Ash

None of this is new, but it’s not OK that it’s happening, and I’m going to continue posting about it until it stops lol. I'm not an idiot nor was I born yesterday so I know these people suck cock and balls however they still need to stay in their lane as the emos that hate sluts

Girls to the front 

In 2023, an emo history book came out that misrepresented a lot of women’s related issues in emo in ways that were intentionally misleading or dishonest. It was very disparaging towards Hayley Williams and conversations about sexual misconduct. One of these things was claiming that one of Pete Wentz’s hardcore bands were one of the first bands to talk about “girls to the front.”

 “Girls to the front” was a riot grrrl mantra. Riot grrrl as a movement started 7 years prior to this band being founded. This band, while not explicitly endorsing these views, shared a lot of connections with Hardline, an extremist hardcore movement that advocated that abortion was the Holocaust, believed women should not be allowed to access birth control, and whose members referred to feminists who disagreed with them as “yeast infected lard cunts.”

Pete Wentz was the only true celebrity who consented to participating in the book. People like Hayley and Gerard declined. 

Around when the above book came out, Fall Out Boy also re-released an oral history of theirs as a book. This oral history involved several prominent figures associated with Hardline. Fall Out Boy did a lot of revisionist history such as removing references to politics in hardcore and a joke Pete Wentz made about sleeping with fat women. The original oral history was written by Ryan Downey. Around when Fall Out Boy re-released this as a book, Ryan Downey co-wrote Ronnie Radke's memoir. Ronnie Radke was arrested on domestic violence charges and has been accused of rape. Ryan Downey was also a prominent member of Hardline and made many statements I mentioned above. This is who Fall Out Boy are giving their money to and who they are working with to pretend Pete Wentz is a feminist.

Performances 

Roughly around when both of these things happened, lineups for WWWY and later Warped began to leak online. Virtually no women were performing, which resulted in an ongoing conversation about sexism. It is my understanding that in response to this, about 3 of the female fronted bands on Pete’s label were added to the lineup(s) and began posting online that they all deserved to play and any woman who criticized this decision was ugly and jealous. For context, 2 of these acts are very sexualized and 1 heavily relies on the sexualization of imagery associated with children, including performing in a thong, a toddler tutu, and a “daddy’s little princess” shirt. 

While much of the criticism leveled at those women online is rooted in misogyny, there is still a broader conversation to be had about why female-fronted legacy acts associated with emo culture such as Evanescence, Flyleaf, Paramore, etc are rarely included the way bands like Fall Out Boy and MCR are. There is also a conversation to be had about how the women mentioned above were not included from the jump. There is also a conversation to be had about why highly sexualized acts signed by men with a history of sexist or predatory behavior are the virtually only women permitted to perform at these festivals, and recent alternative bands like Pinkshift, Meet Me At The Altar, Ayesha Erotica, Mothica, etc are not ever invited to perform despite the latter having way more career success. There is a conversation to be had about how these highly sexualized female-fronted bands are only invited to play at 12pm on undesirable stages, while men like Ronnie Radke, who has been arrested for domestic violence and accused of rape, are invited to be some of the biggest attractions at these festivals. 

Also, as important context, both Victoria Asher and Bebe Rexha (two women in Decaydance bands from 10+ years ago, neither of whom are performing at the above festivals) have expressed that they were treated poorly while in the bands because of their gender. They have both also stated they were pressured into dressing in ways that made them uncomfortable by their label and by Gabe Saporta and Pete Wentz respectively. This history is relevant when the sexualized bands on Decaydance are being marketed as feminist. Tabloids also printed that Pete Wentz cheated on Ashlee Simpson with a woman on his label. This may not be true, but if it is, it is worth mentioning that Bebe Rexha and Casadee Pope were the only women on the label at the time and—in addition to being his subordinate—were both 18/19 when he was 31.