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,âfreaksâ 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 âqueerâ 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 âgayâ and âlesbianâ were used heavily in discussing queer 80s punk, unlike today where âqueerâ 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 âqueerâ 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. Â
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.
âYou donât have to be a homo to read or have stuff published in Homocore. One thing everyone in here have in common is that weâre all social mutants; weâve outgrown or never were a part of any of the âsocially acceptableâ categories. You donât have to be gay; being different at all, like straight guys who arenât macho shitheads, women who donât 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 partâ (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.
Itâs important to note that the punks who say homophobic things and racist things are punks who say they are politically aware and supposedly âcoolâ -- 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 âtraditionalâ 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 âthis is when Queer Punk beganâ -- 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 âqueerâ 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 âfreaksâ who moved from a scene they felt disconnected from. Their version of âqueerâ meant freakish and social mutation, according to David Ensmingerâs chapter six of Visual Vitriol.
Expressed in Ensminger's text is a higher sense of self that was developed through punk and hardcore. There was a load of inspiration taken away from the older generation of punk to the new generation to explore pockets of life beyond music. This inspiration was posed through political lyrics and ideologies expressed within the community, similar to Aaron Effort's perspective on coming out within the punk rock community. Effort was the guitarist of Go! -- he states "being openly gay in punk rock made him a 'stronger person because in regular life you're not forced to stand up for any morals. You're not forced to think ideologically or to use your mind' (Evac et al. 1990)" (Ensminger 159).