of course they were trying to incite anger and riots, the questioning of institutions, and a teardown of normalcy. But the fact that Richey later used part of this radical statement as the title to one of his songs (âOf Walking Abortionâ, natch) proves that he took it somewhat seriously, even if only in the most simple sense â that part of him resented his own maleness.
Life Becoming a Landslide
This is another song Iâve previously discussed, mostly in the arena of Nicky and Richey individualizing their distinctive voices into lines that can clearly be attributed to one or the other. In a song about nature vs nurture and the plastic confines of greater humanity cracking down on who or what someone is really supposed to be, we have:
Life becoming a landslide
Ice freezing nature dead
Life becoming a landslide
I donât wanna be a man
As far as writing style goes, Nicky was always fairly straightforward. Richey loves to convolute his message with proper nouns and alternating verb cases and a lack of a subject just to throw  people off, but hereâs Nicky, my boy, just saying, âDude. Being a man sucks. I donât like this.â
He could mean that being human in general sucks. But, since his attitude towards women leads me to believe he would not abbreviate humanity in this way, and given his and Richeyâs track record with gender and Nickyâs well-documented gender presentation, I think itâs clear the lyric means that he doesnât want to be male. Because he feels it doesnât suit him, for whatever reason. And that nature failed by making him a man instead of a woman.
âYesâ is an incredible song. Its major-chord melody juxtaposed against Richeyâs raw portrait of degradation is truly a thing to behold. The theme? Being used, prostitution both literal and metaphorical (âFor sale? dumb cuntâs same dumb questionsâ), exploitation in the name of capitalism (âIn these plagued streets of pity you can buy anythingâ), and reaching the lowest possible point of existence (âPurgatoryâs circle, drowning here, someone will always say yesâ). But the chorus â the chorus boasts one of the rawest images of sexual violence the band has ever used:
Heâs a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock
Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want
Wow. Okay. Where to begin? The implication here is that gender, along with everything else, is mutable if you have enough money and power to abuse people. However, it appears the change would be made not to entertain others, but to appeal to a specific person, sexually (âfuck himâ). The âyouâ in question is clearly attracted to women, so the narrator offering to mutilate himself to please them can be seen as a last-ditch act of desperation. (âIt feels like this massive defeat,â said a friend. âYou can make him a woman to pleasure someone, but whatâs left to change after that?â)
Richey wrote most of the song; âRitaâ, obviously, is the name used for an alternative female identity. But who would Rita be? Richey seems to be wondering. Would she still be me? And would the change even be worth the affections of whomever heâs speaking to? If the means are so drastic (and difficult to picture without experiencing secondhand pain), that answer would usually be ânoâ. But the song is called âYesâ. I would say yes to anything at this point, Richey is saying, even the most extreme sexual violence imaginable, if thatâs what you wanted.
This is an extreme example of Richey using world issues to examine his own nature. Although anorexic himself, Richey writes â4st 7lbâ from the point of view of an obsessive young girl admiring thin models. There could be multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is that when a person fails to fit the âclassicâ case of an eating disorder, they are often ignored. So, Richey says, you need me to be a teenage girl? I can do that.Â
(Note that in 1994, when this song was written, any eating disorder demographic outside the âwhite girl who loves fashion too muchâ model did not exist by medical standards and was usually subject to ridicule.)
Karen says Iâve reached my target weight
Kate and Emma and Kristin know itâs fake
Problem is dietâs not a big enough word
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view
Embodying the anorexic female stereotype allows Richey to criticize both the world and himself; by creating a parody of a young girl with an eating disorder, he creates commentary on how ridiculous and counter-intuitive her thought process actually is. The song is brutal and often focuses on nudity and sexual imagery, as it has been suggested in studies that eating disorders occur in those who are trying to annihilate their own puberty. Though Richey was well into his 20s when he wrote this, he often expressed a loathing of aging and the entire concept of adulthood.
Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely and 5 stone 2
May I bud and never flower
My visionâs getting blurred
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
My hands are trembling stalks
And I can feel my breasts are sinking
Ultimately, â4st 7lbâ hits hard as both an experiment in identity and a vicious satire of the rich white girl eating disorder clichĂŠ. Although the lyrics do not express a desire to become female, they do indicate that Richey feels everything might be easier and fit more neatly into a box if he were a girl.
[Coming in Part 2: The Girl Who Wanted to be God, Tsunami, Born a Girl, and Pretention/Repulsion.]
