When She Talks, I Hear the Revolution

Punk is notoriously hard to define. The logic goes that to classify it would itself be a very unpunk thing to do. That the very act of defining—and thus limiting—punk would kill all that constitutes the anarchic spirit of the culture. As garage rock turned to punk rock which then diversified into countless subgenres such as hardcore, anarcho-punk, Oi!, Afropunk, riot grrrl, and queercore, it seems that the difficulty in determining what is and is not “punk” only increased. But anxiety of authenticity—whatever that means—or being deemed a “poseur” aside, punk has always allowed new voices of rage and revolution into the cultural discourse. A mutual contempt for conformity, authority, consumerism, and conservatism unites the various strains together in a loosely-formed anti-establishment coalition. At its core, punk as both a subculture and musical genre rejects the mainstream—however one defines it. But what happens when we recognize the ‘mainstream’ not as something magically imposed upon society’s members, but as a product of those that dominate and gatekeep cultural expression? What happens when a movement helmed by white males purports to despise and reject a mainstream that is itself shaped by white masculinity?

Even the white men of the punk canon feel the burden of their difference, of their place as society’s undesirables. White male punks position themselves as victims of late-twentieth century capitalist politics, and, while they are right to identify and resist the exploitation inherent in such systems, they often fail to see the irony in their stance. Their very ability to participate in “white riot[s]” derives from their position as historical benefactors of patriarchal and imperial hegemony. In a piece for The Guardian, Alyssa Kai reflects on her own experiences of white masculinity and exclusion as an active member of the punk scene. “No matter how many dialogues we stage on anti-oppression, safer spaces, radical inclusivity and mutual aid,” she writes, “men in punk can still stand in front of a crowd and scream about almost anything they want or feel — just so long as they avoid a list of anti-oppressive no-no words.”

It’s far easier to rage against the machine when the machine is made up of people like you.

And this is more than just one woman’s anecdotal evidence. A 2004 study by Curry Malott and Milagros Peña reviewed 3,306 punk songs produced in the 1980s and 90s and found that 85% of them were sung by white males. Though the fluid definition of punk allows artists like Debbie Harry and Patti Smith to be consider foremothers of the movement, the culture—as both a social and musical phenomenon—finds in itself a replication of the mainstream in microcosm. It is not that the white men who dominate the genre have no right to condemn institutionalized classism, greed, and corruption, it is rather that punk fails its own revolutionary ethos if it does not make space for those whom history has oppressed and for those whose voice and agency has been violently stripped by the establishment.

Female artists expand the punk community, but their feminist movement is by no means devoid of problematic or even explicitly discriminatory politics. Scrutiny, for example, often centers on the Riot Grrrl movement’s exclusionary white middleclass ethos and marginalization of artists of color. Communities like the Sista Grrrls and zines like Bamboo Girl arose to combat this internal racism, but the narrative of the Riot Grrrl movement—the most widely-known of the female punk subgenres—and feminist punk more broadly remains centered on its white artists. To call the legacy of punk complicated would be to erase its explicitly racist and sexist impulses. The threat of punk’s death always looms large, but its essential spirit of anarchy and revolution is one that drives toward inclusion. The splintering of the punk label into untold subgenres represents a refining of intersectional consciousness and, perhaps paradoxically, an increase in representation. And on the chorus to “Manarchist, Brocialist,” the Filipina-fronted Material Support reminds us of the most fundamental and ever-urgent purpose of women-led bands: to “smash the patriarchy” and disrupt its androcentric narratives of belonging.

Kai laments the fact that the numerous bands led by women and/or artists of color are relegated to “marginalia in the “real history” while the boy-bands get to be “real punk.”” She admits that “if you want — and most people do want — you can retell the early history of punk exclusively by referencing white men.” But she also encourages us to look deeper—to look “in the gaps” of punk’s history because there we find a thriving spirit of resistance and rebellion. And that is what this essay will strive to do: to foreground the “gaps,” celebrate those in the margins, and make space for the makers of punk’s revolution whom the subculture itself has sought to erase.