Terrorizer article about homophobia in metal

Links234

http://www.terrorizer.com/news/features-2/heavy-metal-is-gay-need-tackle-homophobia/

Seriously, seriously good read

P_1

Interesting read Links, thanks for posting the link. It's something that I never really considered (and I'd like to think of myself as being somewhat enlightened) but it is surprising how homophobic the metal scene seems to be.

One could draw parallels between how both the metal scene and the LBGT community have been marginalised by wider society so you'd have thought that the metal scene would act a bit more enlightened. Of course the stereotype of the LGBT community is the complete antithesis of the stereotype of the metal scene but stereotypes are bullshti. I can't help but wonder if people within the metal scene have their views coloured by this stereotype.

DazMarz

A great article.

I remember reading a book a long time ago and it was brilliant. It was by a guy called Seb Hunter and it basically detailed his growing up and his love affair with heavy metal in 1980's Britain. The book was called Hell Bent For Leather, and it is a wonderful, self-deprecating, cynical look back upon a childhood mis-spent on rock n roll and pursuing a dream of being a rock star.

It also includes many chapters dedicated to the history and culture of heavy metal. Seb casts his opinions on many topics surrounding metal and it is generally spot on. I would highly recommend this book to anyone, as it is a wonderful, funny, touching, heartfelt, passionate book with some excellent insight and information.

Included in the book was a section detailing the prejudices that exist in the heavy metal community. Specifically, Seb analysed the two most common accusations that were/are slung in the direction of heavy metal in terms of their prejudices: racism and homophobia.

In both cases, the arguments for both being partly true and partly wide of the mark were made.

The issue of homophobia addressed by Seb covers much of the same material covered in the above linked article.

It is a fact, heavy metal has always been almost comically heterosexual. This is also bolstered by the shock/horror expressed at the "antics" of the gay community in general by heavy metal fans and bands. Ironic, considering the basic trappings of most heavy metal bands/fans: long hair, leather, phallic imagery, make-up (to an extent), bondage-esque gear... the look is steeped in sexual ambiguity.

Heavy metal is generally made and performed by working class, everyday, ordinary Joe-Soaps (at least until fame kicks in). These guys would be more inclined to have a narrower world view than most, so it is not surprising that homophobia and intolerance would be more prevalent.

However, when you look to the likes of Rob Halford (The Metal God, himself), Freddie Mercury (every frontman worth his salt is influenced, however directly or indirectly, by Freddie), Marcie (formerly "Mark") Free, etc., it becomes apparent that LGBT people have long been active in rock/metal. It has been difficult for them, but they are there.

Even in the most evil, depraved and sheer insane heavy metal, that of Norwegian Black Metal, there is a very infamous player... who is also gay. Gaahl, former lead singer of Gorgoroth, is gay, and had a relationship with a very effeminate looking fashion designer. The fact that Gaahl looks so much like a Viking warrior and yet is gay further flies in the face of the accepted stereotype.

Music is typically a genre that has been tolerant and accepting for LGBT people. Elton John, Liberace, Brian Molko, Billie Joe Armstrong, Lady Gaga, Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, Doug Pinnick, Boy George, George Michael, Neil Tennant, etc. etc. etc... The arts has always been an area where LGBT people found their "home" and found safety and acceptance.

However, metal has always somewhat lagged behind in terms of this. This is due to a real "man's man" ethos and paradigm that exists behind it. Even bands that did ballads and stuff (I'm looking at you, Metallica!), still pushed this manlier than manly vibe and so on. Add in the right-wing lunatics that can sometimes be found in heavy metal/rock (Ted Nugent being a prime example), and it does itself no favours.

However, I do think that the article is a little cutting and a bit unfair to the heavy metal community as a whole. So one little scummer left a homophobic comment on a Death video? Not a lot. I know personally of many metal fans, and they couldn't care if someone is gay, straight or Australian. Once they're a sound person, they'll get along.

For sure, intolerance and prejudice exists everywhere in society; it is amplified, however, in minority groupings. There are less people, so a minority within a minority can seem like being much more common than it actually is.

Add in, how much of this is genuine homophobia? I mean, isn't stuff like "Oh, that is so gay!!!" or "That haircut makes you look like a fag!" just flippant adolescent nonsense? It is not truly homophobic, even if it is equating ideals of homosexuality with something negative. It is not meant to be true homophobia. I'd wager a bet that 99% of people who would say that something is "so gay" would actually have no genuine problem with homosexuality. It's just that the idea of something "being so gay" is so engrained in our current society now that it is as common as saying "Jesus Christ!" as an epithet...

I think that ever since Rob Halford came out, it has become more and more accepted in heavy metal circles.

And I mean, c'mon... "Hell Bent For Leather"??? All of you manly, macho metallers NEVER saw anything slightly gay about that??? :P

RayCon

DazMarz wrote: »

I remember reading a book a long time ago and it was brilliant. It was by a guy called Seb Hunter and it basically detailed his growing up and his love affair with heavy metal in 1980's Britain. The book was called Hell Bent For Leather, and it is a wonderful, self-deprecating, cynical look back upon a childhood mis-spent on rock n roll and pursuing a dream of being a rock star.

Nice Post DazMarz... I also recommend Hell Bent For Leather - genuinely hilarious in parts. Another of his books, How to be a Better Person - is probably even funnier.


Another book in the vain of "self-deprecating, cynical look back upon a childhood mis-spent on rock n roll and pursuing a dream of being a rock star" is Giles Smith "Lost In Music" - probably my favorite music related book - genuinely laugh out loud.

Sorry for dragging the thread off topic somewhat ...

DazMarz

RayCon wrote: »

Nice Post DazMarz... I also recommend Hell Bent For Leather - genuinely hilarious in parts. Another of his books, How to be a Better Person - is probably even funnier.


Another book in the vain of "self-deprecating, cynical look back upon a childhood mis-spent on rock n roll and pursuing a dream of being a rock star" is Giles Smith "Lost In Music" - probably my favorite music related book - genuinely laugh out loud.

Sorry for dragging the thread off topic somewhat ...

Must give "How To Be A Better Person" and "Lost In Music" a look.

RayCon

DazMarz wrote: »

Must give "How To Be A Better Person" and "Lost In Music" a look.

Do man ... I doubt you'll be disappointed

Links234

DazMarz wrote: »

Add in, how much of this is genuine homophobia? I mean, isn't stuff like "Oh, that is so gay!!!" or "That haircut makes you look like a fag!" just flippant adolescent nonsense? It is not truly homophobic, even if it is equating ideals of homosexuality with something negative. It is not meant to be true homophobia. I'd wager a bet that 99% of people who would say that something is "so gay" would actually have no genuine problem with homosexuality. It's just that the idea of something "being so gay" is so engrained in our current society now that it is as common as saying "Jesus Christ!" as an epithet...

You know, there's this tendancy to view casual homophobia (in this case, referencing gay as negative, like someone saying "oh that's gay"/"they're gay") as not real homophobia, without noting the knock-on effect that can have. It's not as blatant and overt as physical violence, but it can hurt and make people feel uncomfortable and threatened. When people say "Jesus Christ!" in surprise, it's not the same, that's not bringing with it the connotation of negativity.

The other thing you have to remember is, LGBT people have often heard those same terms yelled at them in an abusive manner, or accompanying more serious, physical abuse. I've had people scream anti-trans slurs at me from cars, had an incident where someone followed me out of a bar to hurl abuse at me down the street, even had things thrown at me accompanied by the same slurs. It might seem like little stuff, but it can seriously set someone on edge, because those are words that accompany an awful lot of hate for some people.

DazMarz

Links234 wrote: »

You know, there's this tendancy to view casual homophobia (in this case, referencing gay as negative, like someone saying "oh that's gay"/"they're gay") as not real homophobia, without noting the knock-on effect that can have. It's not as blatant and overt as physical violence, but it can hurt and make people feel uncomfortable and threatened. When people say "Jesus Christ!" in surprise, it's not the same, that's not bringing with it the connotation of negativity.

The other thing you have to remember is, LGBT people have often heard those same terms yelled at them in an abusive manner, or accompanying more serious, physical abuse. I've had people scream anti-trans slurs at me from cars, had an incident where someone followed me out of a bar to hurl abuse at me down the street, even had things thrown at me accompanied by the same slurs. It might seem like little stuff, but it can seriously set someone on edge, because those are words that accompany an awful lot of hate for some people.

Fair point and well made...

I was just speaking from my own experience of the thing. Loads of my friends, and even yours truly, still use these kinds of expressions in every day life. We even use such childish slurs as "Your ma..." and "Go suck a dick..." to our friends. No, we're not all 16. We're actually all in our mid-20's...

The point being, that none of my friends would be homophobic. One of the best friends we have is a guy who is openly gay and has a boyfriend. We all love him to bits and miss him terribly (he has moved to England for a college course). I went to UCD, and some of my best friends up there were gay/lesbian. One of the guys I went to secondary school and who was a great friend of mine has recently come out as gay.

And yet, this whole "it's so gay", "haircut makes you look like a fag", etc. all that juvenile bullshít gets used day to day. We don't MEAN it. God, no. It's just something that we're so used to using and used to saying, it's like trying to break a bad habit. I don't say it as much, but the lads are terrible for it! Listening to the housemate playing XBox Live, and it's all:

"Suck a dick!", "Blow me!", "Your ma <insert insult here>!!!", ad nauseum.

I think a lot of it is just juvenile and "easy" insults. I mean, when I was a 14 year old, the best, easiest and most cutting insult you could sling at another 14 year old boy was to call them "gay". Easily. It was horrible in its intent, but it doesn't mean I'm homophobic. Maybe I was at 14, when gay people seemed "weird", "deviant" or "unnatural". But as you grow up, you grow out of that stuff. I don't think that any of us would consider ourselves homophobic, nor would we have so many LGBT friends if we were.

On a lighter note, the first time I ever met a guy who is now one of my best friends... He was just kind of coming to terms with his sexuality, and as such was going through a really camp phase. He was lovely and sound and I like his company. Bear in mind, I was only 17 at the time and was just realising that gay people were actually cool and so on. So, being very diplomatic, I blurt out (we were drinking at the time) "What are you, queer or something?!"

Dead silence, as I'm the only one in the group who doesn't know. They're all worried I've offended him.

He turns around, grabs my arse, kisses my cheek and laughs, "Very queer, sweetcheeks!"

I nearly died of humiliation, my friends were in knots laughing and my friend laughed along. I spent the better part of a week apologising, but he was cool with it. We're still really good friends to this day.

But I take your point, this "casual" stuff can hurt a lot more than it's intended. I doubt that a lot of people say it MEANING to cause hurt. It's just a casual thing. But maybe I don't see it as harsh, but maybe it is.

Lyaiera

I wasn't too impressed by that article, to be honest. It has laudable reasoning behind it, supporting LGBT people but the reasoning put forward is really dodgy, "ha, we're so gay anyway, we should be good to real gay people! Ha!" I mean I agree that metal is really homoerotic, and you can't beat the metal fans for proper hair care tips but laughing about metal being homoerotic and metallers as being secretly gay doesn't really put the writer's LGBT support forward very well. If anything the problem with metal is hyper-masculinity and hyper-agression. Sure that hyper-masculinity borders into homoeroticism but the problem I find with metal is people trying to out-manly each other. It's also interesting to note that for the article's hyper-masculinity all the references seem to be about gay men, and only referring to lesbians, bisexual and trans people when the term LGBT is written in full form. This forum is a perfect example that there are far more than men and gay men as fans of metal. There are straight women, gay women and trans people who make up its fans.

The article even goes into describing how the "realities" of gay men don't necessarily mean feminine, fashion loving, etc. So what if it does? Metal is just obsessed with fashion as any other sub-culture, just in a particular form of its own sub-culture. And even if you're comparing gay and campness to femininity then what the **** is wrong with femininity?

The reality is that metal succeeds and fails because of its subculture status. A lot of people aren't willing to give metal a chance because of its hyper-agression and black leather clad alternative to dude-bro status and this bull****, as its as juvenile and "male" as dude-bros. Metal is just as competitive and aggressive as anything else, especially in being more niche (or trve and kvlt to put it in metal terms) than thou. A lot of metal's strength comes from a community being at odds with mainstream culture and certain specific examples of mainstream culture but it also engages in behaviour very typical of mainstream culture, just while clad in black and with long hair. And its attitudes to LGBT people and femininity are no exception.

What needs to be accepted is that anyone can be a fan of metal, no matter their hobbies, no matter their gender and no matter their sexuality. While there might be a typical metal subculture, that doesn't mean that everyone will be a typical metal fan, and really, just because someone is camp doesn't mean that can't be as metal as anyone else. And just because someone isn't interested in body slamming after two bottles of Buckfast and four Jaegers doesn't mean they're not metal.

Mr. CooL ICE

Not directly related to R/M, but I'd echo DazMarz in that myself and friends call each other a whole host of slurs, gay being one of them. We would only use these slurs in a private setting as we all know each other well enough to not cross the line. Nobody in my immediate circle of friends is gay, and I wouldn't consider any of them to actually be homophobic, despite our use of slurs against each other.

Many do have gay relatives or other gay friends (my sister is gay and getting married next week). If one of my friends did come out, I'd have to reestablish any line that might potentially be crossed, even though at this stage the use of the word "gay" would be akin to accusing somebody of being a dirty Nickelback fan, i.e. pointless and merely a joke.

DazMarz wrote: »

On a lighter note, the first time I ever met a guy who is now one of my best friends... He was just kind of coming to terms with his sexuality, and as such was going through a really camp phase. He was lovely and sound and I like his company. Bear in mind, I was only 17 at the time and was just realising that gay people were actually cool and so on. So, being very diplomatic, I blurt out (we were drinking at the time) "What are you, queer or something?!"

I know of something similar that happened to a guy a year below me in school.

I didn't really know this guy too well, but he came out in college. He is a guitarist and was involved in a band at the time. When he came out, he sent one of the band members a text saying something like "I'm quitting the band. Also, I'm gay". The guy who received the text obviously thought it was loaded and assumed somebody was messing with his phone, so he responded "That's fine, we don't want any fagots in the band". I didn't hear what happened after that, but would hope that the band member would have tried to clear things up after the misunderstanding.

peter1892

Links234 wrote: »

I've had people scream anti-trans slurs at me from cars, had an incident where someone followed me out of a bar to hurl abuse at me down the street, even had things thrown at me accompanied by the same slurs.

There's a part of me that's shocked by that and then I realise that it's not shocking at all. Especially when I consider that I've had similar but different things yelled at me!

I don't look like a 'Heavy Metal fan' now but 20 years ago I did. Long hair, biker jacket, skinny jeans (not that I'd fit into them now). Anyway on a number of occasions I'd have to run the risk of idiots in cars shouting things, always from a safe distance and with the benefit of them being able to escape.

What I'm getting at is that for me, the Metal scene always seemed to attract outsiders, weirdos* just like me who could be accepted.

One of my other passions is football and if you consider that the average professional football club has a first team squad of 20-25 players then it's a safe bet that there are several gay men in a typical football league. But few have ever been able to come out and none at the very top levels of the game. It has happened in other sports but football still has a major issue with homophobia, and racism (although this is less of an issue in the English league these days, sadly there are still racism issues in other countries).

*weirdo - me, quiet odd young fella who never went out as a teenager and only got anywhere with girls after he turned 18!

apoch632

Good piece

One thing I'd pick up on and I don't think he gave it enough attention, as genres go Metal is I would actually argue hostile to sexuality full stop

Beyond that, however, we have the relative absence of sex from metal lyrics – at least overt discussion of sex (and again, excluding hair metal, because that was pretty straight too – possibly why lots of metallers didn’t like it that much). Metal sings about death, Satan, misery, misanthropy, internal turmoil, political ideology, dragons, religion, goblins, drugs, the environment, drinking, HP Lovecraft, pirates, ‘The Lord Of The Rings’, ancestral culture, Jesus and heavy metal itself more often than it sings about sex, and when it does sing about sex, it does so more through innuendo (Megadeth’s ‘Mechanix’, for instance) than about falling in love and/or shagging.

He's more dismissive of it, but even of the few artists that are out, can you really picture Gaahl singing about his lovelife, would it even make sense for him to ever do it. Halford, post his coming out Angel is the only song which even broaches anywhere near the subject directly. Cynic I've not heard the new album so can't say for them.

Will this genre ever en masse sing about sex again ala GLAM. I really can't see it happening.

Personally what I think what has happened is you have the general casual homophobia that exists in society as a whole ends up getting amplified by attitudes that are outright hostile to sexuality within our scene and it creates a bit of a beast. It's good that we are starting to have this discussion (this article isn't in isolation, I've seen a few on similar themes) but I think this is gonna be one of the biggest challenges. I would say it's gonna be downright impossible to get the genre to ever accept sexuality full stop. Tackling the casual misogyny and homophobia is the biggest differences we can make.