2 - Playing - It - Queer - Popular - Music - Identity PDF

J o d i e T a y l o r
P
opular music has always been a dynamic mediator of gender and sexu-
ality, and a productive site of rebellion, oddity and queerness. The
transformative capacity of music-making, performance and consump-
tion helps us to make and make sense of identity and a llows us to
glimpse otherworldliness, arousing the political imagination. With an activist
J o d i e Tay l o r
voice that is impassioned yet adherent to scholarly rigour, Playing it Queer pro-
vides an original and compelling ethnographic account of the relationship be-
tween popular music, queer self-fashioning and (sub)cultural world-making.
Playing it
This book begins with a comprehensive survey and critical evaluation of relevant
literatures on queer identity and political debates as well as popular music, iden-
tity and (sub)cultural style. Contextualised within a detailed history of queer sen-
sibilities and creative practices, including camp, drag, genderfuck, queercore,
Queer
feminist music and club cultures, the author’s rich empirical studies of local per-
formers and translocal scenes intimately capture the meaning and value of pop-
ular musics and (sub)cultural style in everyday queer lives.
P o p u l a r M u s i c,
Ident i t y and
Q u e e r Wo r l d - m a k i n g
Playing it Queer
J o d i e T a y l o r received her PhD in Musicology from the Queensland

onservatorium of Music, Griffith University, Australia. She is a Postdoctoral
C
Research Fellow in Cultural Sociology at the Griffith Centre for Cultural Re-
search, Griffith University. She has published numerous articles on aspects of
Peter Lang
queer culture, popular music and ethnography and is currently co-editing three
anthologies on erotic cultures, festivalisation and mainstream music.
www.peterlang.com
ISBN 978-3-0343-0553-2
J o d i e T a y l o r
Playing it
Queer Po p u l a r Mu s i c,
Id e n t i t y a n d
Q u e e r Wo r l d - m a k in g
This is a limited preview provided with the consent of the publisher Peter Lang
Peter Lang
Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frank fur t am Main • New York • Ox ford • Wien
Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National-
bibliografie ; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at ‹ h ttp://dnb.d-nb.de ›.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data : A catalogue record for this book

is available from The British Library, Great Britain
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Jodie
Playing it queer: popular music, Identity and queer world-making / Jodle Taylor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and Index.
ISBN 978-3-0343-0553-2
1. Popular music–Social aspects. 2. Gender identity in music. I. Title.
ML3918.P67J64 2012
781.64086'64–dc23
2012019984
Cover illustration : I Am Solid Gold , 2010

Photographer : Hillary Green (stillsbyhill.com.au)
Graphic Designer : Sean Bates
Cover design : Thomas Grütter, Peter Lang AG
ISBN (pb.) 978 3 - 0343 - 0553-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-3-0351-0420-2
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012

Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
info@peterlang.com, www.peterlang.com
All rights reserved.

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
Printed in Switzerland
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................... ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................ xi
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
Part I: The Theoretical Landscape
CHAPTER 1: QUEER
IDENTITIES, THEORIES AND POLITICS ..................................................... 13
CHAPTER 2: MUSIC AND IDENTITY
SELVES, SEXUALITIES AND SCENES........................................................ 41
Part II: Translocal Styles, Sensibilities and Local Representations
CHAPTER 3: CAMP
A QUEER SENSIBILITY ............................................................................ 67
CHAPTER 4: DOING DRAG, (UN)DOING GENDER
GENDER SUBVERSION AND MUSICAL PERFORMANCE ........................... 83
CHAPTER 5: QUEER PUNK
IDENTITY THROUGH A DISTORTION PEDAL .......................................... 117
CHAPTER 6: WOMYN, GRRRLS AND SISTAS
QUEER AGENDAS IN FEMINIST MUSIC-MAKING ................................... 149
CHAPTER 7: MAKING A SCENE
LOCALITY, STYLISTIC DISTINCTION AND UTOPIAN IMAGINATIONS .... 175
CHAPTER 8: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ................................................. 215
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................... 219

INDEX .................................................................................................... 243
This is a limited preview provided with the consent of the publisher Peter Lang.
INTRODUCTION
“Life is a cabaret”, sang Liza Minnelli in her role as the mediocre but
aspirational Kit Kat Club performer Sally Bowles – a character written
into existence by gay novelist Christopher Isherwood. Sometimes song,
dance, comedy, drama, costume or literature can provide more suitable
ways to proclaim to your onlookers (and to yourself) who you are in a
moment or, perhaps more importantly, who you want to be. In my youth,
life’s cabaret was so apparent to me, it was the beguiling worlds created
in those musical moments that were most appealing and most accommo-
dating, and perhaps this is why I loved to sing, dance and dress up so
much. If queerness is, as I believe and as José Esteban Muñoz so beau-
tifully writes, “the rejection of the here and now and an insistence on
potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (2009, p. 1), then it
is through music that I have staged my rejection and imagined such
otherworldly possibilities. In the spirit of a queer and feminist approach
to the critical ethnography and queer cultural research that I do herein, I
begin this book with a story about myself. Self-indulgent? Perhaps. But I
like to think of it as an upfront declaration of my epistemological and
political baggage. So here goes:
As a teenager growing up in the mid-1990s, identifying as a femme,
bisexual, feminist goth was not so great a problem for me personally; I
actually drew a lot of strength from these identities. They made me feel
distinguishable and independent; they seemed to me a perfect set of traits
for someone who romanticised notions of becoming a performer, a
scholar and a political anarchist. Identifying as all these things did, how-
ever, raise a lot of suspicion and grief among friends at my all-girls high
school and among the three twenty-something-year-old-boys with whom
I played in a band. The problem most of my friends seemed to have with
me was not whether I was gay or straight; it was my inability to choose.
This choice was complicated not least by my sexual desires but also by
the rigid gender stereotypes that (I thought) went hand in hand with de-
claring a particular sexual identity. I didn’t look or act like a lesbian: I
didn’t know you could be a velvet skirt-, fishnet tights- and makeup-
wearing lesbian who ate meat and wanted to sing in the theatre. More-
2 Introduction
over, I didn’t act like the straight girls I knew: I didn’t want to get mar-
ried or have children; I didn’t like any boys my own age; I chose to have
hairy armpits and sleep with girls. Rather than spending Saturday after-
noons shopping for clothes, I scoured secondhand bookstores for as
much feminist literature as I could find, and I wrote songs about suffra-
gettes and played in a hard-rock band with sweaty men – one of them
being my ‘serious’ boyfriend.
Eventually, the social pressure to fix my sexual identity and my
inability to do so isolated me from the rest of my peers. I felt that the
only way I could relate to people on my own terms was through music. It
was in music, and only in music, that I could perform all the roles
necessary to satisfy me. In music I could compose, perform and listen; I
could play multiple instruments; I could perform and appreciate various
styles. It was only as a musician and music lover that I was allowed to be
fluid: to interpret and reinterpret, to create and recreate. As a weekday
student of classical voice and a weekend singer in a hard-rock band, I
found the freedom in music to explore my sexual desires. I was the diva
one moment and a rock star the next. As an opera and musical theatre
enthusiast, I discovered that the diva was often an object of desire – just
as I longed to be. Her femininity was robust and disciplined. It was
captured in her costumes, in the roles that were written for her, in the
curves of her body and in her voice, which gave a powerful blast and
refused containment. In my eyes, her voice was the key to her sexual
prowess, and thus she became a personal icon: she was a disciplined
woman in control of her voice, a woman who regulated her own pleasure
(often through her voice). In contrast, the masculinity encapsulated in
playing the rock star afforded me the public expression of aggressive
sexuality and a toppy femme-ininity. It made me feel like the object of
female desire while also excusing my gaze upon other women. The rock
star was a fugitive of definition and self-control. In this role, it became
perfectly acceptable to flaunt my sexuality, to adorn my body in pier-
cings and S/M-style couture, and to speak and act in whatever manner
pleased me.
While many people still found it unusual that I possessed an equally
intense passion for the genres of opera, musical theatre, industrial rock
and metal, it seemed that expressing conflicting tastes in music did not
attract nearly as much scrutiny as expressing conflicting sexual desires.
This is because, unlike the supposedly natural and thus ‘normal’ expres-
Introduction 3
sion of gender and sexuality, musical taste is not understood to be in any

way natural, normal or innocent, but rather a self-determined and defin-
ing mechanism of cultural identity. Music allowed me to perform gender
and express sexuality in multiple ways that were unavailable to me in
daily life. Furthermore, it allowed me to do this ‘under the radar’ – to
explore the spaces in-between masculine, feminine, gay and straight
without fear of rejection. An expert in border crossing, I ‘played it femi-
nine’ with the men and boyish with the girls, and managed for quite
some time to stay sexually vague – to stay ‘musical’ – escaping detection
and social punishment.
Several years later, I started going to queer bars and clubs. These spaces
were meaningful, not least because they allowed me to meet and socialise
with like-minded people, but that socialising was almost always accompa-
nied by music and dancing. Queer spaces were saturated with gender vari-
ation, sexual oddities, theatrical display, music and musical performance – I
thought I’d found a queer kind of heaven. At this time in my late teens/early
twenties, I could not have imagined the ethnographic project and cultural
analysis involved in writing this book. However, this book is both the result
of and partially an account of this time, these spaces, the people I met, the
friends I made, their stories and most importantly their music. More broadly,
this book is about some of the many ways in which queers have used, and
continue to use, Western popular musics and extra-musical style to express
their gender and sexual differences, empower and transform themselves,
form queer social alliances and mobilise social protest. This book identifies
and examines the kinds of decidedly queer aesthetics, sensibilities, musics,
local and global styles that are the result of queer identificatory and disiden-
tificatory processes. It is as much a book about popular music as it is a book
about queer identities and cultures: a queer insurgency against the hetero-
centric canon of popular music and subcultural studies and a heartfelt
reminder to queer studies that music matters. Borrowing from Sheila
Whiteley and Jennifer Rycenga’s book Queering the Popular Pitch (2005),
this book similarly embraces an understanding of popular music as “a social
force that constructs heteronormativity and resistant queer sexualities”
(p. xiii, emphasis in original). Thus, as Whiteley and Rycenga also point out,
popular music has figured centrally in the fashioning of queer identities and
self-consciousness, “merg[ing] queer social relations with queer musical
ones, thus demonstrating the transforming significance of musical dis-
courses” (p. xiii).
4 Introduction
Methodology
I have been overtly queer-identified, a zealous participant in queer

culture, an advocate of radical queer politics, a music-lover and occa-
sional performer/composer for over a decade now, but it wasn’t until
beginning a PhD in 2004 that I began to critically (re)imagine queer
identities, subjectivities, cultures and music as a scholar. Since then, my
aim has been to conduct a detailed qualitative inquiry into queer musical
performance, identities and scenes – to explore queer self-fashioning and
world-making as it occurs in and through music. This begun with a com-
prehensive examination of the queer popular music histories, politics,
styles and sensibilities of camp, drag and genderfuck, queer punk and
queercore, as well as queer feminist music cultures and queer dance
music and club spaces. This literature was synthesised to create a de-
tailed picture of some of the key stylistic, musical and performance
traditions of queerness, then built upon using a multi-method ethno-
graphic approach, which included participant observation at hundreds of
local and international queer events, twenty-five in-depth semi-struc-
tured interviews with queer musicians, performers, deejays and scene
participants, hundreds of in situ ethnographic conversations, and inter-
pretative textual analysis of queer performances and music. In keeping
with the queer premise of this text, I approach my discussion of music
queerly, evoking what Judith Halberstam (1998) might call a queer
methodology – that is “a scavenger methodology” (p. 13), which she
avows necessitates interdisciplinarity in its betrayal of disciplinary con-
ventions and boundaries, both methodological and theoretical. I make no
apologies for borrowing from multiple sites of musicological, sociologi-
cal, cultural and philosophical thought on music, or for combining
textual analysis with ethnographic interviews and archival research into
queer popular music histories and practices.
All empirical interview data and participant observations referred to
herein were collected between January 2004 and December 2010. Par-
ticipant observations and ethnographic conversations in the field were
recorded in field journals. On occasion, this was done on the sideline of
the research site – especially when trying to capture specific details of
field conversations – but usually the process of writing up an event or
performance was at a spatial and temporal distance from it so as to not
Introduction 5
stifle my immersion in these cultural moments. All interviews (with the

exception of one, at the request of the respondent) were tape-recorded
and transcribed at a later date. Where musicians and performers have
given me express permission to use their real or stage names, I have
done so when referring to their artistic practice. However, for ethical
reasons, pseudonyms are used when quoting interview data and field
conversations involving scene participants as well as some musicians
and performers in Chapter 7. The reasons for using pseudonyms for
some participants here and not elsewhere in the text is because some
people expressed concern regarding the frankness of their commentary
on local culture, fearing that it might be ill-received by other members of
the community.
In musical terms, analysis has focused primarily on extra-musical
and para-musical elements such as the meaning of musical and visual
style, lyrical content, performance, gesticulation and so forth. The sonic
parameters such as rhythm, melody and timbre are of less concern, as
this study is motivated by understanding popular music as a site of queer
identity work and world-making rather than with sonic materials per se.
The queer histories, politics, styles and sensibilities discussed and ana-
lysed in this book refer to multiple locales, including Australia, Britain,
America, Canada and Germany; however, the three case studies pre-
sented at the end of Chapters 4, 5 and 6 focus in detail on queer music
and performance taking Brisbane, Australia as my primary locus of in-
vestigation. That I studied Brisbane-based queer performers was not only
determined by my access to this scene (living in Brisbane and partici-
pating heavily in its culture as I do), but also by the political history and
vibrant DIY (do-it-yourself) culture of this city, which I discuss further
in Chapter 7. In 2009, I extended the geographical scope of my field-
work to include a translocal scene study of Berlin, Germany, which also
features in Chapter 7. This book does not geographically bound its study
of music and queerness, but rather aims to rethink queer culture through
translocal styles, movements, networks and cultural knowledges that are
inherited, appropriated and newly produced.
6 Introduction
Critical Insider Research
I believe my way of being – which I incorporate into and embody in my

everyday life – affords me a particularly queer kind of worldview. But I
also acknowledge that my – some would say radically – queer way of
viewing the world is never commensurate with the views of others who
might also see themselves as incorporating and embodying queerness in
their lives and cultural practices. As a queer researcher of queer culture,
my critical insider status is both beneficial and challenging. It is at once
a departure from and an acute reminder of alterity. To embrace the frac-
tured and broadening landscape of the postmodern and escape the false
dichotomies of object/subject, self/other, queer/non-queer and particu-
larly in this case researcher/researched, it was necessary that I pay
particular attention to the queer subjects who are often excluded from
popular cultural research. Moreover, being a long-term participant in some
of the queer scenes I was investigating had profound epistemological im-
plications regarding how, as a researcher, I came to know and related to
the culture and the people being studied.
The interdisciplinary project that is this book, which straddles queer
studies, popular music studies and cultural sociology, necessitates both
methodological innovation and risk-taking, and doing this kind of work
as a critical insider researcher has additional advantages and dilemmas.
In the fields of popular music and subcultural studies, those researchers
(like myself) with a degree of proximity to the people and culture under
investigation have enthusiastically taken up this method. Paul Hodkin-
son’s (2002) account of the meaning and style of goth, Ben Malbon’s
(1999) project on dance club culture and Deena Weinstein’s (2002) in-
vestigation into the culture and music of heavy metal are just some ex-
amples that exploit the researchers’ cultural affiliations, ‘street creden-
tials’ and ‘subcultural capital’ (Thornton, 1995) in the process of doing
ethnography. The advantages of conducting research from this position
are well documented (e.g. see Adler & Adler, 1987; Bennett, 2003;
Brewer, 2000; Edwards, 2002; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Hodkinson, 2005;
Merton, 1972; Platt, 1981; Sprague, 2005; Wolcott, 1999). Such advan-
tages include deeper levels of understanding afforded by prior know-
ledge; knowing the lingo or native speak of field participants and thus
being ‘empirically literate’ (Roseneil, 1993); closer and more regular
contact with the field; more detailed consideration of the social actors at
Introduction 7
the centre of the cultural phenomenon making access to, and selection
of, research participants easier and better informed; quicker establish-
ment of rapport and trust between researcher and participants; and more
open and readily accessible lines of communication between researchers
and informants due to the researcher’s continuing contact with the field.
However, insider research also has limitations, as one can never presume
that, as an insider, one necessarily offers an absolute or correct way of
seeing and/or reading one’s culture. The deconstructive logics of post-
modernism and poststructuralism have for decades now warned against
privileging knowledge that is constructed within dichotomous rubrics such
as insider/outsider. Moreover, scholars have long warned that as a re-
searcher, and indeed as a cultural participant, one can never assume to-
tality in a position as either an insider or as an outsider, given that the
boundaries of such positions are always permeable (Merton, 1972; Oak-
ley, 1981; Song & Parker, 1995). Some have cautioned against privileging
this position, noting that as an insider one does not automatically escape
the problem of knowledge distortion, as insider views will always be
multiple and contestable, generating their own epistemological problems
due to subject/object relationality (Bennett, 2003; Hodkinson, 2005; Spra-
gue, 2005; Wolcott, 1999). “There is no monolithic insider view”, argues
Harry Wolcott, “every view is a way of seeing, not the way of seeing”
(1999, p. 137, emphasis in original).
While I duly acknowledge these concerns and agree that I have been
afforded certain benefits in undertaking this work given my insider sta-
tus, there is another matter of methodological significance that I wish to
discuss before proceeding. In Halberstam’s work on queer subcultural
lives, she argues that where alliances exist between minority academic
fields and minority cultural production, “queer academics can – and
some should – participate in the ongoing project of recording and inter-
preting queer culture and circulating a sense of its multiplicity and so-
phistication” (2005, p. 159), intentionally blurring the presumed boun-
daries between expert or ‘archivist’ and the object of study. In fact, queer
cultures routinely problematise straightforward distinctions in terms of
who is documenting or theorising and who is producing culture (Dahl,
2010; Halberstam, 1998, 2005; Kennedy & Davis, 1993; Taylor, 2011;
Volcano & Dahl, 2008) – a kind of queer phenomenon in and of itself
that is symptomatic of this project. In Ulrika Dahl’s work on queer
femme-inist ethnography, she states that “there is always something aca-
8 Introduction
demically queer about the desire to be with and write about one’s own,
even if it is not a territorialized, localized or even always visibly recog-
nizable stable community” (2010, p. 144). The ‘something queer’ or as-
kew here is that any notion of ‘objectivity’ is blatantly transgressed in
this action, which by its very nature makes scholarship appear more vul-
nerable to emotional contamination. As Dahl goes on to argue, despite
decades of feminist epistemological discussions, anxieties around issues
of objectivity still loom within the academy. This work, then, is queer
not only in terms of the objects and subjects at the centre of its study, but
also in its way of approach, which brings to bear the allied and sympa-
thetic relationship between those subjects, objects and myself.
Outlining the Book
As the autoethnographic section of this introductory chapter suggests,

music, gender and sexuality are both intensely personal and social.
1
Music and its attendant realms of (sub)cultural style provide meaningful
ways to make, articulate and situate the self. Music does not merely re-
flect gendered and sexual realities, but contributes to the production of
gender and sexual subjectivities. Queer music cultures are by no means
separate from queer theories and theorisation; rather, they emerge as part
of and always in dialogue with this labour. The chapters to follow ex-
plore a range of musico-sexual dialogues and aim to account for some of
the ways in which music has contributed to the production and mainte-
nance of queerness. Presented in two sections, this book discusses
queerness and music in both theoretical and practical terms. The first
section is primarily theoretical, and provides the reader with a necessary
background to social and intellectual debates. The second section ex-
plores the broader cultural milieu in which queer musical work occurs,
and provides a comprehensive study of queer popular music practices
that is historical, translocal and ethnographic.
Beginning with an overview of sexual deviance and the emergence
of homosexual identity, Chapter 1 unpacks what we have come to call
1 In an attempt to distinguish between subcultural theory and subcultures as referred

to in a vernacular sense, I use ‘(sub)culture’ as suggestive of the latter. A detailed
discussion of subcultural theory is presented in Chapter 2.
Introduction 9
queer theory and establishes an understanding of the theoretical and po-

litical arguments that underpin queerness and queer cultural production.
Contextualised within contemporary literatures that establish music’s
value as a tool for undertaking identity work, Chapter 2 examines
music’s role in self-aestheticisation and self-articulation, and connects
music to the project of queer world-making. In particular, the chapter
advocates for a revised conception of the music scenes perspective so
that we may better understand music’s role in structuring queer social
relations. Chapter 3 establishes a general understanding of queer style
and sensibilities in terms of camp. It traces the emergence of camp, its
value as an aestheticised form of political praxis and its relationship to
music performance. Chapter 4 introduces the reader to the history of
drag performance and provides an overview of contemporary drag roles,
which leads into a focused discussion surrounding the lesser known roles
and identities of female drag kings and bio queens. Notions of gender-
fuck, the musicality of drag and the significance of lip-synching are also
prominently featured in this chapter. A case study of an Australian drag
king and bio queen troupe, the Twang Gang, is presented at the end of
this chapter, and is used to exemplify the ways in which women engage
with drag traditions, perform gender and make use of camp in a musical
context. Contextualised within a history of punk rock style, ideology and
queer counter-publics, Chapter 5 maps the emergence of queer punk
with particular reference to the musicality, politics, narrative qualities
and sensibilities of queercore. An understanding of queer punk sensibili-
ties is then elucidated through a case study of Australian queer punk
band Anal Traffic at the end of the chapter. Chapter 6 chronicles femin-
ist music-making. It begins with a discussion of the lesbian feminist tra-
ditions of womyn’s music, followed by an account of riot grrrl and riot
dyke ideologies, and proceeds to argue that in recent times we have seen
the emergence of new queer agendas in feminist popular music produc-
tion. A case study of Australian queer feminist funk/reggae/ska band
Bertha Control is used to illustrate the chapter’s central claims. Focusing
on the ways in which queers collectively organise around certain musics,
Chapter 7 examines queer scenes locally and translocally. It identifies
what we might call mainstream gay aesthetics and queer logics of
musico-stylistic distinction in Brisbane, Australia and Berlin, Germany.
It also examines the way music, style and place resource queer worlds
and utopian imaginings. Finally, returning to broader questions of popu-
10 Introduction
lar music’s role in queer self-making and world-making, Chapter 8

muses on the idea of queer musical ancestry and provides a concluding
summary of the main points discussed throughout, underscoring the
wider theoretical implications of this work.
Part I
The Theoretical Landscape

CHAPTER 1
QUEER – Identities, Theories and Politics
Queer is a slippery term. In the history of all that is and has ever been
queer, it would seem that queer is and has always been at odds with
normal and supposedly ‘natural’ behaviour. Even the etymology of queer
poetically evokes the ambiguity queerness has come to signify in modern
times. Queer, as the Oxford English Dictionary says, is of “doubtful ori-
gin” (“Queer”, 1989). According to pre-eminent queer theorist Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick (1993), queer originates from the Indo-European
root twerkw (across), which also relates to the German quer (transverse),
the Latin torquere (to twist) and the English athwart. The literal English
definition of the word itself implies odd or perverse behaviour or abnor-
mal conditions. Yet there is a record of the Scottish queir, from 1508,
which describes strange, peculiar or eccentric characteristics. The early
English word crew, meaning crooked or not straight, bears further simi-
larity to queer as we understand it today, and provides another etymo-
logical link to the contemporary meaning of queer. In essence, queer
bespeaks a displeasing oddity, perversity and twistedness.
Queer was not used colloquially to describe sexual behaviour until
the end of the nineteenth century. Initially, men who distinctly identified
themselves as part of a homosexual subculture vis-à-vis the dominant
norms of heterosexuality used queer as a self-descriptor (Chauncey,
1994). However, it soon became a pejorative term of reference to homo-
sexuals and gender deviants, and this meaning endured for much of the
twentieth century. The reappropriation of queer as a positive epithet for
gender and sexual non-normativities began again in the 1990s, with the
1
emergence of activist groups such as Queer Nation. In recent times,
1 Queer Nation was formed in New York in 1990 in the wake of escalating violence
towards queers and the heterosexist prejudices of mainstream society. Queer Nation
was a decentralised militant organisation that favoured large-scale direct public
actions and protests, which were often staged in public commercial spaces.
14 CHAPTER 1: Queer – Identities, Theories and Politics
queer has come to be used in two quite distinct ways. First, and most
commonly, it is a catch-all term for communities of lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual and transgender (LGBT) folk. This particular use of queer is rather
problematic. As Nikki Sullivan argues, using queer as an umbrella term
“does little if anything to deconstruct the humanist understanding of the
subject”. It fails to acknowledge differences of gender, race, ethnicity,
class and age, for example, “positioning sexuality as a unified and uni-
fying factor” (2003, p. 44). The second use of queer, which informs this
study, is as a term of resistance imbued with anti-assimilationist and de-
constructionist rhetoric that aggressively opposes hegemonic identifica-
tory and behavioural norms, including liberal lesbian and gay identity
politics.
When used in this second sense, queer is destabilising, liminal, un-
fixed and contingent, and quite possibly above all else, it is highly con-
tested. Within the academy, it is often argued that queer refers to nothing
specific, but is defined precisely by what it is not, acquiring meaning
only from “its oppositional relation to the norm” (Halperin, 1995, p. 62).
Since the purpose of queer is to oppose norms through disturbing defini-
tions and legitimisations, queer perpetually refuses to be defined or le-
gitimised, and attempting to do so “would be a decidedly un-queer thing
to do” (Sullivan, 2003, p. 43). Queer is not a single theory, argument or
positivity, for it has “neither a fundamental logic, nor a consistent set of
characteristics” (Jagose, 1996, p. 96). Queerness is sustained through its
perpetual challenge to normalising mandates, thus it “can never define
an identity; it can only ever disturb one” (Edelman, 2004, p. 17). Yet I
know many people – including myself – who identify as queer in an
effort to keep ourselves, our desires and our positionalities mobile. To
complicate the matter further, queer – whatever that might be, or not be
– can function in a number or ways: as a noun (naming some-
thing/someone), an adjective (describing something/someone), a verb
(queering something or someone) or an adverb (to do something
queerly). Queer can be a political or ethical approach, an aesthetic
Although Queer Nation was a relatively short-lived movement, it was instrumental

in the reclamation of the pejorative term ‘queer’ and had a lasting impact on sexual
identity politics in the United States (for a detailed discussion of Queer Nation, see
Berlant & Freeman, 1993).
CHAPTER 1: Queer – Identities, Theories and Politics 15
quality, a mode of interpretation or way of seeing, a perspective or ori-

entation, or a way of desiring, identifying or disidentifying.
This may be a confusing start to a chapter for a reader new to queer
theory, while the theoretically advanced reader is likely to be very fa-
miliar with such abstrusity and attest to its greyness. Queer theory is a
minefield of contested conversations, disputed perspectives, unsettled
epistemologies and multidisciplinary approaches, and in light of this
confusion I write this chapter specifically for the reader new to queer
theory. Because queer thinking is at the core of this book, I wish to give
new readers a chance to acquaint themselves with queer ideas, but I also
acknowledge that the more theoretically advanced reader will be familiar
with the discussions in this chapter.
The following pages seek to clarify how we come to know ourselves
as gendered and sexual subjects through discourses, institutions and
practices that are historically contingent and socially constructed. I begin
this chapter with a genealogical account of homosexuality and homosex-
ual rights movements in Western culture, enabling us to understand how
we have arrived at queer. I acknowledge that this account is partial, as it
is meant only to introduce key theories and is by no means offered as a
2
complete historical picture of the discursive development of sexuality.
3
Grounded in the deconstructive logics of poststructuralism, queer theory
draws on a range of arguments across a number of disciplines including
philosophy, second-wave and postmodern feminisms, lesbian and gay
studies. Throughout the course of this chapter, I unpack some of these
arguments as necessary so that we may clarify the messiness of queer
theory to which I have alluded in these introductory paragraphs. High-
lighting key literatures from the corpus of queer theory, this chapter
2 For more complete accounts, see the following key texts: The History of Sexuality
(Foucault, 1979), Sex, Politics, and Society (Weeks, 1981); Sexual Politics, Sexual
Communities (D’Emilio, 1983) and Epistemologies of the Closet (Sedgwick, 1990).
3 Poststructuralism interrogates the constitution of subjects through symbolic structures,
arguing that an autonomous subject does not exist prior to the structures that we use in
order to understand it – for example, binary opposition is the relationship between
mutually exclusive terms such as mind/body, man/woman, masculine/feminine,
heterosexual/homosexual, rational/emotional, public/private or natural/unnatural. This
system of language and knowledge suggests that we come to understand each term
only in relation to its opposite. Moreover, these symbolic structures perpetuate
unequal power relationships between the primary terms such as mind, man and
masculinity, and the secondary terms such as body, woman and femininity.
identifies the theoretical arguments and political debates that underpin

the queer identities, cultural practices, aesthetic sensibilities, (sub)cultures,
styles, performers and music-makers that are the focus of this book.
Sexual ‘Deviance’: A Brief Introduction
The act of “sex has no history” says David Halperin: “It is a natural fact,
grounded in the functioning of the body, and, as such, it lies outside of
history and culture” (1993, p. 416). While sex as an activity much like
eating or sleeping may have no history, sexuality is historical. In a land-
mark text entitled The History of Sexuality (1979), French historian and
poststructuralist philosopher Michael Foucault traces the emergence of
sexuality in Western societies. According to Foucault, prior to the mid-
nineteenth century, a sex act was not understood as an expression of a per-
son’s psyche and did not characterise an innate identity. Instead, sex acts
were either considered to be ‘natural’ – and thus moral and legal – or ‘un-
natural’ – and thus sinful and criminal. Sinful sex acts were those that
denied the reproductive destiny of fluids omitted during ejaculation.
Therefore, any sex act that was not in the interest of procreation, such as
anal sex, oral sex, masturbation, sex with non-humans or sex involving the
use of contraception or the withdrawal method, was an abomination, but
4
an abominable act that potentially anyone was capable of committing.
According to Foucault, during the latter part of the nineteenth century,
sex became a growing concern for a number of social institutions. Sex was
suddenly a topic of discussion, and the medical profession in particular
became preoccupied with the nature and treatment of sexual activity. Psy-
chiatrists identified, named and thus discursively constructed a plethora of
new sexualities at this time – zoophiles, auto-monosexualists, mixo-
scopophiles, gynecomasts, presbyophiles, sexoesthetic inversts and dys-
pareunist women – and among these was the homosexual. The first sig-
4 Christianity was paramount in purporting the sinfulness of such sexual acts because
the Christian church believed that the male sperm was the seed of human life, and
to ejaculate without the intention of procreation was wasting the seed and therefore
wasting a potential human life.
nificant publication on homosexuality was by Karl Westphal, a German

neurologist and psychiatrist who published an article in 1870 entitled
“Contrary Sexual Sensations”. According to Foucault, this article
marked the conception of the homosexual as a subject of psychological
and physiological inquiry: the homosexual had become a new ‘species’
and homosexuality was born:
The nineteenth century homosexual became a personage, a past, a case history, and
a childhood in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with
an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into
his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in
him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely ac-
tive principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that
always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than
as a singular nature. (Foucault, 1979, p. 43)
The reconfiguration of the habitual sinner into the homosexual as a type

of person raised questions surrounding the legalities of homosexual ac-
tivity. In the mid-1860s, German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrich began ar-
guing that homosexual acts should not be punished because they were a
fact of nature (albeit an uncommon one). Ulrich suggested that homo-
sexuality was congenital, occurring during inter-uterine development:
“some males are born with a strong feminine element or psyche … [and]
some females are born with a strong masculine drive”, he argued (cited
in Sullivan, 2003, p. 4). In other words, homosexuals were considered to
be ‘inverts’: a theory that argued male homosexuals were women
‘trapped’ in men’s bodies and female homosexuals were men ‘trapped’
in women’s bodies. Notable sexologists such as Westphal and his Ger-
man contemporary Richard von Krafft-Ebing skewed Ulrich’s assertions
of naturally occurring homosexuality. Instead, they maintained that it
was a disease of the mind, or psychological illness, advocating that
homosexuals were degenerate human beings and, while they should not
be criminalised, they should be ‘treated’.
The work of British doctor and sexual psychologist Havelock Ellis
marks an adjustment in thinking about sexuality in exclusively biological
terms. While he did not wholly dismiss the notion of congenital homo-
sexuality, he rather controversially rejected the notion that it was a dis-
ease. Notably, he also advocated for an understanding of sexual
inversion that, while still grounded in one’s physiology, was also influ-
enced by cultural factors. In a study from 1896 entitled Sexual Inversion

(1940), Ellis puts forward an argument that suggests one’s disposition
towards inversion can be encouraged by certain social and cultural cir-
cumstances that might trigger one’s homosexuality, awaking it from its
slumber; thus it followed that if such circumstances could be controlled,
then the risk of homosexual arousal could be diminished. In Sexual In-
version, Ellis gives three examples of possible cultural triggers for
homosexuality: sex-segregation in schools, which he argues plays a role
in developing sexual inversion; the seduction of a younger person by an
older person whose inversion is already developed; and for a congenital
invert to be disappointed with ‘normal’ – meaning heterosexual – love.
In 1897, doctor Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Wissenschaftlich-
humanitäre Komitee (Scientific-humanitarian Committee) in Berlin. His
agenda was to educate the public about homosexuality in order to reduce
unnecessary suffering and persecution. Hirschfeld understood same-sex
attraction somewhat differently from Krafft-Ebing and Westphal. In-
itially, Hirschfeld built upon Ulrichs’ argument suggesting that homo-
sexuality was a congenital condition and the homosexual was a kind of
‘third sex’: an amalgamation of both masculinity and femininity. As his
studies progressed, however, he radicalised his thinking and came to ac-
knowledge a form of sexual pluralism that preposed multiple forms of
human sexuality in contrast to the rigid polarity of other nineteenth-
century paradigms. Sullivan states that Hirschfeld “positioned a notion
of infinite sexual variability that he compared to the distinctiveness of
fingerprints … [and he] totally undermined the distinction between
‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ forms of sexuality and challenged the popular
theory of constitutional degeneracy” (2003, p. 12). Attempts to ‘cure’
homosexuality were erroneous under Hirschfeld’s model: instead, he
advocated for legal and moral acceptance of sexual difference, and thus
became a leading figure in the early homosexual rights movement.
Almost a decade before Hirschfeld, another man had similarly
spoken out against the growing illegality of homosexuality in Germany.
Given that homosexuals were degenerates who were perceived to be
suffering from a sickness of the mind, many questioned the degree to
which they should be held legally accountable for such actions. In 1869,
Austrian-born journalist Karoly Maria Benkert is said to have coined the
term ‘homosexual’ in an open letter he wrote to German legislators
calling for the emancipation of homosexuals, suggesting that people who
partook in these activities should not be punishable by law because

homosexuality was inborn. Benkert’s actions marked the beginning of,
and partially set the agenda for, the homosexual rights movement that
would follow (Jagose, 1996).
The work of German writer and anarchist Adolf Brand offers a mo-
mentary reprieve from scientifically grounded theories of sexuality and
represents a radical shift in thinking. Brand’s ideas, which he published
between 1896 and 1932 in his journal Der Eigene (meaning ‘The Pecu-
liar’ or ‘One’s Own’, depending on translation), argued against the
medicalisation of homosexuality and the popular notion of inversion,
specifically male homosexuality being associated with the feminine.
Although his notions were overtly masculinist, Brand based his argu-
ment on Max Stirner’s theory of self-ownership and the sovereignty of
5
the individual, suggesting that sexual desire was a personal choice and
each person had the exclusive right to control his own body and sexual
conduct (Kennedy, 2005; Stirner, 1974). Der Eigene was not a journal of
sexual behaviour, but rather the first ever literary, art and cultural journal
dedicated to male homosexual culture in the world. According to histor-
ian Harry Oosterhuis “most authors of Der Eigene were of the opinion
that their feelings and experiences could not be understood in scientific
categories and that art and literature provided the better means of expres-
sion” (Oosterhuis, cited in Kennedy, 2005, para. 6). Brand’s journal gave
rise to the foundation of the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of
the Peculiar or Community of One’s Own) in 1903. Bringing together
writers and artists who expressed individualistic and anarchistic ideas
about homosexuality, Gemeinschaft der Eigenen is understood to have
been the second homosexual movement in Germany (Hirschfeld’s being
the first).
Returning now to scientifically grounded theory, in 1905 Austrian
neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud rejected
all claims of congenial sexuality, suggesting instead that sexuality (in-
cluding heterosexuality) was not predetermined but rather continuously
constructed through human social development. In other words, Freud
radically proposed that heterosexuality, while a necessity for the con-
tinuance of humanity, was not natural. According to Freudian scholar
5 Stirner originally published The Ego and His Own in 1844, from which Brand drew
upon the theory of self-ownership.
Juliet Mitchell: “Freud’s achievement was to transform the biological

theory of instincts into the notion of the human drive, then to trace its
possible expressions and to regulate them to their place within the per-
son’s history and subjectivity” (2000, p. 27). Freud theorised that hu-
6
mans are born polymorphously perverse, and it is only through social
instruction that they learn heterosexuality. Thus, in the event of incorrect
instruction or social development, a person may exhibit sexual deviance.
Another radical scientific thinker about sexuality was American bi-
ologist Alfred Kinsey, whose research caused enormous controversy,
outraging academic, medical and social institutions alike. During the
1940s and 1950s, Kinsey (with the support of the National Institute of
Mental Health) conducted extensive surveys collecting data on the sex-
ual identity and practices of individuals. From this he contributed to the
publication of two landmark texts, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male
(Kinsey, Pomeroy & Martin, 1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human
Female (Institute for Sex Research, 1953). In this work, Kinsey derived
a seven-point scale with exclusive heterosexuality marked at one end,
exclusive homosexuality at the other and bisexuality (or equally hetero-
sexual and homosexual, as Kinsey termed it) as its midpoint. Kinsey’s
extensive statistical data showed that most people regarded as heterosex-
ual have at some time in their life experienced varying degrees of sexual
interaction with members of the same sex. Thus the majority of people
are not exclusively heterosexual, and instead can be located somewhere
along a sexuality continuum.
The social propagation of the homosexual as a kind of deviant
served to segregate and control homosexual identity by drawing clear
boundaries between the normal and abnormal, while at the same time
perpetuating a homosexual character stereotype. In 1968 (pre-dating the
work of Foucault), British sociologist Mary McIntosh published “The
Homosexual Role”, proposing that homosexuality was not a medical or
psychiatric condition, or human deviance; instead, it was a social role – a
socially constructed identity. Using cross-cultural examples, McIntosh
argues that behaviours labelled homosexual vary across time and cul-
6 Polymorphous perversity suggests that sexual desire can be directed towards any
object, and sexuality can be satisfied in many ways that lie outside of socially
normative sexual behaviours. According to Freud, it is a condition of childhood,
and is considered to be abnormal in adults.
tures, defying categorisation and thus suggesting that there are homosex-
ual behaviours but not innate homosexuals. McIntosh explains that this
role “refers not only to a cultural conception or a set of ideas but also to
a complex set of institutional arrangements which depend on and re-
inforce these ideas” (1968, p. 189). By labelling and persecuting homo-
sexuals, society created for them an identity and a way to identify each
7
other, forcing homosexuals into the ‘closet’, and ultimately giving rise
to homosexual cultures.
For much of the twentieth century, the homosexual adult generally
was depicted as a sick and loathsome character stigmatised by his or her
‘illness’ and condemned to an ignominious existence. While some did
not believe that homosexuality could or should be cured, a variety of
therapies and treatments continued to plague the lives of people who
exhibited signs of homosexuality. These included subjecting people to
emotional abuse and physical tortures ranging from drug therapies to
electric shock treatment, lobotomies and the surgical removal of repro-
ductive organs (D’Emilio, 1983). In was not until 1973 that the Ameri-
can Psychiatric Association agreed to remove the classification of
‘disease’ from the condition of homosexuality. In response to such tor-
ture and persecution, in the time following the Second World War, civil
rights groups emerged across Britain, Europe, the United States and
Australia calling for the humane treatment of homosexuals.
Homophiles, Liberationists and Lesbian Feminists
While many of the earlier efforts to advance the rights and the treatment
of homosexuals had occurred in Europe – particularly Germany – the
war years and the rise of Nazism extinguished a lot of these advance-
ments. Beginning again around the 1950s, a number of civil rights
groups – which can be referred to collectively as the Homophile Move-
ment – reignited these efforts. Organisations such as the US-based
groups One Inc., The Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis, the
7 In very simple terms, the closet is a metaphorical space that indicates secrecy
regarding one’s non-normative sexual desires. Being ‘in the closet’ suggests that
feelings or activities relating to non-normative sexual desire are undisclosed, while
‘coming out’ or being ‘out of the closet’ suggests that one publicly acknowledges
these feelings, actions and desires.
British Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Australian-based or-

ganisation known as CAMP (Campaign Against Moral Persecution),
lobbied to transform public attitudes towards homosexuality. The agenda
of the homophile movement was largely based on the politics of assimila-
tion (see Altman, 1972; D’Emilio, 1983; Jagose, 1996). Such organisa-
tions tended to stress the biological innateness of homosexuality. While
they opposed the inhumane treatment of homosexuals, they argued that
sexuality was private and should therefore not be a matter of concern to
the church, state or medical profession. Moreover, homophile groups
tended towards conservative representations of homosexuality, arguing
that homosexuals were just like everyone else while disavowing the less
‘respectable’ elements of homosexual (sub)cultures such as drag queens,
butches and transsexuals.
In 1969, exactly a hundred years after Benkert first called for the
emancipation of homosexuals, the gay liberation movement was ignited
when, on 28 June, police raided a New York gay bar called the Stone-
wall Inn in Christopher Street, Greenwich Village that was frequented by
the so-called disreputable elements of gay culture. A glorified and now
somewhat mythologised moment in the annals of gay history (see Alt-
man, 1972; Duberman, 1993; Carter, 2010), the Stonewall riots are said
to have provoked a new movement of collective resistance against sexual
oppression, signifying a refusal to stay respectably closeted any longer.
Homosexual identity was being dramatically reconfigured and an un-
apologetic and distinctly gay identity constructed in its place – “one
based on pride in being gay” (Altman, 1972, p. 109). The counter-cul-
tural politics of the 1960s were sweeping the Western world, and while
Stonewall did not single-handedly launch a movement, it symbolically
marks a shift in the assimilationist agendas of the homophile politics and
towards a revolutionary counter-cultural logic akin to other political
demonstrations of the era.
For many lesbians and gays in the post-Stonewall era, collective
pride became a platform upon which liberationist efforts were mobilised
and a new and publicly visible identity was constructed. Annamarie
Jagose explains that “‘gay’ was mobilised as a specifically political
counter to that binarised and hierarchised sexual categorisation which
classifies homosexuality as a deviation from a privileged and naturalised
heterosexuality” (1996, p. 72). An international collection of groups
(originating in New York in 1969 and London in 1970) known as the
Gay Liberation Front began publicly protesting against the persecution

of lesbians and gays in a far more disruptive fashion than their
homophile allies. The Gay Liberation Front rejected the biological model
of homosexuality, instead opting to assert a notion of choice. As Sullivan
suggests, “in response to the image of homosexuality as a [shameful]
biological anomaly … liberationists claimed that one’s identity ‘needs
no excuses’, that, in fact, it is something to celebrate” (2003, p. 30). Les-
bians and gays began openly celebrating their identity, and various cul-
tural products are testament to this. Pride songs began circulating
through gay communities and musicals such as Let My People Come
(1974) and films such as La Cage Aux Folles (1979) explored deviant
gender and sexual identities on public stages and screens. Scholarly dis-
course surrounding the history, culture and politics of non-heterosexual
gender and sexual identity also started to appear.
Australian Dennis Altman contributed significantly to this with his
publication of Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (1972), as did
Karla Jay and Allen Young’s edited volume, Out of the Closets: Voices
of Gay Liberation (1992), which first appeared in 1972. Akin to the lo-
gics of what we now call postmodernism, liberation politics radically
suggested, among other things, the dispensation of sexuality from the
repressive mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality and homosexuality; the
transformation of gender relationships and roles; the rejection of institu-
tionalised marriage and monogamy; and a reconfiguration of the family
unit. According to Steven Seidman, “liberation theory presupposed a no-
tion of an innate polymorphous, androgynous human nature … [and]
aimed at freeing individuals from the constraints of the sex/gender
8
system” (1993, p. 110). Basing its politics loosely upon what Robert
Reynolds calls “a utopian vision of liberated bodies and unrepressed
psychic drives” (2002, p. 70), gay liberation sought a new and radical
approach to the way gender and sexual identity were conceptualised for
all human beings.
The liberationist project critiqued not only the power structures of
gender and sexuality, but also those of race, class and nationalism.
8 Feminist theorist Gayle Rubin (1975) coined the phrase ‘sex/gender system’ to
delineate the separation of gender from sex. In effect, Rubin suggests that women
and men are taught how to behave in masculine or feminine ways; moreover, they
are taught that they are only allowed to act according to their biology.
Strong critics of capitalism, liberationists advocated for developing

world freedoms, and aligned themselves with radical anti-war move-
ments and black power counter-cultures. However, conflicting identity
politics stifled such attempts, and factions within the movement began to
destroy the hope of achieving a unified state of resistance. As white,
middle-class lesbians and gays gained greater mainstream acceptance
during the 1970s, the liberationist model (to which contemporary queer
radical politics are considerably indebted) was outmoded in favour of an
ethnic (and at times essentialist) model of minority identity politics.
The ‘legitimation’ of lesbian and gay sexuality, and the mobilisation
of lesbian and gay lobby groups throughout the Western world, conse-
quently resulted in a return to assimilation (Reynolds, 2002; Wother-
spoon, 1991). Jagose efficiently summarises the contrasts between the
two models:
According to the liberationist model, the established social order is fundamentally

corrupt, and therefore the success of any political action is to be measured by the ex-
tent to which it smashes that system. The ethnic model, by contrast, was committed to
establishing gay identity as a legitimate minority group, whose official recognition
would secure citizenship rights for lesbian and gay subjects. (1996, p. 61)
The notions of erotic freedom, the challenges to traditional gender roles

and the right to choose one’s sexuality that underpinned liberationist
ideals were discarded as the ethnic model necessitated visible, stable and
commodified sexual identity communities, as this was crucial to the
struggle for civil rights such as the right to marry, the right to raise a
family and inclusion within the military. Rather than attempting to de-
stroy normalising and oppressive systems, the goal became inclusion
within existing heterosexist structures and the hegemonic social order.
Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s, liberation efforts increas-
ingly became gender separatist as many lesbians grew disillusioned with
the political position of women in what they saw as the increasing sup-
remacy of the misogynistic and anti-feminist agendas of gay liberation.
Similarly, many lesbian women were also angered by the marginal posi-
tion of lesbians in feminist movements at the time, with certain hetero-
sexual feminists believing that lesbianism hindered their struggle for
women’s rights, referring to lesbians as the ‘lavender menace’. Conse-
quently, lesbian feminism – a distinct and more radical faction of sec-
ond-wave feminism – attempted to reconstruct the category of lesbian,
shifting it from a category of sexuality to a political position – one that

all women who rejected men could assume, regardless of whether they
has sex with other women or not. This was a call to the ‘woman-identi-
fied woman’ (see Radicalesbians, 1992).
In this sense, lesbianism was regarded as a kind of consciousness.
One means by which this consciousness could be achieved was through
the rejection of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980). Compulsory
heterosexuality is the assumption that heterosexuality is the natural and
universal form of sexual desire. It suggests that men and women are in-
nately attracted to each other, and leads to an institutionalised inequality
of power between women and men, as well as between heterosexuals
and non-heterosexuals. Adrienne Rich (1980) suggested that heterosex-
uality is not natural but rather a condition into which we are coerced by
the patriarchy in order for men to maintain social, economic and physical
power over women. In other words, through denaturalising heterosex-
uality, Rich set out to expose it as an institution grounded in unequal
power relationships; however, she did this (as did some other feminists)
but naturalising gender in its place.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, representational struggles over
gender and sexual identification, and in particular lesbian sexuality, were
debated and constructed in a number of often contradictory ways that I
cannot unpack adequately here. However, it is important to understand
that gay and lesbian liberation efforts were multiple and divergent. Some
returned to assimilationist attitudes, opting for an end to discrimination
and systematic mainstream recognition on the grounds that they were
‘respectable citizens’ whose sexuality was a private concern. Others,
such as sadomasochists, transgender people, butch/femme lesbians, sex-
workers or pornographers, challenged hegemony though public sexual
dissent and consequently were regarded by some lesbian feminists and
other feminists as obscene (see Duggan & Hunter, 1996). Some women-
identified women avoided replicating the oppressive politics of hetero-
sexual hegemony through a rejection of all men, masculinity and even
certain kinds of sex between women, such as sex with a dildo (a phallic-
shaped object), which they saw as male-supremacist and anti-feminist.
Still other women-identified women believed – as did liberationists –
that gender role rigidity was grounded in male supremacy and oppress-
ing to all people, and thus a deconstruction of these roles would lead to
erotic freedom for everyone.
Importantly, as Jagose notes, lesbian feminism productively in-

formed queer theory in three crucial ways: “its attention to the specificity
of gender, its framing of sexuality as institutional rather than personal,
and its critique of compulsory heterosexuality” (1996, p. 57). Indeed,
many of the insights and aspirations of lesbian feminism and the gay
liberation movement have concomitantly inspired much queer thinking
about gender, sexuality, power, difference and utopian visions. However,
as we will now see, a major difference between the liberationist agendas
and what we might call a queer agenda is that queer dispenses with the
universalising goals and grand narratives of sexual freedom, which encap-
sulates the liberationist ideals, in favour of a politics of difference.
Queer Theory
The term ‘queer theory’ was coined by Teresa de Lauretis (1991). She
initially used it to examine the implicit differences that are less apparent
when we speak of ‘lesbian and gay’. For de Lauretis, “‘Queer Theory’
conveys a double emphasis – on the conceptual and speculative work in-
volved in discourse production, and on the necessary critical work of
deconstructing our own discourses and their constructed silences” (p. iv).
Grounded in the deconstructive and denaturalising logics of poststruc-
turalism, queer theory takes up the critique, as set out by Jean-François
Lyotard (1984) and others, of truth, knowledge, objectivity and authen-
ticity, and argues that there is no universal human subject – especially not
one that can be understood as stable and unified. Instead, as we have seen
in Foucault’s (1979) work on sexuality, queer theory proposes that identi-
ties are generated by discourses, regimes of disciplinary knowledge, and
as such they are contingent, grounded in historically and culturally specific
concepts. As Joshua Gamson suggests, “queer studies is largely a decon-
structive enterprise, taking apart the view of a self defined by something at
its core, be it sexual desire, race, gender, nation or class” (2000, p. 348).
While queer theory has made a significant contribution to contemporary
9
discourse on race and class, this book is concerned predominantly with
issues of gender and sexual identity, yet it is careful not to completely
ignore other facets of identity.
Queer is not a monolithic category in itself: queerness manifests in
many different ways, and may be done and/or read differently according
to an almost endless combination of feelings, experiences, contexts and
contestations. According to Moe Meyer, “‘queer’ … indicates an onto-
logical challenge to dominant labelling philosophies, especially the
medicalisation of the subject implied by the word ‘homosexual,’ as well
as a challenge to the discrete gender categories embedded in the divided
phrase ‘gay and lesbian’” (1994, pp. 1–2). While queer theory does not
dismiss the lived reality of being male, female, heterosexual, lesbian or
gay, it rejects the didactic power relationships that structure these cate-
gories, and encourages “an analysis that embeds the self in institutional
and cultural practices” (Seidman, 1993, p. 137) rather than a preoccupa-
tion with identity politics and the assertion of a natural or coherent
lesbian or gay perspective. In the remainder of this chapter, I will unpack
queer thinking in relation to the way discursive systems of power/
knowledge construct identities and review central arguments within
queer theory concerning heteronormativity, performativity, identity and
emergent homonormativities.
Power, Discourse and Heteronormativity
Power, as Foucault (1979) explains it, “is the name that one attributes to
a complex strategical situation within a particular society” (p. 93), which
organises, institutionalises, moralises and makes lawful certain ways of
living and desiring. Networks of knowledge and power dictate the be-
haviours, values, identities and desires deemed normal, acceptable and
advantageous; thus it is within a matrix of power that normativities are
constructed. Yet normativity cannot be challenged effectively by simply
opposing it; power cannot be so easily argued in terms of a majority vis-
9 For further information on queer theory, race and class, see Muñoz’s Dissidentifi-
cations (1999), Sulllivan’s chapter, “Queer Race”, in her Critical Introduction to
Queer Theory (2003); Ian Barnard’s Queer Race (2004); and Max Kirsch’s Queer
Theory and Social Change (2000).
à-vis minority logic – in other words, who does or does not have power,
and who should or should not have access to power. Gay and lesbian
liberationists attempted to fight ‘repressive’ knowledge/power systems
by opposing what they believed were the false truths of dominant soci-
ety, arguing for a different set of truths in place of the dominant logic.
However, as Foucault argues, power is not a duality, something held by
a ruling class or an opposition between who is ruling and who is ruled.
“Where there is power”, Foucault maintains, “there is resistance, and yet,
or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority
in relation to power”. Rather, power and resistance are not in opposition
but are entangled, and within this system there is always “a multiplicity
of points of resistance” (p. 95).
Both power and resistance circulate through knowledge, and it is in
“discourse that power and knowledge are joined together” (p. 100). In
the same way that the hierarchy of power/powerless is a false construct,
so too is it dangerous to consider discourses in terms of what is accept-
able and what is excluded. Instead, Foucault insists that there is “a
multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various
strategies” (p. 100). “Discourse transmits and produces power; it re-
inforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, render it fragile and make
is possible to thwart it” (p. 101). Thus to claim unitary minority status in
the face of an oppressive power structure is to ignore the other dis-
courses or power operations that are circulating within the supposedly
cohesive minority itself.
Through the medicalisation of homosexual behaviour, introducing
homosexuality into public consciousness, hegemonic institutions (law and
medicine) inevitably gave rise to discourses on homosexuals as a distinct
group of people. However, it also made it possible for this ‘distinct group
of people’ to speak for themselves. Foucault argues that attempts to de-
mand legitimisation or naturalisation by this group using the same
institutional discourses are problematic because, while it might be in op-
position to oppression, it is still a form of opposition that exists within the
same oppressive strategy. What is needed instead is strategic change:
We must not expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what strategy they de-
rive from, or what moral division they accompany, or what ideology – dominant or
dominated – they represent; rather we must question them on the two levels of their
tactical productivity … and their strategical integration. (Foucault, 1979, p. 102)
In this sense, following Foucault, queer is not a singular oppositional

position, but rather evokes a broad range of radical critical responses,
which are constantly questioning the dominant discourses that produce
ever-shifting logics of social and cultural normativity and non-normativity.
The mutual exclusivity of heterosexuality/homosexuality, for example,
places the ‘unnatural’ or deviant category of homosexuality in binary op-
position to the normalised and thus ‘natural’ category of heterosexuality,
and it is the discourse of normativity – the natural/unnatural, nor-
mal/abnormal binary logic – that produces oppressive knowledges and
power relations. Queer instigates its challenge around the structuration of
any action or identity as natural or normal. As Sullivan reiterates:
The punishment or stigmatisation of so-called ‘unnatural’ actions and identities is

everywhere apparent in our society, and functions to reaffirm or naturalise that
which is held to be ‘normal’. And we are all both agents and effects of disciplinary
regimes. (2003, p. 84)
Where liberationists attempted to argue that homosexual sex is just as

natural as heterosexual sex, queer theory and politics argue that while the
act of having sex might be an historical fact, there is indeed no such
thing as a natural or normal way to have it.
This institutionalisation of heterosexuality is called ‘heteronorma-
tivity’, and it is a valuable conceptual addition to sexual discourse on the
part of queer theory. According to Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner,
heteronormativity is “the institutions, structures of understanding, and
practical orientations that make heterosexuality not only coherent – that
is organised as a sexuality – but also privileged” (1998, p. 565). These
structuring norms organise homosexuality as its binary opposite. Thus,
within heteronormativity, the category of homosexuality works to main-
tain heterosexuality as the primary, correct or normal sexual identity. It
is important to note that heterosexuality and heteronormativity are not
interchangeable terms. Furthermore, heterosexual sex is not necessarily
heteronormative, as heteronormativity is constituted in the regulation of
normative desires and practices favouring monogamy and other ‘natural’
sexual relationships and institutions such as marriage and kinship fami-
lies.
The impetus of queer theory is to confuse these sexual binaries and
deconstruct fixed categories on the grounds that “fixed identity catego-
ries are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power”
(Gamson, cited in Gamson & Moon, 2004, p. 50). Fixed categories as-
sign power to the majority by organising society into central and
marginal groups. Those who construct the ideal centre of mainstream
Western society – what Audre Lorde (1990) calls a “mythical norm” –
can aptly be described as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Chris-
tian and financially secure” (p. 282). And those who reside in the
margins are scrutinised for their deviation from the social, moral and
political codes purported by the centre. Queer theory seeks to expose the
false truths that have constructed boundaries of centrality and margi-
nality, and have normalised the centre by revealing the performative
nature of gender and sexuality and the fluidity of identity. As Shane
Phelan proposes, “by challenging the boundary lines as well as the con-
tent of the territories they mark, queer work calls each of us to attend to
the uncertainties and incompletion in our identity” (1997, p. 3). In con-
clusion, queer theory does not call for a secure space within the margins
for the articulation of deviant gender or sexuality; instead, it seeks to
disrupt or trouble all boundaries and identities as part of a large-scale
egalitarian project.
Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Performativity
In 1990, poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler published what was

to become a highly influential book entitled Gender Trouble: Feminism
and the Subversion of Identity, considered by many as one of queer
theory’s foundation texts. In Gender Trouble Butler proposes that gender
is in no way natural or stable, but rather is constructed by a series of re-
peated gestures understood as performative acts. She says:
Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally constructed, are performative in the sense that
the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufac-
tured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the
gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the
various acts which constitute its reality … words, acts and gestures, articulated and en-
acted desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion
discursively maintained for the purpose of the regulation of sexuality within the obliga-
tory frame of reproductive heterosexuality. (1990, p. 136, emphasis in original)
According to Butler, gender is discursively produced by social institu-

tions of knowledge that shape our understanding of gender as an outward
sign of biological sex. Gender discourse – the ways in which we describe
masculinity and femininity and the repetitive bodily enactments that we
associate with lexicons of gender – are, in fact, all that gender is. Gender
essence is an illusion, and it is only through discursive re-enforcement
and repetitive performance that gender appears innate. Ontologies of
gender are fictions created by disciplinary regimes for the purpose of
normalising and limiting gender performance to benefit the appearance
of heterosexuality and gender polarity as natural:
Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis: the tacit collective
agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fic-
tions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments that
attend not agreeing to believe in them; the construction “compels” our belief in its ne-
cessity and naturalness. The historical possibilities materialized through various
corporeal styles are nothing other than those punitively regulated cultural fictions
alternately embodied and deflected under duress. (Butler, 1990, p. 140)
In simpler terms, the two distinct gender categories of masculinity and

femininity that we have come to accept as reality are nothing more than
fictions that, albeit unwittingly, we are coerced into performing on our
bodies. Those who do not ‘perform’ as they should risk punishment for
appearing to have an unnatural gender identity – that is, a gender identity
that conflicts with or hyperbolises the sexed body.
Furthermore, it is a culturally and historically specific performance of
gender that informs natural gender identities and ways of being and
knowing our gendered selves. The cultural and historic specificity of gen-
der suggests that the ways in which we ‘do’ gender are variable, thus what
constitutes ‘proper’ masculinity and femininity will vary according to
social, cultural and temporal contexts. “There is no gender identity behind
the expressions of gender”, says Butler. “Identity is performatively con-
stituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (1990, p.
25). Butler contends that we have no essential gender identity that informs
how we behave; instead, how we behave (our performance of gender) is
all that our gender identity is. Therefore, gender does not express a bio-
logical essence, but instead is an effect of power.
Sexuality, too, is performatively constructed, argues Butler:
If sexuality is culturally constructed within existing power relations, then the pos-
tulation of a normative sexuality that is “before,” “outside,” or “beyond” power is a
cultural impossibility … The replication of heterosexual constructs in non-hetero-
sexual frames brings into relief the utterly constructed status of the so-called
heterosexual original. Thus, gay is to straight not as copy is to original, but, rather,
as copy is to copy. The parodic repetition of “the original” … reveals the original to
be nothing other than a parody of the idea of the natural and the original. (Butler,
1990, pp. 30–31, emphasis in original)
Here, Butler is arguing that any notion of an original – thus natural or

‘normal’ – gender or sexual identity is a fiction because there is no ori-
ginal. Instead, these concepts are made intelligible via a matrix of power:
the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990, 1997). The logic purported by the
heterosexual matrix suggests that our biologically categorised body de-
termines the expression of gender and, in turn, gender determines the
bodies/objects we are normatively permitted to desire. In other words:
man = masculine = attracted to women/femininity; and woman = femi-
nine = attracted to men/masculinity. Gender norms fundamentally
stabilise and maintain heterosexuality. Thus homosexuality is often at-
tributed to failed or misconstrued gender roles. Heteronormativity
positions the gay male as feminine because his gender non-normativity is
generative of his sexual non-normativity and thus essentialises the het-
erosexual male’s masculinity. Similarly, the lesbian female is often
perceived as masculine because she too normalises society’s construc-
tion of the heterosexual woman as feminine.
While biological sex most commonly is understood as either male or
female, Butler also questions the organisation of people into sexed cate-
gories, suggesting that – like gender – the sexed body is also a cultural
construct, the consequence being that “the distinction between sex and
gender turns out to be no distinction at all” (1990, p. 7). As Chris Beas-
ley clarifies this with reference to Butler’s (1990) work:
Gender … is typically interpreted as derived from the body. Bodily (anatomical)

sex is seen as pre-dating culture, as eternal sex, the eternal male female binary.
However, in Butler’s analysis, the body is also a gendered performance which is
socially constituted as the essence of gender, and it’s an intact, untouched founda-
tion, and is all the more culturally powerful for this interpretation as being outside
culture. Indeed, in her view, socially constituted gender creates anatomical sex, ra-
ther than the other way around, in the sense that the former makes the latter relevant
in social practice. And if gender does not follow automatically from anatomical sex,
then it is not axiomatic that gender refers only to the two categories designated in
the binary men/women distinction. (2005, p. 101)
The existence of ‘ambiguously’ sexed or intersex bodies points to an-

other category of body that contests the supposedly stable binary of sex
itself. Moreover, since gender is not fixed to the sexed body, we are able
to perform our gender in multiple and conflicting ways that challenge the
distinction of man/woman. To do gender in contrary ways, suggests
Butler (1990), is to cause gender trouble. The power of Butler’s theory
of gender performativity is its ability to reveal that, as individuals, we
are not locked into gender roles; there is no natural way to desire, and
there is no natural way to perform identity upon our bodies.
In following chapters, I discuss in detail some of the performance-
based methods employed by queers that attempt to reveal gender as
performance. Drag performance, being the primary example of this, is
offered by Butler as testimony that all gender identities are a mélange of
concealed norms and performed acts. However, one must be careful not
conflate these types of conscious performance with performativity. As
Butler herself argues: “Performativity is neither free play nor theatrical
self-presentation; nor can it be simply equated with performance” (1993,
p. 95). Rather, performativity is a precondition of the subject, a forced
and repetitious performance of norms sustained by the constraints soci-
ety applies to those norms that effectively endorse some sexual and
gender practices and outlaw others. In contrast, performance is a condi-
tion of the subject, a chosen enactment that we ‘put on’ at will:
In no sense can it be concluded that the part of gender that is performed is therefore the
“truth” of gender; performance as bounded “act” is distinguished from performativity
insofar as the latter consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, constrain, and
exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be taken as the fabrication of the per-
former’s “will” or “choice”; further, what is “performed” works to conceal, if not to
disavow, what remains opaque, unconscious, unperformable. The reduction of per-
formativity to performance would be a mistake. (Butler, 1993, p. 234)
Thus performativity is not a voluntary act, while performance (for the

most part) is voluntary. According to Sullivan, “the distinction between
voluntarism and anti-voluntarism is often understood by commentators
as the difference between performance and performativity respectively”
(2003, p. 89).
While the constitutions of performance are clearly defined by the

will to act, interpreting a performance or the intent of the performer re-
mains highly contestable. As Sullivan suggests, “all performances and
all attempts at subversion will be ambiguous and open to multiple
meanings” (2003, p. 92). The potential for a performance to subvert or
expose the rigidity and unnaturalness of gender and sexuality will be a
fundamental measurement of its success at queering normativity. How-
ever, the multiple potential of meanings suggests that the measurement
of its success will always remain ambiguous, thus the political and sub-
versive potential of performance is always contextual.
Queer Identities and Homonormativities
Queer theory undermines the binary logic that constructs identities as

oppositional and exclusionary, and seeks as its primary strategy the de-
naturalisation of identity categories. As Phelan notes:
Queer theory [has] pointed to the fundamental indeterminacy of identities – of

inside/outside communities, of masculine/feminine, of homo/hetero/bi, of male/female,
and of racial and ethnic categories. Ultimately queer theory’s target is identity itself – the
assumption of unity or harmony or transparency within persons or groups. (1997, p. 2)
Queer theory says we do not have to confine our identificatory practices

to the limited patterns of behaviour like those insisted upon when the
fixed labelling of a sexual identity is heterosexual, lesbian or gay, and
when a gender identity is labelled either feminine or masculine. In fact,
queer manifests in opposition to such bourgeois models of identity, re-
futing definition based upon material sexual practices. In this space of
refusal, queer sexualities then emerge as “a series of improvised per-
formances whose threat lies in the denial of any social identity derived
from participation in those performances” (Meyer, 1994, p. 3). Queer
displaces the notion of self as exclusive, abiding and continuous in fa-
vour of a concept of self as performative, improvisational and dis-
continuous, constructed through the repetition of stylised acts. It
understands identity as constructed categories of self-knowledge, capa-
ble of shifting over time. Borrowing the Deleuzian idea of ‘becoming’,
queer theory explores the dynamism of desire and mutability of life it-
self. So if queer is improvised, unfixed, processional, troubling and, as
some have argued, implicitly unknowable, what does it mean to call one-
self queer?
Many of the people I interviewed as part of this project employ the
term ‘queer’ as a way to describe themselves, while others choose to mix
up terminology, switching between queer, lesbian and/or gay (among
others). Therefore, when I talk about queers in a collective sense I am
not naming and describing a cohesive group of people. The usefulness of
queer is that it marks a flexible space of expression and signification,
and those who occupy this space will not necessarily understand them-
selves to be queer in the same way that others who also occupy this
space. As Sedgwick points out, queer can be understood as:
[T]he open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses
and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of
anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically …
Anyone’s use of the word “queer” about themselves means differently from their
use of it about someone else … “gay” and “lesbian” still present themselves (how-
ever delusively) as objective, empirical categories governed by empirical rules of
evidence … “Queer” seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a per-
son’s undertaking particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and
filiation. (1993, pp. 8–9)
By calling oneself queer, one is not signifying a specifically inclusive or

exclusive identity, but rather calling attention to identity as non-essential
and provisional, moving away from the totalising effects of categories
such as woman or lesbian. When identifying as a queer woman, for ex-
ample, it is perhaps better to think of this as signifying a certain way of
‘doing’ the identity of woman and/or lesbian rather than something that
is a specific or bounded identity itself. Thus Halperin (1995) suggests
that instead of thinking of queer strictly as an identity, it might be better
to think of it as a positionality that is available to anyone who aims to
subvert hegemony, one that can be taken up by those who have been
marginalised owing to their desires and/or because of their inability to
locate themselves within a specific fixed identity category.
Noreen Giffney explains queer as signifying “the messiness of iden-
tity … a resistance to identity categories or easy categorisation, marking
10
a disidentification from the rigidity with which identity categories con-
10 Disidentification can be thought of as a performative mode of resistance to

normalising discourses and dominant logics of identification (see Muñoz, 1999).
tinue to be enforced and from beliefs that such categories are

immovable” (2009, pp. 2–3). Queer is a politicised rubric that asserts
gender and sexual multiplicity and fluidity, and is thus available to sig-
nify a range of non-normative gender and sexual subjectivities, practices
and relationships of desire that defy the moral codes and normalising
regimes imposed by the dominant society. Such subjectivities, practices
and relationships that queer may signify include lesbian, gay, bisexual,
pansexual, omnisexual, asexual, butch, femme, androgyne, genderqueer,
intersex, transgender, transsexual, two-spirit, fetishist, polyamory, non-
monogamy, sex work, practices of bondage, discipline, sadism or maso-
chism (BDSM), or other radical sexual practitioners such as leathermen
or dyke daddies among other things. As Alexander Doty (1993) has ar-
gued, queer can be conceptualised as something different, something
more than lesbian and gay: the “intersecting or combining of more than
one specific form of nonstraight sexuality” (1993, p. xvi).
Of course, it is important to note that the deconstructive tendencies
of queer are not wholly celebrated. While unpacking the numerous con-
testations to queer theory is not something I have either the space or
inclination to do here, I feel that it is only fair to signal this and offer
readers the opportunity to engage with critical literatures. A number of
scholars have waged critical assaults on queer theory, arguing that it is
jargon laden and hierarchical, dominated by North American (and to a
lesser extent British) theories and thinkers who fail to consider the con-
textual specificities of other locales. Some have suggested that queer
theory has failed (Bawer, 1996), or that the time has come to move into a
transdisciplinary post-queer critique (Ruffolo, 2009). Others contend that
it does little to change social inequalities and debases collective political
action by destabilising the subject and undermining sexual discourse
(Edwards, 1998; Weeks, 2000; Taylor, Y., 2010). Moreover, it is said to
sometimes deny the lived reality of women, lesbians and trans people
(Jeffreys, 1993; Richardson et al., 2006; Stryker, 2006), and offers little
in the way of thinking about identity beyond textual analysis (Escoffier,
1990; Plummer, 1998). I am mindful of such criticism and I agree with
those scholars who stress the necessity and importance of empirical work
on queerness. The cultural styles and artefacts that I examine in this
book say a great deal about the lives of the people who make and pro-
duce them, and as such this research pays equally close attention to the
lived realities of makers, producers and consumers of queer culture and
their negotiation of gender and sexual difference in and through cultural

participation.
A final distinctive point of queerness to which I attend in this chap-
ter has to do with its contestation of the mainstreaming of lesbian and
gay culture and identity politics. In relation to music, extended discus-
sions of the distinctions between ‘mainstream’ gay culture and
‘alternative’ queer cultures are presented in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. How-
ever, for now let us considered the concept of ‘homonormativity’.
In the wake of assimilationist agenda, many queer activists argue
that the call for civil rights and legislative gains – gay marriage, child
adoption, military service, welfare and pension benefits – has forced the
mainstreaming of gay and lesbian identity. In other words, in order to
gain ‘equal’ standing within these social institutions, lesbian and gay
identities have been normalised. The gay mainstream, argues Eric Rofes,
“present[s] a sanitized vision of our people and replace[s] butch/femme
dykes with Heather and her two mommies, and kinky gay men with do-
mestic partner wedding cakes” (1998, p. 204). Instead of advocating for a
pluralistic queer culture, certain forms of sexual non-normativity become
privileged at the expense of others. Those that are most privileged and
gain the most status are the ones that most closely replicate heteronorma-
tive ideals: wealthy, monogamous, same-sex couples. For example,
Warner argues that marriage is a “vehicle for a great load of privileges,
and because it confers status that has a great deals of normative force, it is
an inherently discriminatory system”. Warner goes on to say that he finds
the position of gay marriage advocates to be highly problematic, as they
“still pretend that marriage is just a private choice, or a personal right, as
though participating in this institution has no consequence for others”
(cited in Jagose, 2000, para. 8).
These new individualistic and bourgeois neoliberal sexual politics
that privilege certain kinds of same-sex relations are termed homonor-
mativity. In Lisa Duggan’s critique of neoliberalism, The Twilight of
Equality? (2003), she outlines homonormativity as:
a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institu-
tions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a semi-
mobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticised gay culture anchored in
domesticity and consumption (p. 50).
Radical queer activists argue against the homogenisation of gay identity

and the acceptance of liberal gains within the private, consumer sphere.
Queers must remain resistant to such normalising effects, argues gay
shame activist Mattilda (aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore), because assimi-
lation is leading to the increasing marginalisation of queers and
potentially may result in the erasure of certain forms of queer culture:
A ravenous gay mainstream seeks control … of the very ways we represent our
own identities. The radical potential of queer identity lies in remaining outside – in
challenging and seeking to dismantle the sickening culture that surrounds us. (Bern-
stein Sycamore, 2004, p. 5, emphasis in original)
Writing queer social theory and textual analysis, and partaking in direct
political action are useful ways to challenge assumptions, dismantle
cultural norms and instigate radical transgression. However, perform-
ance – and certainly music-related performances – also generates radical
contestations to normalisation and enables the transformative politics of
queer possibilities. In his study of Latina performance, Muñoz (1999)
argues that “minoritarian performance labors to make worlds … more
than simply views or perspectives; [queer performances] are oppositional
ideologies that function as critiques of oppressive regimes of ‘truth’ that
subjugate minoritarian people” (p. 195). Queer world-making perform-
ances are disidentificatory in that they not only seek to dismantle
majoritarian cultures; rather, argues Muñoz, they also use “majoritarian
culture as raw material to make a new world” (p. 196). By using per-
formance as a performative strategy to tear down and then queerly
rebuild the world, Muñoz suggests that these disidentificatory perform-
ances generate ideological transformation and map space for the
emergence of oppositional counter-publics. This is an important idea to
which I return in detail in the next chapter.
In summary, queer as it is employed herein signifies a twisting,
lampooning and dismantling of hegemonic culture. Resistant to both
heteronormativity and neoliberal liberal sexual politics, queer executes
its critique of normalising logics from the social and cultural margins. Of
course, what counts as, or can be read as, queer identity, action or object
is dependent not only on history and culture, but also on personal experi-
ence, and as such queerness is always mutable, contentious and quite
often contradictory. The potentiality of the queer project is signified by
its intensely personal, partial and perverse qualities, where “identities
become not so much categories to be occupied, owned, protected or re-

jected, but spaces to be navigated, revisited, revised and elided on a
moment-to-moment basis” (Giffney, 2009, pp. 6–7). Queer navigations,
challenges, troubling actions and disidentificatory performances take
many forms and pervade multiple genres of cultural expression. Looking
through the lens of music and performance, this will become increas-
ingly evident in the second part of this book, where we will explore
queer cultural histories, practices and people who are in conflict with and
attempt to calve an existence beyond both straight and gay social norms
and mainstream cultural conventions. In the next chapter, however, we
shall turn to thinking about music production and consumption as a re-
source for doing queer identity work and as a catalyst for queer scene-
building and world-making.
CHAPTER 2
MUSIC AND IDENTITY –

Selves, Sexualities and Scenes
The task of defining music and delimiting its constituent characteristics

has been problematic for musicians, audiences and scholars for centu-
ries. Definitions of what constitutes music are both culturally and
historically variable and subject to logics of taste and value. Music,
understood in its most basic form as organised sound, is located in cul-
tures worldwide, and manifests itself in multiple styles and genres, each
with characteristics that extend far beyond what is simply heard. In fact,
for many people, and as it is situated in this study, music constitutes
something far greater than sound objects. As sociologist Tia DeNora
suggests, “music may serve as a resource for utopian imaginations, for
alternative worlds and institutions, and it may be used strategically to
presage new worlds” (2000, p. 159). DeNora’s idea foregrounds the no-
tion of queer world-making to which I will return later.
Much more than a static object or product, music is a collection of
interconnected activities and texts employed as strategic resources in the
production and transmission of self-narrative and collective belonging.
As Nicholas Cook so succinctly states:
In today’s world, deciding what music to listen to is a significant part of deciding

and announcing to people not just who you ‘want to be’ … but who you are.
‘Music’ is a very small word to encompass something that takes as many forms as
there are cultural or subcultural identities. And like all small words, it brings a dan-
ger with it. When we speak of ‘music’, we are easily lead to believe that there is
something that corresponds to that word … But when we speak of music we are
really talking about a multiplicity of activities and experiences … (1998, p. 6, em-
phasis in original)
Popular musics in particular are intricate systems of social practice and

process usually accompanied by lyrics, dance, fashion, video and other
media texts, and thus popular music necessarily incorporates all of these
and acknowledges that it is not only sonic, but also visual, kinetic and
42 CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity – Selves, Sexualities and Scenes
verbal modes of signification that make it such an appealing – and com-

plex – social phenomenon. Popular musics, argues Lawrence Grossberg,
“cannot be studied in isolation, either from other forms and practices of
popular culture or from the structures and practices of everyday life”
(2002, p. 27). The idea of music as it is employed throughout this book
thus extends beyond the sound object itself. I am concerned specifically
with how music functions as a strategic resource in the reflexive deriva-
tion and performance of queer identities – a practice and process that
necessarily are examined in relation to both the spectacular and the quo-
tidian as a multi-textual site for meaning-making.
Popular music and its associated subcultural and scenic sites have
long operated as critical modalities of symbolic resistance to cultural
hegemonies (Hall & Jefferson, 1976; Hebdige, 1991; Willis, 1978). As a
common site of rebellion, popular music meanings and styles frequently
emerge as a polemic against dominant notions of morality or in tension
with stylistic commodification and ‘mainstream’ sensibilities. Providing
a framework for self-making and social action, popular music remains a
contested realm in which multiple and often contradictory meanings cir-
culate, and to study it is to gain insight into the way people construct
their identities, enact their political and social values, and live their lives
in particular times and places. Concomitantly, to understand both the
musics of queer subjects and how queers have coalesced around par-
ticular musics can tell us much about sexual agency, advocacy and the
stylistic modes of queer resistance and survival.
The purpose of this chapter, then, is to establish a conceptual
framework for understanding music’s significance to queer identity
work. To begin, I discuss music in relation to the ways in which it pro-
vides a context for the formation and elaboration of self-identity. I go on
to establish music’s significance to the project of queer world-making by
reflecting on some of the ways in which music has been theorised as a
queer pursuit, not only connecting music to gender and sexual identity
and desire, but specifically locating its historical significance as a re-
source in queer identity-formation. With specific reference to
subcultures and scenes, I then review notable attempts at theorising ways
in which music and extra-musical style are used to organise and distin-
guish social groupings. Finally, I discuss the need to rethink music’s role
in structuring queer social relations and propose some theoretical possi-
bilities for how we might do this.
CHAPTER 2: Music and Identity – Selves, Sexualities and Scenes 43
Making Selves and Mapping Sexualities
In modern society, music is ever present, used for entertainment, for

ritual, to influence consumer behaviour, to pacify angry crowds and to
incite armies to war. While music serves these and many other purposes,
my primary interest here is in music’s ability to assist individuals to es-
tablish, develop and negotiate a sense of identity. Music is a dynamic
cultural practice that can be individually or collectively made, performed
and consumed. Regardless of whether a person is a maker, performer or
consumer of music, music contributes significantly to our identity work.
According to DeNora, a “sense of ‘self’ is locatable in music. Musical
materials provide terms and templates for elaborating self-identity – for
identity’s identification” (2000, p. 68). Similarly, social psychologists
David Hargreaves, Dorothy Miell and Raymond MacDonald (2002) ac-
knowledge that music is a particularly important communication device
for self-expression and development, allowing us to construct new iden-
tities, and express and transform existing ones. We use music to regulate
our moods and behaviours, and to produce a desirable image of our-
selves both for ourselves and for others: “Our musical tastes and prefer-
ences can form an important statement of our values and attitudes, and
composers and performers use their music to express their own distinc-
tive views of the world” (p. 1).
The production and consumption of music are performative in that
they constitute an assemblage of identity-markers, and it is at the site of
performance where Butler’s thinking about sex, gender and sexuality
intersects most poignantly with theories of music and identity. As Susan
Cusick explains, “performances of a gendered and sexed self are partly,
but certainly not entirely, performances of and through the body”; like
these, music too “is partly (but not entirely) the culturally intelligible
performance of bodies … Musical performances, then, are often the ac-
companiment of ideas performed through bodies by the performance of
bodies” (1999, p. 27, emphasis in original). Music is a way for us to
translate, perform and intensify through our bodies, intimate thoughts,
feelings and desires of the body. The act of creating and performing
music – whether creating or performing it ourselves or listening to it, and
thus performing musical meaning-making operations for ourselves
(Frith, 1996) – results not only in the creation and performance of

sounds but also in the creation and performance of subjectivities.
Acknowledging music’s role in self-structuration is, in Foucaudian
terms, to make sense of music as a technology of the self. According to
Foucault (1997a), such technologies “permit individuals to effect by
their own means, or with the help of others a certain number of oper-
ations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and ways of
being” (p. 225). These operations transform subjects, assisting us in the
attainment of desirable states of being while also providing us with a
means to position ourselves in relation to the constitutions of power and
truth as they operate within disciplinary and discursive systems. As
Judith Peraino points out, technologies of the self are both ascetic and
ethical, entailing “exercise[s] of the self on the self” and “tak[ing] into
account positive or negative feedback accorded by the moral codes or
acceptable ranges of conduct produced in the given matrix of truth and
power” (2003, p. 435). Thus, for Foucault, subjectivity is mutable: a
product of institutionalised domination and the potential for one to exert
resistance towards domination, striving towards an aesthetic goal of life
as a work of art. In his words: “From the idea that the self is not given to
us, I think that there is only one practical consequence: we have to create
ourselves as a work of art” (1997b, p. 262). According to Peraino, Fou-
cault’s integration of ethics and aesthetics:
holds promise for an account of music as a self-practice that cuts across yet engages
symbolic systems, and instigates ethical questions of individual conduct vis-à-vis
discipline and desire within or against in-place social and symbolic structures
(2006, p. 12).
Just as I illustrated in my autoethnographic introduction, music is one

way in which we, as aesthetic agents, can facilitate exercises of self-
(re)creation upon ourselves while negotiating the self we are creating in
relation to normative codes of conduct.
While music’s affect works potently at the level of self-identifica-
tion, the social function of music is inextricable from this. Simon Frith
argues that the “interplay between personal absorption into music and
the sense that it is, nevertheless, something out there, something public,
is what makes music so important in the cultural placing of the individ-
ual in the social” (1987, p. 139). Popular music especially has been an
important resource in forging collective identities for working-class
youth in a post-war Western context (Willis, 1978). Racial and ethnic

minorities, too, collectively express their differences in and through
musical practices and consumption (Bennett, 2000). Music, says Frith:
can stand for, symbolize and offer the immediate experience of collective identity.
Other cultural forms – painting, literature, design – can articulate and show off
shared values and pride, but only music can make you feel them. (1987, p. 140, em-
phasis in original)
It is the premise of this book that gender and sexual identities also col-
lectively articulate subjectivities in and through music. Moreover,
music’s ability to locate the individual in the social has the potential to
provide marginalised people such as queers with a means of transgress-
ing the public/private dichotomy that has long operated as a means of
sexual repression. Music is used extensively in queer identity work to
contest gender and sexual norms, and as I demonstrate in Chapters 4, 5
and 6, this particular function of music is especially important to queers
because it accommodates emotional, physical and sexual expressions
that may be unavailable to them in other expressive forms or in other
aspects of daily life.
Music and Queerness
Music can be queer. It can speak of that which is beyond the normal and
signify that which is often invisible. In her introduction to Feminine
Endings, Susan McClary asserts that “music is … very often concerned
with the arousing and channelling of desire, with mapping patterns
though the medium of sound that resemble those of sexuality” (1991,
p. 8). In other words, music allows us to explore and circulate emotions
and pleasures, to immerse ourselves in the ecstatic, to let go, to speed up,
to slow down, to be overcome and to climax. Moreover, music may be
considered particularly accommodating to queer expressions of gender
and sexuality because of its theatrical and fanciful qualities, its “mystery
and miasma” (Koestenbaum, 2001, pp. 189–190). Reaffirming this no-
tion in his comparison between music and film’s accommodation of
queerness, Boze Hadleigh points out that popular music forms indulge
“all manner of gestures, get-ups, accessories, poses and public an-
nouncements. Sex and reputations are a lot more fluid on the musical
scale than on thin, potentially jagged celluloid” (1991, p. 8). In music,

you can get away with exaggerated and ‘artificial’ effect; you can ‘try
on’ different modes of self-presentation; you can ‘come out’ and reveal
yourself in music, lessening (but not eliminating) the risk of exposing
yourself to and being punished by those who would destroy queer possi-
bility. These possibilities are available because music is a somewhat
mysterious and implicit cultural form (Brett, 1994b; Koestenbaum, 2001;
Peraino, 2006). It is for this reason, argue Sophie Fuller and Lloyd
Whitesell, that music has “provided the accompaniment for confronta-
tions between disparate conventions of social propriety in general, and in
particular, for encounters between diverse idiolects of sexual identity”
(2002, p. 12).
Beyond music being a conduit for the performance of identity, there
are some striking parallels between the experiences of queerness and
music. Like queerness, music is often constructed as dangerous, subver-
sive and deviant – those who make it, play it and intensely participate in
its gratification and circulation of pleasure are often accused, again like
queers, of being weak in moral fortitude, for they pose a potential threat
to regimes of the normal. As the pioneering gay musicologist Philip
Brett once said: “All musicians, we must remember, are faggots in the
parlance of the male locker room” (1994a, p. 371, emphasis in original).
While certain popular music genres and subcultures have, over time, es-
tablished their own regulatory regimes of hetero-patriarchy (as I discuss
in Chapters 5 and 6), there is certainly truth to his claim. Twentieth cen-
tury euphemisms that interconnect musicality and queerness, such as ‘a
friend of Dorothy’ or ‘he’s a little bit musical’ were once commonly
used to describe a person’s (usually a male’s) suspect homosexuality. ‘A
friend of Dorothy’ makes reference to Judy Garland’s character in the
1939 film musical The Wizard of Oz, and plays on the established
knowledge of Garland’s iconic position within homosexual culture dur-
ing the mid- to late twentieth century. More abstractly, the term ‘musi-
cal’ in the phrase ‘he’s a little bit musical’ is intended to replace the term
‘queer’; thus musicality colloquially insinuates a recognisable perform-
ance of queer male identity. The equation of music and queerness has
longer historical roots. For example, in the English novel Despised and
Rejected (1988), by lesbian writer Rose Allatini (who first published the
book in 1918 under the name A.T. Fitzroy), the term ‘musical’ is used as
a coded implication of her character’s homosexuality. Similarly, Brett’s
(2002) work on the history of musicology and sexuality shows how,

during the first half of the twentieth century, Tchaikovsky’s sexual
‘nervousness’ (his homosexuality) was theorised in relation to his musi-
cal disposition.
Music’s capacity to construct, express, stimulate and channel sexual
urges and desires – especially queer desires – renders it both a dynamic
mode of sexual signification and, for the puritanical, a threatening agent of
moral corruption: “From Plato to Artusi to Hanslick, anxieties about
music’s power have been elaborated through metaphors of gender, sexual
difference, and sexual allure”, claims Susan Cusick (1999, p. 478). Brett,
too, argues that “music has often been considered a dangerous substance,
an agent of moral ambiguity always in danger of bestowing deviant status
upon its practitioner” (1994b, p. 11). Since the eighteenth century, music
has been conflated with woman, and the hysteria and weakness she sym-
bolises within the patriarchal order; thus to fear music constituted what
Richard Leppert calls “a fear of feminine eruption” (1993, p. 69) – of irra-
tional, unbridled and uninhibited desire. There has long existed – in the
West at least – a degree of anxiety regarding the effect of music upon
one’s sexuality, as music potentially encourages one to “overstep the
bounds of modesty and deference” (1993, p. 69).
Remnants of musically mediated sexual anxieties are littered
throughout the history of Western popular musics too. Jazz, for example,
induced moral panic due to its supposed ‘primitive’ sexuality, ‘jungle’
passions and provocation of interracial sex and immorality (Starr &
Waterman, 2010). Since its beginnings in the 1950s, rock music and its
stars have regularly inspired moral outrage, making it a target of moral
reformists vigorously opposed to the blatant sexuality and phallocen-
trism performed on stage by musicians such as Elvis Presley and Mick
Jagger (Frith & McRobbie, 1990). Moreover, one only has to consider
the phrase ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’, which insinuates that rock music
propels its subjects towards hedonism, immoral and illegal acts. Add to
this the fact that the term, ‘rock’n’roll’ was originally a euphemism for
sex and it becomes easier to understand how embedded sexuality is in
this form. Panic and moral opposition to popular music icons are still
evident today. Consider, for example, the neoconservative gnashing of
teeth that surrounds the likes of metal performer Marilyn Manson and
his androgynous gender-distorting costumes and supposed incitation of
violence, drug use and sexual obscenities. Or consider the more recent
pop sensation Lady Gaga and her presentation as hyper-femme, hyper-

sexual and a rumoured hermaphrodite. Indeed, spectacular musicalised
manifestations of peculiar, strange, queer embodied obscenities like
Manson or Gaga are considered especially dangerous, disturbing and
subversive because they pre-empt, perform and circulate a range of new
identificatory and disidentificatory possibilities that lie outside of the
given codes of gender and sexual identity and pleasure – codes upon
which society relies for the maintenance of order and power. And they
do so spectacularly and on a grand scale in the most popular and populist
forms of music culture: the pop charts.
Indeed, according to Jacques Attali, musicians threaten the social
order with their visions and practices because “music is prophecy”
(1985, p. 11). Music heralds the future; it is a harbinger of change and
speaks to new realities. If this is so, then it is entirely possible that queer
musics anticipate new queer futures. In other words, the ways in which
individuals and communities structure and imbue meaning in music pro-
vides a way of understanding how people and communities also structure
themselves. Thinking about queer music, and by extension queer coales-
cence around particular musics, offers an insight into queer organisations
of subjectivity, agency, community and activism. Through musical con-
testations of the majoritarian public sphere, we can read the potentialities
of queer world-making, where music instigates a transgression of the
limitations placed upon queerness in what Muñoz calls the ‘prison
house’ of the ‘here and now’, and allows us to imagine collectively and
anticipate the possibilities of queer futures. In his writings on queer uto-
pia and futurity, Muñoz asserts:
We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to
think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of
this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream
and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately
new worlds … Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queer-
ness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, fre-
quently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the
ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness.
(2009, p. 1, emphasis in original)
Music, whether we are making it, performing it or listening to it, assists

subjects to transcend the regularity of the everyday. As a temporal art
form, music literally propels us through time and alters our experience of
ourselves across time and space. If we think of music as something that

“exists only in the continual present of its unfolding” (Malbon, 1999,
p. 76), then perhaps it is easier to understand how music may provoke a
dynamic, forward-dawning, unfixed and timeless idea of selfhood: a self
that exists outside what Halberstam terms the heteronormative “temporal
frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity, risk/safety, and
inheritance” (2005, p. 6). This is a self that can be (re)imagined, assem-
bled and presented to the world via a meaning-making and signifying
system – music – which, like queerness, is already outside of normative
sexuality and sexual restraint. In other words, both music and queerness
bring forth new organisations of the self and our world. And to think
about queerness through music and to think about music through queer-
ness theoretically enables one to enlighten the other in ways that have
not yet been explored.
More than any other form, argues Aaron Lecklider, music – par-
ticularly popular musics from the twentieth century onwards – has “pro-
vided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual
identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated” (2006, p. 117). Indeed,
popular musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have been a
dynamic site of gender and sexual oddity, and a productive site of queer-
ness, providing numerous opportunities for people to explore alternative
forms of self-presentation and to seek definition. With these parallels
between queerness and music in mind, I want to argue further that music
has played a crucial role in the fashioning of queer identities, the theatre
of queer memory and the maintenance of queer culture more broadly.
Moreover, music is a queer tactic of survival. Through music, queer
bodies, subjectivities, desires and social relations are frequently con-
structed, affected and performed, and queer coalescence around particu-
lar musics has made space for, and temporally mapped otherness in,
aggressively heteronormative cultural landscapes. Through music,
queers have made and remade worlds. Perhaps, to non-queer ears and
eyes, these worlds are barely recognisable as scenes and perhaps unrec-
ognisable as anything as coherent as a subcultural genre or form – like,
for example, metal, hip hop or punk. But while we don’t flick through
catalogues in record stores or scroll iTunes browsing the ‘queer section’,
it can also be said that there is no style or genre that does not contain
elements of queerness. The musical aspects of queer world-making are
often overlooked by popular music scholars, subcultural theorists and
even – though to a lesser extent – queer theorists themselves. Instead,

what we more commonly find are one-off accounts of the more spec-
tacular renditions of queerness – for example, David Bowie’s gender-
bending style of glam rock (Hawkins, 2009) or k.d. lang’s queer pres-
ence in country music (Bruzzi, 1997) or Deep Dickollective’s affirma-
tion of black queer identity through hip hop (Halberstam, 2005;
Dunning, 2009). Moreover, because queerness lacks stylistic continuity
and genre parameters, subcultural theory has tended to collapse exami-
nations of music and sexuality into pre-existing and cohesive logics of
cultural style, creating overly simplified queer versions of pre-existing,
otherwise ‘straight’ forms: merely placing the queer as an interjection or
episode in otherwise heterocentric subcultural groupings. In popular mu-
sic and subcultural studies in particular, there is little recognition of the
stylistically and musically promiscuous histories of queerness and mini-
mal attempts to understand how, collectively, these constitute significant
acts of queer world-making.
While, as I established earlier, music is a productive conveyer of
sexual expression, particularly queer expression, I will now argue that
we are yet to see the application of a useful theoretical model that ex-
plains the social significance of popular music in queer terms, and ap-
propriately deals with the histories and logics of queer sexual style in
both local and translocal contexts. In what follows, I suggest that a major
reason for a lack of suitably nuanced understanding of queer music and
subcultural activity directly relates to the limitations of subcultural
theory itself. That is to say that subcultural theory has thus far been un-
able to deal with queerness as a subjectivity, a stylistic modality and as a
form of resistance at the foundation of stylistic interpretation. Instead of
placing sexual differences, queer self-fashioning and world-making at
the centre of collective musical organisations, subcultural theory has
tended to relegate queerness to the periphery. As Halberstam suggests in
her work on queer subcultures, they “need to be reckoned with on [their]
own terms” (2005, p. 154).
Popular Music, Subcultures and Queer Scenes
As I outlined in the introduction, this book is concerned with tracing

queer musical and stylistic histories, and with examining how queer
identities are fashioned and expressed through music. It is also con-
cerned with understanding how popular music is used to mark and regu-
late queer scenes, and with how queer world-making occurs in and
through music and style. In order to put these aims in further context, I
now turn my attention to subcultural theory and its relationship to sexual
style and queer musics. Here, I offer a critique of relative theories relat-
ing to the social significance of popular music and extra-musical style,
and argue for a more nuanced understanding of sexualities and their role
in shaping relationships between popular music and (sub)cultural
counter-publics.
In the early 1970s, cultural theorists based at the Birmingham
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) borrowed and re-
worked the notion of subculture, shifting the application of the term from
studies of juvenile delinquency, local gangs, crime and deviance origi-
nally employed by sociologists from the Chicago School (e.g. see
Whyte, 1943) to youth cultural styles of the British post-Second World
War period. The CCCS subcultural model, most famously developed in
Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson’s landmark text Resistance Through
Rituals (1976), sought to explain the behaviours of style-based youth
cultures such as teddy boys, mods, rockers, skinheads, bikers and punks
which had been developing rapidly in Britain since the 1950s. Imbued
with both neo-Marxist structuralism and labelling theory, and tied spe-
cifically to the social conditions of young, white, working-class males,
subcultures were theorised by the CCCS as sites of resistance that em-
erged as symbolic and aestheticised articulations of disdain for a mono-
lithic parent culture and in contestation to Britain’s socio-economic and
political post-war structures. While conceptualised in a number of differ-
ent ways in Resistance Through Rituals, subcultural theory can be
summarised broadly as a conceptual framework for reasoning a group’s
collective style-based responses to social exclusion, ambiguity, social
conditions or limited potential, allowing for deviant behaviours to be
read as markers of differentiation, opposition and struggle, and thus le-
gitimising or normalising these behaviours in relation to oppressive

social circumstances.
Developing this model in his landmark text on punk, Subculture:
The Meaning of Style (originally published in 1979), Dick Hebdige dem-
onstrates how forbidden subcultural identities are signified through a
limited array of stylistic artefacts; those who do not take part in these
differentiating forms of “semiotic guerrilla warfare” (1991, p. 105) are
implicitly incorporated into this paradigm as complacent unnamed
‘straights’. According to Hebdige, subculture provides a framework for
understanding how cultural objects such as fashion, dance, music, film,
literature and language can collectively be appropriated and inscribed
with a range of new meanings detached from commodified culture, gen-
erating symbolic resistance and dissent. Thus, locating subculturalists
outside of the majoritarian sphere. Consequently, when subcultural styles
become commercialised by the cultural industries through incorporation
back into the ‘mainstream’, they lose their critical potential for symbolic
resistance. Thus, according to this theoretical model, subcultures are ac-
tive, innovative, authentic and substantive sites that exist outside of mass
culture in contrast to the passive uncritical consumption practices of an
essentially homogenised mass cultural mainstream. The CCCS subcul-
tural model is of importance here because it represents one of the first
attempts to consider how marginalised and discontented groups of peo-
ple generate connectedness and collective distinction via the meaning
they imbue within popular music forms and associated extra-musical
texts. Yet subcultural theory is problematic, and for a number of reasons
one must approach the naming of distinct groups of people as subcul-
tures with caution.
There are numerous well-cited critiques of the Birmingham
School’s approach, the most significant of which (at least to my argu-
ment) I will touch upon briefly. Since the 1990s, subcultural theory has
taken an anti-essentialist turn, resulting in what we might generally refer
to as post-subcultural studies. Subcultural critiques, reworkings and de-
bates have exhaustingly been played out across a variety of cultural
forms and contexts in a range of scholarly volumes such as Club
Cultures (Thornton, 1995), The Clubcultures Reader (Redhead, Wynne
& O’Connor, 1997), The Post-subcultures Reader (Muggleton & Wein-
zierl, 2003), After Subculture (Bennett & Kahn-Harris, 2004), Music
Scenes (Bennett & Peterson, 2004) and Youth Cultures (Hodkinson &
Deicke, 2007). The majority of this work argues that the CCCS notion of
subculture both exaggerated the differences between and underscored the
internal homogeneity of those who fell within its groupings, thus pre-
senting an overly simplistic duality between authentic subcultural pro-
duction and mainstream media and commerce. Grounded in structuralist
and oppositional logics of ‘us versus them’ and ‘minority versus ma-
jority’, such an uncritical acceptance of subculturalists as authentic,
outside of and Other to a relatively untheorised and monolithic main-
stream fails to acknowledge that subcultural spheres are not hermeneuti-
cally sealed from one another.
In a postmodern landscape characterised by cultural fragmentation
and the proliferation of consumable products in late capitalism such as
music, fashion or film, our contemporary understanding of a coherent
individual subject with discrete ties to culture is unravelling. As argued
in Chapter 1, the stable subject has now been replaced by a subject
whose identity is understood to be fluid, or at least less fixed and reflex-
ively derived from a multiplicity of sources ad sites whose boundaries
are mutable and permeable (Jameson, 1992). Predicated on the know-
ledge that collective identification rooted in traditional social categories
such as class, race, ethnicity and gender has shifted towards a freedom to
‘choose’ one’s identity and lifestyle, which may be derived from all
manner of consumer goods, images and texts, the internal coherency of
and boundaries between subcultures is decaying.
While the meaning of stylistic commodities lay at the heart of sub-
cultural theory, a number of scholars have raised concerns regarding the
limited attention that the CCCS approach paid to popular music (e.g. see
Bennett, 2000; Brown, 2003; Redhead, 1990). In his study of pop art and
glitter rock, Van M. Cagle points to this noting that while the CCCS
theorists “view music as integral to the homology of the subculture, very
little is said about how and why the music plays a significant role in the
identity-making process of the subculture” (1995, p. 39). Instead, what
we more commonly find in CCCS work is a fixation on visual display at
the expense of musical meaning. As Dave Laing (1985) demonstrates in
his critique of Hebdige’s (1991) analysis of punk, given the limited at-
tention Hebdige gave to music, it thus seemed to be a less important part
of the “stylistic ensemble called ‘punk’” (1985, p. x), the most signifi-
cant part being the visual display or ‘look’ of punk. Furthermore,
Laing’s study is of significance because it demonstrates that musical
taste is not necessarily a modality of class-consciousness but a form of

oppositionality available to a range of social classes, and may in fact be
read as a way to circumvent class rigidity. Indeed, when examining the
social meaning of music in queer terms, the class-based interpretations
of musical style put forward by the CCCS hold no credence. Moreover,
in a queer context it is not only those supposedly counter-hegemonic
forms like punk or rock that are employed politically, but a number of
supposedly ‘mainstream’ forms (such as pop) also acquire political
meaning and provide a context for oppositional social critique.
Although it could be said that the CCCS never claimed its work to be
totalising and transferable, the centre’s approach also dealt rather haphaz-
ardly with the significance of locality. Emphasising the uniformity of style
in white metropolitan contexts, the CCCS consequently overlooked trans-
local exchanges and cultural hybridisation, as well as locally specific
meanings and variations of style in smaller urban, regional or rural set-
tings. Moreover, in a globalising world, the local increasingly is influ-
enced by transnational and disaporic peoples whose cultures impact upon
existing localised forms and subsequently become incorporated into global
mainstreams. Countering the limitations of a global and essentially white
approach to subcultures, a considerable number of scholars have since
demonstrated the embeddedness of musical expression in place, leading to
a number of locally specific ethnographic studies of popular music and
identity from both music-making and audience perspectives (e.g. see Ben-
nett, 2000; Cohen, 1991; Harris, 2000; Shank, 1994). This has led to an
understanding of musicalised identities as necessarily engaged in a dialec-
tical relationship with the social organisations of the local contexts in
which identities are lived out. In relation to the ethnographic work on
queer music-making and scene formations in this study, we will see how
musicalised articulations of queer approaches to gender and sexuality re-
flect both the global mobility of cultural forms and local structures of
feeling.
Youth – possibly the most steadfast determinant of subcultural
membership to date – has also become a contested category within the
post-subcultural debate. The ‘original’ subcultures identified in the
CCCS work are themselves ageing, and thus it follows that some of
those people who came of age as part of a particular subculture are
themselves growing old with that subculture. As recent British studies
into punk (Bennett, 2006), goth (Hodkinson, 2011) and northern soul
scenes (Smith, 2009) have demonstrated, these days it is far less com-
mon for people to resist the music and subcultural investments of their
youth completely. Increasingly, early adult and middle-aged subjects are
finding ways to incorporate traditionally youthful activities into their
ageing lifestyles, and to locate their sense of self in music either through
continuing musical and stylistic investments carried over from their
youth or through new investments that they make in the years beyond
their youth. As both Halberstam (2005) and I (see Taylor, J., 2010, 2012)
have previously argued, queer subcultures, which exist largely outside
traditional kinship notions of family and community, are hotbeds of
post-adolescent music and style-making activity. Indeed, the people I
interviewed in this study represent a diverse range of ages, from late
teens to late forties, and thus fall outside the definition of youth.
Another point of criticism levelled at subcultural theory that war-
rants attention relates to issues of gender and sexuality. Preoccupied with
the more spectacular of leisure pursuits and grand public displays of
stylised deviance visible at a ‘street level’, subcultural theory effectively
precluded certain forms of participation from mattering. Overlooking
those participants whose commitment was modulated, or whose alliances
were less public, compromised an understanding of the functions that
subcultural style assumes in more mundane and everyday ways such as
within domestic settings, or ‘bedroom cultures’ (McRobbie & Garber,
1976). Since the leisure-time and cultural practices of young women of-
ten occurred in the home and thus less visible, girl-centred teeny bopper
culture was relegated to being interpreted as part of the passive main-
stream, and girls were disregarded as private consumers. According to
Angela McRobbie (1980), in the absence of empirical data to tell us how
style produces meaning in quotidian lives, we are left with an uncriti-
cally masculinist bias of what subcultural style means, a bias that reflects
both subcultural machismo and the selective tendencies of subcultural
researchers themselves. However, as Susan Driver (2007, p. 205) notes,
in attempting to respond to subcultural theory’s sexist orientations,
“feminist youth culture approaches have often reified gender parameters
in their attempts to promote female alternatives”, structuring girls’ musi-
cal tastes in binary gender terms. Such an approach, Driver argues,
“leaves little room to consider girls who defy heterosexual expectations
and feminine norms, excluding those girls who take up masculinity as a
site of identification”. Remarkably, among the numerous criticisms of
the CCCS approach to subcultures, there has been little concern about its
failure to account for the styles of sexually ‘deviant’ subcultures.
“Queer subcultures illustrate vividly the limits of subcultural theo-
ries that omit consideration of sexuality and sexual styles”, argues
Halberstam (2005, p. 161). Queer subcultural members routinely prob-
lematise straightforward distinctions in relation to established socio-eco-
nomic and cultural indicators such as sexual identity, gender, age,
locality, race, ethnicity and class. They share a tenuous relationship with
the mass media and because they espouse a form of sexual desire that is
still so abject to the norm, they are far less likely to be absorbed into the
mainstream intact, but rather are poached for their style – like pop cul-
ture’s appropriation of camp – while the significant political work that
occurs at the site of style is discarded. This is not to say that queer sub-
cultures are beyond media influence or do not interact with it in
interesting ways. Queer cultural forms such as drag, for example, regu-
larly poach aspects of commercial culture – pop star identities, songs,
dance moves, style – and put them to use in ways that do not neatly oc-
cupy either a space within subcultural semiotic rebellion or the
commodified cultural mainstream, for they can often operate within both
simultaneously. Further demonstrating the invalidity of a CCCS ap-
proach in relation to theorising sexual minority cultures, Halberstam
goes on to argue that:
Queer subcultures cannot be placed in relation to a parent culture, and they tend to
form in relation to place as much as in relation to a genre of cultural expression,
and ultimately, they oppose not only the hegemony of dominant culture but also the
mainstreaming of lesbian and gay culture. (2005, p. 161)
Therefore, theorising the ways in which music functions as a critical

stylistic resource in queer social lives necessitates the establishment of a
theoretical framework that accommodates these parameters. For this
purpose, I turn to critical work on ‘scenes’.
Scenes
Many post-CCCS reworkings of subculture, such as Paul Hodkinson’s

(2002) study of goth, have proffered sophisticated theoretical alterna-
tives while maintaining the usefulness of subculture as a term that differ-
entiates “those groupings which are predominantly ephemeral from those

which entail far greater levels of commitments, continuity, distinctive-
ness, or, to put it in general terms, substance” (p. 24). Indeed, in the
context of goth subculture, stylistic substance and continuity are more
easily identifiable than in the context of queer subcultures, which I will
come to argue are far more ephemeral and stylistically promiscuous.
Others, however, have disavowed the term subculture altogether. Two of
the prominent alternatives to subculture offered by scholars with a
popular music focus on youth cultural formations include ‘clubcultures’
(Redhead, Wynne & O’Connor, 1997; Thornton, 1995) and ‘neo-tribes’
(Bennett, 1999, 2000). The former can be employed substantively to refer
to localised youth cultures centred around dance music who construct their
own hierarchies of authenticity in term of taste and “for whom dance clubs
and their eighties offshoots, raves, are the symbolic axis and working
social hub” (Thornton, 1995, p. 3). Meanwhile, the latter, grounded in
Michel Maffesoli’s Time of the Tribes (1996) and developed by Andy
Bennett (1999, 2000) in relation to urban dance music, is characterised by
temporal gatherings, superficial affiliations and the fluid stylistic boun-
daries of contemporary youth music taste cultures. Again, both terms offer
a useful framework for thinking through the social practices, sensibilities
and collective identities of young people in relation to music consumption.
However, neither is suitable in the context of this study as neither can ac-
count adequately for music performance, production and consumption
beyond the clubbing experience.
Thinking about cultural identity and musical production and con-
sumption with the concept of ‘scenes’ is one of the more recent endeav-
ours in the post-subcultural debate. In contrast to the approaches men-
tioned above, the scenes perspective offers much greater scope to
account for queer experience, and I argue that it is the most suitable
theoretical alternative for examining queer music practice and music-
orientated collective formations, and for thinking about sexuality and
sexual style. Influenced by work in the fields of cultural studies and
cultural geography, scene has transpired out of the reductiveness and
inflexibility of subcultural theory and the necessity to be able to theorise
beyond the spectacular leisure pursuits of youth, thus situating it as a
useful alternative to subculture for some popular music studies scholars.
Scene constitutes a theoretical and empirical critique of the relationship
that music and associated forms of cultural style assume in everyday
contexts and, in contrast to subculture, allows for a greater range of

styles, sensibilities, practices and forms of participation to be counted as
meaningful. According to Bennett (2004), thinking in terms of scenes
suggests that membership is “not necessarily restricted according to
class, gender, or ethnicity, but may cut across all of these” (2004,
p. 225). But as is evident in Bennett’s statement – and in the work of the
majority of subcultural and post-subcultural researchers upon which
Bennett draws – he too fails to consider sexuality, and through exclusion
one only serves to reinforce and naturalise heterosexuality as a default
category, the presumption being that it is internally coherent within a
scene. To counter this normative critical approach, in the remainder of
this chapter I pay particular attention to the way in which a scenes
perspective can indeed accommodate sexual non-normativity and queer
style, an assertion that I test in my empirical research in Chapter 7.
The scenes perspective has its roots in two prominent texts: Barry
Shank’s book Dissonant Identities: The Rock’n’Roll Scene in Austin,
Texas (1994) and Will Straw’s article “Systems of Articulation, Logics
of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music” (1991). In
Shank’s study, he advocates for an understanding of a scene that is
rooted in localised communities of music-making and spectatorships
where a plurality of styles that are often contradictory all circulate within
the same networks, drawing on the same localised knowledges; thus all
achieve recognition as ‘authentic’ within a local context. Grounded in an
understanding of music’s significance to the local, Shank suggests that a
scene is an “overproductive signifying community” (1994, p. 122),
which, through music and extra-musical style, interrogates and ex-
changes a discourse around local politics and identity in parallel yet
incongruous terms. By way of example, Shank points to the multiple and
conflicting ways in which Texan masculinity is expressed within the
same local context (Austin) via the contrasting genres of cowboy songs
and punk rock. Borrowing from Shank’s earlier work in a suggestive
conference paper, Straw (1991) offers a different perspective – though a
complementary one – on the conceptualisation of scenes. He formulates
an understanding of scenes as distinct from a community or subculture
where “particular social differences … are articulated within the building
of audiences around particular coalitions of musical form” (p. 384).
Within these cultural spaces, “a large range of musical practices coexist,
interacting with each other within a variety of processes of differenti-
ation, and according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross-

fertilization” (p. 373). Straw’s argument centres primarily on the inter-
play between local and global music communities and the degrees of
cosmopolitanism evident in locally specific systems of articulation. In
other words, Straw offers a way to theorise stylistic forms of differenti-
ation that occur within a given cultural space (such as a musical form)
beyond fixed boundaries of locality – that is, translocally. Drawing on
Straw’s (1991) theoretical approach, Keith Harris’s (2000) study of ex-
treme metal scenes is a useful example of the way that thinking with
scenes can help illuminate the practices of music-making and consump-
tion in particular generic, temporal and spatial contexts. Harris
emphasises the term’s flexible application to musical spaces and prac-
tices, and offers a way to examine local/global relationships beyond
logics of homology and stylistic symmetry. For Harris, “scenes include
everything, from tight-knit local musical communities to isolated musi-
cians and occasional fans, since all contribute to and feed off a larger
space(s) of musical practice”. It follows, then, that “everything within a
scene, and indeed scenes themselves, may exist within a number of other
scenes” (2000, p. 25).
While both Straw’s and Shank’s original arguments are grounded in
different logics of locality, what we can deduce from their work is that a
scene produces an array of signifiers that filter through local sites, dy-
namically mediate and synergise local and global aesthetics and, in a
given cultural context, contest homologous cultural structures and coher-
ent narratives of identification. Such scenes may either be local,
occurring in a specific geographical location, or translocal, thus orien-
tated around stylistic and/or musicalised associations across
geographical boarders. It is also necessary to mention here that there is a
third dimension to the scenes argument put forward in Andy Bennett and
Richard A. Peterson’s edited volume, Music Scenes (2004), which
examines scenic formations not only in the local and translocal contexts,
but also in virtual contexts. In summary, they define these three types of
scene as follows. The local refers to clusters of people in a delimited
space who share common musical tastes and “collectively [distinguish]
themselves from others by using music and cultural signs often appropri-
ated from other places, but recombined and developed in ways that come
to represent the local scene” (Peterson & Bennett, 2004, p. 8). The
translocal refers to the ways in which music and styles produce affective
communities that, while situated within the local, interact and connect
with “groups of kindred spirits many miles away” (Peterson & Bennett,
2004, pp. 8–9) who exhibit parallel expressions of musical taste, cultural
identity and style. Like translocal scene participants, those in virtual
scenes “are widely separated geographically, but unlike them, virtual
scenes participants around the world come together in a single scene-
making conversation via the Internet” (Peterson & Bennett, 2004, p. 10).
This could include online chat-room groups and fanzines that share
common stylistic sensibilities, and trade music and images online (e.g.
see Lee & Peterson, 2004). By Peterson and Bennett’s definition, virtual
scenes are controlled primarily by fans rather than cultural producers.
However, in the advent of collaborative audio and video performance
software that allows people to generate and perform audio and video
over the internet in real time, it would be remiss to presume that virtual
scenes are exclusively discussion based. These three ways of interpreting
scenes are not discrete, but necessarily overlap, as one type of scene will
inform another, which in turn will inform another across the categories
of style and spatial contexts.
Queer Scenes: Translocality, Sexual Distinction and World-making
The emphasis on locality that preoccupied many of the early ethno-

graphic studies of music scenes and associated lifestyles has since been
challenged for over-emphasising the separation between the local and
the global. Shared tastes cut across geographical boarders, making
localised cultural networks difficult to contain within delimited space.
As illustrated in this quote from Simon Reynolds, “a noise band in Man-
chester can have more in common with a peer group in Austin, Texas
than one of its ‘neighbours’ two blocks away” (1990, p. 174). Indeed,
with regard to the local queer performers who inform the case studies in
this book, it is evident that they identify and interact with queer histories,
musics and styles that cannot be confined narrowly to their home town
of Brisbane or even contained within national borders. While all the
local artists I interviewed responded to various localised social circum-
stances and national political debates, their sense of what is stylistically
appropriate is as much informed by a desire to express their gender and
sexual subjectivities and their queer world-views. Moreover, in doing
this, they draw on the queer and political histories of a wide range of
cultural forms and styles, thus connecting them to and locating them
within existing scenes and forms of culture-making that are neither dis-
cretely local nor discretely style-based. Rather, their scenic connections
hinge more radically on their identification as queer and on their desire
to affect queer social critique by musically and stylistically traversing
conceptual boundaries around gender and sexual norms – both hetero
and homo – age, race and class-based norms and, in some instances, the
stylistic norms that have come to signify mainstream lesbian and gay
culture. Ultimately, their experiences of gender and sexual Otherness
imbue their cultural production with personal, social and political
meaning in multiple and unique ways that defy spatial limitations and
stylistic coherence.
To account for the interplay among the global communities of taste
on which queers draw, contribute to and redefine, as well as their
weighty political histories and local vernaculars of style, the approach to
queer scenes that I advocate here is grounded in translocality. However,
the notion of a translocal scene needs some adjustment to account for
queerness. As we will see in the localised case studies of queer musi-
cians and performers presented at the end of Chapters 4, 5 and 6, these
people – who are all from the same local scene – draw on an excessive
array of styles, sensibilities and aesthetics that collectively contribute to
an understanding of a queer scene as musically and stylistically promis-
cuous. In an article entitled “Queer Aesthetics”, Daniel Williford (2009)
examines queer aesthetics in visual arts conjuring the notion of a ‘pro-
miscuous image’, where queerness is something that embodies excessive
aesthetic enunciations. He writes: “the political force of queer aesthetics
lies not in a specific announcement but in an effort that keeps ambiguity
at play in relation to social subjectivity” (p. 7). Queerness, he goes on to
argue, reminds us that aesthetic ambiguity is possible; that queer politics
see the ordering logics of normativity as a sign that there is always the
possibility of reordering meaning and that meaning is always in excess:
“excess is the language of queer logic” (p. 13). Style – such as that asso-
ciated with being a bear, a leatherman, a queen, a dandy, a twink, a butch
1
or a femme, for example – is a way for queer individuals to distinguish
themselves, to signal their sexual desires and “criminal intimacies”
(Berlant & Warner, 1998, p. 558), and to locate themselves within queer
communities of desire and social resistance. The signification of queer
desires through style has a long history, one that surpasses any of the
post-war subcultural formations, and as Williford would have it, queer
culture-makers see the possibilities of reinterpreting and reordering the
meaning of style in endless ways. Just as there are multiple ways of be-
ing queer and signifying one’s sexual desire or gender identity through
cultural symbols, the stylistic modalities of queer scenes are also multi-
ple. For the cultural histories and meanings of a range of styles that can
all be called queer are radically different in character. Queer scenes,
then, are not typified by stylistic continuity or ‘substance’; rather, their
distinctiveness is evidenced by their stylistic excess.
At the beginning of this chapter, I pointed to DeNora’s (2000) ideas
on music as a resource for utopian imaginations and a means for creating
alternative worlds and institutions, and I would argue that a lack of
scenic coherence and stylistic excess bespeaks alternative worlds that are
queerly imagined: amorphous, ambiguous and adaptable. Because heter-
onormativity dictates public culture, the sites of queer world-making are
often marginal, ephemeral and subterranean, constructed in the counter-
public sphere through embodied social practices such as music, dancing
and performance. The covert transmission of queerness and the nebulous
points of entry that make queer worlds ephemeral and difficult to recog-
nise have “everything to do with the fact that leaving too much of a trace
has often meant that the queer subject has left herself open for attack”
(Muñoz, 1996, p. 6). The queer world is not made clear for us; rather, we
come to feel it, find it and know it as selves that have already been
shaped by other aspects of culture, style and taste, and we bring these
with us into our queer worlds. The routes that we take to find queerness
are often varied and unconventional, requiring us to traverse the cultural
spaces that might otherwise contain us if we were not, as queers, seeking
to inhabit a queer world.
1 These are vernacular terms commonly used to describe certain somatotypes,

fashions, taste cultures and gender presentations. These terms are defined in the
relevant chapters that follow.
In their article “Sex in Public”, Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner

(1998) argue that a “queer world is a space of entrances, exits, unsys-
tematized lines of acquaintance, projected horizons, typifying examples,
alternate routes, blockages, incommensurate geographies” (p. 558).
Queer scenes structure and make public a “common language of self-
cultivation, shared knowledge, and the exchange of inwardness” through
“mobile sites of drag, youth culture, music, dance, parades, flaunting,
and cruising” (p. 561). The tactics of queer world-making involve
transformation of the self and the social in a way that makes queer
pleasures possible and desirable. Queer scenes are attempts to make
worlds within which queerness is legible. Music is a strategic resource
that both aids self-fashioning and sustains world-making attempts. What
music, style and performance can offer in terms of world-making is “the
promise of transformative agency, grounded in everyday life practices
and locations” (Jagose, 2000, para. 37). For Warner, the idea of queer
world-making is centred around:
the activity we undertake with each other, in a kind of agonistic performance in

which what we become depends on the perspectives and interactions of others,
brings into being the space of our world, which is then the background against
which we understand ourselves and our belonging. I find this a compelling account
because it stresses historical activity and human creativity, but without falling into a
naive view of individual agency or intentionality. The world made in public action
is not an intended or designed world, but one disclosed in practice. It is a back-
ground for self-understanding, and therefore something not purely individual. It is
also immanent to history and practice, unlike ideas of community or identity, which
tend to be naturalized as stable or originary. And it is a language of performativity
that is necessarily contextual and multi-perspectival, rather than the somewhat de-
contextualized picture of performativity that we often find in queer theory, where
the only scene of enunciation is the relation between the subject and a norm. (War-
ner cited in Jagose, 2000, para. 38)
In the next section of this book, I chart the emergence of a select range
of queer sensibilities, styles and musical cultures by first outlining the
translocal histories of these styles and then examining the ways in which
they are taken up in the everyday local context of Brisbane, Australia.
This study is by no means an exhaustive endeavour, and it is not in-
tended to be one. The purpose of the case studies in Chapters 4, 5 and 6
is to provide rich insights into musical modalities of queer gender and
sexual self-making; to provide a snapshot of the kinds of activities that
are occurring in one particular and localised site of queer world-making;

and to illustrate how these local sites draw upon translocal histories of
queer style. Then, in Chapter 7, I return specifically to this scenes ap-
proach and make sense of how, in practical terms, queer scenes generate
meaningful order out of musical and stylistic excess.
Coda
It would be remiss of me not to mention a nagging concern I have with

the terms this chapter has critiqued and defended: ‘subculture’ and
‘scene’. To this end, I must point out the reccurring incongruences I have
noted in the application of these terms inside and outside the academy.
The vernacular use of these terms works largely with exactly the
opposite logic ‘on the streets’, so to speak. While in the context of schol-
arly analysis, I find that the scene perspective is more plausible, within
the scene itself, this word is rarely used as a form of collective reference.
Instead, among the queer scenes I have studied, ‘subculture’ is the most
favoured term of collective self-reference. This is because the ‘scene’ –
or, as one might say, ‘to be on the scene’ – appears to imply a level of
visibility now associated with mainstream gay culture and commercial
gay club spaces, while for those who participate in more underground,
DIY counter-publics, ‘subculture’ connotes the more subversive qualities
of queerness; thus it is this term that is favoured and more commonly
employed in self-reference. For many of the queer-identified people I
interviewed, queer functions as a subculture in the sense that they col-
lectively see themselves as resisting both the stylistic norms of the
commercial gay club scene and the heterosexual norms of dominant
culture. While I do not believe that this is a reason to turn our attention
back to subcultural theory and, as I have argued, the scenes perspective
offers greater theoretical and epistemological flexibility, it is neverthe-
less a terminological dissonance worth mentioning so as to avoid later
confusion.
This is a limited preview provided with the consent of the publisher Peter Lang
INDEX
A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.: 127 assimilation: 24, 25

ACT UP: 77, 142 Attali, Jacques: 48, 130, 215
Afro Sisters: 95 autoethnography: 1–3
ageing music fans: 54–5
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power: see Babuscio, Jack: 71, 114
ACT UP Baker, Roger: 90
AIDS: 68, 95 Bakhtin, Mikhail: 129–30
Alexander, Mary: 103–16 Bakshi, Leela: 180, 198
Boom Bang: 104 Barnard, Ian: 27
Tricky: 104, 107–8, 113 Bassey, J.C. Nimblefingers: 161
Alexander, Matilda: 161, 162, 170, 171 Battle, Kathleen: 92
Allatini, Rose: 46–7 Bayton, Mavis: 152
Alliance Hotel (Brisbane): 181 Beasley, Chris: 32–3
all-male revue: 90 Beat Mega Club (Brisbane): 181, 182,
Altman, Dennis: 23, 67, 196 189, 191, 193, 195
American Psychiatric Association: 21 Bellini, Vincenzo: 73, 78
Anal Traffic: 9, 133–48, 196 Benkert, Karoly Maria: 18–19, 22
‘Age of Consent’ controversy: Bennett, Andy: 52, 57, 58, 59–60
144–5 Berdaches: 86
album artwork: 137–9 Berghain (Berlin): 203, 211–13
approach: 135–45 Berlant, Lauren: 29, 63
clothing: 135 Berlin
distinctive sound: 135–7 gay scene: see LGBTQ culture in
Dump EP: 134–5 Berlin
humour: 143 as queer metropolis: 200, 205
lyrics: 135, 139–42, 147 reunification: 201
performing queer identities: 145–8 Weimar: 201
physical image: 145–6 Berlin Insane: 207
punk influence: 136 Bertha Control: 9, 151, 160–74, 180
sensibility of play: 140 album art: 166, 167
socio-political consciousness: albums: 161
142–3 approach to female stereotypes:
use of bodies: 135 171–4
visual content: 137 ‘Bertha vibe’: 165–6
see also queercore black triangle: 170–1
Angels of Light: 93 female instrumentalists: 165–6
Arnold, Gina: 126 healing role: 162, 163–4
Arq (Sydney): 119, 194 lyrics: 168–70
Ashburn, Elizabeth: 97 mentoring role: 163
244 Index
musicality: 164–5 C.C. the Cat: see Cottone, Clare

performances: 161 cabaret, European: 88
performing queer identities: 171–4 Cabaret: 199
playful approach: 170–1 Café Fatal (Berlin): 208
social justice role: 163–4, 166–71 Cagle, Van M.: 53
see also feminist music-making; camp: 4, 67–81
womyn’s music aestheticism: 70, 71–2
Big Gay Day (Brisbane): 179 as aestheticised political praxis: 9,
Bikini Kill: 154, 155 67, 75, 77
Bimbox: 125 appropriation by popular culture:
bio queens: 9, 85, 96, 98–9, 103–16 67–8, 70
biological sex: 32 association with queer identity: 67
Birmingham School: see Centre for as critique of social normativities: 67
Contemporary Cultural Studies defined: 67, 68
(Birmingham) deliberate: 73
Bitch and Animal: 158 emergence of: 9, 67
Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Joh: 178 evolving meaning of: 68
Black Fag (band): 95 features of camp performance: 71–2
Black Fag (Brisbane): 184–5 gender performance interplay: 72
Bleyle, Jody: 125–6 gender transgression: 74
Bloolips: 93 high: 69, 91–2
Body Line (Brisbane): 181 humour: 71, 72
Bom, Patty: see Preece, Patty in literature: 69–70
Boot Co. (Brisbane): 181 irony: 71
border crossing: 3 location within queer discourse: 68
Bowie, David: 50, 80, 121–2, 199 low: 69, 91–2
Brand, Adolf: 19, 200 performative qualities: 74
Bratmobile: 154 as product of gay oppression: 71
Brett, Philip: 46, 47 as queer parody: 73–7, 131
bricolage: 132 relationship to music: 78–81
Briefs (Brisbane): 184 sensibility: 80
BrisBears (Brisbane): 179 separation of gender from sexed
British Homosexual Reform Society: 22 body: 72
Britton, Andrew: 72 theatricality: 71, 72
Bronstein, Kate: 215 use of parody: 73, 75–6, 80
Brooke, Dita: 103–16, 194 Campaign Against Moral Persecution
Mitzee Burger: 104 (CAMP): 22
Rock Hard: 104, 115 Candy-Ass Records: 125, 126
Brown Sugar (Brisbane): 179–80 carnivalesque: 129–30
Browne, Kath: 180, 198 Cave, Nick: 199
Buckland, Fiona: 189 Centre for Contemporary Cultural
burlesque: 84, 87–8 Studies (Birmingham): 51–6
Bust magazine: 155 subcultural model: 52
Butchies, The: 158 Chainsaw: 125
Butler, Judith: 30–4, 84, 95, 100 Chantal’s House of Shame (Berlin): 208
Index 245
Chauncey, George: 91 culture: 6

Cher: 92 see also dance music; house music
Cherrie magazine: 156 dance music
Chicago School: 51–6 in gay clubs: 4, 189–90
Chisholm, Dianne: 201 dandyism: 70
Cian: 134, 135, 148 Darfur, Blitz: 134, 139, 141, 142
Citizens’ Welfare Committee Daughters of Bilitis: 22
(Brisbane): 179 Davey, Kate: 97
City Lickers (Brisbane): 183 Davis, Madeline: 96
Cleto, Fabio: 72, 73 Dawron, Dora: 89–90
Clinton, Lord Arthur: 69 De Lauretis, Teresa: 26
clothes Dead Man Talking: 184–5
gender-bending fashion: 117 Decadance (Brisbane): 184, 189, 195,
gendered dressing: 83 196
see also cross-dressing; drag DeChaine, D. Robert: 119–20, 128,
Club Phoenix (Brisbane): 183 129, 131–3, 141
clubcultures: 57 Deep Dickollective: 50
Coates, Norma: 149 Deleuze, Jacques: 34
Cockatoo Club (Brisbane): 181, 189 Den, the (Brisbane): 181
Cocker, Jarvis: 80 DeNora, Tia: 41, 43
Cockettes, The: 93–4 Depeche Mode: 199
Community of the Peculiar: 200 Der Eigene, 19
Connections (Berlin): 205 Devitt, Rachael: 98
Connell, John: 197 Dickinson, Kay: 79
Cook, Nicholas: 41 Dietrich, Marlene: 69, 201
Cooper, Alice: 122 DiFranco, Ani: 118
Cooper, Dennis: 123 Dillon, Matt: 138
Core, Philip: 67 Disposable Toy Boys: 99
Corium dance party: 179 Ditto, Beth: 158, 159, 160
Cottone, Clare: 161, 162–3, 164, 167, diva, cult of: 92
170, 171 Diva magazine: 118, 159
counter-culture movement: 22 Dizzygotheca: 196
Crawford, Joan: 92 DJ Neroli: 176
critical insider research: 6–8 Dobkin, Alix: 153, 156
cross-dressing: 83–4; in films: 84, 90 Dollimore, Jonathan: 74
Crystals (Brisbane): 189 Donaldson, Stephen: 122–3
Cure, The: 78 Donny the Punk, see Donaldson,
Currid, Brian: 191 Stephen
Cusick, Susan: 47, 101–2, 112 Doty, Alexander: 36
Cut and Taste (Brisbane): 184, 189, Downes, Julia: 155
195, 196 Downs, Kylie: 138
Cvetkovich, Ann: 159 Downs, Samantha: 134, 135, 146
drag: 4, 83–116
Dahl, Ulrika: 8 anarchic: 93
dance clubs: 4, 190 aural signifiers: 100, 103
246 Index
contemporary roles: 9 Fast, Susan: 79

criticism as sexist: 84–5 Female Menudo, The: 95
as critique of gender performance: feminism
84 lesbian: 152, 154
cross-gender dressing: 83–4 marginal position of lesbians: 24–5
disruptive agenda: 102 postmodern: 15
as form of queer agency: 85, 193–4 second-wave: 15, 152, 154
in films: 84, 90 third-wave: 150, 153, 154
in gay culture: 91–6 see also feminist music-making;
importance of music to: 85 lesbian feminism; riot grrrl;
lesbian: 90–1 womyn’s music
masquerade balls: 91, 179 feminist music-making 9
origins of: 86–103 queer: 4, 149–74
poaching of commercial culture: 56 see also riot grrrl; womyn’s music
role in gay liberation: 95 femininity: 31
underground clubs: 91, 92 see also gender
use of term: 87 Fenster, Mark: 117, 119
see also bio queens; drag kings; Fertile La Toyah Jackson: 95, 125
lip-synching festivals, lesbian: 118
drag kings: 9, 85, 96–8, 99, 103–16 Fifth Column: 125
drag queens: 196 Filiault, Shaun: 187
focus on: 85, 95 Fitzroy, A.T.: see Allatini, Rose
political role of: 92 Fleming, Renee: 92
Draper, Paul: 80 Fluffy (Brisbane): 182–3, 189, 191,
Driver, Susan: 55, 151, 159 193
Drummond, Murray: 187 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley: 149
Duggan, Lisa: 37–9 Folsom Street Fair (Berlin): 202
Dyer, Richard: 71 Fosse, Bob: 199
dykecore: 150, 157 Foucault, Michel: 16, 26, 27–9, 43, 201
see also riot grrrl, riot dyke Franklin, Aretha: 115
Fretmaster Flawless: 161
EDM: see dance music Freud, Sigmund, 19–20
Eldorado (Berlin): 201 Friskies-Warren, Bill: 156
Elliot, Paige: 183 Frith, Simon: 44, 45, 189
Ellis, Havelock: 17–18 Fuller, Sophie: 46
Eltinge, Julian: 88, 90
empirical literacy: 6 G.A.Y. (London): 118
Errol, Bert: 89–90 Gamman, Lorraine: 100
Etheridge, Melissa: 158, 196 Gamson, Joshua: 26
Evans, Caroline: 100 Gang Stars, see Twang Gang
extreme metal: 59 gar’ba’djee’lum: 179–80
Garber, Marjorie: 86
Family, The (Brisbane): 183 Garland, Judy: 79–80, 92
Fanny: 158 Garvey, Shane: 134, 135, 139, 141,
fashion: see clothes 142, 145, 146
Index 247
gay Gossip, The: 158

aesthetic: 187–8 goth: 6, 54
marriage: 36; see also main- subculture 56–7
streaming of lesbian and gay Gray, Macy: 78
culture Grinder (Brisbane): 183
mobilization of term: 22–3 Grossberg, Lawrence: 42
music venues in Brisbane, see
LGBTQ culture in Brisbane
musical norms: 117–18 Hacienda Hotel (Brisbane): 181
pride songs: 23 Hadleigh, Boze: 45–6
rights: 36 Halberstam, Judith: 4, 7, 49, 50, 55, 56,
scene, see LGBTQ culture in 96, 97, 100, 157, 159–60, 174, 186,
Brisbane 209
gay liberation Hall, Melissa: 104
in Brisbane: 178–9 Miss Match: 104
movement: 22–4, 71 Hall, Stuart: 51
theory: 23 Halperin, David: 16, 35
Gay Liberation Front: 23, 93 Hanna, Kathleen: 155, 158, 159
Gayhane (Berlin): 204 Hannay, John: 181
Gaynor, Gloria: 191 Hargreaves, David: 43
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen: 19 Harris, Keith: 59
gender Hawkins, Justin: 80
biological sex and: 32–3 Hawkins, Stan: 80
categorisation: 31 Hays Hollywood Motion Picture
‘doing’: 33 Production Code: 90
norms: 32 heavy metal: 6
trouble: 30, 33, 100 see also extreme metal
as performance: 30–4 Hebdige, Dick: 52, 53–4, 121
socially constructed: 31 Hedwig and the Angry Inch: 199
subversion: 84; see also drag heternormativity 29: as fixed category:
voice in determining: 100–3 29–30; see also homosexual/
see also biological sex; sexed body heterosexual binary
genderfuck: 4, 9, 84, 93, 95, 98–103, heterosexuality: 29
110, 112 heterosexual matrix: 32
multiple performances of gender: heterotopia: 201
99–100 Hex, Celina: 155
Gibson, Chris: 197 Hirschfeld, Magnus: 18, 200
Giffney, Noreen: 35 Hodkinson, Paul: 6, 56–7
Gilbert, Douglas: 89 Holes and Poles (Brisbane): 179
Gill, John: 189 Holmes, Analea: 104, 106–7
Ginoli, Jon: 123–4 Inspector Muff: 104
glam rock: 50, 121 Mr Frisky Bob: 104, 106–7
global communities of taste: 61 Holy Titclamps: 125
GMF (Berlin): 205 homocore: 119, 124
God Is My Co-Pilot: 125 see also queercore, dykecore
248 Index
Homocore magazine 122–3, 125 intersex: 33

homogenization of lesbian and gay see also gender, sexed body
culture, see mainstreaming of Isherwood, Christopher: 69–70, 73
lesbian and gay culture
homonormativity: 34–9 J.D.s: 124–5
frames of: 49 Jagger, Mick: 47, 80, 121–2
Homophile Movement: 21–2 Jagose, Annamarie: 22, 24, 26
homophilia: 21–2 Jarman-Ivens, Freya: 78–81
homosexual rights movement: 15, Jay, Karla: 23
21–3 Jefferson, Tony: 51
homosexual/heterosexual binary: Jeffreys, Elena: 156
29–30 Jeffreys, Sheila: 150
homosexuality Jennings, Tom: 122
attempts to cure: 18 jester: 215–16
biological model: 23 Jet, Joan: 158
congenital: 17–18 Jones, G.B., 124–5
cultural triggers: 18 Jones, Paul: 134, 135, 139, 141, 142,
as deviant: 20–1 146
emergence of: 8 jongleur: 215–16
as fixed category: 29–30 Joyce, Victoria Moon: 215
history of: 15
inversion: 17 Kabuki: 86
medicalisation, 19, 28 Kaminsky, Elizabeth: 85
psychiatric classification: 21 Kathakali dance drama: 86
socially constructed: 19–20 Kearney, Mary Celeste: 152
treatments and therapies: 21 Kennedy, Elizabeth: 96
see also homosexual/heterosexual Khawal dancers: 86
binary Kings’ Ball (Brisbane): 179
Hot Peaches; 93 Kinsey, Alfred: 20
house music, 190–1 Kirsch, Max: 27
in gay clubs: 191 Kleinhans, Chuck: 68, 75, 129, 131
handbag (diva) house: 191–2, 198 Klub Kruise (Brisbane): 181
see also dance music, dance clubs Knuckles, Frankie: 191
Howard, John: 142 krautrock: 207
Hutcheon, Linda: 75, 131;
LaBruce, Bruce: 124–5
identity Lady Bunny: 94, 95
disidentification: 35 Lady Gaga: 48, 191
messiness of: 35–6 Ladyfest: 118
music and: 41–64 Laing, Dave: 53–4
queer as 35 lang, k.d.: 50, 118, 158, 196
Inches magazine: 146 lavender menace: 24
Indigo Girls: 158 Le Tigre: 157, 159
Institute of Sexology: 200 Leather Pride Festival (Brisbane): 179
International Lesbian Day: 179 Lecklider, Aaron: 49
Index 249
Lennox, Annie: 78 Livingstone, JennLH: 94

Leon, Francis: 88 Lolly Factory (Brisbane): 184
Leppert, Richard: 47 Lonc, Christopher: 100
Lez Vegas (Brisbane): 114, 183 Lorde, Audre: 30
lesbian Love Parade (Berlin): 202, 211
feminism: 25–6 L-Tunes (Berlin): 205
music venues, see LGBTQ culture Lurleen: 94
in Brisbane Lyotard, Jean-François: 26
roles: 96–7
sexuality: 25–6
sound: 196 MacDonald, Raymond: 43
uniform: 196 Madonna: 78, 92, 115, 191
use of space: 182–3 Maffesoli, Michel: 57
lesbian and gay studies: 15 mainstream society as mythical norm: 30
Lesbians on Ecstasy: 160 see also heteronormativity
LGBTQ culture in Berlin: 199–214 mainstreaming of lesbian and gay
DIY venues: 199 culture: 37, 186
Kreuzberg: 202–4 Malbon, Ben: 6
marketing stereotypes: 203 Mallan, Kerry: 75
Prenzlauer Berg: 199, 202–4, 205, Mamone, Gina: 156
206–7 Manson, Marilyn: 47–8
scene locations: 202 masculinity: 31
Schöneberg: 201, 202, 205 see also gender
Turkish gay scene: 204 masquerade balls: 91, 179
use of “queer” in Germany: 204 see also Sleaze Ball
utopian potentiality: 209–14 maTHRILLda, see Alexander, Matilda
white gay scene: 204 Mattacine Society, The: 22
LGBTQ culture in Brisbane: 177–99 Mattilda: 38
alternative events: 183–4, 187, McGill, Kylie: 104, 108
194–5 Mystery Bound: 104
commercial venues: 180–1, 185, McGillis, Rod: 75
187, 194, 196 McIntosh, Mary: 20–1
dance clubs: 190–1 McLary, Susan: 45
DIY events: 184, 187, 195–6 McRobbie, Angela: 55, 189
door policies: 184 Men: 159
Indigenous: 179–80 Mercury, Freddie: 79
lesbian venues: 182–3 Merman, Ethel: 92
locations: 180, 184 Meyer, Moe: 27, 74
preference for gay clubs: 188–9 Michigan Womyn’s Festival: 118
Liberace: 79–80 Miell, Dorothy: 43
Lieven, Jo: 104, 108 Millington, June: 158
Bonn Apiteet: 104 Minnelli, Liza: 1, 79–80
Elektra Fying: 104 Minogue, Kylie: 76, 191
Lilith Fair: 118 minstrelsy: 84, 87–8
lip-synching: 9, 99, 100–2, 111–12, 193 Mint (Brisbane): 182
250 Index
Mitchell, John Cameron: 199 Ono, Yoko: 158

Mitchell, Juliet: 20 opera: 73, 78
Moore, Clive: 177, 181–2, 186 Options (Brisbane): 108, 174, 181
moral panics: 47–8 Outpunk: 125, 127
Morell, Steve: 207 OutRage: 77, 142
Morrissey, Steven: 80
mosh pits, female only: 154 Pansy Division: 123–4, 125, 126, 128
Mozart, Amadeus: 78 pantomime: 84, 87–8
Muñoz, José Esteban: 1, 27, 35, 38, 48, para-musical elements: 5
62, 209, 212, 213 Park, Fanny: see Park, Frederick
music halls: 88 Park, Frederick: 69
music pastiche: 131–2
affect and: 44 Peaches: 159, 199
arena for marginalised voices: 49 Pedro, Muriel & Esther: 95
class and: 44–5, 54 Peraino, Judith: 44, 100, 153, 217
as collection of interconnected performance
activities: 41 as challenge to social norms: 216
empowering role of: 218 gender as: 30–4
queerness and: 45–50 ideas communicated through
self-expression through: 43, 217 bodies: 43
sense of self and: 43 of subjectivities: 44
sexuality and: 47–8, 50 performativity
social function of: 44–5 gender and: 33
as technology of self: 43 sexuality and: 30–4
theatrical qualities: 45 vs performance: 33–4
transcendence of everyday and: Peterson, Richard A.: 59–60
48–9 Phelan, Shane: 30, 34
transformative agency: 218 Phoenix, Val: 156
women’s role in, 151–2 Phranc: 125
see also gay musical norms; Planet Positive (Brisbane): 183
performance; popular music play, sensibility of: 128–33
musical theatre Poly Styrene: 153
camp and: 78 Pop, Iggy: 121
popular music
neo-tribes: 57 political role: 54
New York Dolls: 121–2 significance to queer identity: 3, 42
Newton, Esther: 101 as system of social practice: 41–2
nightclubs, gay-identified: 118–19 theatricality and: 44–5
Nihilson, Deke Motif: 122 as threat to social order: 48
northern soul: 54 working-class identity and: 44–5,
54
O’Hara, Craig: 121 see also subcultures
Olivia Records: 153, 157 power and sexuality: 27–9
Omo (Brisbane): 195, 208 Preece, Patty: 161, 162, 164, 170, 171
One Inc.: 22 Presley, Elvis: 47
Index 251
Pride Fair (Brisbane): 144, 168 sensibilities: 128–33

punk: 9, 53–4, 58, 117, 120–3, 153 as subculture: 126, 127
anarcho-punk: 120 theorisation: 128–9
DIY production: 120 zines: 125
focus on self-expression: 120–1 see also Anal Traffic; punk; queer
gender accommodation: 122 punk
hardcore: 120, 122 Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: 186
homophobia: 123 Queer Film Festival (Brisbane): 179
musicality: 121 Queer Nation: 13, 77
post-punk: 207 queer punk: 4, 9, 117, 122, 48
sexuality: 121 as alternative to gay culture: 119
social marginalisation and: 121 identity: 120
see also queer punk marginality and: 117
see also punk; queercore
QNews 183 queer scenes: 62, 176–214
Qsesh (Brisbane): 184 emergence of: 177–8
Queen: 79 local: 9, 176
Queens’ Ball (Brisbane): 179 performative critique and: 209
Queensland Positive People: 183 relationship to place 186
queer role of music in: 176–214
as aesthetic quality: 14–15 sexual identification and: 177
challenge to normalization: 14, 38 translocal: 9, 208, 209–14
counter-publics: 9 transnational 54
culture: 36–7 utopian potentiality: 209–14
deconstructive tendencies: 36 see also LGBTQ culture in
defined: 13 Brisbane
discourse: 27–9 queer self-making: 10
as identity: 15, 35 Queer to Queer (Brisbane): 184
improvisation: 34–5 queer world-making: 9, 38, 216
multiple levels of functioning: 14 role of music: 10, 49–50
as perspective: 15 sites of: 62
as political approach: 14, 36 tactics of: 63
purpose: 14 Queer Zine Archive Project: 125
studies: 26 Queercore Blitz: 126–7
subjectivities: 36 Queeriosity (Brisbane): 180
theory: 9, 15, 26–39, 153 Queerline Media: 202
use of term: 13–14, 27
Queer as Folk: 190 Radical Faeries: 77
Queer Control Records: 125 Rage (West Hollywood):
queercore: 4, 119–20, 123–8 Redhead, Steve: 52, 53
carnivalesque approach: 128–33 Reed, Lou: 121
DIY production ethos: 125, 128, 130 Reich, June L.: 99
focus on self-narratives: 127 remix culture: 190
lyrics: 126 Reynolds, Robert: 23
power of subversion: 130–1 Reynolds, Simon: 60
252 Index
Rich, Adrienne: 25 sexual deviance: 8

Ridiculous Theatrical Company, The: 93 history: 16–26
riot dyke: 9, 157-8 sexual identity
riot grrrl: 9, 150–1, 153–60 labelling of: 34
flexible self-identification: 154 Sexual Offences Act 1967 (UK): 77
outreach to adolescents: 155 sexuality
pro-female stance: 154 as performance: 31–2, 34
separatist practices: 154 biological: 17–18
views on feminism: 154, 155 history of: 16
zines: 151 Kinsey scale: 20
crossover with queercore: 155–60 liberation movement: 24
Riot Grrrl Ink: 156–7 music and: 47–8
Rodger, Gillian: 89 psychiatric interest in: 16–17
Rofes, Eric: 37 sexual labels: 16–17
Rollo, Paul: 134 Shank, Barry: 58–9
Royal Brisbane Boys’ Club: 181 Shapiro, Eve: 99
RuPaul: 94, 95 Shoemaker, Deanna: 128
Rupp, Leila: 87 Show Your Bones (Brisbane): 184, 185
Rycenga, Jennifer: 3 Siberry, Jane: 118
Siegessäule: 202
Samson, J.D.: 159 sister act: 88–9
saunas and cruise clubs: 181 Sister George: 125
Scarlet (Brisbane): 183 Skank (Brisbane): 184, 195
scavenger methodology: 4 skinheads: 122
scenes: 9, 56–60, 176–214 Sleaze Ball (Brisbane): 179
incongruences: 64 Slits, The: 153
local: 59, 60 social protest
translocal: 9, 59–64, 208 music and: 3
types of: 59–60 Sontag, Susan: 70–1, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78
virtual: 60 Spencer, Amy: 119
see also queer scenes Spivak, Gayatri: 158
Schacht, Steven: 85 Splash (New York): 119
SchwuZ (Berlin): 207 Split Britches: 93
Scientific-humanitarian Committee: Sportsman Hotel (Brisbane): 181, 182,
200 193
Search and Destroy: Queer Noises: Stefani, Gwen: 78
207, 208 Steinem, Gloria: 155
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky: 13, 116 Sternweiler, Andreas: 200
Seidman, Steven: 23 Steward, Sue: 121
self-aestheticisation: 9 Stirner, Max, 19
self-articulation: 9 Stonewall riots: 22, 68, 76, 92–3
Senelick, Laurence: 94 Stooges: 121
sexed body: 32–3 straight edge: 120
ambiguous: 33 see also punk
intersex: 33 Straw, Will: 58, 59
Index 253
Streisand, Barbra: 92, 95, 190 experimentation: 109

style: 61–2 gender anarchy: 106
stylistic commodities: 53 gender-troubling performance: 110,
subcultural theory: 50, 51–64 111
critiques of: 52, 53–4, 56 musicality: 109–11, 116
gender and sexuality: 55, 56 Our Tribe: 114–16
masculinist bias: 55–6 playful feel: 105
queer music and: 51 political role: 108
see also Centre for Contemporary queering of popular songs: 116
Cultural Studies reclamation of camp and drag:
subcultural capital: 6 112–13
subcultures: 42 use of rock music: 110–11
incongruences: 64 twinks: 187
as modalities of resistance: 42 two-spirits: 86
see also scenes Uffie: 159
Suede: 78 Ulrich, Karl Heinrich: 17, 18
Sullivan, Nikki: 14, 18, 23, 27, 33–4 utopian potentiality: 209–14, 218
Sycamore, Matt Bernstein, see Mattilda
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Vaginal Crème Davis: 94, 95
76–7 variety: 84, 87–8
gender impersonation in: 89–90
Taboo (Brisbane): 184, 189, 195, 196 vaudeville: 84, 87–8, 10
Taylor, Verta: 87 gender impersonation in: 89–90
T Bar (Brisbane): 183 double-voiced vocalists: 89–90
Team Dresch: 125–6, 157, 158 Velvet Condoms, The: 207
technologies of the self: 44 Velvet Underground, The: 121
Tennant, Neil: 80 Verdour, Mona: 161
Terminus (Brisbane): 180 Villis (Berlin): 206–7
Third Sex: 125 vocalisation: 99–103
Thomas, Allan: 78 see also lip-synching
Thompson, Mark: 94 voice
Thomson, Sheona: 182 role in gender determination: 100–1
Thornton, Sarah: 192 Von Krafft-Ebing, Richard, 17, 18
Tom’s Bar (Berlin): 205–6 Von Thorndyke, Dame Sybil: 179
transnational culture Vu Du (Brisbane): 183
impact on music: 54
transvestitism: 86 Walters, Suzanne: 150
see also drag Warehouse (Chicago): 191
Tribe 8: 125, 126, 128, 157 Warner, Michael: 29, 37, 63
Twang Gang: 9, 97, 101, 103–16, 194 Weinstein, Deena: 6
camp sensibility: 112, 116 Western, Lillie: 89
concerns about sexual identity Westphal, Karl: 17, 18
rigidity: 106, 108, 111 Wet (Brisbane): 181
drag cabaret style: 104 Whiteley, Sheila: 3, 177
empowerment: 105 Whitesell, Lloyd: 46
254 Index
Whittle, Stephen: 99 womyn’s music: 150, 151, 152–3, 171

Wickham Hotel (Brisbane): 118, 181, DIY ethos: 151
182, 189, 193, 194, 195 see also feminist music-making;
Wigstock: 94–5 riot grrrls
Wilde, Oscar: 70 Wowereit, Klaus: 202
Williams, Robbie: 80
Williamson, Cris: 153, 158 X-Ray Spex: 154
Williford, Daniel: 61–2
Willox, Annabelle: 97 yé yé: 78
Wilson, Angela: 157 Young, Allen: 23
Wiminfest: 118 youth, as contested category: 54–5
Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres
Komitee, 18 Zia: 196
Wobensmith, Matt: 127–8
P
opular music has always been a dynamic mediator of gender and sexuality, and
a productive site of rebellion, oddity and queerness. The transformative
c apacity of music-making, performance and consumption helps us to make
and make sense of identity and allows us to glimpse otherworldliness, arous-
ing the political imagination. With an activist voice that is impassioned yet adherent
to scholarly rigour, Playing it Queer provides an original and compelling ethnographic
account of the relationship between popular music, queer self-fashioning and (sub)cul-
tural world-making.
This book begins with a comprehensive survey and critical evaluation of relevant litera-
tures on queer identity and political debates as well as popular music, identity and (sub)
cultural style. Contextualised within a detailed history of queer sensibilities and crea-
tive practices, including camp, drag, genderfuck, queercore, feminist music and club
cultures, the author’s rich empirical studies of local performers and translocal scenes
intimately capture the meaning and value of popular musics and (sub)cultural style in
everyday queer lives.
“Taylor’s revised conception of music scenes and thought-provoking case studies pro-
vide new insights into the ways music contributes to the production and maintenance
of queer social relations. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary book is an essential
read for scholars interested in popular music and queerness.” Sheila Whiteley, Profes-
sor Emeritus and author of Women and Popular Music
“Jodie Taylor makes us sit up and pay attention to the wild experimentations in cul-
ture, subculture and community that can be heard in queer clubs and music venues …
Taylor’s intricate and detailed ethnography makes an important contribution to recent
scholarship on queer music cultures. Claiming that music-making conjures new possi-
bilities for politics and pleasure, Taylor lets us believe in queer rhythm and hear the beat
of an exciting elsewhere. Tune in or miss out ! ” Jack Halberstam, author of The Queer
Art of Failure
J o d i e T a y l o r received her PhD in Musicology from Griffith University, Australia.

She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Sociology at the Griffith Centre for
Cultural Research ( 2009–12 ) , and is currently a Research Fellow at the Queensland
Conservatorium Research Centre. She has published numerous articles on aspects of
queer culture, popular music and ethnography and is currently co-editing three anthol-
ogies on erotic cultures, festivalisation and mainstream music.
www.peterlang.com
ISBN 978-3-0343-0553-2

2 - Playing - It - Queer - Popular - Music - Identity PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2 - Playing - It - Queer - Popular - Music - Identity PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

J o d i e T a y l o r

J o d i e T a y l o r received her PhD in Musicology from the Queensland

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data : A catalogue record for this book

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover illustration : I Am Solid Gold , 2010

ISBN (pb.) 978 3 - 0343 - 0553-2 ISBN (ebook) 978-3-0351-0420-2

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2012

All rights reserved.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS .......................................................................... ix

Part I: The Theoretical Landscape

Part II: Translocal Styles, Sensibilities and Local Representations

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................... 219

sion of gender and sexuality, musical taste is not understood to be in any

I have been overtly queer-identified, a zealous participant in queer

stifle my immersion in these cultural moments. All interviews (with the

Critical Insider Research

I believe my way of being – which I incorporate into and embody in my

Outlining the Book

As the autoethnographic section of this introductory chapter suggests,

1 In an attempt to distinguish between subcultural theory and subcultures as referred

queer theory and establishes an understanding of the theoretical and po-

lar music’s role in queer self-making and world-making, Chapter 8

The Theoretical Landscape

QUEER – Identities, Theories and Politics

Although Queer Nation was a relatively short-lived movement, it was instrumental

quality, a mode of interpretation or way of seeing, a perspective or ori-

identifies the theoretical arguments and political debates that underpin

Sexual ‘Deviance’: A Brief Introduction

nificant publication on homosexuality was by Karl Westphal, a German

The reconfiguration of the habitual sinner into the homosexual as a type

enced by cultural factors. In a study from 1896 entitled Sexual Inversion

partook in these activities should not be punishable by law because

Juliet Mitchell: “Freud’s achievement was to transform the biological

Homophiles, Liberationists and Lesbian Feminists

British Homosexual Law Reform Society and the Australian-based or-

Gay Liberation Front began publicly protesting against the persecution

Strong critics of capitalism, liberationists advocated for developing

According to the liberationist model, the established social order is fundamentally

The notions of erotic freedom, the challenges to traditional gender roles

shifting it from a category of sexuality to a political position – one that

Importantly, as Jagose notes, lesbian feminism productively in-

Power, Discourse and Heteronormativity

In this sense, following Foucault, queer is not a singular oppositional

The punishment or stigmatisation of so-called ‘unnatural’ actions and identities is

Where liberationists attempted to argue that homosexual sex is just as

Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Performativity

In 1990, poststructuralist philosopher Judith Butler published what was

According to Butler, gender is discursively produced by social institu-

In simpler terms, the two distinct gender categories of masculinity and

Here, Butler is arguing that any notion of an original – thus natural or

Gender … is typically interpreted as derived from the body. Bodily (anatomical)

The existence of ‘ambiguously’ sexed or intersex bodies points to an-

Thus performativity is not a voluntary act, while performance (for the

While the constitutions of performance are clearly defined by the

Queer Identities and Homonormativities

Queer theory undermines the binary logic that constructs identities as

Queer theory [has] pointed to the fundamental indeterminacy of identities – of

Queer theory says we do not have to confine our identificatory practices

By calling oneself queer, one is not signifying a specifically inclusive or

10 Disidentification can be thought of as a performative mode of resistance to

tinue to be enforced and from beliefs that such categories are

their negotiation of gender and sexual difference in and through cultural

Radical queer activists argue against the homogenisation of gay identity

Cover illustration : I Am Solid Gold , 2010