Tag: punks

The problem here relates to the fact that being confident about speaking out on important issues or reflecting on personal experiences in music immediately politicises female artists or brands them controversial, for better or worse, even if they feel it is mere human decency to do so. Gordon, for instance, never really set out to embody everything the label comes with; rather, she just wanted to fight for greater justice where there was none.

As a result, Sonic Youth adopted layers of social and political commentary, mainly owed to Gordon’s insatiable desire to reject the parts of the world that those around her had long normalised. She grew to resent the system and everything it stood for and allowed this to be reflected in her music, no matter how it would come across to others. Much of this came through in Dirty, with songs like ‘Swimsuit Issue’ tackling Gordon’s secondhand experience of workplace sexual harassment at a label they had just signed onto.

However, Gordon wasn’t just attached to the punk label because she overtly criticised the world around her. She earned it on the basis of constantly pushing back, even in subtle ways, like how she looked, spoke, and sang. Borrowing some of the definitive tropes from other underground pioneers like Destroy All Monsters’ Niagara, Gordon became the definitive boundary-pusher by going against the grain, utilising her in-built aggression from being oppressed from the get-go to try to make sense of the chaos that threatened to box her in.

This made her, and countless other women in the space, equipped with a certain level of resilience and rebelliousness from the off, armed with all of the poised defensiveness of a woman who has always been faced with the relentless fight for respect and equality. Others like Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, and Kathleen Hanna became rich, well-rounded reflections of the society they were forced into, the fiery injustices of an inherently misogynistic world etched into their soul like a prophetic sorting hat from birth.

Hanna, in particular, all but made it her life’s work to continue the fight after a chance encounter crossed her path with Gloria Steinem at age nine. Even before her brain had fully developed, she knew the beast existed inside her and followed its unrelenting, glaring gaze until she held the torch. As she later reflected: “It was the first time I had ever been in a big crowd of women yelling, and it really made me want to do it forever.” In other words, this was her calling because she had entered this earth with the one thing that gets you unjustly treated: a woman.

According to Gordon, what also makes women better punks than men is that this is well-known to everybody who shines brighter, except those who lack the knowledge and experience. Women are “second-class citizens,” as she argues, which places their knowledge and understanding of societal oppression and subsequent artistic expression bone-deep, their immediate exposure to such injustice breeding a level of defiance few will ever know.

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