PUAs in Japan: when misogyny and Orientalism mix

(Content note: misogyny and violence against women, abuse mentality, racism)

Readers might already be aware of the pick-up artist (or “executive dating coach, as he apparently prefers to be known) Julien Blanc, aka RSD Julien, who has received opprobrium for the manipulative and often violent tactics he advises men to use to attempt to attract women. In particular, a video of him using these tactics against women on the street in Japan has gained attention for the openly violent actions he is shown using- putting women in headlocks and thrusting their heads into his crotch, for example. The backlash has begun, with feminist activist Jennifer Li starting a Change.org campaign urging hotels in Australia to refuse to host Blanc’s seminars, which has already successfully persuaded the Como hotel in Melbourne to cancel one such event. (Li is also behind the #TakeDownJulienBlanc hashtag.)  In Japan too, commenters are raising awareness of Blanc’s planned return to Japan in mid-November, hoping to prevent him assaulting any more women.

I’d like to urge everyone who hasn’t already to sign Li’s petition, and to spread the word that this man’s actions, and those of PUAs more generally, constitute harassment or even assault of women. In this blog I’d like to focus a bit on the Orientalism that underscores Blanc’s behaviour towards Japanese women in his video, and how that Orientalism is reflected in attitudes towards Asian women among not only the pick-up artist community, but also among Western (generally white) men in Asia.

(For the purposes of transparency: I studied Japanese at university and spent a year in Japan as part of my course, where I observed the behaviour and attitudes I discuss. This obviously means my impressions are limited to one country in Asia and are of course subjective in nature;  I cannot pretend to be an expert on Orientalism or the dynamics of how Western men conceive of Asian women or Japanese women in particular. Feel free to let me know whether you think my observations are valid or not.)

Anyone who, like me,  is driven by some masochistic impulse to spend any time reading into the PUA movement- men who seek codified, systematic ways to seduce women- will probably come to the conclusion that manipulation is central to the approach these men adopt towards women. The central idea that PUAs/”dating coaches”/whatever advocate is that there are foolproof shortcuts available to men (for a fee, of course) to essentially trick women into sleeping with them. For a sizeable portion of PUAs, in fact, the central pleasure of sexual conquest seems not to be sexual, but the “conquest”- the sense of having “beaten” or “won” against the woman in question. If like me, you believe in patriarchy as a social system and a mindset that values domination and control above all else, the connection seems obvious. So too does the frequent characterisation of PUAs as seeing women as enemies in a video game- if you consult the strategy guide and use the right techniques against the “enemy”, you will be able to control them and gain a victory, without fail. PUA communities therefore buy into the unstated patriarchal imperative to exert control over women, and the dehumanisation and essentialist attitudes (“women are all the same, they all respond predictably to these actions”) that one must adopt in order to use manipulation against an entire group of people without encountering moral conflict.

There are differences in how these men see separate groups of women, though, which lead to differing approaches against said groups. In particular, PUAs and others in the affiliated internet “manosphere” view Asian women through the lens of Orientalism, buying into crass stereotypes of them as submissive, subservient, demure, and focussed on pleasing the men in their life. This is often held up as an ideal model of womanhood, contrasted against Western (generally American) women who are characterised as too demanding, selfish or even “ruined” by the influence of feminism. (This antipathy never seems to stop PUAs from attempting to seduce Western women, funnily enough.)

While the manipulative or even outright abusive techniques PUAs champion are themselves forms of violence (Blanc and at least one other pick-up guru have characterised the Duluth Power and Control Wheel as a how-to guide on “gaming” women, which is unusual only in its frankness), it is less common that they explicitly recommend an escalation into physical violence of the kind displayed by Blanc, at least when first meeting a woman. So why does Blanc feel so confident in assaulting Japanese women? Certainly, he utilises this outright aggression against women around the world. But he seems particularly brazen about this behaviour in Japan, bragging that “When you go to Tokyo….if you’re a white male, you can do what you want.” He also gives voice to abusers and rapists everywhere with the pronouncement that “Every foreigner who is white does this.”

Here, the racist conception of Asian women as submissive and non-retaliatory intersects with the misogyny inherent in the PUA outlook on women in general. Because Japanese women are believed to be too submissive to object to abuse, and because women are believed to be property men can do what they want with, Blanc feels entitled to assault with even more impunity than he would against white women. And because of the belief abusers hold that all men treat women like they do, he feels confident enough to display this abuse online and promote it to other men- every white man in Japan does this, or they would if they could. Unconsciously, he makes explicit the power that white privilege gives him, even in a majority non-white country like Japan. Because unfortunately, unless someone decided to file a complaint and press charges against him, he likely will get away with this. The influence of white supremacy around the world means that often when white Western men harass or abuse Japanese women, nothing gets done.

Obviously, few white men in Japan engage in openly abusive behaviour like Blanc’s. But the Orientalist view of Asian women that spurs such behaviour on is not uncommon among those men. During my time in the country I quickly became aware of the other exchange students who spent most of their time trying to seduce Japanese women, who would sometimes openly profess their “appreciation” for said women over those from their own country. The point is not that international relationships are a bad thing- happy, respectful partnerships between white men and Japanese women happen all the time. However, men who travel to Japan (or other countries in East Asia- the stereotypes in question are rarely sensitive to nationality) with a preconceived notion of the country’s women moulded by Orientalism are more likely to fetishise those women than to treat them as individuals worthy of respect. Even if they don’t use physical violence like Julien Blanc, they are likely to feel more entitled to harass women in these countries, to ignore signs of discomfort or shrug them off as “natural submissiveness”. This behaviour is all too common against women in Western countries; buying into Orientalist stereotypes can only make it worse.

It’s a good thing that Blanc’s abusive behaviour, and his promotion of abuse to other men, is being exposed and opposed. With any luck he will soon find it impossible to profit off of his behaviour, though I won’t hold out hope that this will cause him to question whether what he is doing is acceptable. What Blanc does, however, is at the extreme end of a spectrum of behaviours. While it’s easy to focus on the PUAs who, like Blanc, openly harass and assault women, we also need to pay attention to the racist and misogynist ideas behind their behaviour. Few will take them to such extremes, but they underscore the outlooks of far more men than just the relatively small pick-up artist community.

Bölzer, the swastika and ill-advised reclamation

Like most things in life, I caught on late to Bölzer, the Swiss death/black metal duo whose music has been received rapturously by metal critics over the last year or so. But having listened to a track off their soon-to-be-released Soma EP, I quickly came to the conclusion that the hype was justified. With a teeming, overwhelming sound for a two-piece, aided by refreshingly naturalistic, analogue production, both of the band’s short releases to date show a lot of promise, at times bringing to mind a version of Blut Aus Nord that favours direct bursts of aggression over long-form experimentation. It’s little wonder that these recordings, and a smattering of well-received live shows, have metal sites the world over eagerly awaiting a full album.

But, given recent events involving other underground bands who turned out to hold extremist views, a part of me was cautious about becoming too enthusiastic. What if this group, too, had some skeletons in their closet? In an extreme metal world that more often than not fails to adequately defend against the infiltration of dangerous far right ideology, this caution is not always excessive.

And then, last night, I came across an interview with the band on Stereogum that seemed as though it might confirm some of these fears. Among various other topics, interviewer Kim Kelly questioned guitarist/singer Okoi Jones (aka KzR) about tattoos of his depicting swastikas, as well as other symbols used by ancient religions. I have excerpted the relevant passages below:

STEREOGUM: I have one more question. I wanted to talk about your tattoos, specifically the swastikas and sunwheels. I know you and I know what you’re about, but not everyone who sees you play has that background. I want to just get it all out there before anyone sees a picture of you and makes assumptions. So. What’s up with the swastikas?

KzR: Please, I’m very happy you asked me because only a few people have asked me in interviews and I’m more than happy to tell people because I don’t want to be misunderstood. My sunwheels, my swastikas, my whatever you call them, it’s an ancient symbol used by basically every culture on this planet at some time or another for more or less the same reason, to express their adoration for the sun, the solar power. Most of them were sun-worshipping peoples, or held respect for the balance of the sun. It’s also a lunar symbol in itself for the sun cultures. Its right or left form reversed is a lunar symbol, too, and it’s a female as well as a male symbol; it represents a lot of different energies. It’s a continuum, it can be a destructive force, it takes a lot of natural philosophies into one. If you read about it, it’s really fascinating.

(…)

STEREOGUM: It also recently dawned on me that the title of your much-loved song “Entranced By The Wolfshook” is actually referencing the wolf’s hook symbol, which has got a very heavy history of usage by the Nazis as well as in Hermann Löns’ book Der Wehrwolf and by forestry workers in Germany. You even incorporate the wolf’s hook into the Bölzer logo itself. Can you tell me why you decided to highlight that particular symbol?

KzR: Indeed, man’s lusting for power is as a wolf’s for meat … often leading to self destruction. For us the wolf’s hook, or Wolfsangel, is one of the many symbols of antiquity to become caustically stigmatized as a result of their usage within a fascist-era Europe, something we are soberingly aware of but do not condone. Enough systematic cultural lobotomization has taken place in the past to make any such further demonization of values and symbolism acceptable within a modern and supposedly tolerant society. We promote the growth and enlightenment of the individual, the last thing on our agenda would be to glorify the implements of power involved in the collective enslavement of a people and their individualism. Fascism and racism in that sense are pretty unattractive for us.

Given my previous writing on another band’s association with Nazism and related imagery, some readers might expect that I would be quick to similarly label Jones a neo-Nazi as well. In this case, however, I am not entirely sure that this is so- at least, not yet. It is true that a white person with tattoos of a symbol that has come to be associated with perhaps the world’s most infamous fascist regime is extremely suspicious. The dig at “modern and supposedly tolerant society” also rings at least a couple of alarm bells- it does not seem to come from a position critiquing the hypocrisy of modern capitalist societies which preach the rhetoric of tolerance while still remaining fundamentally unequal and white supremacist in nature. And despite Jones’ proclamation that his band favours individualism over the collectivism of fascist ideologies, and the implication that they are therefore opposed to Nazism, this could be merely a cover for the truth. As contradictory as it seems, the rhetoric of individualism is not always incompatible with fascism, as can be seen in the phenomenon of libertarian types allying or forging ideological links with far-right movements. Certainly, his explanation comes off better than the infamously incoherent equivocation offered by Inquisition’s Jason Weirbach when asked whether he was a neo-Nazi– it would be hard to come up with something worse. But this could simply indicate that Jones is better at hiding his true beliefs than Weirbach.

Nonetheless, I do not think there is conclusive evidence here to declare with reasonable certainty that Okoi Jones is a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi. While there was at least one eyewitness account of the fascist views of Inquisition’s members to add to the evidence of Nazi and anti-semitic imagery and allusions in that band and its associated side projects, nothing similar has yet appeared in relation to Bölzer, at least as far as I am aware. As such, the possibility remains that the band’s leader may be “merely” extremely ignorant of the swastika’s impact, and genuinely (if misguidedly) attempting to “reclaim” the symbol’s older meaning. While I remain skeptical of Jones’ explanation and half-expect to hear more questionable statements in future, I am not yet prepared to suggest that we shun the band immediately.

This does not mean, however, that the best case scenario- that Jones is extremely misguided, rather than an outright fascist- is a harmless one. The fact remains that, in spite of its thousands of years of use in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, as well as in ancient Europe, the swastika is mostly associated in present-day Europe and North America with Nazism and other fascist and far-right movements. It is extremely unlikely that its appearance in a tattoo on a white person will be taken as anything other than support for those movements and their associated violence against marginalised peoples, given the white supremacist views that lurk in such circles.  The Third Reich’s heinous crimes are not even a century old; it seems impossible to hope that isolated efforts to detoxify or reclaim the symbol they appropriated will have any effect after such a short time. And if such a reclamation were to be attempted, it seems far more appropriate that it would be spearheaded by the religious movements who used it in the past* than by people in a musical subculture which has a frankly shameful record in terms of combating the sort of ideology that corrupted the symbol’s meaning in the first place.

As such, regardless of whatever Jones’ intentions are, his usage of an ancient symbol tainted by fascist ideology and its accompanying brutality cannot hope to achieve what he seems to want them to. His championing of individualism in the Stereogum interview leads me to believe that he would fervently disagree with this view, perhaps claiming that his personal motives and interpretations of the symbols should override what others would assume based on what they see (and I’ve no doubt that commenters on this piece will offer similar defences). Unfortunately, I am not swayed by these arguments, which seem to imply a person’s intentions have the magical ability to erase any harm that might arise from their actions. Like it or not, when used in the form of a tattoo on a person who looks like Jones, the swastika is likely to mean only one thing to a survivor of the Holocaust, or to a member of any group targeted by contemporary fascists. Even if his intentions genuinely are to use this symbol in a way entirely unrelated to fascism, history looms larger than our individual desires.

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* The swastika is, of course, still frequently used throughout Asia, where its association with the region’s religions is stronger than the taint of Nazism. It should go without saying that this cultural context is vastly different from the situation in Europe, and that any talk of reclamation applies primarily to areas where the symbol is still a reminder of a horrific regime and the crimes it committed.

Inquisition and black metal’s fascism problem

It was only at the end of last year that I became aware of US black metal band Inquisition, thanks to the appearance of their latest album Obscure Verses for the Multiverse on numerous critics’ end-of-year lists. Upon first listening, the main things that struck me included the oddly croaky, reptilian voice of singer/guitarist Jason Weirbach (aka Dagon), as well as the fact that all the songs sounded quite samey, given the ubiquity of their monolithic assemblage of thick riffs and relentless blastbeats. Quickly though, I grew to appreciate the band’s unique sound, and delved further into their back catalogue. This did lead me to develop some concerns about their material, the song “Crush the Jewish Prophet” from Magnificent Glorification of Lucifer being the most obvious example. If the song was an anti-Christian critique in the black metal tradition, as it appeared to be based on its lyrics, why was it necessary to centre Jesus’ ethnicity in the title, unless the band felt this too was something to criticise? But, caught up in the music, I didn’t worry too much about this.

Until, that is, I saw a thread concerning the band on a friend’s Facebook page earlier this month. It was here that a man named Daniel Gallant, formerly a white supremacist himself, called Inquisition’s members (Weirbach and drummer Thomas Stevens, aka Incubus) out as Nazis. When asked to elaborate on this, he stated the following:

“I was a white supremacist for many years. I have been out for twelve years. I drove the bus for an Inquisition tour. When I suspected they were white power, because I was driving for my friends band Gyibaaw, a First Nations band, I decided to prove it.

I pulled off my t shirt and there it was…my giant swastika for them all to see…they clapped and cheered…Inquisition (both Tom and Jason) were thrilled.

They boasted about their admiration for Hitler, how they loved the white power movement, and had many friends from South America and Everett, Washington…turns out we had mutual acquaintances. Tom used to hang out with the World Church of the Creator and still boasts his admiration for the church. Jason boldly stated he loves imagining living in the Nazi era and wished that would happen in America. They ranted until I shut them down.

The band Gyibaaw were grossly offended to the point of backing away from the black metal scene because of it.”

I realise that not all readers will be convinced by the personal testimony of one individual. It is a known fact, however, that the band has associated with the white supremacist Antichrist Kramer, commissioning him to create artwork for the 2010 reissue of their first full length album Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult. Kramer has been deeply involved in the National Socialist black metal movement, putting out music by openly white supremacist and/or anti-Semitic groups on his label Satanic Skinhead Propaganda (as documented in this article). It seems unlikely that Inquisition’s members would be unaware of his leanings, or that they would associate with him unless they were sympathetic to his beliefs*.

Sadly, this kind of ideological association is not unheard of within metal, especially black metal. The subgenre has long been a hotbed for reactionary political viewpoints, perhaps because of the anti-modern standpoint many of its bands employ, its reverence for “paganism” and other traditionally-minded cultural trends that have also been co-opted by fascists, and the reactionary nature of not only its ideological position but also its musical form. The Second Wave of black metal started, after all, as a reaction against death metal, with many bands deliberately hearkening back to earlier forms of metal and forsaking technique and polished production in favour of a “primitive” sound. It’s not surprising that this inclination would also create room for fascist ideology to spread- both spring from a reaction against modernity, as elucidated in point 2 of Umberto Eco’s analysis of the uniting ideology of fascist movements here.

Despite knowing about this trend within black metal, however, it was still an unpleasant shock to discover that a band I enjoyed subscribed to fascism. My immediate reaction was a feeling of shame, and anger at myself for not having investigated the group’s background. In the past I had made it a point to avoid music created by neo-Nazis or white supremacists, even in cases like Burzum where people insisted the music was good even if band leader Varg Vikernes was a virulent bigot. I smugly stuck to the position that I wouldn’t listen to Nazis’ music because it was shit anyway, the product of idiotic skinheads who could barely string two chords together. But this was confounded by Inquisition’s technically adept, well-written and well-recorded output. I had been simplifying reality to fit my own preconceptions.

More than anger at my self, though, I felt angry that the band’s fascist leanings were not more widely known. This is a group that has gained increasing media attention in recent years, their latest album having been reviewed in mainstream publications such as Pitchfork, but as far as I can tell metal journalists have yet to seriously question Inquisition on their views or their links to open white supremacists like Antichrist Kramer. How hard would it have been for the interviewer in this Invisible Oranges article, for example, to seriously interrogate Weirbach about the message of “Crush the Jewish Prophet”, instead of just accepting his equivocation? Do these writers not care about the expression of bigoted views, as long as they like the music? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that they don’t.

Even though I hadn’t paid for any of their music,  I didn’t want to support Inquisition in any way after finding out about their Nazi sympathies. I eventually decided to delete them from my music library and stop listening to them entirely. I do still find myself asking whether this was necessary. Fascist or white supremacist rhetoric is not central to their message or lyrics, which tend instead to focus on the conventional black metal concern of Satanism as expressed through astrological and cosmological imagery. Perhaps the band is canny enough to realise that openly expressing their views would limit their appeal or get them into trouble; perhaps they ascribe to the wider metal world’s liberal conviction that music is no place for politics. In any case, I usually hold to the idea that it’s OK to enjoy art and media with problematic elements, or which has been created by objectionable or even bigoted artists, as long as we acknowledge those problems and don’t shut down criticism of them. But for me, personally, a line has to be drawn somewhere. Art created by Nazis, fascists and/or white supremacists is on the side of the line I do not wish to set foot in.

This is not what I would consider a hypocritical position. Fascist ideology- insofar as it is a coherent ideology- is inherently violent in a way other political alignments are not, rooted in the rhetoric of destroying any element of society deemed undesirable. As Eco notes, diversity is conceptualised in fascism as a symptom of modernist decadence; and since fascism worships action for action’s sake and violent struggle as an inherent part of life, Nazi or white supremacist movements are ideologically driven to commit violence against members of any group outside their own. While the rhetoric of neo-Nazis and/or white supremacists within black metal is often mainly focused against Jewish people, it is naive to think that violence will be used solely against one group if this rhetoric is tolerated, especially when hatred of marginalised groups such as people of colour, LGBT people and disabled people is accepted even within mainstream society. Even a band like Inquisition that doesn’t openly espouse fascist rhetoric can still cause harm to members of persecuted groups. Gallant’s story shows how Weirbach and Stevens’ open expression of admiration for the Nazis led to the First Nations band Gyibaaw turning away from black metal, closing the door on an opportunity for that group to counter the genre’s overwhelmingly white demographic and tendency to champion or tolerate extreme right views. If we give our money to musicians with fascist leanings, we don’t just support them financially, we send a message to them that their extreme views will not cause them to be criticised, that their views are therefore acceptable. The same act also sends the message to minority groups that we care more about music than about making sure that fascist and white supremacist ideologies are not tolerated or allowed to spread. In a sense, we choose our own enjoyment over people’s safety, over their right to live free from fear of ideologies that call for their destruction.

I urge anyone who cares about making metal a space which is open to and safe for marginalised groups of people to, at the very least, abstain from paying for Inquisition’s albums or live shows. I wouldn’t want to force anyone to stop listening to the band’s music entirely as I have done; this is obviously a matter of personal choice. But please do consider whether it is worth it to add to the popularity of a band that holds these views- not just Inquisition, but any band in black metal or the wider genre who subscribes to fascist, white supremacist or Nazi standpoints. There’s enough excellent music out there being made by musicians who do not align themselves with dangerous, hate-fuelled ideologies.

                                       

* It is also worth noting that Inquisition’s Jason Weirbach runs a side project titled 88MM. In the simple alphanumeric cypher that passes for a secret code among neo-Nazi groups, this number represents the letters HH, or “Heil Hitler”.

Lord Mantis, Transmisogyny and Questions of Intent

Content Note/Trigger Warning- discussion of explicit, graphic depictions of violence against trans women; transmisogyny

Owing to a persistent internet connection problem I’ve been unable to update the blog for about three weeks. During that period I’ve been doing my best to keep track of an extremely troubling series of events centering around the Chicago metal band Lord Mantis’ choice of artwork for their upcoming third album The Death Mask. I’ve refrained from commenting up to now, partly because I was unable to get internet access for long enough to draft a full response, but also because of a sense I wasn’t the best person to talk about the issues involved. Based on a friend’s advice, I’ve stepped away from my original plan to review the album upon its release, since even if I note my problems with the band’s artwork and associated conduct, the review format does constitute a promotion of their work. Instead, I’ve decided to make a critique of the bands’ choices (and their consequences) the central focus of this post. Most of the points I make here have been made previously (and better) by other commentors, many of whom have more of a personal connection to the issues at hand and are therefore probably more qualified to talk about it than me. Nonetheless, I feel like I need to express my feelings on the matter.

First, a quick recap for those unfamiliar with the overall story. In January of this year it was revealed that Jef Whitehead, sole member of the black metal project Leviathan, was producing the cover art for Lord Mantis’ newest album, and the artwork in question was shared on an Instagram account jointly run by Whitehead and his partner, Dark Castle and Taurus singer-guitarist Stevie Floyd. Controversy swiftly erupted due to the nature of the piece: the painting explicitly, graphically depicts a trans woman who has seemingly been tortured, then brutally murdered. (I’d prefer not to spend time describing the artwork in exacting detail; curious readers can easily find images of it if they so desire.) I personally recall that, in the wake of criticism aimed at the band, Whitehead and Floyd, and heated arguments online, there were indications that an alternate cover would be used. However, if this was ever going to be the case it no longer is: The Death Mask is set to be released in April with the original Whitehead artwork.

Readers accustomed to the graphic depictions of violence against women that unfortunately still grace extreme metal album covers might be wondering what the fuss is about. The context is important here: it might not automatically be the case that an image endorses what it is depicting, but it can sometimes tell you something about the image’s creator. The fact that album artist Jef Whitehead has been accused of sexual assault and domestic abuse (and found guilty of the latter), and incorporated violent misogyny into albums such as True Traitor, True Whore, makes it harder to accept the Lord Mantis piece as an ironic statement. It also forces us to question whether the band members themselves see violence against women, especially trans women, as a suitable subject to use for cheap controversy to garner sales.

The wider context of that everyday violence against trans women is even more important, however. While data on rates of violence against transgender people tends to be sparse, and much of this violence likely goes unreported*, it is clear that trans women, particularly trans women of colour, are subject to disproportionately high levels of police harassment, assault from healthcare professionals, and murder, not to mention astronomically high rates of suicide and transphobic abuse and discrimination in employment, housing etc. Given this reality, the prevalence of depictions of trans women as victims of violence- not just in Lord Mantis’ album artwork, but across all media- and its link to that violence in real life has to be critiqued. It’s obviously unlikely that someone would use Whitehead’s painting as their sole inspiration to murder or otherwise commit violence against a trans woman. But it does form one small piece of the wider cultural narrative surrounding trans women. And it does send yet another subtle message about how little society values trans women. People already predisposed to violent transmisogyny can and do pick up on this message and utilise it to justify their crimes, with such twisted reasoning as the conception of women “deceiving” men with their undisclosed transgender status used as an excuse for “corrective” rape or other violence.

I have heard the band’s defenders bring up the question of intent- whether or not the band members and/or Whitehead intended to offend trans women or anyone else with their choice of artwork. If they didn’t mean to hurt anyone, the argument goes, it’s OK. If they didn’t set out to be offensive or to cause harm to trans women with this cover, then they are absolved of any negative consequences, apparently. To me this is an inadequate response, one that ignores the social and cultural impact of art and reduces things to a narrow individualistic view. Our actions have consequences, often ones that we didn’t intend or want them to have. Like most people, I’ve had moments where I unintentionally caused great hurt to people I care about, and agonised over the fact that I did this without realising it. But to turn round and say to this person that, because I didn’t intend to hurt them, I was not in the wrong, would be unhelpful to say the least. It doesn’t really matter whether or not the members of Lord Mantis, or Jef Whitehead, are personally bigoted against trans women**. What matters is that their chosen artwork has the potential to contribute, however indirectly, to the epidemic levels of violence trans women face in the real world, whether they intended it to or not. The seeming refusal of the band and their label, Profound Lore, to consider this, and to insist instead on releasing the album with this cover, is the real problem.

In another sense though, the question of intent is worth considering; specifically, what artists intend to achieve with their work. I’ve said before that I believe metal has the potential to offer a site of genuine resistance against hegemonic discourses, to become a truly counter-cultural resistance against mainstream society, and rediscover the shock and panic the genre used to inspire in guardians of mainstream morality. Too often, however, bands seem content to recycle aesthetics of perversion or depravity that seem shocking on the surface, but fail to actually offer any real critique of, or alternative to, those hegemonic discourses. So it is with the cover of The Death Mask. It might initially seem shocking to depict violence against trans women in this way, and it may seem as though I’ve just spent over a thousand words on the offense this image caused me. But as noted above, this is a world where violence against trans women goes on all the time, with an awful frequency, mostly unnoticed or commented upon by the people it does not directly affect. That violence is a normalised aspect of our society; in a sense, mainstream society condones that violence. So really, what is shocking about a metal band depicting it on an album cover, seemingly without any intention to critique it? What could be more pedestrian or unchallenging? Shouldn’t we expect more of a band in what is supposed to be a counter-cultural musical movement; that it might, for instance offer a counter to the dominant cultural perception of trans women?

At this point we should probably turn to the question of what can be done. It is abundantly clear at this stage that neither the band nor Profound Lore is interested in changing the artwork or seriously considering the concerns raised. In a neoliberal economic order that increasingly gives us power only as consumers, the only way forward might well be to withdraw our custom. This is not an easy thing for me to recommend- I have grown to greatly enjoy Lord Mantis’ previous album Pervertor, and was initially looking forward to hearing their music develop on this release. But weighed against the possibility of helping a band to profit off of transmisogyny, my personal disappointment is not important. I would urge readers who were considering purchasing The Death Mask not to support Lord Mantis by paying for the album or their live shows. If possible, I would also recommend avoiding any of Profound Lore’s other releases until the band and/or the label issue a full apology and promise to change the artwork. I appreciate that it’s easy for me to ask this of others, and that it might not seem like this will have any impact. But I’d like to believe that if enough of us commit to this, and make our intentions clear to Profound Lore, it will eventually be in the label’s financial interest to do the right thing. Once again, outcomes trump intentions.

                                            

* For example, it is often reported that 238 trans people (men and women included) were murdered worldwide in 2013, but the true figure is almost certainly much higher.

** Having said that, this interview with Lord Mantis vocalist/bassist Charlie Fell suggests that his view on transgender issues could charitably be described as “unreconstructed”, and will not win over critics of the cover art choice. (Trigger warning: contains images of the Death Mask album artwork)

Prison Rape Jokes and Rape Culture

Trigger warning: explicit discussion of child abuse, rape culture mentality

(This post is not strictly related to a metal artist, but it concerns an article published on a metal site, so I’m going to say it still counts.)

I often find myself wondering why I keep reading the MetalSucks blog. The site has introduced me to great songs and artists in the past, but its focus on controversy-seeking clickbait, gossip and rumour-mongering, not to mention its frequently juvenile writing style, has gotten very old very fast. And while I realise that what goes on below the line isn’t the editors’ responsibility, the comments section is mostly filled with that mix of exclusionary elitism and macho posturing that makes metal fandom, and indeed internet-based fandom in general, such a frustrating space. It’s better than Youtube comments, but not by much.

Last night, though, I came across an article that was even worse than usual, that has made me decide to swear off the site for the foreseeable future.

Readers might already be aware that Ian Watkins, former singer for the godawful rock band Lost Prophets (who were in no way metal, but received enough coverage in Kerrang and similar rags in the last decade that MetalSucks presumably felt the need to cover the story) was charged last year with conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a female under 13 and possession/distribution of indecent images of children. Watkins has now pleaded guilty to a list of charges related to child pornography and child abuse, both planned and carried out. I am not often squeamish about descriptions of crimes, however horrific. But the details of the abuse carried out by Watkins and two young women, and the callous manner in which Watkins spoke about his intentions in evidence presented to the court, are truly stomach-churning. I don’t wish to list the charges here; anyone interested can read the PRP’s report here. (I don’t want to boost the traffic of an offensive article, so I won’t link to the MetalSucks post on the guilty plea; it can be easily found on the site if you want to read it for yourself).

Ian Watkins has admitted to being a child molester. The quotes attributed to him at the trial make it clear he feels entitled to use children to fulfil his own desires, which is the disgusting end result of a patriarchal culture that sends men the message that women are there for their sexual fulfilment. Obviously not all men who absorb this message of entitlement will go on to abuse children, but I believe that message forms the kernel of the justification child abusers, and rapists and abusers more generally, use to excuse their crimes*. It is near impossible to muster any sympathy for the man, and as poorly suited as our current prison system is for rehabilitating criminals and preventing recidivism, I hope he is kept away from society for a long, long time.

This does not mean it was OK for MetalSucks writer Axl Rosenburg to end his piece on Watkins and his female associates by saying:  “I hope they all get sent to jail for a very long time, during which they are raped. A lot.”

The article in question made its commitment to bad taste clear early on, poking fun at the perpetrator’s mugshot: “his (Watkins’) new look makes him far more readily identifiable as a scum-sucking pedophile”. Because clearly the most important thing here is that our preconceptions about what a child molester is “supposed” to look like aren’t challenged, so we can continue to call these people aberrant monsters instead of examining how patriarchal society encourages them to commit abuse. But joking about anyone being raped in prison, even those who have themselves raped or abused others, is more than just “bad taste”. It helps to reinforce the very rape culture that emboldens people to commit these crimes.

My guess is that the thought process behind the crack, if indeed there was any, was something along these lines: “Watkins and his conspirators have done unspeakably awful things. (True enough.) Rape is an unspeakably awful crime to commit against someone. (Again, true.) Therefore, it’s OK to wish for these awful people to have an awful crime committed against them.” It’s in keeping with the would-be edgy, confrontational tone of much of the site’s content. But prison rape jokes don’t actually confront preconceptions or challenge the status quo at all.

It’s not hard to understand why people feel enough fury against Watkins and the women also being charged to wish this against them. Doubtless some readers might interpret this criticism of a joke at their expense as a defence of people who no one in their right mind would want to defend**. This goes beyond this individual case, though. When you joke about rape in prison being committed against someone you think “deserves” it, you are implicitly stating that you believe there are situations where rape is justified. This is part of what Zoe Stavri talks about in her Independent piece on the case, where she notes that “we see people decrying Watkins yet continuing to perpetuate other myths that make it easier for rapists to get away with it”. Whether intended or not, the message sent by prison rape jokes helps to reinforce a wider cultural conviction that rape can be acceptable. It helps reinforce the justifications used by rapists when that girl needed to be “taught a lesson” for dressing so slutty. When that lesbian woman needed to be “cured” by a “real man”. When that trans woman needed “correcting”, and perhaps even murdering afterwards, for being “misleading” about their gender.

“An eye for an eye” might have been an acceptable basis for a justice system thousands of years ago, but not today. The appropriate punishment for rape or child abuse is not rape. And if we genuinely want to help prevent rape and child abuse in the future, jokes about “corrective” prison rape will not help erode the patriarchal culture of entitlement that emboldens perpetrators in the first place. MetalSucks can either apologise for the Watkins piece, or they can continue to be part of that culture, and help ensure that cases like this will keep on happening.

                           

* This is not to suggest women don’t commit rape and abuse, against adults or children. They do, but as far as I am aware women are not told, to the same degree as men, that other human beings exist purely for their sexual gratification.

** Of course, it’s a depressing inevitability that there are fans continuing to root for Watkins, even after his admission of guilt. I have seen it argued, for example, that he lied to the court to secure a lighter sentence, which is so stupid a statement I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it.

Laina Dawes- What Are You Doing Here?

Last weekend, I made the trip up to Leeds University, my alma mater, to see the Damnation Festival, held there annually in the student union. The festival highlights some of the best current metal bands, big and small, across a variety of genres. I had a great time seeing bands I already loved (Carcass, Cult of Luna, Slabdragger), and being wowed by groups I’d not yet listened to (The Ocean, Rosetta). But looking at the musicians and the fans, something uncomfortable stood out to me: the performers were overwhelmingly white and male. A couple of groups I saw featured men of colour, and only one featured a (white) female musician. Not one band I saw included any women of colour in their lineup*. And while there were women (and men) of colour in the audience, they were dwarfed by the number of white women, who in turn were outnumbered by white dudes.

Why is metal so dominated by white men, in terms of fan demographics, band lineups and popular imagination? I had been thinking about these issues for a while, but I doubt they would have been so central in my mind if I hadn’t been reading What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal on the train up to Leeds. Author Laina Dawes, a lifelong metal fan, wrote the book to talk about why this situation exists, but also to explain why she and other black women still love metal in spite of how it very often does not represent them. In doing so, she highlights a lot of important issues with insight and clarity.

The overwhelmingly white, male character of metal means music label bosses are unsure of how to manage and market black women in heavy bands, limiting their ability to potentially act as inspirations to a new generation. For example, Skunk Anansie frontwoman Skin, who also wrote the book’s foreword, relates how music industry players in the States referred her band to “urban music” division managers they had little common ground with, because they assumed based on her race that she was part of a hip-hop or R n B group. There’s also the fact that metal’s white, male domination is a deterrent in of itself to female fans of colour getting actively involved in their local scenes. Dawes interviews some black women metallers who perceive the genre’s fans as not being particularly bothered about race, but she also notes that “(s)ome of the women I talked to… were fearful of being at the receiving end of racial slurs or getting physically attacked, and of what their friends or family might think if they knew what music they listened to” (26). She gives examples from her own life and those of interviewees of receiving patronising treatment, and even racist abuse, from white metal fans. However isolated these incidents might be in the aggregate, they help create a sense that metal gigs are not safe places for black women, even those who enjoy the music itself.     

This is compounded by the general resistance to and wariness of metal that Dawes documents within black communities. She describes a perception of the genre as “music for racists”, which is not helped by occasional outbursts from metal musicians that support this interpretation, and the adoption by some bands of symbols associated with Nazism or the American Confederacy**.  There is also the issue of a concern among some black people with preserving a proscribed cultural ideal of “blackness”, that questions those who enjoy art and culture designated as white. Dawes relates how, as the adopted child of white parents, she faced criticism growing up for loving “white” music, and the assumption that this meant she was ashamed of her black heritage, or unduly influenced by the culture of her white family. As she says, “(a) black metalhead can be perceived not only as an affront to the past and present struggles black people have endured, but as a personal insult to those closest to them” (79).

If that sounds overly critical of black communities, it’s important to remember that this desire for a cohesive, unifying black identity is the result of the massive cultural dislocation and destruction inflicted upon black peoples by whites, first through the slave trade, and then through the lingering presence of racism, both personal and structural, up to the present day. The pressures of this existence led to a conservative trend among some black people, that posited the importance of proving racist stereotypes wrong by showing that people of colour could be more hard-working, God-fearing and respectable than whites were. This trend, commonly identified as respectability politics, strives to present a good image of black people, but only in terms of what a racist society deems good. It can lead, for example, to black metal fans being derided by their parents or peers for “letting their people down” by identifying with wild, primal music and therefore confirming stereotypes about all black people. The irony, which better commentators than myself have observed time and again, is that respectability politics themselves limit the boundaries of blackness as a result, and place the responsibility for ending racism on those affected by it rather than those perpetrating it***.

As Dawes shows, respectability politics have constrained black women in particular from engaging in sexually-charged music: blues, rock ‘n’ roll, and the heavy metal that later arose from these black-originated genres: “Rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and jazz albums were banned in many black homes. Many families felt that the music was unsuitable- that it was sacrilegious and conveyed messages that were too personal and too sexual. More importantly, the sexual desire, emotional woes and relationship issues that the female blues singers detailed in their lyrics signified a freedom from male oppression, which threatened the sanctity of the black nuclear household.” (67) Unfortunately, it is all too easy for marginalised men to seek the power denied them by structural racism in society, through complying with that society’s patriarchal norms, and oppressing women as a result.

It’s important to note, though, that black musicians, including women such as Big Mama Thornton, were integral to the development of blues and early rock ‘n’ roll music. Without these (mostly uncredited) influences, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath would not have popularised hard rock and heavy metal. In spite of its current white domination and the resistance to it among some members of black communities, then, metal is black music, and black women have a right to perform and listen to it. Dawes expresses this perfectly when she answers the question in her book’s title with the chapter heading: “I’m Here Because We Started It!”

What happens, though, when you find yourself in an environment where people who look like you are few and far between? Dawes identifies this as “the ‘only one’ syndrome”: the situation of being one of only a few black (or black and female) fans in an audience. As she notes from personal experience, when more than one black woman attends a metal show, jealousy and suspicion can be the result: “I have felt the disheartening chill of making eye contact with the only other black girl at a metal show, and receiving a death glare in return” (96). Coincidentally, the blogger 113yearslater identified a similar dynamic, observed among female musicians rather than audiences, in a comment on one of my pieces about metal and patriarchy. (In this instance it was described as “a sort of Highlander ethic at work for women: There can only be one.“) If there’s one thing patriarchal systems are incredibly skilled at, it’s getting women to fight amongst each other, eager to prove themselves as the “only one” worth a place as “one of the guys” in a male-dominated setting. The alternative proposition, of finding solidarity with the other women in these settings and helping to increase women’s representation there, is not an easy one to imagine in a patriarchal society that champions competition and domination above all else. In a metal context, I’d argue that the genre’s ideological tendency towards individualistic iconoclasm makes this solidarity even more difficult.

Despite all the problems she identifies with metal’s treatment of women of colour, however, Dawes is ultimately still an enthusiastic fan, and is optimistic about the possibilities it offers as a genre for those women. One of her reasons for being so positive is close to my heart as well- the potential of music, including metal, to highlight political issues and give voice to the desires and concerns of marginalised people. She argues that “(m)usic is not only for enjoyment. We derive too much pleasure, pain and education from the music that we listen to every day to dismiss it as simply entertainment. For black populations in Western civilisation, music has provided a voice in times when their own were silenced” (61). Precisely because of its extreme nature, metal can effectively channel the rage and frustration of oppressed people and transform it into a powerful musical statement.

Dawes also highlights economic factors that mean excluding women of colour as metal fans will ultimately prove financially unsustainable for the music industry. A largely underground genre such as metal, with increasingly little mainstream chart exposure, relies on audiences willing to attend shows and buy merchandise: “(c)ommunities of metal fans are needed in order for the culture to survive and thrive, especially in an era with such an overbearing Top 40 pop music culture” (134). Perhaps more than other genres, fans of heavy music are willing to give this support to their favourite bands, but in an age of decreasing financial security even for bands on major labels, “(d)eterring any fan from participating in metal, hardcore and punk is simply not economically viable.” (135)  Unfortunately, as Dawes notes, “the welcome mat is not always out for black women fans” (ibid), but if labels continue to fail to represent women of colour in the bands they add to their roster, it’ll be their own bottom line that suffers. If music industry bosses realise this, perhaps the ruthless logic of capitalism can provide the incentive to remedy metal’s stultifying lack of diversity.

Ultimately, What Are You Doing Here is hopeful for the future. It might be blindingly white at the moment, but black people created the roots of metal, and black women have always been there as fans and musicians. Despite the barriers of music industry conservatism, the reactionary tendencies of some white metalheads, and disapproval from their own communities, women of colour will break through and gain both representation and acceptance. I can’t express this any better than Dawes herself does: “one of the most satisfying things I realised after interviewing women for this book is that we all share the same attitude. Come hell or high water, none of us will ever back down from a fight.” (156)

                                          

* In fairness, I saw only a fraction of the bands on the bill, mostly on the doom metal and post-metal stages. I have however looked at the lineups of all the groups at the festival, and was unable to find evidence of any women of colour in any of them.

** The number of patches and T-shirts I saw at Damnation that bore the logo of Burzum, the black metal/ambient project of convicted murderer and self-described racist Varg Vikernes, are one personal example I can think of that might lead a person to associate metal music and fans with racism.

*** A few examples of articles discussing respectability politics: “No Disrespect”, Tamara Winfrey Harris (http://bitchmagazine.org/article/no-disrespect); “Respectability Politics Won’t Save Us: On The Death of Jonathan Ferrell”, Mychal Denzel Smith (http://www.thenation.com/blog/176183/respectability-politics-wont-save-us-death-jonathan-ferrell); “I Hate Myself!”, Maurice Dolberry (http://alineinthesand.com/respectability-politics/); “Acting Right Around White Folks”, ReBecca Theodore-Vachon (http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/solomon-northrup-and-the-code-of-silence-the-respectability-politics-in-american-cinema-12-years-a-slave). I’m far from the most informed person on this subject; if any readers wish to address problems they have found in my explanation of it, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

A Model For Feminist Extreme Metal

Reinventing the Steel: A three-part discussion of how extreme metal could reinvigorate itself through explicit ideological engagement with feminism

3) A Model For Feminist Extreme Metal

It’s telling that this final article on metal, patriarchy and feminism has taken me much longer to write than the ones before it. Where those were engaged in critiquing the metal scene as I see it, this one involves proposing a way to change things, a far harder task. I’m hesitant to suggest any kind of definitive answer to the problems within metal, but I’m fairly certain the solution isn’t for us to feel personal guilt over problematic lyrics, and shy away from the genre as a result. It’s OK to listen to those lyrics if we admit there’s a problem with them, rather than getting defensive about how metal bands don’t actually kill women. More helpful than avoiding the problem, or trying to justify the status quo, are active attempts to create an alternative narrative- a model of feminist extreme metal.

I hope that my previous posts on heavy metal subculture and its links to patriarchy have demonstrated that there is a serious problem, in this subculture and more widely, of women being denied representation and treated with horrific violence, metaphorical and literal. I’d argue that feminism- which I understand as a movement to improve the lot of marginalised people, including but not limited to women, by demolishing patriarchal power structures- is the most suitable ideological trend to remedy this situation. It’s always easy to find people who balk at even the mention of the name, however. And not just the internet-dwelling Men’s Rights “activists” who will loudly insist that forty-odd years of limited progress toward gender equality have turned the tables and created a “misandric”, matriarchal society: plenty of girls and women, from the playground to the editorial pages, are reluctant to explicitly identify as feminist. (To be fair, there’s a world of difference between those who are hesitant to criticise patriarchy, and the many women of colour who feel excluded by high-profile feminist movements that tend to ignore their specific concerns and focus only on the issues of white, middle-class women. I can hardly blame those women who feel this brand of feminism doesn’t speak for them, and instead prefer titles such as womanist, or no label at all.)

While there has been an increased media focus lately on the myriad ways feminism’s goals have yet to be achieved, there remains a perception that we somehow have moved beyond the need for a women’s movement. Those feminist arguments that do receive serious mainstream attention are very often individually-focused, aiming at getting a few women into leading roles in the capitalist hierarchy. Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” brand of feminism is the most prominent example of the neutered rhetoric that talks of female empowerment without critiquing patriarchy as a system¹.

If feminism was truly irrelevant or unnecessary in today’s “post-feminist” world, its opponents would not spend any time attempting to discredit or disparage its ideals and practitioners. If it were as silly or “irrational” as is claimed, they would simply ignore it, instead of expending energy trying to counter it. But feminism continues to invite ridicule, disdain and rebuttals (as well as attempts at co-option) because it poses a very real, existential threat to patriarchal systems of power. Its radical critique of patriarchy as a system propping up massive inequality is threatening to the people who benefit from that structural inequality. What could be more dangerous to patriarchal power than an ideology that repudiates its very structural underpinning?

Make no mistake, feminism is still a dirty word for far too many. Student Jinan Younis, for example, was recently hounded by online abuse from boys, simply for daring to start a feminist society at her school². This is merely one example of the relentless threats women face for expressing feminist viewpoints, or even for just existing in online space³. The hostility is not limited to internet harassment from those who lack social status and therefore lash out at those with less than them, in an attempt to feel powerful. UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s dismissive attitude toward female MPs is well documented- for example, shutting down Green MP Caroline Lucas’ questioning about the continued presence of the Sun newspaper, with its prominent nude modelling pictures, on Parliament news stands. Whatever your feelings on the No More Page 3 campaign against nude modelling in “family” newspapers, the dismissive response toward the concerns of women by the leader of a modern, supposedly enlightened nation should be extremely concerning. And outside of nations with at least the façade of a commitment to gender equality, official responses to feminist activism are marked with outright hostility, rather than smug indifference. The Pussy Riot case in Russia shows the extent to which dictatorial leaders and massively powerful religious authorities, who logically should feel secure in their absolute dominance of social life, will crack down on any feminist challenge.

For metal bands to explicitly align with feminism, then, would be a radical act in of itself, one that might restore some genuine counter-culture credentials to an increasingly apolitical art form.

 

What would feminist metal consist of?

A feminist approach to extreme metal would start with the organisation of bands and shows. It’s important to have more groups with female members in central roles – there are already plenty of bands entirely made up of dudes. And not only women, but people of colour and LGBT people as well; all of these groups are massively under-represented because they fall outside the genre’s white, male, straight, cissexual norm. Intersectional feminism ought to mean centralising not only female voices, but also those of women (and men) of colour, as well as trans people and/or gender-non-conformists. In addition, there needs to be an effort to make shows more welcoming to these groups. I’ve heard too many stories from female friends about sensing an unwelcoming atmosphere, or even outright hostility, at metal and punk shows. When race enters the mix, this feeling only increases. Laina Dawes highlights this in What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal: “sexual and racial stereotyping and threats of physical harm can limit the participation of black women fans. (…) Some of the women I talked to… were fearful of being at the receiving end of racial slurs or getting physically attacked”⁴. It’s on us white, male, straight metal fans to make sure shows are inclusive and welcoming to people who might not fit the stereotypical image of a metalhead.

As well as demographics, the themes and content of metal could be adjusted to accompany feminist consciousness. In the Post-Zeitgeist blog piece “Extremity in Metal”, the author offers a potential model for reconfiguring the “extreme” aspect of metal: “To me, true shock, true extremity should deeply unseat more than an individual’s taste or stomach. In fact, I would argue that it is not necessary for extremity or shock to be negative”⁵. Simply by presenting alternatives to established discourses, intersectionalist feminism welded to metal extremity could potentially shock listeners into questioning the patriarchal organisation of the genre. Wouldn’t metal with explicitly feminist lyrics and presentation- that reflected reality by including the perspectives of women, LGBT persons and people of colour- rekindle a sense of the danger metal once possessed?

By itself, this inclusion wouldn’t immediately demolish the music’s patriarchal structure. But by channelling the experiences and voices of people outside the genre’s white, straight, male norm, it would at least present something different to what we’ve heard before. Who knows what new and exciting approaches to metal we might be missing out on by not giving equal representation to female, LGBT and PoC perspectives?

 

Forced Gender Re-imagining

At this point, it might be helpful to take an example of an existing metal song, and imagine how it could be reconfigured to reflect intersectional feminist concerns. The aforementioned Post-Zeitgeist post discusses an apt candidate in Cattle Decapitation’s “Forced Gender Reassignment”, which gained minor notoriety last year for its video, deemed gruesome enough to be banned from Youtube and other video-sharing sites. The song’s lyrics and their accompanying visuals depict violent retribution committed against fundamentalist Christians. The victims in question are forcibly put through gender reassignment surgery by “a stereotyped sadomasochistic, implied homosexual”, presumably as a punishment for religious bigotry. The implication is that this is a horrific fate for religious fundamentalists, because of their misogyny, cissexism and adherence to the strictly defined gender roles their religion helps the patriarchal system to prop up. But the reassignment-as-punishment device leaves the assumption of a rigid gender binary unchallenged- it is taken as read that the victims have been gender-switched simply because their anatomy has been forcibly altered. The song’s lyrics ultimately “suggests that gender is merely biological, which we all know by now it is not”, and thus “merely reinforce rather than transcend or properly critique sexual stereotypes”⁶. In the same way that Cattle Decapitation rely on well-worn metal hostility to organised religion (however well-justified), they ultimately fail in their attempt to shock the audience because they are still working within conventional notions of gender. “Forced Gender Reassignment” ends up being nowhere near as transgressive as it wants to be, no matter how gory its video. But it would be entirely possible to write a song with the exact same title that explicitly incorporated feminist/queer gender theory, while still remaining true to the established characteristics of death metal.

Imagine a baby assigned one of two binary genders at birth, who grows up wishing to be on the other side of that divide, or even outside it entirely. Imagine an intersex baby with ambiguous genitalia, forcibly assigned a specific gender and operated on by doctors in an attempt to get it to conform to that gender. Imagine the pain and strife that could result if this gender identity does not fit the child’s preference, if they would have wished to exist outside the gender binary, an opportunity denied them before they were even truly conscious. Imagine the dysmorphia that trans, intersex and/or gender non-binary people often feel when forced into an inappropriate gender identity- a visceral body horror that one cannot escape from. Is this not a creatively fertile area for exploration, one that allows for emotional expression in a recognisably metal way, but that hasn’t been overdone?

It wouldn’t be necessary to focus on the negative side to be shocking here, either. As the Post-Zeitgeist piece asks of “Forced Gender Reassignment”: “Why was it not possible for the creators of the video to create a beautiful version of forced gender reassignment among consenting peers? What about representing fluidity, transformation and possibility as key shock tactics(?)”⁷ Showing the positive potential of gender fluidity would certainly be as shocking as revealing the injustices faced by trans and/or non-binary people, maybe even more so.

An entire metal concept album constructed around these issues wouldn’t be at all implausible. A central narrator’s rage and frustration at the rigid gender binary and the position within it they were forced into, their own body dysmorphia, or the discrimination and horrific violence faced by trans and non-binary people, would all make ripe fodder for extreme, aggressive music. If you wanted to uplift and inspire listeners, as well as make them angry, you could also highlight the empowerment this character finds in discovering a gender identity and expression that’s not recognised in the mainstream but is still “right” for them. What part of that isn’t metal?

Of course, if this hypothetical album were to speak from a place of experience and authenticity, it would have to be written by a trans and/or gender non-binary person. Simply finding someone interested in bringing their perspective to a project like this would not be easy: as poor as women’s representation is within metal, it’s an even worse situation for trans people. About the only trans musician with a relatively high profile in underground metal that I’m currently aware of is Cretin and Repulsion guitarist Marissa Martinez, for example.⁸ Yet a project like this would be ideal for bringing attention to both queer theory and trans and/or non-binary musicians, who might end up as role models for young metal fans questioning their own place within the gender binary. This isn’t to say that trans musicians in metal have to sing only about gender issues or feminism, of course. They would, however, be more qualified to talk about certain issues surrounding the gender binary than the cisgendered. Metal music would be greatly enriched by representing the perspectives of people who have traditionally not had a voice within the genre, especially if these would help challenge those areas where the music has reinforced patriarchal assumptions.

 

Nobody Knows If Nobody Sees

For a political, social or musical movement to have any effect, people need to know about it. And often, spreading awareness means getting coverage in mainstream media. Even in an age where social media networks make it easier than ever for people to get informed without relying on print and television news, it’s still necessary to get that coverage if you want to reach the widest audience possible. Given that, I’m not all that optimistic that feminist metal would get much play in dead-tree media, whether that be major newspapers or specialist monthly publications. Ideologies that pose a significant challenge to existing social norms will not get taken seriously in corporate-owned titles. Even in metal magazines with an ostensible counter-culture slant, socio-political discussion is scarcely to be seen, especially if it would critique the genre’s patriarchal structure. You could make a hypothetical comparison here with riot grrl, the early 90s wave of female-led punk bands affiliated with third-wave feminism. The limited mainstream attention paid to bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile or Huggy Bear was mostly negative, misinterpreting pro-women stances as anti-men (for further examples of this false dichotomy, see any mainstream report on any feminist movement, ever). The impact of the movement on wider punk circles was limited in scope- and given that punk has historically given at least token support to feminism in a way that metal hasn’t, there’s little reason to suspect a similar movement within metal would be any more influential.

But it’s important not to be too negative here. Riot grrl might have influenced only a relatively small amount of bands worldwide, but for those who did adopt its DIY attitude, explicit political involvement and activism, it offered a model for how to carve out a space for women in an increasingly macho punk scene; how to create a subculture within a subculture. A similar movement within metal, expanded to incorporate the input of people of colour and LGBT persons, could achieve something similar: perhaps not changing the world, but making a small part of it safer and more comfortable for those who’ve been excluded from it up to now.

It’s probably unlikely to expect feminist metal to make much headway in the mainstream, or even to alter the structure of metal subculture all that much. Any change it did effect would be gradual, limited at least initially to small local scenes. But that doesn’t mean introducing intersectional feminist perspectives into extreme music isn’t worth doing. If it makes things more comfortable for fans who don’t happen to be straight white dudes, or inspires even one person to start a band who wouldn’t have if they hadn’t seen people like themselves playing metal, it’ll be worth it.

 

Footnotes

1 For an excellent deconstruction of Sandberg’s “faux-feminism”, see bell hooks’ article “Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In”. http://thefeministwire.com/2013/10/17973/

2 “What happened when I started a feminist society at school”, The Guardian, June 20^th 2013. http://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2013/jun/20/why-i-started-a-feminist-society

3 Further discussion of the nature of online sexism and misogyny can be found in Laurie Penny’s Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet, quoted in the previous post in this series.

4 Laina Dawes, What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal, 26. Expect a post dedicated to this book in the near future.

5 “Extremity in Metal: a Buddhist’s Perspective”, Post-Zeitgeist, 13th November 2012. http://post-zeitgeist.blogspot.jp/2012/11/extremity-in-metal-buddhists-perspective.html

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Coincidentally, Martinez’ Cretin bandmate is none other than Matthew Widener, the musician behind Liberteer, who I discussed in the first part of this series. For an excellent interview with Martinez about her transition and musical influences, see here: http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2011/01/interview-marissa-martinez-cretin/

The Possibility, and Necessity, of Change

Reinventing the Steel: A three-part discussion of how extreme metal could reinvigorate itself through explicit ideological engagement with feminism

2) (ii) The possibility, and necessity, of change

Trigger warning: victim-blaming, graphic description of abuser/rapist mentality

In discussing the patriarchal underpinnings of metal in the first part of this post, I didn’t mean to decry the genre, or to declare that it can’t create spaces for women. Because of my appreciation for heavy music, and the close-knit communities that spring up around it, I know that it’s capable of offering marginalised groups of people a support structure, and potentially a site of resistance against an oppressive, patriarchal system. But if it continues to perpetuate that same system in its own organisation, metal is not acting as a support structure for women who appreciate and need it just as much as their male comrades. I want metal to be for everybody who wants it.

In her recent e-book Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet, Laurie Penny identifies a similar dynamic at play in geek culture (which metal could be defined as a subset of), especially in its manifestations online. For geek women, isolation from mainstream culture is made worse by sexism and ostracism from the very boys and men they might have expected to find solidarity with. She writes from personal experience, as someone who knows how being both a geek and a woman compounds your marginalisation:

“we were there too, the other geeks and weird kids whose lives were hellish at school…We were there too, but you didn’t see us, because we were girls. And the costs of being the geek were the same for us, right down to the sexual frustration, the yearning, the being laughed at, the loneliness. And then we went online… only to find ourselves slut-shamed and screamed at if we gave away that we might be female. For us there was no escape. We had to fight the same battles you did, only harder, because we were women and we also had to fight sexism, some of it from you, and when we went looking for other weird kids to join our gang, we were told we weren’t ‘real geeks’ because we were female.¹”

 

The accusation that women can’t be “real” geeks or “real” metalheads is rampant both online and off. Never mind women’s genuine appreciation for those subcultures, and their lived experience of the same bullshit as socially marginalised men, and more besides. For too many men, all geek girls (or metal girls) are fake². It is absolutely unfair that women drawn to the culture around heavy music for the same reasons as men have to face this persecution, and the accusation that they don’t truly belong there, in what is supposed to be a space for anyone who can appreciate musical extremity.

If men want to help change this situation, the key is not guilt or despair, but a clear look at how not only patriarchal ideals, but also metal’s very structure, contribute to the idea that treating women this way is acceptable. The takeaway from Allan Johnson’s The Gender Knot (from which I quoted extensively last time) is that no one alive today is personally responsible for creating patriarchy. Its influence is systemic, wider and bigger than any one person. The system only acts through us, so we do have a responsibility to try and ensure our actions don’t prop up male domination and female oppression. Calling your friends out for derogatory or exclusionary comments about women, and explaining why it isn’t cool, is also important. But the system of patriarchy, not the actions of individual misogynists, is the main problem.

Although the same propensity for “geek sexism” that Penny identifies is at play in the metal world, male metal fans are not inherently any more misogynist than men generally- a lot of them are opposed to oppression of women, either explicitly or without realising it. The problem isn’t individual misogynists, but that the genre conventions of metal as a musical form tend towards either excluding, ignoring or actively denigrating women. As blues music often expressed hostility or fear toward women as a staple theme, rock music and later, metal, absorbed this tendency, reproduced and consolidated it. As Post-Zeitgeist documents, there is a direct continuity between violence against women in blues lyrics, and in death metal- the latter’s imagery is more explicit and grotesque, but the theme and underlying intention are the same³.

Metal lyrics and rape culture

At this point you might be asking why it matters that misogynistic themes are prevalent in extreme metal. So death metal bands have all those songs about the murder and rape of women- they don’t actually commit the atrocities they sing about, or endorse people doing so. Isn’t it all essentially tongue-in-cheek, an exploration of fantasy? It’s true that expressing morbid feelings doesn’t automatically translate into a desire to act out those impulses. The problem is that our actions and our art do not necessarily send the message we want them to.

It’s been said by better people than me that feminists don’t think all men are rapists- rapists think all men are rapists⁴. The extent to which male sexual offenders believe their actions to be normal, acceptable male behaviour is well-documented, and is directly related to the normalisation of violence against women in wider culture. Exposure to sexist jokes, for example, is connected to greater levels of self-reported rape proclivity and victim-blaming⁵. A connection could easily be made between misogyny in metal lyrics and last year’s debate around rape jokes in stand-up comedy. Quite aside from the need to consider the huge numbers of women who have been raped and will therefore probably not find the joke funny, do we really want to reinforce the justifications built up in the minds of sexual predators? Do we really want to contribute, in some small part, to their actions?

“I wrapped my hands around
her neck
Squeezing out her breath
Eyes rolled back in her head
Clawing at my skin
I know now it’s not my fault
She was asking for it”

(Cannibal Corpse- She Was Asking For It)

Let’s take a concrete example of a metal song that plumbs the depths of misogyny. Cannibal Corpse’s song “She Was Asking For It” would likely be taken by most listeners as a sick joke, not an honest statement of belief about female rape victims. You could even argue that by presenting the rapist/killer’s mindset in such bald clarity, it attempts to lay bare and ultimately condemn the mentality behind such crimes⁶. But as the study quoted above shows, jokes about rape help to legitimise violence against women for those predisposed to misogyny. In the mind of the rapist, conditioned to feel entitled to women’s bodies thanks to numerous subtle cultural messages encouraging that entitlement, it’s easy to take “I know it’s not my fault” at face value. It’s yet another affirmation that he is justified in his behaviour and his viewpoint, that women are indeed “asking for it”.

It’s easy to criticise a set of lyrics for propagating rape culture if one personally finds them artistically lacking. But what if a band you personally like does something similar? For me, Pig Destroyer are one of the best bands in metal today, in part because of their lyrical content. Vocalist JR Hayes’ writing is downright poetic, packing a surprising depth considering the brevity required of grindcore. This undeniable skill means the streak of misogyny in his lyrics is harder to get to grips with⁷.

“I hold your hands in mine

the rest of you is scattered

all over

your rib cage is open

like a great white’s jaws

your legs look so sexy out of context”

(Pig Destroyer- Deathtripper)

“Deathtripper” is another tale of death and dismemberment, albeit rendered less explicitly than the blunt trauma of a Cannibal Corpse song. The “out of context” line, for example, creeps up on you, evoking horror only when you’ve considered its implication. Rather than wallowing in gore, Hayes uses irony and simile to help the listener paint the terrifying picture in their imagination. But the lyrical sophistication masks the fact that it is the exact same narrative of violence against women as in so many other metal songs. Its comparatively refined language is almost more insidious in this respect.

“She’s got a neck
Built for my hands
The way a pine
Grows for the saw
They say I hate women
They couldn’t be more wrong…
The other day
I followed her…
I just wanted to hold her
Like an anaconda”

(Pig Destroyer- Baltimore Strangler)

“Baltimore Strangler” follows a stalker of women, letting us into his head as he describes his feelings toward his target. To be fair, no violence is explicitly committed in the song’s narrative. The intent is presumably to provoke us to consider the stalker’s justifications, not to endorse them. But the line “They say I hate women/They couldn’t be more wrong” has a self-referential air- it could be read as a direct quote from the author, which necessarily ties the rest of the song’s sentiments to Hayes himself. Again, he probably doesn’t intend for us to accept the subject’s reasoning, but any misogynists and abusers that might be listening don’t necessarily know that. Might they not see it as yet another reassurance that how they see women is justified, that their behaviour is OK?

If that were the case- if a Pig Destroyer fan raped or otherwise assaulted someone- it absolutely wouldn’t be on Hayes because a song he had written had been misinterpreted as justifying rape. Pinning the blame for an individual crime onto one specific media influence would be the same flimsy argument made by religious conservatives to blame the videogame Doom for the Columbine high school massacre. But like it or not, the song would have been one small, individual contribution to rape culture; the larger cultural narrative a rapist could point to as justification for their crime.

Metal lyricists need to ask themselves- is it worth it to use violence against women as a topic, if it can be used by rapists in that way? I don’t mean this as an attempt to shame metal artists into avoiding certain themes. But we absolutely have to think deeply about how our art will be understood by an audience. It’s fast becoming a cliché to quote Kurt Vonnegut’s line in Mother Night, but it’s still true- “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”.

By following the genre conventions of metal music as they exist today, one can easily end up reinforcing patriarchal structures and representations of women, without meaning to. It is even possible to unwittingly end up contributing to a narrative that minimises and justifies violence and rape. This is why I feel the status quo of metal as it currently exists is exclusionary towards women.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

This is why it’s so important to create alternatives to how metal currently represents women, to make space for new roles women can play within metal. This is where feminism comes in. Not only does feminist thought hold the potential to undercut patriarchy in metal and create more equal, respectful representations of women, it also acts as a model of political engagement, tempering extremity with reflection in a way that could help restore the genre’s sense of danger and vibrancy.

Footnotes

1 Laurie Penny. Cybersexism: Sex, Gender and Power on the Internet, p32.

2 Devin Faraci, “On Fake Geek Girls”. http://badassdigest.com/2012/11/13/on-fake-geek-girls/

3 “Death metal: Grotesquery, fetish and misogyny”, Post-Zeitgeist, 20^th March 2012. http://post-zeitgeist.blogspot.jp/2012/03/death-metal-grotesquery-fetish-and.html

4 “Feminists Don’t Think All Men Are Rapists. Rapists Do.” http://dbzer0.com/blog/feminists-dont-think-all-men-are-rapists-rapists-do/

5 Cullen, Fernandez, Thomae, Viki. “The Effect of Sexist Humor and Type of Rape on Men’s Self-Reported Rape Proclivity and Victim Blame” in Current Research in Social Psychology, Vol 13, No 10 December 2007. http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp13_10.pdf

6 It might be unhelpful to conflate murder and rape here. Some will undoubtedly claim that songs about killing women don’t promote rape culture. But the song’s title is a frequent justification for rape of women more than murder. In any case, without consent, sex is not sex. Rape is violence, and thus is connected to murder.

7 As is the band’s popularity with female metalheads. I am aware many of these women have no problem with songs I might find misogynist, and that they may well consider my pronouncements on metal patriarchy incredibly patronising. Certainly misogyny is far from the only influence in the bands’ lyrics, much of which focus on women and female imagery, but I believe it is definitely there.

We need to talk about women: metal’s patriarchal structure

Reinventing the Steel: A three-part discussion of how extreme metal could reinvigorate itself through explicit ideological engagement with feminism

2. (i) We need to talk about women: metal’s patriarchal structure

In the last post, I promised to talk about the specific form that a politicised, ideologically engaged metal music might take. But first, I want to take a brief detour into a potentially fraught topic- the issue of women’s representation, or lack thereof, within metal, and how this reflects wider societal structures.

The case of Tim Lambesis, the singer of As I Lay Dying who is currently facing trial for attempting to arrange the murder of his estranged wife Meggan, shows that hostility towards women is unfortunately still not hard to find within the metal community. Countless examples can be found of online commenters, men and women, taking the attempted murderer’s side, castigating his wife as a “bitch” and speculating on what she must have done to provoke her husband¹. This kind of victim blaming is not exclusive to metal, of course. The outpouring of fan support for Chris Brown after his assault against Rihanna shows that blaming women for violence committed against them is a society-wide problem².

The Lambesis case does demonstrate, however, that for all their supposed counter-culture credentials, metal fans are not above some old-fashioned victim-blaming and misogyny. As a subculture created within a larger society structured under the system of patriarchy, it’s not exactly surprising that the metal community reflects that underlying patriarchal structure, even as it defines itself in opposition to mainstream culture.

At this point, it would be useful to define what patriarchy actually is. What it absolutely is not is a conspiracy among all men to engage in misogyny and deliberately keep women down for the fun of it. (Making this clear probably won’t stop people accusing me of defining metal fans as misogynists, but at least I can say I tried). The theory of patriarchy does not state that all men actively hate women. It is a model of social organisation based around veneration of dominance and control, that privileges men-as-a-group over women-as-a-group.

Of course, it is necessary to note that the various interrelated metal subcultures are not monolithic- as there are substantial differences between bands and subgenres re: musical topics and approaches, different metallers will react to patriarchy in different ways. It is not accurate to state that all metal fans consciously subscribe to patriarchal norms, and they may in fact actively subvert them. There are numerous examples of metal serving as a site of resistance against oppressive patriarchal control structures, particularly religious ones. The Satanist and atheist stances of countless bands need little explanation. The example of Janaza, a one-woman black metal band from Iraq that espouses an anti-Islam stance, shows that metal has the potential to offer refuge from religious, and therefore patriarchal, authority, in regions where criticising said authority holds real danger of social stigma and persecution. With that said, the reflections of wider patriarchal social norms that do exist within metal culture cannot and should not be ignored.

In his book The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy, Allan Johnson elucidates a succinct, accurate illustration of the systemic features of patriarchy that I feel can also be applied, at least in part, to metal subcultures. In the rest of this post, I want to briefly list the features Johnson identifies as central to patriarchy, quoting his explanations thereof and demonstrating how they are reflected in the metal world³.

Patriarchy is…

Male domination: “positions of authority… are generally reserved for men… When a woman finds her way into such positions, people tend to be struck by the exception to the rule and wonder how she’ll measure up against a man in the same position… Male dominance also promotes the idea that men are superior to women… if men occupy superior positions, it’s a short leap to the idea that men must be superior.”⁴

Obviously an anti-authoritarian subculture like metal doesn’t have leaders or central authorities in the same way a country or a religion does. But famous and visible metal musicians do hold positions of relative power and influence compared to their fans. And it’s an inescapable truth that the overwhelming majority of those musicians are men, just as most powerful figures in politics, religion and business are.

It’s tempting to leap to the conclusion that, if there were more women in prominent positions within the metal community, this male domination would eventually be eroded. But while women’s increased representation in metal is undoubtedly part of combating male domination, it’s not enough by itself to destroy the idea of male superiority. Pop music has a large number of prominent, successful female performers, particularly in comparison to metal. But this does not mean the ideology of male superiority has disappeared from that genre, either. Robin Thicke’s smash hit “Blurred Lines”, and its endlessly-dissected video, was only the most prominent example this summer of a pop song depicting men in a sexually dominant position over women, who are shown as valuable only for their ability to service men sexually. This was the product of a deeply-held cultural belief in male superiority, and the individual successes of Beyonce or Lady Gaga did nothing to prevent it.

When female metallers do achieve success and fame, a lot of the attention they receive still revolves around them being “women in a man’s world”, and it’s still considered important to emphasise their ability to “measure up” to the guys. There seems to be a default attitude of suspicion toward women in metal- that they have gotten attention because of their gender rather than their skills (after all, if most famous metallers are men, it must be because men are just better at metal, right?) Thus the need to prove one’s worth as a female metalhead by identifying with a male-dominated subculture. Especially for female singers, this often centres on their ability to sound as harsh or “brutal” as men. This ties into the second key feature of patriarchy, male identification.

Male identification: “core cultural ideas about what is considered good, desirable, preferable, or normal are associated with how we think about men and masculinity… These include qualities such as control, strength, competitiveness, toughness, coolness under pressure, logic, forcefulness, decisiveness, rationality, autonomy, self-sufficiency, and control over any emotion that interferes with other core values (such as invulnerability). In contrast, qualities such as cooperation, mutuality, equality, sharing, compassion, caring, vulnerability, a readiness to negotiate and compromise, emotional expressiveness, and intuitive and other nonlinear ways of thinking are all devalued and culturally associated with femininity and femaleness”⁵.

Metal might not express its core values in the same way as mainstream culture, but the qualities most treasured in metal- “hardness” in sound and toughness in behaviour, uncompromising ethical stances, autonomy and independence, an individualist ethos- are ones culturally identified with manhood. To identify as a metalhead is to accept and promote these male-identified values; failing to do so makes one “false” or “untrue” to metal. This is essentially a reflection of the rhetoric in mainstream culture that not being strong, in control of your emotions or otherwise subscribing to male-identified cultural norms makes one not a man, a “faggot” or worse, a “girl”.

Metal’s veneration of an uncompromising, individualist aesthetic, which tends to be culturally identified with manhood, is by no means alien to other genres. Highly collaborative, cooperative metal bands are also in abundance, but these too are not always necessarily opposed to individualism as an ideal. Particularly in black metal, the subgenre most devoted to an anti-social and highly individualist stance, the one man band (and they are almost always formed by men) is the purest expression of the “lone ranger” archetype idealised in both metal and mainstream culture; the direct, unfiltered product of an uncompromising artist, usually a man, following no path but his own. This trend towards total freedom of self-expression has undoubtedly created some absolute masterpieces. It’s ironic that the two albums I praised so effusively in Part One for their potentially revolutionary model of political engaged metal, Liberteer’s Better To Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees and Panopticon’s Kentucky, were also created by one man projects; they were written and performed entirely by Matthew Widener and Austin Lunn respectively. The adherence to individualism is not inherently a bad thing, obviously. It can form the basis for a stance of resistance against coercive authority. But it is rooted in the same patriarchal veneration of qualities that have been culturally associated primarily with men and manhood.

Of course, qualities identified with one gender are not actually exclusive to that gender alone. They are all human qualities- anyone, male or female, can be tough at times and emotionally vulnerable at others, or self-sufficient in some ways and reliant on those around them at others. The fact that women who sufficiently identify with “male” characteristics in metal gain some acceptance as “one of the guys” shows that musical and social concepts like “brutality”, self-sufficiency etc are not exclusive to one gender or another. The problem comes when one set of characteristics is both designated “feminine” and also devalued, considered “wussy” or “girly”. Attempts by bands to meld metal with “softer”, “feminised” musical forms are increasingly welcomed for increasing the genre’s diversity, but are still met with disdain in certain quarters, even if they succeed in bringing emotional depth and variety to the genre that an exclusive focus on the “hard”, male-identified emotions of anger or hatred cannot achieve by itself. In this way patriarchy is limiting for men as well as women. If even metal subcultures opposed to mainstream society consider “feminine” expression verboten, where can socially alienated metalheads turn to express the full range of human emotion?

Male centredness: “the focus of attention is primarily on men and what they do… With rare exceptions, women are portrayed as along for the ride… providing something for men to fight over, or being foils that reflect or amplify men’s heroic struggle with the human condition”.⁶

In looking at metal lyrics for representations of women, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that they are most notable for their absence. While relationship songs, hymns to a (generally) female lover, have formed pop music’s stock and trade from the 1950s up to the present day, metal love songs are rare, especially at the extreme end of the spectrum. This is not automatically problematic- metal is in part a reaction to bland, commodified mass culture, often deliberately turning to the dark and miserable side of life in contrast to an oppressively sunny pop landscape. Pop songs about love have their own bundle of issues in terms of how they portray women and (mis)represent healthy relationships; by largely avoiding the topic of love, metal at least avoids that particular hornet’s nest.

But in those songs where women are represented, problems quickly emerge. When they are not being ignored entirely, women are often present as victims of some horror movie sadist, carved up in countless gore-soaked grindcore and death metal songs. If they’re not victims of men they’re emotional tormentors, often presented as the villain via the trope of the “Evil Ex”, identified as a lyrical touchstone for metal by Natalie Zina Walschots in the wake of Tim Lambesis’ arrest. She describes how she fulfilled this role, of a symbolic female evil, for one anonymous musician in the wake of a breakup, and the harassment she endured as a result⁷. Walschots further locates the internet backlash against Meggan Lambesis as an expression of this same “Evil Ex” narrative. Unable to fathom a well-liked musician being capable of attempting to arrange his wife’s murder, fans shifted their blame to her for provoking him. Ascribing to the well-established cultural narrative of a wicked woman as the cause of a man’s woes was easier than acknowledging a respected public figure’s capacity for violence. For those commenters, Meggan Lambesis lost her humanity and became the “evil ex” trope personified. In this way, the male-centred nature of metal songs and their representations of women were responsible for the castigation and dehumanisation of a woman in real life.

Obsession with control: “[control is] the cultural standard for a truly superior human being, which is then used to justify men’s privileged position. Men are assumed (and expected) to be in control at all times, to be unemotional (except for anger and rage), to present themselves as invulnerable… and in command of every situation, especially those involving women”⁸.

Johnson is quick to point out that control is not in of itself an evil that inexorably leads to oppression. Civilisation as we know it would not exist without the human ability to control our actions and use our agency to achieve defined goals. Without a certain measure of control, several of metal’s key features would be absent. If no musicians were willing to subject themselves to years of disciplined practice, we wouldn’t have the highly technical guitar solos, drumwork and extreme vocal styles that make metal an exciting and vital genre. Without the discipline and control to make it through a potentially exhausting cycle of recording, promoting and touring, metal bands would not be able to share their music with a wide audience.

But as in patriarchal society overall, control often assumes such importance in metal that it becomes oppressive. Whether it’s rigid adherence to Spartan self-control, or a “loss of control” that results in metaphorical violence, control is at the heart of metal lyrics and imagery. This then has an effect on the wider subculture- it promotes the idea that emotions must be tightly controlled, expressed only in outbursts of anger, which is often the only emotion considered appropriate for men to show. This forces metal fans, men in particular, into the unenviable position of always having to be “hard”, in control, unable to show vulnerability. It might also contribute to a sense among women in metal that they can’t discuss the sexism they’ve encountered simply for being women in metal.

Of course, metal is not entirely subordinated to patriarchy’s control fetish. Depending on the particular subgenre in question, there is more or less room available for expression of emotion, especially on the negative end of the spectrum: depression, suicidal thoughts, misanthropy. It’s important that people have the outlet to express these as well as more positive feelings. But in the often violent imagery of extreme metal, the spectre of control is never far away. What are lyrics about murder and torture of women, if not expressions of ultimate control over a person’s very life?

As in wider society, the focus on control in metal discourse spills out into actions in the physical world. One wonders if Tim Lambesis was driven to plot his wife’s murder because he felt that, in the breakup of his family, he was losing the control, especially over women, that a patriarchal society leads men to feel entitled to.

[This is a two-part post, that will be continued in 2) (ii): The possibility, and necessity, of change.]

Footnotes

1 http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/49980202149/as-i-lay-dying-singer-attempts-to-murder-his-wife

2 It may be worth noting the massive amounts of attention that Chris Brown’s assault of Rihanna received compared to the Lambesis case. Of course, Brown has many more fans, and a larger cultural impact, than the singer of a Christian metalcore band, so some of that attention is to be expected. But one wonders if Brown’s race played a part in making the mass media more comfortable passing judgement against him than Tim Lambesis. The intent here is not to excuse Brown’s horrific crime and his unapologetic stance after the fact because of his skin colour, but to note the role that race plays in reporting of crimes committed by celebrities.

3 This basic patriarchal model can be applied to metal’s engagement with people of colour and LGBT people, as well as women. The genre as a whole is dominated, identified and centred on the straight, the white and the male experience. For simplicity I’m only focusing on patriarchy in metal as it relates to women, but I believe parallels can be drawn between this and how it affects non-white and LGBT people.

4 Allan G. Johnson. The Gender Knot: Unravelling Our Patriarchal Legacy, p5-6

5 Johnson, p6-7

6 Johnson, p10

7 Natalie Zina Walschots. “It Is Safer In the Dark: What the Treatment of Meggan Lambesis Tells Us About Violence, Victim-Blaming and Silence”, Toronto Standard, 16^th May 2013. http://torontostandard.com/culture/it-is-safer-in-the-dark-what-the-treatment-of-meggan-lambesis-tells-us-about-violence-victim-blaming-and-silence

8 Johnson, p14

Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses

Reinventing the Steel: A three-part discussion of how extreme metal could reinvigorate itself through explicit ideological engagement with feminism

Part 1: Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses

If you’d asked a metalhead thirty years ago about the chances of their music gaining critical acceptance in the mainstream, they’d probably have laughed in your face. But especially in the last five years or so, more and more media outlets have started paying serious attention to the genre. Pitchfork and other music sites are profiling underground metal in monthly or weekly columns, and amongst their general reviews. The UK’s NME magazine recently ran a retrospective on the history of black metal. Norwegian cultural diplomats are reportedly receiving instruction on that very history- once controversial for its connections to church burnings and murders, black metal is now officially recognised as one of the country’s cultural exports¹. This attention hasn’t necessarily resulted in heavy bands swarming the pop charts, but at certain publications at least, metal is no longer considered a joke among “serious” reviewers.

Perhaps because of this increased critical acceptance, however, heavy metal no longer seems to conjure the same fear and panic in mainstream media and moral majority types that it did in the 1980s. The irony is that as the subgenres of death metal, black metal and grindcore have created ever more “extreme” aural templates, metal seems to inspire less and less opposition among religious and political leaders. 80’s bands like Judas Priest and Venom can sound tame compared to the extremity on offer today, yet they inspired greater moral panic among parents, priests and politicians than say, Eric Danielsson’s endorsement of terrorist acts in the name of his band Watain².

This is only really true in a European and American context, of course. As Invisible Oranges’ recent series of articles on metal in Africa reports, Middle Eastern metalheads still regularly face police harassment and accusations of Satanism. Their subculture is apparently still sufficiently threatening to religious and political authorities to lead to repression³. But in an increasingly secular Western world, metal no longer shocks the way it used to.

It’s probably a good thing that our society has grown up enough to no longer be shocked by metal’s anti-religious, anti-establishment themes. If metal is still largely seen as music for outsiders and weirdos, at least it’s no longer considered actively dangerous. But isn’t part of metal’s draw the hostility it provokes in authority figures? The sense of belonging to a countercultural movement opposed to the bland trappings of (post-) modernity, that offers real power in its ability to shock and frighten? Extremity is pretty much the genre’s raison d’etre: “In its earliest stages, metal takes the extremity of rebellion further than either rock or punk and weds it to the grotesque, the bizarre and the violent. Metal is not content with a two fingered salute(;) it frequently seeks to alienate, indeed it seeks coherence in alienation”⁴. Alienating mainstream society with extremity, and finding common purpose with those who can appreciate that extremity, is at the core of the metal identity. Many metalheads, fans and musicians alike, lament a seeming loss of purpose and direction now that the music inspires more indifference than indignation. If we care about metal for its potential to offer a real alternative to dominant cultural and media norms, this is an important issue. For me at least, the important questions are these: why has metal lost its ability to shock? And what can it do to regain a sense of danger?

Satan is boring: metal’s diminishing returns

Heavy metal emerged in a specific cultural context. Amidst the hippy-dippy trappings of the 60s summer of love, a dark potency was brewing. Influenced by the same blues music as more established rock artists, bands like Black Sabbath differentiated themselves from your Creams and your Beatles through a willingness to tackle “dark” subjects that pop music had never really dealt with before, as much as their “heavier”, distorted guitar sound. Satanic imagery (“Black Sabbath”), the horrors of war (“War Pigs”) drug abuse (“Hand of Doom”) and depressed, pessimistic attitudes (“Paranoid”); these were genuinely shocking at the time, for their novelty as well as their opposition to prevailing cultural norms. Dark themes were reflected in doomy, minor-key riffs, although early metal’s tethering to the blues and 60s psychedelia meant there was still room for good-time rocking out as well.

If you mine any vein of inspiration for over 40 years, though, creative exhaustion is inevitable. The mere presence of dark and disturbing themes is no longer enough on its own to shock and unsettle. This is down to overexposure, but also changing social circumstances. The prevailing political mood in an age of economic downturn is one of cynicism, pessimism and distrust of authority. By entering the mainstream, the anti-authoritarian attitude underpinning metal has been co-opted. The gradual collapse in the West of the traditional religious basis for moral order means that Satanic or anti-religious themes, while still encountering resistance in certain quarters, are no longer perceived as a direct affront to the fabric of society.

Internal aspects of metal subculture have also contributed to this stagnation. The fantastical, horror-based trappings of certain bands’ music and lyrics inspired fear in the past, but especially these days they are also easy to dismiss as juvenile. Just as horror movies were held responsible for moral decay in the 80s heyday of “video nasties” but now mostly face indifference, gory lyrics, cover art and stage presentation are largely written off as the immature obsessions of individual horror nerds, not an existential threat to the fabric of society.

There is also the issue of a certain traditionalism within metal subcultures, rooted in a desire to remain true to the spirit and intentions of the genre’s forbears. It’s certainly admirable to want to maintain a continuity with those who came before you, to share a connection with a worldwide movement of musicians and fans through the use of shared symbols, themes and musical approaches. This sense of a common purpose, a mutual appreciation for what metal can offer, is part of the camaraderie that, somewhat paradoxically, is very strong in a movement with a highly individualist credo. But this can often manifest in a resistance to innovation within the movement. A certain subset of fans express distaste or even hostility toward bands that step outside narrow parameters of what it means to be truly “metal”, particularly in heated internet debates. It’s easy to understand the disdain for ill-conceived attempts to cross over with other genres for largely commercial reasons; nu-metal is the obvious example here. But this often results in hostility towards any change in a band’s sound over time, or towards musicians bringing in outside influences that could re-energise the genre creatively.

This might explain the popularity of decidedly retro-oriented metal from the mid-2000s onwards. In particular, mid-80s thrash was a common reference point for many bands; the best, such as Municipal Waste, updated a vintage sound for a modern era and injected a burst of energy and self-consciously goofy humour that was hard not to enjoy. But while all metal subgenres have relied on inspiration from earlier bands, it is difficult to identify a contemporary movement that represents as large an innovation as, say, early 90s black metal. It’s easy to get the sense that, rather than welcoming a metal scene with room for both traditional and innovative sounds, some metalheads would be happier if all bands endlessly reformulated past classics.

An entry on the Post-Zeitgeist blog identifies the problem with this unthinking adherence to reproducing the “brutal” sounds of past bands we enjoy: “if there is a problem with extremity, it is due to an absence of reflection. Unreflexive extremity is essentially a form of violence, a string of actions with accelerating intensity occurring regardless of the context (people, environment, society) which it is situated”⁵. If we don’t temper extremity with reflection, we endlessly repeat a cycle of aural violence.

The most stinging rebuke to this backwards-looking tendency comes from one of the very bands which pioneered death metal in the first place. On Carcass’ 2013 comeback album Surgical Steel, vocalist Jeff Walker articulates contempt for this lack of imagination and adherence to increasingly empty genre rehashing in “Non-Compliance to ASTM F 899-12 Standard”:

“Artistically moribund/ Soulless ghosts of the underground/ By the past you are bound”… “The cycle of death exhausted, well and truly played/ A terminal malaise that you so feverishly savour”.

Towards a politically engaged heavy music

So what’s the solution to this malaise? How can metal reaffirm its status as a countercultural movement, and become dangerous and vital again? I believe the answer is the creation of heavy music that exhibits the kind of reflective, thoughtful relationship with extremity mentioned in the Post-Zeitgeist piece. Specifically, where extremity is directly employed alongside explicit political goals and ideological vision, to present a genuine alternative to the sociopolitical dominance of neoliberal modernity, rather than a retreat into anti-social nihilism.

Very often within metal subcultures (and the wider world), people can be dismissive toward the idea of explicitly political music. This ties in to a general political apathy among both young and old, the idea that it’s all boring and doesn’t really relate to our everyday lives. Specific complaints in relation to politicised music are that artistic vision is compromised by adherence to ideology, that stilted, empty sloganeering is often the result of an attempt at consciousness. Sometimes, of course, this is true. But the assertion that politics and political music doesn’t relate to everyday life is a false one. As the slogan goes, the personal is the political; and conversely, the political is personal. I would argue that political topics in music are far more relevant than cartoon gore or self-isolating occultism, and have greater potential to revitalise the genre.

The criticism of politicised music also ignores the numerous sterling examples of politically engaged metal bands and songs, which can provide audiences with intellectual fuel as well as headbanging material. In particular, two of last year’s best metal albums- Liberteer’s Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees and Panopticon’s Kentucky– offer a demonstration of the transcendental and inspirational possibilities of politically engaged metal. Upon release, similarities were drawn between the albums due to their use of traditional instruments (banjo, mandolin, horns etc) and weaving of non-metal musical forms into their tapestries: Liberteer blends short and sweet grindcore with Communist propaganda and marching music to create a flowing metal symphony, while Panopticon melds the seemingly incompatible genres of black metal and Appalachian bluegrass into a stirring evocation of rural Americana.

The two releases differ significantly in their approach to political engagement, however. Liberteer is more direct and polemical, seeking to inspire listeners toward armed revolution and anarchist forms of co-operation and organisation. Some sloganeering is present (just look at the title), but there is also room to dissect radical ideas such as the nature of power itself (“It Is the Secret Curse of Power That It Becomes Fatal”). The album’s music itself was also specifically designed with political goals in mind. In an interview with Pitchfork, the band’s creative mastermind and sole performer Matt Widener discussed how he sought to subvert the nihilistic attitude of much grindcore, and create a positive-minded alternative, through the music itself:

‘Take the typical socio-political grindcore album, and what do you hear? Pure rage, heaps of alienation. At best, it can rally the young. I remember being a teenager and driven to mosh purely by brutal riffs. But to me anarchy isn’t about anger or alienation; it’s an optimistic and humane idea, so using typical grindcore riffs didn’t make sense. That’s why half the album is written in major keys, which are never used in grind. If you’re describing an autopsy or dwelling on dire socio-political topics, you’re trying to offend, shock. But when you’re trying to rally, to inspire? I think it makes me realize that even the most political of grind bands don’t have an answer to any of the problems they present. They’re only trying to throttle people into awareness. Liberteer is poised to come afterward. Like: “Hey, there’s hope, let’s talk about how it might look if we chose a different way.”‘⁶

Kentucky, by comparison, is less overt. It reveals its politics most clearly in the old folk songs it covers, standards of the workers’ movements in the early 20^th century. Serving a similar purpose are the samples throughout the record that illustrate the history of coal mining in the titular state; the most affecting of these is an extended recording of an elderly miner discussing the conditions of exploitation and abuse that led him into the workers’ movement and political organisation, in order to achieve the lofty goal of a pay raise to 8 cents an hour.

The overall scope of the album is a historical examination of the effect that the coal industry has had- not just on workers’ lives, but on the environment around them. It’s a welcome reminder that areas of the American South considered “redneck” and unfailingly conservative have roots in a not-so-distant past of radicalism and working class solidarity. It’s an intimate, detailed portrait of one specific site of political and ideological engagement, tied to an explicit evocation of time and place. Where Liberteer is strident and polemical, Panopticon is introspective and discursive. Both approaches have much to recommend them, and they demonstrate the wide variety of possibilities within the category of “politicised music”. It need not mean directly penning a musical manifesto for revolution- it can be enough just to let a specific political issue inform your lyrics or theme.

Not all metal has to aspire to a deeper meaning than making you want to wreck someone’s shit in the mosh pit. Sometimes it’s exhausting to listen to music that demands you work your brain at the same time as banging your head; sometimes the aural equivalent of a gory horror film is all that will suffice. And there’s nothing wrong with bands who dedicate themselves solely to creating the music they want to listen to. But if more bands were presenting music related to real life concerns, with informed passion and political acuity behind it, it could help to reignite metal as a cultural force presenting a real challenge to mainstream culture.

Aren’t there already a lot of heavy bands with political lyrics and anti-establishment attitudes?, you might ask. Certainly. But I would argue that, although metal champions rebellion against the status quo, the underlying structure of its music and subcultures is closely connected to the dominant patriarchal paradigms of wider culture and society. Until we understand and begin to challenge these connections, it can’t serve as a site for resistance against the mainstream. In the following posts on this theme, I want to examine metal’s relation to patriarchal power, and posit an ideology that could reconfigure heavy music to effectively oppose that power: intersectional feminism.

Footnotes

1 “Norway to Train Diplomats in Black Metal”, Wired, 9th June 2011. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-06/09/norway-diplomats-black-metal

2“I totally encourage any kind of terrorist acts committed in the name of Watain, absolutely, that’s the way rock and roll works”. Watain interview, Metal Blast, August 2012. http://www.metalblast.net/2012/08/watain-interview/

3 Invisible Oranges, African Metal series. http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/05/egypt-culture-of-the-undefeated/;http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/06/african-metal-2-libya-and-tunisia/

4 “Extremity in Metal: a Buddhist’s Perspective”, Post-Zeitgeist, 13^th November 2012. http://post-zeitgeist.blogspot.jp/2012/11/extremity-in-metal-buddhists-perspective.html

5“Extremity in Metal”, Post-Zeitgeist.

6 Brandon Stosuy. Interview with Liberteer’s Matthew Widener, Show No Mercy, February 22nd 2012. http://pitchfork.com/features/show-no-mercy/8777-build-no-system/