Queer and Punk

I am both a queer kid and a punk kid - I go to punk shows and hang out with punks, and I go to gay clubs and hang out with queers. But I don't feel that I properly assimilate into either 'scene'. And while I know this is a good thing, that singular identities are boring and terribly un-postmodern, I want to look at why I think there's so little crossover between these scenes.

The meaning of the term 'queer', as opposed to 'gay and lesbian', means, in the way I use it and the way in which it has been recently reclaimed, 'non-heteronormative'. It is a 'post-gay' term, based on the idea that heterosexuality, homosexuality and the middle ground of 'bi' are constructed ideas. That an individual's sexuality, gender and desire do not fit neatly into these binary boxes.

The punk community is (supposedly) all about challenging concepts of normality, and the politics represent a faith in the individual and an ideal of freedom of the individual coupled with a sense of community. Sexuality, gender and relationships are often challenged. Punk's approach to sexuality is like its approach to most things: it's radical and outside of normal boundaries, and this is why I love being in the punk community. J.D.s homocore fanzine explained why punk is queer:

"When you're reading Maximum RocknRoll, everything is question authority - question rules applied to music, ecology, politics, the mosh pit ... But what about sex? If you're fighting against how the majority tells you to act, then how can you act like the majority when it comes to sex-type-stuff? The biggest way schools, parents, the church, and other institutions control youth is by telling them who they have to love and fuck. How you have to act according to the rules of being a girl or a boy. Who says girls can't be butch? Who says boys can't be fags?"

However, the way I see it, the majority of punks are experimenting with this stuff starting from the privileged point of heterosexuality or from a background of hetero-monogamous relationships. So their task is to unpick the hetero conditioning they've been brought up with. But for those who grew up queer and have not grown up with primarily opposite-sex desires, their lives have been spent as the 'Other' to a heterosexual norm, so their starting point for politics is different to that of a hetero-queer punk.

Different contexts create different cultural codes for punks and for queers. Often, I feel like my 'codes' are what make me not feel entirely assimilated to either scene. I feel the way I look does not say 'dyke' enough in the gay scene, because there are some punk 'codes' going on which have little or no meaning in the gay scene. The gay scene revolves around alcohol, and being straight-edge is unheard of. Although I don't drink, I go to queer drinking venues and support these capitalistic venues, which is completely against my politics. In the punk scene, I whinge so much when shows are at over-18 drinking venues, so I feel weird even telling my punk friends about what I do in the gay scene. And appearance-wise I often feel weird about some of the things I wear when I am in the punk scene, that I look too 'shiny' and new, that I look too 'mainstream dyke'. I even modify my look slightly according to where I'm going.

While punk fits more with my politics, I still need gay venues. This is because I'm still a queer person in a heterocentric world, and places like these are the few spaces where we're guaranteed to be the majority, and feel, in our sexuality at least, not like the Other. However, the pit-falls of the mainstream 'gay and lesbian' scene in general are that I am 'othered' in different ways. I don't fit the dyke uniform in image; I identify as 'queer' and have relationships with those who are classified as male by dominant categorising of gender; I don't do monogamy and I'm interested in a new model of relationships based on loving and fucking many. I still feel weird, just in a different way to the weird I feel in hetero contexts. 'Gay and lesbian' is political only insofar as it seeks assimilation, acceptance on the terms of the rest of 'normal' society. Meanwhile, punk rejects assimilation and the values of dominant society. However, punk is still a predominantly straight scene and punks still predominantly have the privilege of heterosexuality. Punks need to try and understand why queers may feel pressured to look a certain way, to behave in ways which they would class as 'selling out', and why their ability to label it 'selling out' is a privilege.

I see separate queer spaces – 'ghettoisation' - as a necessity still, a place for queer people to be reassured that they are not freaks. And I understand, if not support, the assimilation and mainstream nature of gay venues. Maybe once we are stronger as individuals, we can turn around and critique society, but it can be hard to become self-assured enough to make yourself the minority and the aberration again. In this way, I see queer spaces as a stepping stone to radicalisation, not as an end in themselves, but as a means to an end.

So, while the queer community needs to start looking towards a more radical politics, the punk community needs to continue the work of un-doing its heterocentric perspective and realising the privileged stand-point of many of the individuals within it - for whom the immediate need to fight for reformist 'equality' on the terms of the mainstream isn't so urgent or useful.