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.

Header Soc Metal

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.

side 1 metalSo 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?

metal insert 1

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?

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.
I yell at stu­pid peo­ple on the YouTube. Enjoy my pain, be­cause some­body has to.

Latest posts by Christopher King (see all)

Scroll to top