Let’s set the scene, you’re scrolling through social media, and perhaps you’ve paused on an Instagram reel of a Goth woman showing off her OOTD. Opening the comment section, you expect something tame. Perhaps a ‘Soooo sexy xx’ if the commenter’s feeling especially cheeky. But instead, your expectations are far exceeded (in a horrific way), where slews of “Mummy”s and “Stamp on me pls” are just the least suggestive among the ones you can actually get yourself to finish reading.
So our story begins. For many Goth women who have been compressed into the stereotype of the dominant, hypersexual “goth mummy,” the Goth subculture is no longer a refuge. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ 1980 single ‘Happy House’ mocked the fake joy of the perfect home, and decades later, the subculture surrounding music like theirs has become its own “happy house:” alternative-looking but hiding cracks underneath. For women, queer people, and ethnic minorities especially, stepping outside the mainstream has never necessarily meant stepping beyond sexism, racism, or fetishisation.
For instance, in the early 1990s, Riot Grrrl emerged as a cultural and political movement in the United States after being dismissed in the Punk scene. However, Riot Grrrl was not as inclusive as it claimed. Critics have long argued that it centered around white, middle-class women, leaving women of colour, queer women, and trans people on its margins. In her essay ‘Why I Was Never A Riot Grrrl,’ Black writer Laina Dawes recalls that she was: “more fearful of being assaulted because I was black than because I was a young woman.” A movement that framed sexism as the only enemy had little to say to women like her.
The safe space possibly isn’t just an illusion, but replaced by a new one built by those whose scenes failed them. Around the mid-1980s, the Toronto zine ‘J.D.s’ helped launch queercore, a movement which addressed homophobia in Punk and conformity in mainstream gay culture. Similarly, in 2003, James Spooner’s ‘Afro-Punk’ documentary showed Black Punks carving out a space for themselves in an overwhelmingly white scene.
These movements show that subcultures are shaped by whoever is willing to push back against the mainstream, but also that ‘counterculture’ isn’t automatically safe. Essentially, rejecting the mainstream doesn’t make a scene free of sexism, racism or discrimination as a whole.
The answer isn’t to leave the house of subcultures, but to take it back. Goth was never meant to be a costume for someone else’s fantasy. It’s the music, the eyeliner, the dancing badly to Bauhaus at 1am. The women, queer people, and people of colour in these scenes do not owe anyone a performance. And even if you aren’t part of that subculture, or any other subculture? Call out the leering and the gatekeeping when you see it: in the comments, at the club, in your group chats. “Girls to the front,” as Riot Grrrl would put it, but don’t forget to make room for everyone else too.
“Goth” by okokitsme is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
