QUEER PUNK of AMERICA: 1970s,80s,90s and NOW

Martin Sorrondeguy of Limp Wrist

PANSY DIVISION (1991)

Toured with Green Day and Jimmy Eat World

Darby Crash (of Germs) -- intentional heroin overdose at age 22

Tammy Fraser and Joe Zinnato from Nervous Gender commenting on Fear, the band, punk’s development of aggressive tendencies from performed aggression attracting violent and aggressive audience members, which influenced the transition from performance and punk to macho hardcore in LA and NYC specifically in the 1980s. 

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By Brycen Beam /// Queer Designs for Living in My America 2017

Queer punk is a vein of Punk music that separated itself to focus on confronting the violence and prejudice against LGBTQ, racialized, and otherwise deviant communities and individuals. Developed in the mid-1980s, what has grown to be known as Queercore brought gay musicians and audience members into their own niche genre, where lyrics and front-members speak to topics of gender identity and sexuality. Their experiences had an outlet with a receiving end. Frustration with not being heard as different individuals was a growing issue within the punk community. The creation of the sub-genre Queer Punk, still based in the morale of punk but with a wider queer lens, allowed space for, as Visual Vitriol quotes,“freaks” to come together via zines, writing, and music. HOMOCORE is a prime example of what writing and collectivity gave Queer Punks of late 1980s and early 1990s.

To be specific about what the term “queer” means in Queer Punk, it means the stereotyped aggression of punk, sometimes about gender and sexuality, but it also means unfolding the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class and what it looks like to bring these unspoken aspects of the world (socially, within and outside the punk scene). So queerness looks a lot like sexuality and gender, but it speaks to those (like Poly Styrene, for example) who yelled about things swept under the rug in common places.

The terms “gay” and “lesbian” were used heavily in discussing queer 80s punk, unlike today where “queer” has been reclaimed throughout LGBTQ communities. Keep in mind that Queer Punk, as spoken by the punks who lived this era via interviews and alternative dialogues, is a term used to describe the pre-1980s punk generation; the term “queer” was not widely used then as it is today, but is often used as a retrospective descriptor of those times. The dynamic of punk post-1981 shifted into a new generation, where punk politics were complicated by old generation and new generation crossing paths.  

Dave Dictor of Millions of Dead Cops (MDC) explains the separation of 1970s and 1980s punk generations. MDC was closer to the 1970s punk rock "freak revolution" than what started coming out in the early 1980s, like Minor Threat and SSDecontrol. "A lot of those people didn't have the spirit of '81... They didn't have the empathy or connection to the stuff that was pre-1980, which was definitely a lot more open-minded about sexuality than what came out of '82-'84. The hardcore scene was rather homophobic," Dictor explains (Ensminger 159).

Queer Punk, or Queercore, can take form in multiple mediums, from writing music, to curating zines, to nonfictional reporting, to activist spaces (like Queer Nation that birthed the LGBTQ+ center in NYC in the early 1990s). But here, the most infamously known part of Queer Punk are the outcasts of the outcasts, the victims of a sexist, racists, homophobic, transphobic punk scene of the 1980s. The Queer Punk era excluded only those who excluded them. It was not limited to strictly gays, but served as a platform for revolt against oppression, much like the earliest days of punk across the U.K. and eventually America.

An excerpt from the first page of the first edition of Homocore, edited by Tom Jennings and Deke Motif Nihilson, speaks to the notion of inclusivity and accessibility of the (then developing) Queer Punk scene of the late 1980s.

“You don’t have to be a homo to read or have stuff published in Homocore. One thing everyone in here have in common is that we’re all social mutants; we’ve outgrown or never were a part of any of the ‘socially acceptable’ categories. You don’t have to be gay; being different at all, like straight guys who aren’t macho shitheads, women who don’t want to be a punk rock fashion accessory, or any other personal decision that makes you an outcast is enough. Sexuality is an important part of it, but only part” (Tom Jennings, editor of Homocore)

A lot of which speaks to queerness or deviancy in society is highlighted in zines of the 1980s through the days of today. Works from multitudes of identities and individuals is displayed in Homocore, and queer zines to follow, took hold until about the late 1990s, when Queer Punk began to fade into a genre of hardcore that took on more liberal "face value" ethics on queerness (David Ensminger, Visual Vitriol pp165). Those who submit to these zines also stand against the hatred and fear spewed by bigots, homophobes, racists, etc. outside of the punk community, but also within the community.

It’s important to note that the punks who say homophobic things and racist things are punks who say they are politically aware and supposedly “cool” -- reflecting the ego of 1980s punk rockers. Acts of bigotry were addressed in this active separation and expression of otherness. These collective zines and queer musicians are actively speaking against the anger and fear spewed by “traditional” punks. Queer Punk is the umbrella under which safety took hold, away from the complications of a new generational punk.

It is hard to point to a single year and say “this is when Queer Punk began” -- it happened over intervals of time, slowly realizing itself through the exposure of anti-gay tendencies of punk. But to place it in a ballpark time-frame, mid-late 1980s through the mid 1990s were when these conversations of queerness were taking place. The term “queer” was not very popular in describing homosexuality/trans identities, or even queer people as we know them today, until the late 1980s when queer activists and scholars began to reclaim the word from its original slur. Punks did not refer to the genre Queer Punk as a homosexual movement against normalcy, but rather a collective of “freaks” who moved from a scene they felt disconnected from. Their version of “queer” meant freakish and social mutation, according to David Ensminger’s chapter six of Visual Vitriol.

Though Queer Punk is a term used to describe Queercore of the “original” punk generation, the term “queer” was not widely used then as it is today. The terms “gay” and “lesbian” were heavily used in the dialogue of 80s punk, unlike today where “queer” has been reclaimed throughout the LGBTQ community and artist spaces.