Punk Rock Feminism vs Punk Rock (the joke)
Punk Rock Feminism vs Punk Rock (the joke)
by Cameron Borg
Speaking from the vantage point of having got into punk rock way back in 1982, people are astounded that I have embraced riot grrl / punk rock feminism when indeed it is the only logical step for a person of intelligence and learning such as myself.
Its hard for people now to imagine punk rock back in the early 80s there was no internet, no cable TV, no fuckin VCRs, some people were just getting their sewerage connected to their houses, and your only hint of anything radical was in tiny lil column in the Melody Maker and NME - although up to six months old from the boat voyage from the UK everyone hated the Sex Pistols - who spat and vomited and couldn’t play - and the Clash were seen as red commies, both inspiring fear into a community who loved their sordid cold chisel and Bruce Springsteen fantasies. So at that stage we wore the slashed suit coats and painted slogans on our clothes and wore safety pins and put coloured shit in our hair and it was a great fuckin laugh.
By the mid 80s though the intelligence level of the movement had dropped to an all-time low, the home-made clothes became fashionable uniforms, haircuts became standardized and there were definite boundaries on who you could listen to and who was cool and who was hardcore. Hardcore the death knell of a once vibrant punk ethic reducing free thinkers to sheep and encouraging sheep into a scene they cared nothing for so after enduring all the fuckin bullshit I got out got the fuck outta hardcore and its shallow pretensions and grew my hair long to piss these morons off.
So got tagged hippie-punk cos I was still playing punk, still doing zines, still seeing bands and being a force so I was there but hippie-punk meant I could remain an associate member of the so-called punk fraternity.
Though by 1988 the metalheads had infiltrated the movement and it has remained fucked up to this day bad metal fashions started to predominate punk bands were playing bad metal and if you think I’m wrong go to any punk rock band playing this week and listen to the barking dog woof-woof death metal shite and it was a scene that was co-opted and attitudes - girls were suddenly hangers-on and all the macho sexist attitudes of the springsteen era had returned.
Worldwide Nirvana broke through and ushered in a whole wave of long-hair grungers who were ignorant and apathetic and tools of the corporate system. I cut all my hair short again and kept playing my own style of punk and kept pasting zines and working in a void. then in 1994 I started distroing records from a lil label called KILL ROCK STARS. back then they were great - now they are fuckin useless but BIKINI KILL were the first hint of punk rock spirit reincarnated! it was exclusionist and elite but it had something to say and it pissed off all the long-hair grungers and all the puerile heavy metal punk pretenders, and I got the same feeling listening to PUSSYWHIPPED that I had when I first heard NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS HERE’s THE SEX PISTOLS all those years ago!!
I immediately broke up my pisstake band SPICE BOYS and with some grrlfriends formed a group called HAMSTER BABY. my so-called punk rock friends deserted me in droves, a new group of feminist friends and people who cared about issues and burning rule books and narrow fashion dictates and seeing though the apathy of grunge and the sick sheep state of hardcore, declared that punk rock friendship, be yourself, there are no limits, you don’t need permission for anything, ethic was back. and to this day I don’t feel sad about BK breaking up, they did their thing and never signed to a major, HB split but that’s life and they’ll always be my dear friends, and I keep doing creative stuff, and making a difference and confronting attitudes and being honest. because that’s what punk rock is about - freethinking, forward thinking, creative honesty.