Lock Up Your Daughters Launch

Even before its first issue, Lock Up Your Daughters came armed for bear: check out the breathless and antagonistic introduction on their web pages. Picking up on the queer anger that drove forward the political process that eventually transformed Scottish attitudes to sexuality, LUYD is determined not to let outrage become petulant whinging.

It was slightly disappointing that the launch night wasn’t as aggression-fuelled as the web page, lacking any ranting beat-poetry or oppositional performance art that would get the show closed for obscenity. It did feature the manic funky jazz of Doctor and the Apostles, a band so obviously febrile and imaginative that they are bound for obscurity and retrospective hagiography, as well as a busy crowd that divided between conspiratorial clusters and straight lines watching the show. The free pilot issue handed out was the highlight of the evening, during a relentless electro-disco that was somewhat awkward in the homely Flying Duck (Glasgow’s latest underground club-cum-converted basement flat).

LUYD seems to be interested in moving forward the intensely personal nature of identity politics: the pilot issue has the usual quota of cartoons, band references and mundane storytelling. There’s a certain panache and wit lurking behind the articles, an unwillingness to dwell on the obvious - a farewell to Electrelane is almost curt and perfunctory, while meditations on Ellen and internet dating refuse to get caught up in vapid generalisation. The lack of broad political engagement - no ‘not in our name’ posturing here - might be refreshing or disturbing: does it represent a rejection of tired sloganeering or a retreat into self-satisfied hedonism?

Actually, a bit more aggression wouldn’t hurt. LUYD claims a proud heritage - those angry queer fanzines that knew what they didn’t want and which inspired riot grrrl, Ladyfest, queercore, Derek Jarman: the identification of that scene’s gentrification and tokenism is a powerful starting point.

And there is plenty to get angry about: mainstream magazines that usurp the culture of zines, former alternative rock stars writing advice columns for daily newspapers, crabby journalists lecturing youngsters on the true history of ‘the scene’, the development of an unthreatening gay monoculture that reinforces stereotypes while policy-makers fail to grasp that LGBT is more than a statement of sexual preference. Lock Up Your Daughters more than deserves to survive, being a rare voice of diversity.