Queercore: Subcultural Tensions, Resistance, and Identity Politics in 1990s London 1

Introduction: Queer to the Core

On December 17, 1993, pop/rock music critic for The Guardian, Caroline Sullivan, wrote an

account of London’s relatively new queerpunk movement, Queercore, entitled “Queer to the

Core.” Juxtaposed against popular music’s “colourful, eccentric, lovable” “handful of gay stars,”

Sullivan emphasized that Queercore was “a radical gay music movement with attitude” which

rejected the former group’s music and politics while ironically resenting the erasure of

Queercore coverage from mainstream gay and lesbian publications, such as the Gay Times.2 This

negative portrayal of tensions within the LGBTQ community resulted in a letter to the editor by

Colin Richardson, Assistant Editor of the Gay Times, who not only defended the publication

against this accusation, but also demanded an apology from Sullivan, who he felt had misread

these tensions – “We cannot cover everything and everybody. We therefore make choices.” –

and lacked knowledge of queer musicians – “In order to claim that the number of ‘openly gay’

pop stars can be counted on the fingers of one hand, Sullivan has made herself look silly.”3

While I acknowledge that there are areas in which Sullivan’s condensed history of the

beginnings of Queercore may be lacking – apart from Richardson’s gripes, the journalist also

oddly spent more time discussing non-Queercore bands, such as Tongue Man and RPLA, than

London’s arguably most important Queercore band, Sister George, and featured a photo of

Queen’s Freddie Mercury in concert rather than an image of an actual Queercore artist – I cannot

feasibly dismiss this article, Sullivan, or The Guardian’s overall importance to the Queercore
1
A playlist has been provided for the music discussed in this dissertation: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PLeha6wI-aANZxwlXM7N1eTJrlP7RqC-AX
2
Caroline Sullivan, “Queer to the Core,” The Guardian, December 17, 1993.
3
Colin Richardson, “Letter: Queercore,” The Guardian, December 22, 1993.

1
scene in London. Sullivan’s article marked the first time a mainstream publication – and a

highly read one, at that – acknowledged London’s Queercore movement. The article was

actually promoted a day earlier in The Guardian and marked as a highlight: “Caroline Sullivan

analyses an exciting and militant musical trend which articulates lesbian and gay anger.”4 In

addition, Sullivan and The Guardian continued to support the movement, albeit sparsely,

throughout the 90s – i.e. a review of Sister George’s record, Drag King,5 and various notices

promoting Queercore shows. Finally, Sullivan is to be credited for highlighting the growing

tensions between the Queercore scene and the gay and lesbian mainstream, which were prevalent

despite Richardson’s protests: “‘queercore’ has become a touchstone for any young homosexual

alienated by traditional gay culture.”6 However, one can still empathize with Richardson’s final

words which articulated his frustration: “There’s a good article to be written about queercore.

Sadly, Caroline Sullivan’s was not it.”7

Unfortunately, Richardson would have to wait nearly twenty years for such media

coverage. In the two decades since Sullivan’s Queercore article, mentions of the underground

movement in mainstream publications, particularly in the UK, have remained few and far

between, though there were a few notable articles in the music publication NME and the LGBTQ

magazine The Advocate, written by the late Adam Block. However, nineteen years later, Adam

Rathe’s rather nostalgic, yet important article – similarly titled, “Queer to the Core”8 – was

published in Out Magazine, a popular LGBTQ magazine in the United States. Rathe interviewed

4
“Tomorrow in 2 The Guardian,” The Guardian, December 16, 1993.
5
Caroline Sullivan, “Gothic Grunge: Rock/Pop,” The Guardian, February 25, 1994.
6
Sullivan, “Queer to the Core.”
7
Richardson, “Letter: Queercore.”

8
Adam Rathe, “Queer to the Core,” Out Magazine, April 12, 2012.

2
several writers and musicians who had innovated or supported Queercore two decades earlier in

Canada, the US, and the UK, ranging from queerzine artist and musician G.B. Jones of the band

Fifth Column to Jon Ginoli of Pansy Division to Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day. He

subtitled his project “an oral history of the movement that changed the world (whether you knew

it or not).”9 To anyone who had heard either little or nothing about Queercore before, and I

admittedly count myself amongst this group, Rathe’s opening assertion might appear grandiose,

premature, or simply confusing: if Queercore was so important, why does no one talk about it?

This was certainly my reaction when I happened upon this article two years ago. As such, this

project has served to examine what Queercore was, as well as its asserted social and political

importance, as analyzed from a queer musicological and sociological standpoint.

Queercore: Context, Aims, and Arguments

Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell outline in their book, Queer Episodes in Music and Modern

Identity, a relation between musicality and queerness through an “outsider discourse,” which

emphasizes the idea that queer subcultures were generally made possible during the twentieth

century by postmodern conditions of urban societies.10 As Max H. Kirsch states, through this

postmodern (and poststructuralist) shift, “reality is somehow destabilized” [emphasis in original],

which, quoting Terry Eagleton, fosters “a style of culture which reflects something of this

epochal change, in a depthless, decentered, ungrounded, self-reflexive, playful, derivative,

eclectic pluralistic art which blurs the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, as well

9
Rathe, “Queer to the Core.”

10
Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell, “Introduction: Secret Passages,” in Queer Episodes in Music and
Modern Identity, edited by Sophie Fuller and Lloyd Whitesell (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 4-5.

3
as between art and every-day experience.”11 The development of Queercore punk scenes in

major English-speaking Western cities during the late 1980s, then, reflects this theory, as this

DIY-styled multi-media subcultural movement marked an emergent historical moment of social,

political, and musical change. Growing out of the gender-bending glam rock of the 1970s, and a

decade marked by crisis between Thatcherite homophobia and the devastation of HIV/AIDS

during the 1980s, Queercore firmly established itself in London’s cultural underground during

the early 1990s with punk bands like Sister George, Mouthfull, Children’s Hour, and Six Inch

Killaz. This scene appeared to be claustrophobically positioned between an overtly homophobic

dominant culture, popular music industry, and mainly straight and “macho” punk scene, and the

separatist gay and lesbian mainstream. As such, Queercore ultimately provided a safe communal

space for young LGBTQ misfits who were respectively perceived as “too queer” or,

alternatively, “not queer enough.” Not unlike other subcultures, including the punk scene and

the gay and lesbian mainstream they rallied against, Queercore participants sought a voice and

validation within their subcultural sphere, often at the expense of those they opposed. Through

their preferred mediums of literature and music, Queercore zines and bands typically addressed,

in a borderline serious/tongue-in-cheek tone, relevant and intersectional social issues and

pressures pivoted against and felt within the queer community, such as misogyny, homophobia,

racism, violence, inequality, oppression, and the pressure to conform to heteronormative social

conventions. The outspoken social commentary, anger, and frustration expressed in Queercore

music, lyrics, and zines “took back” the derogatory term “queer” and generated a sense of

empowerment and emphatic resistance to conformity amongst its performers and listeners in an

11
Max H. Kirsch, “Crossroads,” chapter 1 in Queer Theory and Social Change (London: Routledge, 2000),
20.

4
idealized social time and space by challenging, subverting, and deconstructing hetero- and homo-

sexist gender and sexuality binary system “norms.”

As there is little academic research on the Queercore movement – and of the few studies

which do exist, none have been located in London – throughout my research process, I have

drawn from contemporary zines, music, interviews, articles, and archival performance footage

documenting the emergence of the Queercore scene, as well as academic writing on Queercore in

Canada and the US. Additionally, I will rely on social, gender, subcultural, and queer theory

discourses, notably Michel Foucault’s notions of power/knowledge, governmentality, resistance,

and the technologies of the self, Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, Jack

Halberstam’s notions of queer times, places, subcultures, negativity, and failure, and José

Esteban Muñoz’s concept of disidentification.

My overarching aims in this dissertation are threefold. Firstly, by engaging with these

theories, as well as my own analysis of Queercore music, lyrics, and zines, I ultimately aim to

establish a sociological historiography of the Queercore movement’s early years in London, thus

rectifying its general absence not only in academia, but also within LGBTQ history. There are,

however, certain obstacles to overcome in such a project. As Robert Mills outlines, one issue

with developing queer histories is that they tend to be exclusionary by design, counteractively

marginalizing those who do not easily fit into a normative view of LGBTQ identity and culture.12

Mills emphasizes that a true London queer history should encompass all queer identifications,

desires, and the various roles they played in everyday city life.13 Due to space limitations, such

exclusionary cuts are regrettably inevitable. However, I will try to be as inclusive and nuanced

12
Robert Mills, “Queer is Here? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Histories and Public Culture,”
History Workshop Journal 62 (Autumn 2006): 258-259.
13
Mills, “Queer is Here?,” 258-259.

5
as possible in my arguments throughout the exploration and portrayal of this moment in

Queercore history. Furthermore, there are issues with combining queer theory with sociological

and subcultural theories. For example, Adam Isaiah Green argues that queer theory is not an

extension of sociology, but is rather in tension with it, because queer theory’s deconstructionist

position rejects the self and the social while paradoxically remaining “relevant to selves and the

discursive determinants that characterize late modernity.”14 However, Steven Seidman asserts

that while queer theory challenges the reign of gender and sexuality binarisms by rendering all

identity construction unstable and exclusionary, it should not be considered anti-identity politics,

as rather it aims to open up identity politics and meaning.15 More recently, Stephen Valocchi

made a case for queer theory and what it can both teach and learn from sociology, stating that

queer theory can – to an extent, I argue – fill in the gaps between sociological theory and lived

experience, as both theories can be used to explore how gender and sexuality socialization

occurs.16 Above all, the teaming up of queer theory with sociology can “combine a queer

sensibility about the performative nature of identity with a sociological sensibility about how

these performances are constrained, hierarchical, and rooted in social inequality.”17 Additionally

helpful to me in this project was Alan O’Connor’s assertion in his critique of sociology’s youth

subcultural theory that punk subcultures cannot be homologized: they are both local and global,

thrive on cultural contact and hybridity, include both older and younger generations, and are

exclusionary and fuelled by tension both against dominant culture and within each respective

14
Adam Isaiah Green, “Queer Theory and Sociology: Locating the Subject and the Self in Sexuality
Studies,” Sociological Theory 25 (March 2007): 43.
15
Steven Seidman, “Symposium: Queer Theory/Sociology: A Dialogue,” Sociological Theory 12 (July
1994): 173-174.
16
Paraphrasing Stephen Valocchi, “Not Yet Queer Enough: The Lessons of Queer Theory for the Sociology
of Gender and Sexuality,” Gender and Society 19 (December 2005): 750-770.
17
Valocchi, “Not Yet Queer Enough,” 766.

6
subculture.18 Importantly, these various views on queer theory and sociology open up queer

subcultural theory to make possible an account of Queercore’s contradictory politics and both

internal and external tensions which grew out of struggles over race, class, gender, and sexual

identity.

Secondly, this dissertation seeks to complicate the already growing subfields of queer and

gender studies within musicology, which apart from a few exceptions are typically located in

dominant culture and the gay and lesbian mainstream. A recent conference on music and

sexuality outlined the current moment in queer musicology as an “increased tension between

theory and politics” and historicity v. presentism.19 Mitchell Morris argues in his paper that the

intersection of music and sexuality is “a fertile ‘borderland,’ rich with complexity, ambiguity,

and dynamism,” which should be conscious of varying political contexts of queer theory (i.e. the

devastation of AIDS and institutional indifference) and those of activist groups like Queer

Nation and queer punks (i.e. radical).20 Additionally, Whitesell’s paper asserts that the space for

queer subjects, such as Queercore participants, is in opposition, and that we must be conscious of

the restrictions, limitations, and contradictions of queer initiatives.21 I hope this dissertation will

reflect these arguments, and also express, as supported by the abovementioned musicologists, the

need for musicology to utilize queer theory and sociology in a more nuanced discussion of

gender, sexuality, and culture in relation to music.

18
Paraphrasing Alan O’Connor, “The Sociology of Youth Subcultures,” Peace Review: A Journal of Social
Justice 16 (2004): 409-414; and Alan O’Connor, “Local Scenes and Dangerous Crossroads: Punk and Theories of
Cultural Hybridity,” Popular Music 21 (May 2002): 225-236.
19
Judith Peraino and Suzanne G. Cusick, “Music and Sexuality,” Journal of the American Musicological
Society 66 (Fall 2013): 827-828.
20
Mitchell Morris, “Calling Names, Taking Names,” in Peraino and Cusick “Music and Sexuality,” 831,
833-834.
21
Lloyd Whitesell, “Compromising Positions,” in Peraino and Cusick “Music and Sexuality,” 837.

7
 Thirdly, and relatedly, I aim to present Queercore politics and agency through relevant

strands of queer theory, such as Halberstam’s call for the construction and expansion of a “queer

archive” and Donald E. Hall’s call for a queer social theory “that motivates, that embraces the

‘politics’ in identity politics, and that articulates a vision for the future.”22 Hall implores queer

theorists to find and embrace agency, as the current state of queer theory is generally

inapplicable to daily life.23 Halberstam’s “queer archive” is described as “a discursive field and a

structure of thinking” and “a theory of cultural relevance, a construction of collective memory,

and a complex record of queer activity.”24 Furthermore, Halberstam argues that “queer

subcultural theory should begin with those communities that never seem to surface in the

commentaries on subcultures in general.”25 I believe Queercore is a strong candidate for both

Halberstam and Hall’s respective projects, particularly within the field of musicology.

Dovetailing the abovementioned theories with my Queercore analysis also serves to

shape my overarching arguments. Firstly, I argue that the importance of Queercore lies in the

deconstructive and subversive identity politics of its music, which not only offered LGBTQ

youth a subcultural queer time and space of empowerment and resistance, as stated, but also

paralleled – and helped further – the development of queer theory in academia. With regard to

Katie R. Horowitz’s recent critique of queer theory’s “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink”

approach, I assert that by “highlighting these dissimilarities,” Queercore “decentralizes the white,

22
Donald E. Hall, “Introduction,” in Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer
Studies (London: Routledge, 2009), 12.
23
Hall, “Transcending the Self,” chapter 3 in Reading Sexualities, 77.

24
Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: New
York University Press, 2005), 32-33 & 169-70.
25
Judith Halberstam, “What’s That Smell? Queer Temporalities and Subcultural Lives,” chapter 1 in
Queering the Popular Pitch, edited by Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga (New York: Routledge, 2006), 12.

8
upper-middle-class, gay male body as the hegemonic norm of queer life.”26 Secondly, and

relatedly, I argue that Queercore subcultural and identity politics, though revolutionary in their

own small space, were also inherently contradictory, paradoxical, and ahistorical – though not

apolitical. With a separatist view of the world and an amnestic view of its own history, which

parallel Foucault’s histories, queer and subcultural theories of dominant culture v. queer culture,

and Halberstam’s “antisocial” notion of the “queer art of failure,” the politics that Queercore

participants preached did not always reflect those that they practiced. In these ways, I will re-

envision the identity politics of the early days of Queercore, as analyzed in the movement’s zines

and music and lyrics, through the lens of recent developments in, and critiques of, queer theory

discourse, which offers a more nuanced understanding of the complex fluidity and multiplicity of

gender and sexual identity, the constitution of the self, and the emergence of queer subcultural

politics.

The Problematic Multitudes of “Queer”: Politics, Theory, and Zines

“To whom does it [‘queer’] belong and what does it represent?” – Max H.

Kirsch27

While Queercore politics, aesthetics, zines, music, and lyrics share overarching thematic and

stylistic similarities, it is necessary to emphasize that each political and artistic expression and

identity is nuanced, specific, and different. Alan Sinfield states in his books, On Sexuality and

Power and Cultural Politics – Queer Readings, that subcultures should not be “envisaged as

26
Katie R. Horowitz, “The Trouble with ‘Queerness’: Drag and the Making of Two Cultures,” Signs 38
(Winter 2013): 310.
27
Kirsch, “From Culture to Action,” chapter 6 in Queer Theory and Social Change, 97.

9
homogeneous or as having clearly defined boundaries,”28 and further asserts that subcultural

theory should indicate that terms like “queer” are “markers of political allegiance,” rather than

meaning “we are ‘the same’.”29 That said, though I do not wish to generalize Queercore politics

and aesthetics, in order to fully understand those that are played out in Queercore zines, music,

and lyrics – as analyzed in the following sections – it is necessary to define the term “queer”

within the general Queercore context, what it meant to the movement, and how it fostered the

movement’s subcultural and self-identity politics. Therefore, I will provide a thorough cultural

and political context of, and the tensions and contradictory parallels between, Queercore, queer

politics, and queer theory; in all three contexts, “queer,” to quote Annamarie Jagose, assumes “‘a

zone of possibilities’…always inflected by a sense of potentiality that it cannot yet quite

articulate.”30

Halberstam’s book, In a Queer Time and Place, makes a claim for queer spaces and

temporalities, or queer subcultures – generally situated opposite of heterosexist dominant culture

– as postmodern sites of resistance wherein cultural hierarchies and power dynamics are

subverted, fostering opportunities to engage with and empower queer identity politics.31 I will

quote Halberstam’s respective definitions of “queer,” “queer time,” “queer space,” and

“postmodernism” at length – they apply to the general usage of these terms throughout this

dissertation – as a tool to delineate the complex relations between Queercore identity politics and

aesthetics as compared with the nuanced and multiple meanings of “queer” within other

contexts:
28
Alan Sinfield, “Beyond Englit,” chapter 4 in Cultural Politics – Queer Readings, 2nd edition (London:
Routledge, 2005), 68.
29
Sinfield, “Beyond Englit,” 72.
30
Annamarie Jagose, “Introduction,” in Queer Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University
Press, 1996), 2.
31
Paraphrasing Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place.

10
 “Queer” refers to nonnormative logics and organizations of community, sexual
identity, embodiment, and activity in space and time. “Queer time” is a term for
those specific models of temporality that emerge within postmodernism once one
leaves the temporal frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity,
risk/safety, and inheritance. “Queer space” refers to the place-making practices
within postmodernism in which queer people engage and it also describes the new
understandings of space enabled by the production of queer counterpublics.
Meanwhile…I see postmodernism as simultaneously a crisis and an opportunity –
a crisis in the stability of form and meaning, and an opportunity to rethink the
practice of cultural production, its hierarchies and power dynamics, its tendency
to resist or capitulate.32
Importantly, Halberstam reminds us by quoting Steve Pile – “the map of resistance is not simply

the underside of the map of domination” – that the relationship between opposition and authority

is always, in actuality, changing.33

Though a historically complicated and sometimes derogatory term, the reclaiming of the

word “queer” initially developed out of the changing gay and lesbian politics from the 1970s to

the early 1990s. As Jagose demonstrates, “queer” can be contextualized within the gay liberation

politics of the 1970s – which focused on community identity, cultural difference, and the freeing

of non-heterosexual identities from the constraints of gender and sexuality binary systems – to

the assimilationist politics of the 1980s – which focused on similarities between gay culture and

dominant culture, leading to separatist politics between the gay and lesbian mainstream, debates

about “valid” sexual identities, and the exclusion of non-binary identities. These politics

ultimately led to great backlash during the late 1980s and early 1990s due to an overwhelming

dissatisfaction of exclusionary and binary identity categories, during which use of the word

“queer” emerged as a way to broaden these limitations placed on identity politics.34 Overall, the

usage of “queer” in Queercore, queer politics, and queer theory demonstrated, as outlined by
32
Halberstam, “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies,” chapter 1 in In a Queer Time and Place,
6.
33

Halberstam, “Queer Temporality and Postmodern Geographies,” 6.

34
Paraphrasing Jagose, “Limits of Identity” and “Queer,” chapters 6 and 7 in Queer Theory: An
Introduction, 58-100.

11
Joshua Gamson, the disruption or deconstruction of fixed gender and sexual identities, fostering

an identity politics dilemma, as these fixed identities are at once the basis of oppression and the

basis of political power.35 These waves in LGBTQ politics corresponded directly with the

contemporary dominant social, cultural, and political climate of Britain, which – as outlined in

detail by several scholars, most notably Matt Cook, Rebecca Jennings, and Lesley A. Hall –

proved catastrophic for the gay and lesbian communities, as the devastation of the HIV/AIDS

crisis, Thatcherite homophobia, and discriminatory legislation such as Section 28 led to this

renewed, angry brand of queer activism.36 As Richard Dyer states, around this time both queer

theory and politics aimed to reclaim the term “queer” while fully aware of its stigma and

negativity; as such, queer cultural production is the product of society and culture, meaning

“there is no pure expression of queeritude, uncontaminated by an equally unalloyed straightness

surrounding it.”37 Indeed, as Dyer emphasizes, the only true difference between queer and

straight cultural production is that the latter “retains the prestige of normative sexuality, its felt

centrality and taken for grantedness.”38 Dyer further asserts that queer political movements and

cultures such as these aim to make sense of the world, and that queer art makes visible this

knowledge, these politics, propaganda, and pleasure, and also forges identity.39 Similarly, Philip

35
Paraphrasing Joshua Gamson, “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma,” Social
Problems 42 (August 1995): 390-407.
36
Matt Cook, “From Gay Reform to Gaydar, 1967-2006,” chapter 6 in A Gay History of Britain: Love and
Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages, edited by Matt Cook, H.G. Cocks, Robert Mills, and Randolph Trumbach
(Oxford: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007), 179-214; Rebecca Jennings, “The Politics of Lesbianism, 1970-
2000,” chapter 10 in A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500 (Oxford: Greenwood
World Publishing, 2007), 169-189; and Leslie A. Hall, “Approaching the Millennium,” chapter 11 in Sex, Gender
and Social Change in Britain since 1880, 2nd edition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 165-174.
37
Richard Dyer, “Introduction,” in The Culture of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002), 9.
38
Dyer, “Introduction,” 10.
39
Dyer, “The Politics of Gay Culture,” chapter 1 in The Culture of Queers, 15-16.

12
Brett and Elizabeth Wood discuss in Queering the Pitch how the oppressive socio-political

climate of the 1980s fostered “the resulting wave of politicization of the arts” which “produced

in music a sense of community.”40 As Sinfield presents, this relationship between queer politics

and the arts is ideological, and, I argue, symbiotic. Quoting Louis Althusser, Sinfield claims that

art “alludes to reality” and “makes us see”; in other words, if art is detached and text is both

historical and deconstructive, both serve as a kind of mirror in society.41 As such, there is a close

link between performers and audiences in queer subcultures. Sinfield further asserts that since

these ideologies are lived in subcultures in everyday life, and since “culture is political”42 and

played out in gendered and sexed power relations and hierarchies of identities, there is an

“element of power-play in much gay self-presentation.”43 In this way, the “queer” in queer arts

and politics also presents a problematic danger. Its potential of sexual dissidence does not

assume “the default position” and is “at once vaguer, more purposeful, and more inclusive”44 as

it confuses the boundaries of a “universalizing” and/or “minoritizing” sexuality,45 allowing

subcultural participants to “develop a plausible alternative subject position.”46 However, at the

same time, “queer” is a limiting identity which claims to speak for “others” – socially,

politically, and artistically – yet also excludes and potentially erases identity.47

40
Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood, “Lesbian and Gay Music,” chapter 15 in Queering the Pitch: The New
Gay and Lesbian Musicology, edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas, 2nd edition (New York:
Routledge, 2006), 364.
41
Sinfield, “Art as Cultural Production,” chapter 2 in Cultural Politics – Queer Readings, 27, 37-38.
42
Sinfield, “Foreword (1994),” Cultural Politics – Queer Readings, xviii.
43
Sinfield, “Foreword,” Cultural Politics – Queer Readings, xii & xv.

44
Alan Sinfield, “Introduction,” in On Sexuality and Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 7.
45
Sinfield, “Beyond Englit,” 69.
46
Sinfield, “Beyond Englit,” 66.
47
Sinfield, “Foreword (1994),” xx.

13
 Located within the Queercore movement then, “queer” was, as Michael du Plessis and

Kathleen Chapman argue, “a signifier” which could “be resituated in specific contexts to open

new possibilities for identification, alliance, and action.”48 As such, “with a profound sense of

difference” and “deviance,”49 “queer” was a multi-dimensional, all-encompassing, inclusive, and

anti-assimilationist umbrella term used to differentiate the movement from the perceived

hierarchized exclusivist and separatist politics of the gay and lesbian mainstream, and to

celebrate the limitless potential of non-heterosexist and non-binary identities. Furthermore, as

Viviane K. Namaste demonstrates, “[queer] is used as a catachresis to indicate a subcultural and

political anti-authoritarian identity.”50 In this way, the “queer” in Queercore was radically

reclaimed from its homophobic and separatist origins as a source of empowerment and

resistance, the identity politics of which relate to Foucault’s theory of the technologies of the

self,51 Butler’s notion of gender performativity,52 and Muñoz’s concept of disidentification.53

Foucault related his earlier history of sexuality and theories of power-knowledge and

governmentality54 with an unfinished theory called the technologies of the self, through which he

discussed how discourses of power-knowledge and governmentality circulate in society, shaping

48
Michael du Plessis and Kathleen Chapman, “Queercore: The Distinct Identities of Subculture,” College
Literature 24 (February 1997): 55.
49
Kevin Schwandt, “The Erotics of an Oil Drum: Queercore, Gay Macho, and the Defiant Sexuality of
Extra Fancy’s Sinnerman,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 13 (2009): 78.
50
Viviane K. Namaste, “The Use and Abuse of Queer Tropes: Metaphor and Catachresis in Queer Theory
and Politics,” Social Semiotics 9 (1999): 230.
51
Michel Foucault, Technologies of the Self, edited by Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick H.
Hutton (London: Tavistock Publications, 1988).
52
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London: Routledge, 1990); and
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (London: Routledge, 2004).
53
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (London:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

54
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

14
who we are as individuals, how we conduct ourselves, how we identify, and how the self is

constituted as subject.55 Foucault believed that “normative” codes of humanism were limiting as

they were relative and contextual rather than universal, and claimed that there were “more

possible freedoms” and truths of the self and identity than we might realize.56 Above all,

knowledge of the self is located and constituted as subject in the “contact between the

technologies of dominations of others and those of the self,”57 and all identities and subcultures,

even the most radical and subversive, are bound equally to power-knowledge and

governmentality discourses of both resistance and power: “where there is power, there is

resistance, and yet, or rather, consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in

relation to power.”58 More on this point below.

In Gender Trouble, Butler introduces her theory of gender performativity, which

deconstructs gender and sexuality binarisms by theorizing that gender is socially and culturally

constructed and performative, rather than natural, and that gender and sexual identity are

flexible, rather than fixed and rigid. Butler further illustrates how the “internal coherence” of

these binarisms limits gendered and sexual possibilities, and expresses how the parodic repetition

of performativity exposes the “act” of the binary systems. As linked with queer politics, Butler

discusses how identity categories, such as “queer,” both mobilize and constrain identity politics –

the “internal paradox” of Butler’s task is that this “deconstruction of identity” does not equal the

“deconstruction of politics.”59 Butler expanded on her theory of performativity in Undoing

55
Foucault, “Introduction,” in Technologies of the Self, 3.
56
Rux Martin and Michel Foucault, “Truth, Power, Self: An Interview,” chapter 1 in Technologies of the
Self, 15.
57
Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” chapter 2 in Technologies of the Self, 19.
58
Foucault, “The Deployment of Sexuality: Method,” part 4.2 in The History of Sexuality, 95.

59
Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire: V. Identity, Sex, and the Metaphysic of Substance” and
“Subversive Bodily Acts: IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions,” chapters 1 and 5 in Gender Trouble,

15
Gender, which explores the question of undoing normative and restricting constructs of gender

and sexuality by conjoining performativity with Foucault’s questions of “subjection” and

“regulation” within the discourses of gender power regime “norms,” which “governs social

intelligibility of action.” Butler also discusses the problems with reducing gender to sexuality, as

well as the “paradox of autonomy” in which gender regulations “paralyze gendered agency.”

Importantly, and similarly to Queercore participants, Butler urges her readers to “live a life

politically” in relation to power and to others in order to foster the possibility of a “collective

future” in which it is possible to live outside norms in a “radically altered social world.”60

Muñoz’s concept of disidentification further explores how those who are racially and/or

sexually outside mainstream culture performatively and artistically negotiate and transform

tropes and codes of dominant culture in performance, to both empowering and limiting effects:61

disidentification is one “mode of dealing with dominant ideology, one that neither opts to

assimilate within such a structure nor strictly opposes it; rather, disidentification is a strategy that

works on and against dominant ideology.”62 This definition is important to Queercore politics as

being inherently contradictory and ahistorical, as Queercore participants did not necessarily

practice what they preached, and as cultural production tropes such as punk zines and music

were appropriated for their own means: “this ‘working on and against’ is a strategy that tries to

transform a cultural logic from within, always laboring to enact permanent structural change

30, 187, & 189.

60
Butler, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” “Gender Regulations,” “Undiagnosing
Gender,” and “The Question of Social Transformation,” chapters 1, 2, 4, and 10 in Undoing Gender, 39, 41, 101, &
226.
61
Paraphrasing Muñoz, Disidentifications.
62
Muñoz, “Introduction: Performing Disidentifications,” in Disidentifications, 11-12.

16
while at the same time valuing the importance of local or everyday struggles of resistance.”63

As such, disidentification offers minority subjects “survival strategies” to work within, resist,

and negotiate the dominant public sphere in subcultural sites of self-formation wherein “new

social relations” are fostered in counterpublic spheres.64 These queer subcultures are “sites of

emergence” which are populated by “identities-in-difference” within which these minority

identities are “constituted and specified.”65 Above all else, Queercore participants were the

minority of a minority, and Queercore zines and music often expressed how Queercore

performers and listeners disidentified not only with dominant culture, but also with the punk

scene and the gay and lesbian mainstream, particularly through performance. As such, Muñoz

asserts that disidentifying queer performances are sites of “transformation and political

reformulation” to make “a queer world.”66 Muñoz’s disidentification theory also allows a view

into minority politics which is not “monocausal or monothematic, one that is calibrated to

discern a multiplicity of interlocking identity components and the ways in which they affect the

social.”67 Appropriating “queer” as a means of political and identity empowerment and

resistance is the ultimate example of this disidentifying phenomenon within the Queercore

movement, which allowed its subcultural participants to perform with a Foucauldian “possibility

for freedom”68 as others in an immediate and mediated queer time and space.69

63
Muñoz, “Introduction,” 11-12.
64
Muñoz, “Introduction,” 4-6.
65
Muñoz, “Introduction,” 6-7.
66
Muñoz, “Preface: Jack’s Plunger,” in Disidentifications, xiv.
67
Muñoz, “Introduction,” 8-9.
68
Muñoz, “Performing Disidentity: Disidentification as a Practice Freedom,” chapter 7 in Disidentifications,
179.
69
Muñoz, “The Autoethnographic Performance: Reading Richard Fung’s Queer Hybridity,” chapter 3 in
Disidentifications, 82.

17
 Dara Blumenthal engages further with these complex tropes of resistance in her review of

Janet Halley and Andrew Parker’s book After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory.70

Blumenthal suggests that a major limitation of queer theory as it currently stands is the

disconnect between discourse and the everyday through which rigid and fragmented binarisms

are employed in a “dis-embodied framework,”71 which “stiffly retains its umbilical cord” link

with “normativity,” or “straightness.”72 Furthermore, the dualisms queer theory proposes

constitute a critical loss of agency and the body through which the field has become “divorced

from its roots in struggle and activism” and “people’s everyday lives.”73 This point, while

certainly relevant to current debates in queer theory, can also be extended to queer subcultures,

such as Queercore scenes, as there remains an inherent detachment between the reality, agency,

and expressive and artistic contexts of Queercore and the oppositional binarisms (i.e. queer

subculture/identity v. dominant culture/”normative” identity) through which the movement is

discussed and set against – both by scholars and Queercore participants. Queercore subcultural

and individual identity politics, then, were intrinsically linked with and woven out of dominant

culture codes, through which Queercore resistant politics and reactionary subcultural formation

were somewhat limited and short-lived, yes, but also radical, revolutionary, and made possible.

The importance of this move, then, of reclaiming “queer,” to Queercore identity and

subcultural politics was often expressed in early queerzines and music. Zines were self-made

underground publications that offered an “oppositional history that reclaimed silenced narratives

70
Dara Blumenthal, “After Sex? On Writing since Queer Theory (2011) ed. by Janet Halley and Andrew
Parker,” Culture Machine 1 (2012): 1-8.
71
Blumenthal, “After Sex? On Writing since Queer Theory,” 2.
72
Blumenthal, “After Sex? On Writing since Queer Theory,” 7.
73
Blumenthal, “After Sex? On Writing since Queer Theory,” 7.

18
of oppressed groups.”74 Figure 1 at the end of this dissertation features three queerzine covers.

As A.C. Licona outlines, “[zines] can be irreverent, parodic, utopian, imaginative; thus, in a

sense, zines perform the difference they are trying to make. By challenging, re-imagining, and

replacing exclusionary and oppressive discursive practices, zines perform new representations of

subjectivity.”75 In this way, the term “queer” was not only used as self- and subcultural-

identification, it was also inherently political, as queerzine writers often portrayed in mission

statement manifestos. For example, a writer for the zine Freaky Queer stated that Queercore was

a “new queer revolution”76 in “a war against society, a society that restricts our movements, our

love, our behavior;”77 further arguing that “queer is for everyone…it’s about time we collected

together and organised our own entertainment…i [sic] think we need change, now, don’t you?”78

Though statements like this were typical of queerzines, Ian Barnard importantly points out that

this militant non-assimilationist ideology of queerzines destabilized hegemonic gay and lesbian

identities by highlighting differences within the Queercore scene through specialized zines which

targeted a specific readership and identity (i.e. race, gender, sexuality, class, etc.): “as each ‘zine

irreversibly invokes a queer specificity, so the ‘zines’ multiple voices illustrate that ‘queer’ is not

one thing. They smash the myth of ‘the gay community.’”79

Paradoxically, as the Queercore scene equally resisted and distrusted normative

homosexuality and visibility in the gay and lesbian mainstream in an angry and often alienating

74
Camille Erickson, “Querying Sex, Gender, and Race through the Queercore Zine Movement: G.B. Jones
and Vaginal Davis Protest Conformity,” Gateway Prize for Excellent Writing 4 (2013): 1.
75
Erickson, “Querying Sex, Gender, and Race through the Queercore Zine Movement,” 14.
76
Freaky Queer (Cardiff, 1992), 1.
77
Freaky Queer, 13.
78
Freaky Queer, 5.

79
Ian Barnard, “Gloria Anzaldúa’s Queer Mestisaje,” MELUS 22 (Spring 1997): 37.

19
way, these supposedly inclusive queer politics were in some ways as separatist as the ones the

movement set itself against: as illustrated in the Toronto zine, BIMBOX, “we must identify us

and them in no uncertain terms.”80 Indeed, as Penelope J. Engelbrecht claims, the major

“semantic problematization” of the term “queer” in these contexts is that it seeks “unity” while

paradoxically fostering an “us v. them” mentality.81 As such, “queer” also meant the opposite of

“straight”: not in terms of a fixed and binaried understanding of sexuality, but rather in terms of

accepting, embracing, and celebrating difference. As outlined in Freaky Queer, “straights are

people who see any deviation from their own line as threatening and try and stamp on it.”82 As

du Plessis and Chapman assert, by utilizing these somewhat contradictory subcultural self- and

community-identity politics, “the functions of queercore, then, are to deny legitimacy to the

public sphere, to stress internal coherence around its own proper differences, and to turn to the

networks created by queerzines, clubs, music and other subcultural practices so that a counter-

public sphere can be created.”83 Robert DeChaine concurs, “by celebrating difference…the

category of queer seems to be at odds with itself.”84 Despite this apparent paradox in

Queercore’s subcultural identity politics, the important take-away is that Queercore zines and

music created, as G.B Jones stated, a subversive and resistant “alternative for an already

alternative culture”;85 or, as Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga assert, these queer artists were

“in fact other than the others.”86

80
BIMBOX (Toronto, 1991), no page numbers.
81
Penelope J. Engelbrecht, “Strange Company: Uncovering the Queer Anthology,” NWSA Journal 7
(Spring 1995): 82 & 84.
82
Freaky Queer, 3.
83
Du Plessis and Chapman, “Queercore: The Distinct Identities of Subculture,” 49.

84
Robert DeChaine, “Mapping Subversion: Queercore Music’s Playful Discourse of Resistance,” Popular
Music and Society 24 (1997): 21.
85
Quoted in Erickson, “Querying Sex, Gender, and Race through the Queercore Zine Movement,” 4.
86
Sheila Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga, “Introduction,” in Queering the Popular Pitch, xvi.

20
 Queercore participants not only set the movement apart from dominant culture and the

gay and lesbian mainstream, but also positioned Queercore against queer political activist

groups, such as Queer Nation in the US and OutRage! in the UK – organizations which were

accused of stealing and weakening the word “queer.” As G.B. Jones and Jena von Brücker

asserted in BIMBOX, “We are angry with those awful people at Queer Nation…they stole our

word. While there is [sic] a few o.k. individuals at Queer Nation, they are for the most part

clones in queer’s clothing.”87 Additionally, Queercore participants resented the appropriation of

the term “queer” for what participants in the movement perceived as radical yet cloaked

assimilationist politics. As London-based music journalist Toby Manning states:

The collapse of Queer Nation is often taken as an example of the failure of

queer/transgression as a whole, though the organization in fact had no connection
to the queer zine ethos, simply appropriating the term “queer” for what was
essentially just a more militant take on the usual gay reformist agenda. The extent
of the organization’s separation from real queer culture is illustrated by their
sending a death threat to Denis Cooper, a hero to queer zinesters. But it was this
movement that came to represent queer in the popular imagination, the result
being, as Bruce LaBruce has pointed out, that “the Queer Nation sensibility and
aesthetic merged with what [zinesters] were doing and watered it down.” Unlike
the queer zinesters wholesale rejection of society, the new militancy was easily
assimilable into gay culture.88
Despite these growing and sometimes violent tensions, the initial politics and outlook of queer

activist groups developing out of the same socio-political climate as Queercore, fell more in line

with queer punk culture: as Cherry Smyth of OutRage! argued, “we’re queer and we’re not going

to let you ignore us…we have seen that homophobia is killing people and this can’t go on. That

anger…it needed to have some sort of discharge or explosion, and that seems to be what queer

87
BIMBOX, circa 1991, no page numbers or specified date.
88
Eric [pseud.], quoting Toby Manning, Fuck Yeah! Queercore, no entry date,
http://fuckyeahqueercore.tumblr.com/ (accessed June 30, 2014).

21
has provided…I see that as a throwback to punk anarchy with queer on the front of it.”89 Perhaps

it is the on-the-surface parallels between Queercore, queer politics, and queer theory which

angered Queercore participants the most, as Namaste outlines the main problem:

While queer theories and activism make use of metaphor to associate queers and
lesbians/gays, queer-punks employ the term catachrestically, as a metaphor for
which no literal referent exists. Lesbians and gays who call themselves “queer”
assimilate and equate the referents of “queer” and “lesbian and gay” sexual
identities and politics: an association which should make us question whether
Queer Theory and politics are as radical and inclusive as they claim to be. The
rhetorical use of the term “queer” within queer-punk discourse, in contrast, cannot
be reduced to a lesbian/gay political framework or agenda [emphasis added].90
The complex and contradictory problems with the appropriation of a broad umbrella term

such as “queer” in the abovementioned contexts – queer theory, politics, and zines – have been

discussed at great length. To summarize, Nadine Milde argues that while “queer” provides “for

homosocial bonding in a safe space,” as well as political and identity potential, such a term also

comes with dehistoricizing and homologizing dangers,91 which simultaneously worked for and

against Queercore’s postmodern sensibilities. Similarly, H.G. Cocks argues that modern sexual

identity is not a “unitary entity” rooted in a historical binary system, but is rather bound by

contexts of locality, class, age, nationality, gender, patterns of sociability, etc.92 As such,

categories such as “queer” paradoxically provide, in Butler’s words, both “unity” and

fragmentation for political action93 (as outlined above); in this way, a “we” construction denies

89
Cherry Smyth and Amy Hamilton, “Interview: Queer Nations,” Off Our Backs 22 (October 1992): 12 &
15.
90
Namaste, “The Use and Abuse of Queer Tropes,” 232.

91
Paraphrasing Nadine Milde, “Pop Goes the Queerness, or, (Homo)Sexuality and Its Metaphors: On the
Importance of Gay Sensibilities in Postmodern Culture and Theory,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 46 (2001):
135-150 (quote from 141).
92
Paraphrasing H.G. Cocks, “Modernity and the Self in the History of Sexuality,” The Historical Journal
49 (December 2006): 1211-1227.
93
Butler, “Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire: IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary, and Beyond,” 21.

22
the complexity of identity a term like “queer” seeks, yet provides a “radical instability” in queer

politics.94 Ultimately, Butler (and Foucault) theorize that those gender and sexual identities

which escape hegemonic societal prohibitions merely expand these boundaries, as individuals

who subvert dominant “norms” also depend on them to remain on the “outside.”95 Heather Love,

drawing from Foucault’s “reverse” discourse, calls this the “backwardness” of queer identity,

and suggests that the “mixture of delicious and freak” and of “damage” and affirmation of this

“backwardness” is a “key feature in queer culture…in celebrations of perversion, in defiant

refusals to grow up.”96 Queercore politics formed, then, what Muñoz calls “necessary fiction of

the past that grounds” its participants “in the present”97 through disidentification, which “allows

us to discern seams and contradictions and ultimately understand the need for a war of

positions”98 continually seen in Queercore art and politics. Through an ahistorical outlook and

contradictory, radical politics, Queercore participants disidentified with dominant ideologies of

heteronormative British society, the gay and lesbian mainstream, queer activist groups, and the

general British punk subculture to assert their queer group and individual identity politics and

artistic aesthetics.

Queercore in the UK: Sister George, MouthFull, and Six Inch Killaz

94
Butler, “Conclusion: From Parody to Politics,” in Gender Trouble, 181.
95
Butler, “Subversive Bodily Acts: II. Foucault, Herculine, And the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity,”
chapter 3 in Gender Trouble, 119-124 & 135.

96
Heather Love, “Introduction,” in Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (London:
Harvard University Press, 2007), 2-3 & 7.
97
Muñoz, “The Autoethnographic Performance,” 83.
98
Muñoz, “‘The White to Be Angry’: Vaginal Crème Davis’s Terrorist Drag,” chapter 4 in
Disidentifications, 115.

23
 To me, the gay lifestyle is getting to be like just another alternative lifestyle. You
go down Old Compton Street in Soho and see them sitting there in nice coffee
bars with their pink pounds - and these [Sister George] are 20-year-old kids who
are angry and on the dole. – Liz Naylor (owner of Catcall Records)99
Similarly to the complexities of Queercore political and aesthetic contexts, Queercore music

poses its own set of challenges: though Queercore scenes and bands share overarching

similarities in musical styles and themes in lyrical expression, studies such as this one risk

generalizing an art scene which is “undeniably diverse.”100 As expressed by Kevin Schwandt,

much queercore music attempts to disrupt binary conceptions of gender and

sexuality, but the sheer diversity of identities associated with the term would seem
to prohibit one band or even a group of bands from truly serving as
representatives….in attempting to categorize politically engaged music in blanket
legacies of musical ideology or style, we risk diluting their political significance
and reinscribing conventional notions of gendered music.101
Tracy Shildrick and Robert MacDonald further emphasize this point, arguing for the importance

of recognizing the structurally embedded social divisions, inequalities, and postmodern and

multiple identifications found in subcultures.102 Therefore, it should be stated that the following

bands, Sister George, Mouthfull, and Six Inch Killaz, while sharing all of the political, artistic,

and expressive queer themes and aesthetics discussed at length above, will be considered in an

individual and nuanced manner. Overall, as Kevin C. Dunn outlines, punk music is generally

subversive and counter-hegemonic on its own, offering an “anti-aesthetic” subcultural space to

those considered “other” to musically place “a mocking assault on dominant social norms” in

“critical opposition to the status quo,” further arguing that these spaces have the potential to

99
Quoted on “Sister George,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Sister+George (accessed July 1, 2014).
100
Schwandt, “The Erotics of an Oil Drum,” 79.

101
Schwandt, “The Erotics of an Oil Drum,” 79.
102
Paraphrasing Tracy Shildrick and Robert MacDonald, “In Defence of Subculture: Young People,
Leisure, and Social Divisions,” Journal of Youth Studies 9 (2006): 125-140.

24
“work within systems of global communication.”103 Ultimately, “a punk scene is of punks, for

punks, by punks,” providing these “others” with “resources for agency and empowerment.”104 In

this way, Queercore was musically, again, the minority of a minority, or, other than the other.

The Queercore band, Sister George, channeled the abovementioned politics and

aesthetics into their music and lyrics. DeChaine outlines how Queercore’s postmodern politics

applied to its music through an aesthetic discourse of play sensibility, consisting of carnival,

parody, pastiche, and bricolage. As shown through an analysis of Pansy Division’s songs and

live performance, DeChaine argues that Queercore offered a liminal time and space in which this

“sensibility of play” allowed participants “subaltern discursive tactics” to resist, deconstruct, and

subvert an oppressive, heteronormative dominant culture and homonormative gay and lesbian

mainstream in an empowering and defiant manner.105 This is certainly the case with Sister

George. While other queer punk bands, such as The Apostles (whose core members later formed

Academy 23), began in London during the 80s, Sister George, though short-lived, accrued a level

of influence and popularity which was central to the establishment of the Queercore movement

in London in the early to mid-90s. The band influenced the formation of various other

Queercore bands, some in which its members went on to play following their breakup in 1995.

As Brett and Wood assert, with “a more aggressive image in music” throughout the 90s

“numerous lesbian and gay singers and queercore bands had a crossover popular following…

including Sister George.”106 The 1968 queer film, The Killing of Sister George, inspired the

band’s name, and its members consisted of the late Lisa Cook on bass, Daryl Stanislaw on
103
Kevin C. Dunn, “Never Mind the Bollocks: The Punk Rock Politics of Global Communication,” Review
of International Studies 34 (2008): 197, 198, & 201.

104
Dunn, “Never Mind the Bollocks,” 198-199.
105
DeChaine, “Mapping Subversion,” 21.
106
Brett and Wood, “Lesbian and Gay Music,” 367-368.

25
drums, Lyndon Holmes on rhythm guitar, and Ellyott Dragon – a now famous and influential

Israeli DJ – on lead vocals and guitar,107 all of whom are pictured playing a live show in Figure 2.

Their first and only album, Drag King, initially came out in 1994, and was later re-released in the

United States on Outpunk records; a staple in Queercore repertoire, it was already considered to

be a “classic” punk “masterpiece” by the queerpunk community as early as 1996, as mentioned

in the archives of Oasis Magazine, an early online resource for closeted queer youth.108 Sullivan

reviewed Drag King for The Guardian; I will quote from her review at length, as it’s a relatively

short blurb:

Here’s a thing that will probably get up a few right-on noses. This east London-
based gay/lesbian foursome are noisy advocates of queercore, the movement of
aggressively out young gay people. One queercore obsession is middle-class,
“lifestyle” gays, and this mini-album starts as it means to go on. The first song
starts with a sample of a woman criticising a queercore-style lesbian – and
degenerates into a guitar-thrashing free-for-all. Musically, the Sisters have two
modes, the shrieking, X-Ray Spex-punk of Krap, and the relatively laid-back
Let’s Breed. The merciless pace and the furious shouting get wearing, but they
raise interesting issues. If nothing else, they have an affinity for language; try this
line from Handlebar: “Hey, there, big girl’s blouse, wanna sit on my handlebar
moustache?”109
Figure 3 shows the front, inner, and back album art for this record, the latter of which states the

censored message, “F**k your healthy gay lifestyle!” in all caps. Musically and lyrically this

album is a challenging, defiant, and cathartic listen, and is reminiscent of several queer punk

aesthetics often heard in Queercore music. Subverting popular music ideals – for example, a

polished sound and politically correct and censored lyrics – Queercore recordings typically

featured three chords, a fast tempo, the prominence of drums and bass, distorted guitars, raw,

slightly out of tune vocals, and an intentionally low production value, with imperfections kept in
107
“Sister George,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Sister+George (accessed July 1, 2014).
108
Midol, “Queercore,” Oasis Magazine, 1996, http://oasisjournals.com/Issues/9602/queercore9602.html
(accessed July 1, 2014).
109
Sullivan, “Gothic Grunge: Rock/Pop.”

26
to emulate the essence of a messy, live performance.110 More on this point below. While Sister

George’s songs were more melodic and advanced than most Queercore records, Drag King – and

the other records discussed below – feature these musical aesthetics. Sister George’s songs also

parodied well-known popular music tropes, often accompanying these upbeat conventions with

brutally honest, explicit, and socially aware lyrical content. Ryan Moore argues that punk

subcultures react to the crisis of postmodern society through deconstruction and authenticity,

further claiming that these two reactions are in tension with one another. This may be true in

some cases; however, in Queercore, modes of deconstruction and authenticity also complimented

one another, as modes of authentic artistic production – zines and records – served as the vehicle

for Queercore’s deconstruction of social norms and expectations.111 It cannot be denied that

Queercore appropriated punk musical and literary DIY aesthetics for their own means. Indeed,

as Jodie Taylor points out, “queer scenes and their members do not, therefore, reject popular

culture entirely, but rather they draw upon those, often spectacular, forms of presentation

available to them and adeptly reconstruct and reorder culture queerly.”112

Sister George’s songs provided an angry, yet humorous and sarcastic commentary on

social tensions and pressures commonly felt within the queer community, most notably

homophobia, misogyny, sexual violence, and lesbian invisibility. As Muñoz expresses, queer art

was not simply “good-humored fun”: Queercore artists “insisted on art that educated as it

entertained” and “insisted on social critique.”113 Muñoz continues, in queer art,

110
DeChaine, “Mapping Subversion,” 23.

111
Paraphrasing Ryan Moore, “Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and
Deconstruction,” The Communication Review 7 (2004): 305-327.
112
Jodie Taylor, “Scenes and Sexualities: Queerly Reframing the Music Scenes Perspectives,” Continuum:
Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 26 (2012): 151.
113
Muñoz, “Preface: Jack’s Plunger,” x-xi.

27
 comedy does not exist independently of rage. It is my contention that rage is
sustained and it is pitched as a call to activism, a bid to take space in the social
that has been colonized by the logics of white normativity and
heteronormativity.114
A strong example of this social commentary is Sister George’s song, “Virus Envy,” which

married Queercore’s brand of disidentifying humour and parody with a radical cultural

critique.115 “Virus Envy” is only a minute and a half long, the typical length of much punk

music, and yet atypical to Sister George, whose songs tended to be three to almost five minutes

in length. Musically, “Virus Envy” features a strong emphasis on bass and drums. Over this

driving rhythmic section, a repetitive – and, for lack of a better word, “catchy” – guitar hook

plays throughout. The instruments break for Dragon’s vocals, which are rough and almost

piercing, more screamed rather than sung. A second short and ambient guitar hook plays in a

higher register throughout the chorus, during which the words “it’s virus envy” are repeated in an

almost mocking tone, which adds to this second hook’s almost out of place feeling in contrast to

the raw, pounding force of the lower rhythm section. The song’s common outro chord

progression plays on another popular music convention, driving home the feeling that Sister

George and their target audience are “in” on a joke, in which outsiders do not necessarily take

part. Ultimately, the entire musical aesthetic of “Virus Envy” is gritty and mocking. Despite its

purposeful raw imperfections, one cannot deny its addictive, simple yet ingenious hook, which is

reminiscent of mainstream popular music conventions, particularly those of contemporary

grunge and alternative rock.

Lyrically, “Virus Envy” tackled three prominent and linked problems for many in the

queer community: firstly, misogyny between the gay and lesbian communities; secondly, the

114
Muñoz, “Preface: Jack’s Plunger,” xi-xii.
115
Muñoz, “‘The White to Be Angry,’” 100.

28
historical invisibility and erasure of lesbians during and from the HIV/AIDS crisis; and thirdly,

the subsequent lack of sex education, resources, and support available to the lesbian community.

These concerns for lesbian issues and visibility expressed in “Virus Envy” reflected those of a

contemporary lesbian activist group, The Lesbian Avengers, which formed in June 1993

following allegations against OutRage! for being “too male, white, and middle class.”116

Queercore participants who were involved with this group remained concerned that it would

become “some elitist thing like OUTRAGE.”117 The lyrics for “Virus Envy” contain, like almost

all Queercore lyrics, strong profanity and sexual content, serving as a typically ignored female

HIV warning. I have quoted the lyrics below, uncensored and in their entirety, as I feel

censoring the song’s admittedly abrasive and graphic content would not only defeat the point

Sister George was trying to make, but would also be a disservice to Queercore aesthetics. As I

am viewing this music from an academic standpoint, all aspects of it are rendered necessary, and

this disclaimer applies to all lyrical examples used in this paper.

So you think that dykes don’t fuck?

Low risk = no risk: burn your gloves?
Lesbo love is safe you think
Dental dams are just for kink!

Virus envy
It’s Virus envy

What do you think we do in bed?

Dykes are sick just in our heads!

116
Jennings, “The Politics of Lesbianism, 1970-2000,” 187.

117
Chaos/Order (London, 1994), no page numbers.

29
 Girl to girl HIV transmission
Is going to go on happening if we give it permission!118

Sister George’s record also features a punk cover of Tom Robinson’s 1978 gay-anthem “Glad To

Be Gay,” which the band renamed “100 Times No.” This track closes Drag King and its

sardonic treatment highlights the generational and subcultural tensions between the gay and

lesbian mainstream and Queercore participants. Sister George juxtaposed in a double chorus an

insincere and disjointed rendition of Robinson’s original lyrics, “sing if you’re glad to be

gay/sing if you’re happy this way,” which is syncopated and sung in a sarcastic tone, with “we

kill in self-defense,” which is emphasized on the beat and screamed angrily. The latter is a quote

borrowed from American serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and the band even samples snippets from

her deposition throughout the song. “We kill in self-defense” was commonly chanted by fans at

Sister George’s gigs.119

Muñoz argues that songs and lyrics are often a form of disidentification, as a listener can

hear both the author of the song and a singer who is not, who is “heard by something that is a

shared impulse, a drive toward justice, retribution, emancipation;” furthermore, a lyric like that

of “Virus Envy” or “100 Times No” was “a lyric that dreamed, strove, and agitated to disorder

the real and wedge open a space in the social where necessary fictions of…queerness could

ascend to something that was and was not fiction, but was, nonetheless, utterly heard.”120 In this

way, Queercore bands disidentified not only politically and socially with dominant culture and

the gay and lesbian mainstream, but also musically with contemporary local and global punk

scenes, as briefly mentioned above – and, as seen in “Virus Envy” and “100 Times No” – by

118
Sister George, “Virus Envy,” on Drag King, MP3, Catcall Records, 1994.
119
Sister George, “100 Times No,” on Drag King, MP3, Catcall Records, 1994.
120
Muñoz, “Introduction,” 21.

30
appropriating these punk musical styles and aesthetics queerly. Perry Grossman emphasizes this

point, that queer punk is an example of the paradox between “the punk ideology of acceptance

and the actual practices of exclusion,” which can be seen not only in the tensions between

Queercore and the gay and lesbian mainstream, but also between the male and straight

dominated punk scene’s homophobia towards Queercore participants, who often heckled

Queercore bands during live shows.121 As such, the Queercore definition of music, if one may be

– albeit abstractly – discerned, was that of a vehicle for expressing Queercore aesthetics and

politics. Rather than focusing on the inner-workings, complexities, or technical skills involved

in making music, Queercore scenes emphasized the social importance of music to its performers

and listeners, and the comradery it fostered by blurring the divide between the two groups.

Indeed, sonically not unlike that of other punk subcultures, the messiness and simplicity of

Queercore music, and the specific anger, fear, vulnerability, and sociopolitical concerns

expressed in its lyrics, emphasized a contradictory exclusive openness which encouraged the

sense that anyone could pick up a guitar and be a part of this.

Sister George was the only UK band featured in Lucy Thane’s 1997 documentary, She’s

Real (Worse Than Queer). In a very short clip, Ellyott Dragon discusses the Riot Grrrl

movement, a feminist contemporary of Queercore with which she also identified, and the

surprised reactions of radical lesbians who had never heard of the movement: “So many dykes

around have been rioting in their own way for years, and now they ask me, ‘what’s this Riot

Grrrl thing?’ And then when they describe it, they go – because they don’t read the music papers

– they say ‘that sounds just like what we do…except the music’s a bit too noisy for me.’”122 This

121
Perry Grossman, “Identity Crisis: The Dialectics of Rock, Punk, and Grunge,” Berkeley Journal of
Sociology 41 (1996-1997), 27.
122
Lucy Thane, She’s Real (Worse Than Queer), Vimeo, part one http://vimeo.com/12084539, 14:15-15:00,
1997.

31
short interview clip is followed by an excerpt of a live performance of “Virus Envy,” further

showcasing the political importance of the song, and the simultaneous political alignment yet

separation of Queercore and radical queer activism, as discussed above. Chris Holmlund and

Cynthia Fuchs further outline this point in their book, Between the Sheets, In the Streets: Queer,

Lesbian, Gay Documentary, in which they discuss films such as Thane’s as exploring the

“uncoupling of identity” aesthetically for political action and social acceptance, while discussing

the complicated, often contradictory politics of queer identities.123 Holmlund and Fuchs further

claim that documentaries speak to mainly queer audiences through portraying “evidence from the

world” and “discourse about the world,” as this queer discourse circulates and is produced

through collaborations between queer filmmakers and queer audiences, while remaining “largely

unknown by other communities.”124 Ultimately, queer artists “choose queer as a fighting word,”

which signals resistance and “generational allegiances and differences” through a medium of

“radical openness and possibility” and “marginal perspectives.”125 While this documentary

theory most obviously aligns with Thane’s film, I argue that these arguments also parallel

queerzine and Queercore music aesthetics, politics, outlook, and target audiences. Indeed, as

Rob Fatal asserts, queer music and lyrics are the vehicle for anti-hegemonic messages which

constitute conversational narratives between queer punk artists and their listeners, and which

foster a sense of individual and community validation and empowerment.126

123
Chris Holmlund and Cynthia Fuchs, “Introduction,” in Between the Sheets, In the Streets: Queer,
Lesbian, Gay Documentary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 1-2.
124
Holmlund and Fuchs, “Introduction,” 2 & 5.
125
Holmlund and Fuchs, “Introduction,” 6.

126
Paraphrasing Rob Fatal, “Lezbophobia and Blame the Victim: Deciphering the Narratives of Lesbian
Punk Rock,” Women’s Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal (2012): 158-174.

32
 Initially touring with Riot Grrrl bands, such as Huggy Bear and Hissy Fit, Sister George

also typically played cheap shows (3-5 pounds admission) in smaller clubs and bars in London,

such as the Splash Club, Water Rats on Gray’s Inn Road, as advertised in The Guardian – which

mistakenly referred to the group as the “all-female punk band at the forefront of the queercore

movement” [emphasis added].127 Eventually, Sister George toured with fellow early Queercore

bands Mouthfull and Children’s Hour, and these three bands proved highly influential not only in

the establishment of Queercore in London, but also its long-staying power. Unfortunately,

though Children’s Hour is recounted consistently on Queercore-devoted websites, their

biography, music, and lyrics seem to be all but lost, so I will be unfortunately unable to analyze

their output or politics. However, Mouthfull remains prolific in London’s Queercore scene.

Mouthfull was active from 1994 to 2000, and cited Tom Robinson, Sister George, and the

American – and notably the most popular and successful Queercore band – Pansy Division,

among their biggest influences. Mouthfull’s core members were Andy McHaffie on guitar and

lead vocals and Mike Wyeld on bass guitar and vocals. Other band members initially included

Yasmin Sairally on guitar and Lea Andrews on drums, both of whom left before any songs had

been recorded. Perhaps most importantly, this earlier lineup of Mouthfull set up London’s first

Queercore night club, Up To The Elbow, in Camden.128

In an interview with Outpunk, Andrews emphasized difference – going against the often

mistaken assumed homology between individuals who identify as queer – within the band itself:

“when we started this band it was for a queercore band, like we were all going to have loads in

common because it’s a gay band and the rest would just follow. But in actual fact, probably the

127
“Rock & Pop Music,” The Guardian, November 12, 1994.
128
“Mouthfull,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Mouthfull (accessed July 1, 2014).

33
only thing we’ve got in common is that we’re gay.”129 Additionally, the band poked fun at the

problematic categorical distinction of “Women in Rock” in the mainstream music media by

repeatedly and sardonically stating of Sairally and Andrews, “we are ‘Women of Rock.’”130

Helen Davies highlighted this distinction as misogynistic and an example of the bias female

musicians faced from the music press and the mainly male punk scene in Britain during the early

90s, which was an issue commonly targeted in Queercore music and zines, as expressed in this

interview.131 Furthermore, Julia Downes, and Kevin Dunn and May Summer Farnsworth, affirm

in their respective articles how punk subcultures such as this provided women with a subversive

and resistant space to critique and challenge sexism and the construction of heterosexual

femininities in British culture, thereby opening possibilities for women to assert power and non-

normative identities in a backlash against dominant cultural ideals and norms.132 In this same

interview, the band temporarily lost their biting, yet joking tone when Wyeld mused on the

importance of Queercore as queering the punk subculture, which I will quote at length:

But I think also part of that thing recently about queercore, and particularly
British queercore, there’s been a lot of talk about the lesbian and gay “gaze”; what
do they like to look at? And there’s been a lot of talk about heavy metal bands
and the reason why they’ve not been traditionally popular with gay men, despite
whether or not that’s true, is because the play of the camera is between female
audience members and male band members, that gay men watching it get the idea
that these are men reserved for women, whereas with queercore bands something
different goes on. Because there’s [sic] men and women on stage and they play to
a mixed crowds [sic] of hets and gay people, men and women, that there is the
potential that men standing watching these people could be watching the men or
129
Mouthfull Interview, Outpunk, circa 1994-1995, 21.
130
Mouthfull Interview, Outpunk, 21.

131
Paraphrasing Helen Davies, “All Rock and Roll is Homosocial: The Representation of Women in the
British Rock Music Press,” Popular Music 20 (October 2001): 301-319.
132
Paraphrasing Julia Downes, “The Expansion of Punk Rock: Riot Grrrl Challenges to Gender Power
Relations in British Indie Music Subcultures,” Women’s Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal 41 (2012): 204-237;
and Kevin Dunn and May Summer Farnsworth, “‘We ARE the Revolution’: Riot Grrrl Press, Girl Empowerment,
and DIY Self-Publishing,’ Women’s Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal 41 (2012): 136-157.

34
 could be watching the women and vice versa, so with queercore bands you get a
whole reworking of the “gaze” and I think that’s probably something that’s fairly
significant and hasn’t been analysed in any of these philosophical writings on
queercore, however crap they’ve been so far.133
When asked what Queercore meant to them and for queer culture, McHaffie’s answer was

perhaps the most stripped away and honest: “Being sincere. Singing about real things.”134

Andrews followed up with what seems to be at the heart of this movement, “as long as

something is real then it’s worthwhile.”135

Following the departure of Sairally and Andrews, 17-year-old male drummer, Monsoon,

joined the lineup to record Mouthfull’s most popular song, “16” – the band’s all-male lineup can

be seen in Figure 4. “16” was Mouthfull’s only single, which appeared on their EP Stop

Homophobia 2, which was released in 1995 on Turkey Baster Records. The song would later

reappear on their initially unmastered self-titled album (alternatively titled Bring Balloons) on a

small London record label called Better – a (re)mastered version would later be distributed

online for free in 2009. The cover art for this album is shown in Figure 5. Musically, “16” is

instrumentally similar to Sister George’s style, with a heavy focus on bass and drums, a

repetitive, “catchy” guitar riff which plays with popular music conventions, and a raw, live

sound. McHaffie’s vocals, while much more melodic than Dragon’s, are just as rough and at

times out of tune. His tone almost emulates a Kurt Cobain-esque sound. The lyrics for “16”

reflect the outrage felt within the LGBTQ community during the ongoing debate on the gay age

of consent in the Britain during the mid-90s, which in 1995 was lowered from 21 to 18 – still not

equal to the heterosexual age of consent of 16.136 McHaffie’s emphasis is clearly sardonic in the
133
Mouthfull Interview, Outpunk, 24.
134

Mouthfull Interview, Outpunk, 24.

135

Mouthfull Interview, Outpunk, 24.

136
Hall, “Approaching the Millennium,” chapter 11 in Sex, Gender and Social Change in Britain since
1880, 173.

35
chorus’ repetitive line “I break the law,” balancing the anger and jest commonly heard in

Queercore music.

I am a lover and a criminal

Immoral sexual deviant

Chorus
I break the law
I fuck a 16-year-old
He breaks the law
When he touches me

I’ve been a danger since I was 14

In the showers with another boy

I’ll confess to everything you say

But my boyfriend, he won’t go away
We break the law
When we perfect our love
He breaks the law
When he can sit in my bed137
Throughout their tenure, Mouthfull played relatively cheap shows, typically ranging from 4-6

pounds admission, in smaller venues and pubs in London, such as The Red Eye on Copenhagen

Street and The Garage on Highbury Corner. These gigs often featured fellow punk groups and

artists, such as Pansy Division, the UK indie pop group Fosca (who played at the annual

137
Mouthfull, “16,” on Stop Homophobia 2, MP3, Turkey Baster Records, 1995.

36
Queercore festival in London, Queeruption, in September 1998), folk/punk singer-songwriter

Patrick Fitzgerald, and the all trans* Queercore group Six Inch Killaz.138

This last group, Six Inch Killaz, formed in 1994 and consisted of songwriter Mona

Compleine on guitar, Miss K on rhythm guitar, Luis Hatred on bass guitar, and singers Jasmine

Salome and Holly Cock,139 all of whom can be seen in Figure 6. Each member of this band

identified as MTF (male-to-female transgender), and were self-described as “tranny punks on the

verge of chaos.”140 Throughout Six Inch Killaz’s five-year tenure, the group played shows

throughout London’s underground pub scene, as well as two Pride festivals, “sporadically”

booking whatever gigs they could for their “genderqueer” live show.141 Their live act has been

described by fans as “unpredictable” and “characterised by their lax attitude, drink and drugs.”142

Additionally, fans recount Six Inch Killaz’s sound as “primitive”:

Cheap overdriven amps of Mona and Miss K, underpinned by a monotonous and

brutally deprogrammed drum machine (a BOSS Dr Rhythm, beloved of early rap
artists) and Luis’ Sid Vicious-esque bass and performance style. Above this
backing, Holly and Jasmine would shout in an atonal call-response shouted
style.143
While Six Inch Killaz never acquired a record deal, their demos fortunately were released by

Compleine on a CD-R collection entitled Wonderful in 2000, following the band’s break up in

1999. The cover art and track list of Wonderful is shown in Figure 7. Though each member of

the band was a strong songwriter in their own right, one of their earlier songs, “P.I.G.”, was

138
“Article 1 – No Title,” The Guardian, October 25, 1997; and “Music: Singles Reviews,” The Guardian,
November 7, 1998.
139
“Six Inch Killaz,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).
140

Quoted on “Six Inch Killaz,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).

141
“Six Inch Killaz,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).
142
“Six Inch Killaz,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).
143
“Six Inch Killaz,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).

37
written by Compleine. Standing for “Politically Involved Girls,” “P.I.G.”, as Miss K explains,

was “inspired by the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey film Women in Revolt,” and is “the perfect

Killaz song in a nutshell, short, noisy, witty, relentless and catchy, with a Warhol/Factory

reference and an Angry Brigade, situationist attitude.”144 The demo is a rough listen, featuring

the lowest recording quality I came across in my research, and is both musically and lyrically

difficult to decipher, with its chords and half-spoken, half-sung vocals muddled beneath an

overwhelming buzzing sound. However, the angry political sentiment of the song is clear, and as

Miss K emphasizes, from the beginning Six Inch Killaz were on the attack:

We're the girls from P.I.G.

We're making our own history
P.I.G. is here for you
We're gonna show you what to do

Into the streets of London Town

Blow it up or burn it down
Kick it till it breaks

We're the girls from P.I.G.

Ending the century
(Burn baby, burn baby, burn, yeah!)
P.I.G. is here for you
We're gonna show you what to do
(Burn baby, burn baby, burn, yeah!)

Politically Involved Girls

144
Miss K, “Six Inch Killaz: Shoot To Kill #2,” The Dragnet.org: The Thoughts/Music/Writing/Art Of A
Transgender Z-List Sleb, December 21, 2008, http://www.thedragnet.org/blog/music/killaz/killaz_02.html (accessed
July 1, 2014).

38
 Baader-Meinhoff had their fun,
Patty Hearst load up your gun
(Gotta burn, baby burn, baby burn, yeah!)
Come and kill some time with me
In your town in your city
(Gotta burn, baby burn, baby burn, yeah!)145

Six Inch Killaz were a dominant force in London’s Queercore scene, as seen in the contemporary

Queercore duo, The King Cheetah’s, tribute to the band in 2005. The King Cheetah befriended

Six Inch Killaz through joint performances at the “mixed-gay Kitsch Bitch club night”146 during

the mid-90s. Their song “Six Inch Killaz” portrayed the power of Six Inch Killaz’s music, and

the empowering, long-standing influence they held in London’s Queercore scene, with lyrics

such as:

Blow it up, and burn it down

She wrote this on my walls
She found the fence that we’d been sitting on
And turned it on.
I’m very good at fucking up, she said
She scowled and then she thrashed that guitar hard
She found hostility, and silenced it,
She knew right then she’d got the power.
Where are the Six Inch Killaz?147

Appropriately, The King Cheetah referred to Six Inch Killaz’s musical aesthetics and their

powerful political statements as a “notorious ‘drag wall-of noise.’”148

145
Six Inch Killaz, “P.I.G.,” on Wonderful, MP3, 2000.
146
“The King Cheetah: About,” http://thekingcheetah.com/about/ (accessed July 1, 2014).
147
The King Cheetah, “Six Inch Killaz,” on Six Inch Killaz EP, MP3, Spitshine, 2005.
148
“The King Cheetah: About,” http://thekingcheetah.com/about/ (accessed July 1, 2014).

39
 Apart from their great musical influence, Six Inch Killaz also contributed to the queerzine

culture, as Compleine self-published a zine called Girly (the cover of which is shown in Figure

1), which was dedicated to transgender issues and awareness. Importantly, she approached the

term “transgender” in a way which parallels that of Queercore’s general inclusive and political

approach to difference and identity by utilizing “queer”:

Transgender: a fancy PC term or just a pretentious new label? No. Transgender

is an inclusive general term for all sorts of people into any kind of temporary or
permanent gender-altering or blurring. But it’s not just a descriptive term, it’s an
identity you choose. It’s a question of “self-identifying” as transgender,
identifying with other TG people and their experiences, recognising common
ground, but appreciating diversity. It’s a political idea…for me it’s been useful to
self-define as TG, it’s helped me find self-respect and support, so its [sic]
important.149
Compleine also emphasized that her zine was unintentionally exclusionary: targeted towards

MTF trans* people with a title like Girly, she inadvertently left FTM trans* people out, and

made the distinction that she did not “presume to represent all TG people.”150 This is a common

issue in queerzines, where authors wish to be as inclusive as possible, but are always aware of

inevitable exclusions: an issue, as described above, inherent to terms like “queer.” Still,

Compleine importantly targeted the issues and tensions felt within the transgender community

regarding various identities and assumptions about identity:

What’s the problem here? The hierarchies: all the divisive labelling, counter-
labelling and backbiting, which further uphold the divide-and-rule stereotypes
provided for us. We emphatically are not one big happy family but we are a kind
of family, we can learn from each other and can all benefit from mutual respect
and support….Insecurities and hierarchies depend on each other, along with
suspicion, competition and individualism. We don’t need shit like that. Mona
says: Get over it.151

149
Girly: TransGender Zine, issue 5 (London, 1996), no page numbers.
150
Girly: TransGender Zine.
151
Girly: TransGender Zine.

40
Compleine’s words emphasized the ultimate goal of Queercore, as well as the political, societal,

and internal subcultural tensions the movement tried to overcome by utilizing their brand of

queer identity politics artistically: creating an inclusive, empowering, and resistant space for

queer youth.

Conclusions:

Queercore emerged in an intense and angry explosion during the late-80s and early-90s, and

though it is still around today politically and artistically, and has actually expanded into other

musical genres such as indie rock, pop, synth, and experimental, this already small punk scene

has, for the most part, dissipated. Today, its unorganized history lives on mainly through

sporadic academic papers, sparsely held Queercore festivals and events, and social media blog

sites like Tumblr. The creator of one such Tumblr blog – Fuck Yeah! Queercore – muses that

“Queercore…is a subculture, a movement, a genre, a political alignment – it cannot be perfectly

defined.”152 Personally, I prefer Liz Naylor’s definition: the founder of Catcall Records, which

distributed Sister George’s Drag King, aptly reflected that Queercore wasn’t a “movement,” it

was a “moment.”153 As such, there are a few reasons why Queercore emerged with a bang and

subsequently fizzled out with a whimper. Firstly, Queercore lacked direction, uniformity, and

money. These concerns were clearly expressed in an editorial for the London queerzine

Chaos/Order:

152
Eric [pseud.], “About Queercore,” Fuck Yeah! Queercore, no entry date,
http://fuckyeahqueercore.tumblr.com/ (accessed June 30, 2014).
153
Quoting Liz Naylor, “Queercore: Blah Blah Blah!,” Fagburn, April 12, 2012,
http://www.fagburn.com/2012/04/queercore-blah-blah-blah.html (accessed June 15, 2014).

41
 We’re all talking about QUEERCORE…But what is QC really? is [sic] it a
simple reaction to the gay scene? then [sic] what’s the point? most [sic] of us
dislike the scene, but is it important enough to be the reason for our
existence?...It’s also a matter of money. the [sic] scene costs more than most of
us can afford, at least on a regular basis. but [sic] going to gigs and buying
records also isn’t cheap. we [sic] live in a consumerist society, everything
costs….now I get to the politics. if [sic] we claim to make a statement by merely
being QUEERCORE then what’s the difference between us and other “lifestyle”
queers? I think we all agree that QUEERCORE is more than shagging a member
of the same sex whilst listening to God Is My Co-pilot or Sister George…but
what else does it take? what [sic] do we want?154
It seems no one had a definitive answer. Secondly, and relatedly, like most queer subcultural

communities, as Queercore expanded internationally it also “became increasingly fragmented,”155

and its sense of commonality156 and politics weakened as inner tensions regarding race, gender,

and class arose; in this way, it “inevitably no longer [met] the idealistic view [it] initially set for

itself.”157 Thirdly, as expressed throughout this dissertation, Queercore was inherently

reactionary and of its time: emerging out of a world where it was nearly impossible for

Queercore participants – and anyone identifying as any non-hetero/cis-gender identity in general

– to safely be and express wholly who they were, the movement then dissipated in a world where

it suddenly became easier and more socially acceptable to do so. However, I argue that this does

not diminish its social impact. In fact, it is important to remember that in a time before the

internet, before LGBTQ rights really progressed and became a mainstream and international

socio-political issue, and before the support of organizations such as the Trevor Project and It

Gets Better campaign, Queercore did much of the work of these organizations, albeit for a small

population of queer punks. Just by simply being who they are – loudly, strongly, and proudly –

154
Chaos/Order, no page numbers.
155
Kirsch, “Conclusion: Theory, Politics, and the Community,” in Queer Theory and Social Change, 115.

156
Nikki Sullivan, “Community and its Discontents,” chapter 8 in A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 137.
157
Kirsch, “Conclusion: Theory, Politics, and the Community,” 117.

42
Queercore artists made a difference by offering potentially life-saving resources to LGBTQ

youth through fanzines and music, and by, as romantic as it may sound, saying “yes” while the

rest of the world said “no.”

Equally, there are many reasons why Queercore has become a somewhat hidden artifact

in academia and LGBTQ history: their music was unpolished and gritty at best, as some bands

barely knew how to string together three chords when they started; their lyrics were graphic,

overtly-sexual, and violent; their zines were messy, utilizing a cut-n-paste aesthetic, equally

angry and explicit, and riddled with grammatical errors; and their live shows, marred with stage

antics and jokes, the imitation of sexual acts, and unfortunate yet empowering interactions with

hecklers, encompassed all of these characteristics and more. As such, no one aspect of the

Queercore aesthetic is necessarily easy to digest: it is aggressive, shocking, brutally honest,

taboo, and, as it thrives on conflict, confrontation, and controversy, potentially upsetting and

offensive. Ultimately, queer punks still do not quite jive with the assimilationist approach,

hegemonic image, and equal rights political agenda of the LGBTQ mainstream. It often seems

like Queercore participants have never wanted acceptance from those who outcast them – they

just wanted to be. From the outside, any punk subculture may be seen as a fad or a phase for

youth in which it’s “cool” to identify with a certain band or scene; however, for Queercore

participants, overall, the movement’s music and zines were exceedingly important to a

simultaneous sense of survival and fun.

Queercore identity politics were also, as expressed throughout this paper, inherently

paradoxical. Horowitz’s recent critique of queer theory reflects this as she criticizes the current

state of its discourse as hetero- and homo-normative – i.e. assuming that anyone identifying

under the umbrella term “queer” “should have anything in common culturally, politically, or

43
otherwise” – and counter-argues that queer theory should decentralize any presumed hegemonic

norms and similarities, and should instead highlight dissimilarities among queer identities and

cultures.158 These issues stem from the term “queer,” which, as I have discussed at length,

“simultaneously seeks to erase differences (by insisting on the inclusion of an ever-expanding

array of nonnormative genders and sexualities) and to maintain differences (by framing some

bodies and lives as queerer than others).”159 This argument to think about queer identity as “not a

priori structured around binarism and hierarchy”160 reflects the politics, tensions, and erasures

that were commonly fostered in Queercore zines and music. Therefore, I argue that the politics

Queercore participants preached by appropriating the term “queer” for their aesthetic, political,

and artistic agendas almost foreshadowed recent critiques of queer theory, while those that were

paradoxically practiced more closely paralleled contemporary queer theory.

In a 2006 queer theory conference, a theoretical “antisocial turn” was set between two

extremes: Halberstam’s “forgotten archive” of political negativity and Muñoz’s “queer

utopianism.”161 I argue that Queercore politics and art reflected both extremes due to its

simultaneous ahistoricity, social critique and resistance of the present, and the utopian

“emancipatory potential” of counter-public and alternative culture zines, music, and lyrics.162

For example, Ruth Adams’ article on the impact and legacy of the Sex Pistols focuses on what

she calls “the Englishness of English Punk,” through which she asserts that this punk music is a

158
Horowitz, “The Trouble with ‘Queerness,’” 304 & 310.
159
Horowitz, “The Trouble with ‘Queerness,’” 322.
160
Horowitz, “The Trouble with ‘Queerness,’” 310.

161
Robert L. Caserio, Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz, and Tim Dean, “The
Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory,” PMLA 121 (May 2006): 824 & 826.
162
Michelle Comstock, “Grrrl Zine Networks: Re-Composing Spaces of Authority, Gender, and Culture,”
JAC 21 (Spring 2001): 394.

44
“form of symbolic war” which simultaneously dramatizes the realities of everyday life,

emphasizes historicity by “wallowing in nostalgia,” and celebrates difference in the view of an

“(alternative) future” in a postmodernist utopia.163 Similarly, Kate Shaw asserts, the alternative

politics of subcultures emphasize not only resistance and subversion, but also anti-establishment

and anti-”art” elements, allowing subcultures to rewrite the past for their own purposes.164 These

themes are clearly represented in Queercore’s politics and art, as discussed.

Despite the problems with “queer” in both real life and theory, many scholars have

struggled to provide a solution. However, the most recent proposal to apply queer theory to daily

life while acknowledging a decentralized agency in contradictory subcultures, such as

Queercore, can be found in Halberstam’s “antisocial” notion of the “queer art of failure,” which

is located in “radical utopias” (i.e. queer subcultures), low theory (“a counterhegemonic form of

theorizing… alternatives within an undisciplined zone of knowledge production”), and popular

culture.165 In this case, Halberstam’s notion of “failure” is the recognition that queer identities,

subcultures, and art fail to adhere to hegemonic norms, and thereby imagine existing alternatives

to ideologies of “success” in dominant culture power discourses and systems: “under certain

circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in

fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world.”166

Queering and integrating this “failure” with “low theory,” Halberstam analyzes how queer tropes

work on different levels in both “high” and “low” art and culture; he approaches each extreme
163
Ruth Adams, “The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia,” Popular
Music and Society 31 (2008): 472 & 475.
164
Paraphrasing Kate Shaw, “Independent Creative Subcultures and Why They Matter,” International
Journal of Cultural Policy 19 (2013): 333-352.
165
Judith Halberstam, “Introduction: Low Theory,” in The Queer Art of Failure (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2011), 2 & 18.
166
Halberstam, “Introduction: Low Theory,” 2-3.

45
equally, while acknowledging that “low” art may potentially not be taken seriously in academia

or otherwise. This combination, then, revels in anti-disciplinarity and opens up new possibilities

and alternatives for queer theory and cultural studies which do not get caught in the “trap” of

more conventional queer topics, tropes, and ways of theorizing and “knowing” (i.e. utilizing

binarisms and “all-encompassing and global theories”) by providing a more nuanced, darker,

chaotic, subversive, and queerer view of the world through “knowledge from below” [emphasis

in original].167 Importantly, Halberstam’s use of the term “negativity” differs from how it has

been used thus far in this dissertation – referring to the stigmatization and injury of the term

“queer” – and instead it critiques queer theory’s impulse towards tropes of positivity,

productivity, affirmation, success, and hope for an imaginary utopian future and aims to decenter

this line of thinking; as such, Halberstam’s negative queer archive embraces pessimism,

masochism, the anti-social, resistance, radical anti-politics, punk aesthetics, etc. For example, as

related to Queercore, Halberstam argues that queer punk negativity consists of “implicit politics

of failure”168 which allow for an escape and subversive critique. “Failure” in this sense refers to

the inefficient attempt of queer identities and subcultures to adhere to “normative” constructs of

behavior and identity in society, which preserves anarchy and disturbs boundaries; additionally,

Halberstam suggests that forgetting (i.e. Queercore’s ahistorical outlook) can be used as a means

of resistance.169 As such, queer aesthetics of the subcultural performer include darkness, dissent,

167
Halberstam, “Introduction: Low Theory,” 11.
168
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” chapter 3 in The Queer Art of Failure, 90.

169
Halberstam, “Introduction: Low Theory,” 15.

46
and resistance through failure170 and a “subjugated knowledge” from “below.”171 Halberstam

ultimately asserts:

We can also recognize failure as a way of refusing to acquiesce to dominant

logics of power and discipline and as a form of critique. As a practice, failure
recognizes that alternatives are embedded already in the dominant and that power
is never total or consistent; indeed failure can exploit the unpredictability of
ideology and its indeterminate qualities.172
In this way, Halberstam suggests that queer punk scenes are antipolitical, but not apolitical;173

failure is not necessarily a loss, lack of success, or falling short of expectation, but rather it “turns

on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in

losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being” [emphasis added].174

Halberstam argues that queer punks exhibit a “refusal of a normative model” of life, and playing

on this notion of societal expectation, queer social worlds, like Queercore scenes, are “evidence

of failure,” whereas heterosexuality seems to be “rooted in a logic of achievement, fulfillment,

and success(ion).”175 Therefore, in queer subcultures, Halberstam’s ahistorical logic of queer

failure is celebrated and sardonically – and knowingly – maintained by its “losers,” as seen

particularly in Queercore music and zines.

Bruce LaBruce, a forerunner in the establishment of the first Queercore scene (initially,

“homocore”) in Toronto, cynically commented in 1995, “‘Queercore’ is dead. I know, because I

170
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 97.
171
Halberstam, “Introduction: Low Theory,” 23.
172
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 88.
173
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 90.
174
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 88.
175
Halberstam, “The Queer Art of Failure,” 94.

47
say it is.”176 He continued that he finally “really understood it – how you can create something

out of a desperate need, and make it so convincing that not only you but others around you start

believing it too;” uncomfortable with the fact that Queercore had become “an international

phenomenon or something,” with people referring to what he calls his “imaginary creation as

‘legendary’ and ‘important’,” LaBruce felt it was time to move on.177 LaBruce argued that the

creators and participants of this “gay underworld” lived in an “imaginary world,” and that queer

punk fanzines and music were not “supposed to be written about…catalogued and historicized

and analysed to death…they’re supposed to be disposable,” further stating that by the time this

article was written, Queercore had become “meaningless.”178 Ultimately, LaBruce asserted, “I’m

not going to write about punk because sometimes to explain is to weaken.”179 Given that, by

1995, LaBruce had been effectively kicked out and ostracized by the queer punk community he

created due to the commercial success of his underground films – which supposedly sold the

movement out – it is understandable that his attitude towards Queercore would become so jaded

and bitter. However, as a music historian, my obvious counter-argument to his claims is that not

writing about moments in music history such as this is really what weakens their importance.

Indeed, I firmly maintain that the inherent difficulty, contradictions, and relative disappearance

of Queercore should not dissuade us from discussing and analyzing it, because none of these

paradoxical aspects lessens its continuing impact: the politics and message were reactionary and

loud, angry yet vulnerable, highly influential and inspiring to those aware of it, and very much of

its time, while almost foreshadowing current issues in queer theory discourse and queer activism

176
Bruce LaBruce, “The Wild, Wild World of Fanzines: Notes from a Reluctant Pornographer,” chapter 9 in
A Queer Romance: Lesbians, Gay Men, and Popular Culture, edited by Paul Burston and Colin Richardson
(London: Routledge, 1995), 186.
177
LaBruce, “The Wild, Wild World of Fanzines,” 186.
178
LaBruce, “The Wild, Wild World of Fanzines,” 193-194.
179
LaBruce, “The Wild, Wild World of Fanzines,” 193.

48
and politics. Halberstam’s queer failure model claims that the antisocial queer negativity archive

in academia is lacking, and I argue that future studies on queer subcultures such as Queercore

would work within Halberstam’s model and be a strong contribution to his “queer archive,”

particularly within musicology. As studies such as this expand on the current trend of integrating

social theories and methods within musicological projects, I argue that Rathe’s bold assertion –

that Queercore “changed the world (whether you knew it or not)” – is not so off the mark, but

rather important and insightful, and proves the importance of rectifying, perhaps to LaBruce’s

chagrin, its general absence within mainstream LGBTQ history and academia.

49
 Figures
Figure 1: Queercore zine covers180
A) Freaky Queer - Cardiff, 1992

B) Chaos Order - London, 1994

180
Freaky Queer (Cardiff, 1992); Chaos/Order (London, 1994); and Girly: TransGender Zine (London,
1996)

50
 C) Girly: TransGender Zine - London, 1996

Figure 2: Sister George live, 1994181

181
“Sister George,” Facebook Profile, Photos Page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sister-
george/474814682559440 (accessed June 16, 2014).

51
Figure 3: Sister George, Drag King front, inner, and back album cover art, 1994182

182
“Sister George,” Facebook Profile, Photos Page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sister-
george/474814682559440 (accessed June 16, 2014).

52
Figure 4: Mouthfull, circa 1995183

183
“Mouthfull: Pictures,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Mouthfull (accessed July 1, 2014).

53
Figure 5: Mouthfull, Mouthfull/Bring Balloons front album cover art, recorded in 1997 and
released in 2009184

Figure 6: Six Inch Killaz, circa 1995185

184
“Mouthfull: Albums,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Mouthfull (accessed July 1, 2014).
185
“Six Inch Killaz: Pictures,” Last.fm, http://www.last.fm/music/Six+Inch+Killaz (accessed July 1, 2014).

54
Figure 7: Six Inch Killaz Wonderful front cover art and track list, 2000186

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Sound and Film:

The King Cheetah. Six Inch Killaz EP. MP3. Spitshine. 2005.
Mouthfull. Stop Homophobia 2. MP3. Turkey Baster Records. 1995.
Sister George. Drag King. MP3. Catcall Records. 1994.
Six Inch Killaz. Wonderful. MP3. 2000.
Thane, Lucy. She’s Real (Worse Than Queer). Vimeo. Part One: http://vimeo.com/12084539.
Part Two: http://vimeo.com/12078680. 1997.

Further Reading
Literature:
Dodd, Sarah Louise Drakopoulou. “Roots Radical – Place, Power and Practice in Punk
Entrepreneurship.” Entrepreneurship & Regional Development: An International Journal
26 (2014): 165-205.
Freedland, Jonathan. “The Pink, White, and Blue.” The Guardian. June 4, 1996.
Lucas, Ian. OutRage! An Oral History. London: Cassell, 1998.
Schippers, Mimi. “The Sociological Organization of Sexuality and Gender in Alternative Hard
Rock: An Analysis of Intersectionality.” Gender and Society 14 (December 2000): 747-
764.

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