Social Justice Takes To Heavy Metal

Chris King directs his ire at yet another attempt to lampoon the Metal scene as being problematic, when it's been damn inclusive all along.

I find myself as a Libertarian, folks. That’s what I am — for the most part. What I mean by that is that I don’t like to prescribe myself to particular titles because they entail a rigid way of thinking that just isn’t my cup of tea. I like to be flexible; the world is nuanced and it changes based on context. It’s important to understand that in life.

It’s also important to understand that I don’t like authoritarians. I don’t take shit from authoritarians, and I made it very clear back in October that if they made it a point to worm their way into my scene while I was here then I would make it my personal job to end their nonsense with gale force.

So imagine my surprise when I came across an article by Adrien Begrand from — what I can surmise is a glorified blog — “PopMatters” about, you guessed it, social justice within the Metal scene. Yeah, ain’t that a kick in the head. It seems as if we have a problem with homophobia, racism and misogyny in the Metal scene. It seems as if we’re not inclusive enough, and if we have any measure of inclusivity it’s because that’s something we’ve done with the help of our saviors, our paragons of morality, social justice.

It’s as if these individuals always end up forgetting about Rob Halford, Doug Pinnick, Roddy Bottum, Gaahl, Otep Shamaya, Paul Masvidal, Sean Reinert….Christ almighty, do I have to go on? Do you know what all these heavy hitters have in common? They’re all gay, and nobody cares except you people.

You expect us all to believe this? To believe that there’s a rampant problem with homophobia and misogyny? In a culture where grown men wearing tight leather and copious amounts of makeup every day are praised as kings to millions on stages around the world? They do, fantastically enough. Their contention isn’t comprised of things like direct, malicious intent towards homosexuals. Or a clear intention on part of the community to shun homosexuals, no, nothing substantive like that.

It seems as if individuals such as Adrien, ironically, have a problem understanding something very crucial to how people use words; intent is important. I have been called a dick more times than I have been called a faggot, and I’m a homosexual. Now, if we used your bit of logic to determine intent behind a word, we might infer that “dick” is a slur specifically meant to demean men, a word that does so by implying our genitals are a thing of abhorrence. That seems like a very sexist slur, something we shouldn’t call each other.

Or could it just be a word meant to signify that anybody of any gender is not being a very nice person?

It’s important to understand how somebody intends on using a word. In a sub-culture where our men are scantily clad in leather, half naked and/or caked in makeup, the word faggot certainly isn’t meant to be demeaning to homosexuals. Certainly not as much as some people think it does. It’s used as a substitute for asshole, or dick, and it’s only social justice and their ilk who are determined to see a rampant problem where none looks to exist.

Not in a world where homosexual marriage is legal and valid across the entirety of the western world. Not in a world where Metal culture, for the most part, has always done away with the archaic nonsense of religion, and it’s forbiddance of sin — homosexuality being one of them. Black Metal, and to be fair all of Heavy Metal, has always embraced anyone regardless of ideology, creed, race, or politics. And feminism is included, happily in fact.

There is, however, a catch.

Nothing is taboo except to tell others that something is taboo, and that is precisely what feminism today likes to do. We do not like authoritarians. This culture was founded on the backs of children angry at their fathers, fathers angry at their government, women angry about their plights and the non-believers angry about the tyranny of religion.

We are born and bred to fight people who stand there wanting to dictate what we can and cannot do. That’s all we’ve ever done and that’s likely something we’ll always do. If somebody wants to take politically correct, jean vest wearing whingers to task because they’ve gotten their feelings hurt over imagined injustice, and they want to put the people who want to interject their identity politics into a subculture that only ever identified as Metalheads in their place, well… I’m all for it. I’m raring to take on what apparently seems to be the PMRC reborn. And much like with that fiasco — with the farcical Tipper Gore — I am not alone.

We don’t need people to act as our mothers, scolding us for things they don’t like and imposing rules where they have no right to do so, telling us that there are monsters in the dark where none exist.

In other words?