Guest post: Punk, Goth, Trans

Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on Too many organisations have let them get away with it.

Our generation had Punk. They practised what we’d probably now call “trolling” and got the desired response. That was their passport to seeing themselves as lonely misunderstood romantic heroes. Then came Goths and most people were a just little wiser and pretty much let them get on with mooching about in cemeteries at midnight and writing bad poetry. We’d been there. Then came what? We’d reached a point when nothing anyone could do in terms of presentation or “lifestyle” could shock or even slightly perturb the older generations. We, who had become those older generations, were all too busy desperately denying the reality of our ageing bodies.

So what do you do when dying your hair an unnatural colour and weighing down your body with a jeweller’s case of heavy metal isn’t getting a response? You make demands – inherently unreasonable demands. Except the generation which is still young enough to be successfully denying the reality of their bodies but has gotten their hands on the mid-level reigns of power, is way ahead of you. They’re actually happy to accede to unreasonable demands – indeed it’s a badge of pride(!), because postmodernism, or something, though mostly just to deny that they’re no longer young romantic heroes and have gotten hold of the power they profess to despise. And if it’s just the rights of women in prison (or women in general) that need to be sacrificed well that’s not a sexy issue, and won’t look good on social media, and almost certainly will never affect them or anybody they know (until one day they look in the mirror and realise they’re old and everyone else sees them as old and are plotting to push them out of the way, and no they can’t identify out of being old but that won’t happen, surely not?).

So the reasonably well-off twenty-somethings get to play the romantic hero and be a dick to women on the internet and everyone else gets to be a dick to women on the internet. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. Well, it could be if they could just get their head around where all the shouting is coming from.

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