Pierre Bouvier

Simple Plan

by Emma Caterine

I was terrified. If I hadn’t already humiliated myself by unknowingly saying it in front of Against Me!’s singer Laura Jane Grace, I wouldn’t be as blatant about it here. But since I’ve already dug that grave, I’ll go ahead and be honest.

I grew up with a lot of musically great, albeit often sexist, corny, or racist, punk bands. I listened to Rancid and AFI and NoFX. Some of these bands (hi NoFX!) in retrospect were always terrible choices that I mostly made because it was the cool thing to do. A band like NoFX or Rancid always had bro-tastic or boring shock rock lyrics that I just couldn’t sing along to because even at that time, I identified as a feminist. But Against Me! was different. Their lyrics were about anarchism. And not Sex Pistols-type, boring fuck-the-system shit; Against Me! was talking about the WTO protests and the struggle for the 8-hour work day. And they were ballads. Genuine narratives that gave you feelings about the characters in them. I didn’t just want to sing along, I wanted to scream along! And for what I perceived as an all-male band, they sure seemed to be able to portray women in non-sexist and even empowering ways (little did I know…).

I lived in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for most of my life. Punk was this distant thing I could sometimes see at the Peppermint Beach Club, but for the most part punk was whatever popped up in the music store at the Patrick Henry Mall. I spent a lot of time there in high school. One day I was there around the time I broke up with my first boyfriend. I was in a pretty shitty mood, especially since the whole “I like boys” thing hadn’t gone super well with my mom or the local contingent of wannabe rednecks at my school (I say wannabe cause I went to a prep school and their parents weren’t fishermen or farmers, but car dealership owners and high-ranking military officers). But it was ok: I had just gotten paid at my shitty job at my shitty corporate pizza place and was ready to buy a shit ton of music. And what do you know? Three new albums by some of my favorite punk bands! AFI, Against Me!, and Bad Religion. “Thrash Unreal” was the title of the Against Me! album. Those who are familiar with these kind of bands are cringing at this point.

I tried really hard to like them. I tried so hard. But I was already starting to get into 80’s hardcore and musically Against Me! was going in the opposite direction. I know the lyrics to the song “Thrash Unreal” really well because every other song on that album was pretty much unlistenable for me and, again, it is about a strong female character. I fantasized a lot about being the girl in that song. After all, lines like “There ain’t no Johnny coming home to share a bed with her / And she doesn’t care!” were pretty pertinent to my too-gay-for-girls, too-straight-for-guys, too-dysphoric-for-sex-of-any-kind state of being.

This is also when the accusations about Against Me! started to surface: That they were sell-outs. That they didn’t care about their original fans and just wanted to please the readers of Alternative Press. I, being a high school punk, immediately joined in spilling the haterade. I’d blame the album in my iTunes on my brother. I’d say the CD was so bad that I threw it out of my car. I’d say that the song with Tegan and Sara made me dislike them even more (and then later that night I’d listen to “The Con” and cry and say I was sorry over and over).

In retrospect, I feel stupid about being so harsh for that album. But “White Crosses”? First, they released it through Warner Bros. And of course, the song that pissed me and so many of my friends off was “I Was a Teenage Anarchist.” Let’s be real here: I don’t identify as an anarchist anymore. But I do have a lot of respect for principles in anarchism and my friends who are anarchists. I certainly don’t look down on them or shake my head and say “Ah yes, I remember being a teenager…” And that was what that song was. It actually hurt a lot more than most of us could admit. I gave up on the band at that point. It seemed like a point of no return.

I came out publicly as transgender my last semester of college, in March 2012. I had been out to a lot of my friends by that point, but it’s when my life started to become utter bullshit. Williamsburg, Virginia may mean funny colonial-era hats or retirement homes to you, but for me it meant getting yelled at every day biking to school or work. It meant being laughed at by other students on campus. It meant having a car try to run over me and a man chasing me before throwing and hitting me in the back with a 2x4. I still have that scar. Laura comes out in May. I pretended to be into it because all my queer friends (all cisgender) were super into having a new punk trans woman celebrity and I didn’t want to be left out. But I was so angry at Laura Jane Grace for having my identity but successful, prettier, and more politically correct. I knew from then on I’d be compared to her always. I probably got asked if I had heard about her 50 times that month. It made me want to tear out my hair, but luckily, I was too concerned with growing it out long.

Then I moved to NYC. And there were tons of trans women, and even other trans women punks. I started to slowly calm down in most of the areas of my life: my tendency to call out even the smallest incidence of prejudice with fury has subsided considerably. And I started to wonder: what if the next Against Me! album is awesome? I don’t want to be late on that. It could be historical. Laura could be my generation’s Jayne County or at least our Dana International. I wanted it to be good. I wanted it to be an album good enough to shove in the faces of every transphobic punk dude and say “Fuck you, this is better than your crap anyways.”

And “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” doesn’t disappoint. Like some sort of punk phoenix, its validity has risen from the ashes. Sure, the music has retained a lot of the poppiness even with the much-appreciated throwbacks to the “Searching For A Former Clarity” sound. But the lyrics mean something other than nagging at those damn teens. And it is catchy as fuck. Even one of my friends who generally didn’t like the album had to admit anytime “True Trans Soul Rebel” came on, it was stuck in her head for the rest of the day.

Just some things to point out in reference to other music reviewers. Though they have learned to be more careful with the trans women language, the writers just don’t know how to write about this album. They fixate on how Laura’s voice “hasn’t changed.” Are you kidding? Have you even listened to another Against Me! album? But of course if there isn’t an octave higher voice change, clueless writers assume that none has happened at all. They also miss the points of a lot of songs. The confusion around how happily married Laura could write “Unconditional Love” just shows a total disconnect with what life is like for trans women. Sure, men write songs about how women love them but they’re just too hopeless and they’ll laud it as dark and edgy: but shouldn’t a trans woman just be grateful that someone loves her?

“Transgender Dysphoria Blues” is a very well put-together album. Although “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” doesn’t rank among my favorite tracks of the album, it is the perfect opener. It sets the stage of “I’m going to sing about me, about women like me, and you’re going to shut up for once in your life and listen.” So even though the song is all about insecurities and feeling like you’ll never look the way you want to, the power of the vocal delivery along with the driving guitars and then double time marching pace of the song give it an urgency that most songs about anxiety simply don’t have it.

So let’s get to what “Unconditional Love” meant to another trans woman. I heard a lot of my abusive ex in this song, but that’s cause I heard every relationship I’ve had since coming out in this song. Whether it is boys or girls or genderqueers or whomever, I’m always treated as this vulnerable puppy that the power of their love is protecting. But your love won’t save me. The future is an always ice-cold nightmare, and if you can’t get used to that you need to get out. I certainly felt this way much more with my earlier relationships, when not being able to pass (appearing to be cis) meant I faced far more abuse on a daily level. But I still am trans every day. It doesn’t go away. Love me as a person in constant danger, not as someone who you somehow can save from it.

The pair of “Dead Friend” and “Two Coffins” was what really blew me away with this album. “Unconditional Love” and “Paralytic States” are my go-to’s for a quick morning sing along before work, but these were songs that pushed Laura to depths of sadness that Against Me! had previously not reached. “Dead Friend” is what you’d expect as a eulogy by Laura Jane Grace, complete with shouted “God damn”s in the chorus and poetic lines like “How could I not have guessed she would fall in love with the first boy she kissed in a casket?” delivered over very pop punk music. But the second set of verse lyrics make you realize this isn’t another “Pints of Guiness Make You Strong”: “She waits for you to haunt her, / She sleeps with your ghost at night in bed.” This sort of literal intimacy with death, the emphasis on this private moment of living with your friend’s death. Against Me! always had real-feeling characters in their ballads, but this song feels like I’m feeling Laura’s own pain. I would like to think this change is from transitioning: many of us are able to share feelings we never were before.

As I lay on my bed listening to the album for the first time, I was focusing hard on trying to hear the lyrics to “Dead Friend.” I lost a few friends myself in the past couple of years, some in truly terrible ways, and the process of grief and acceptance never ends, so when something like “Dead Friend” comes into my life I immediately mine it for my own catharsis. So perhaps it was this concentration, along with the seamless editing, that plunged me immediately into “Two Coffins.” And holy shit, the room got cold. My mind filled with fog, my eyes filled with mist, my joints fidgeted nervously. I was back. At this funeral, at that funeral, at the bookstore where I heard the news for the first time, to the moment I broke down crying cause I had canceled plans we had a couple of nights before. But it felt very “I’m being guided by the Punk of Funerals Past” rather than “TRIGGERTRIGGERTRIGGER.” And revisiting those moments needs to happen. Being taken there, as much as it did and does push me, made this album special to me in a way that no Against Me! album ever has been. A friend asked me what I thought of the album and I immediately said “It might be my favorite Against Me! album.” They were stunned, knowing my zealous loyalty to “Reinventing Axl Rose” and “As the Eternal Cowboy.” But as great as those albums are, they are great punk albums. This is a great album for me, and for many trans women like me: it’s our album.

But that connection made the low point of the album even lower. I’m a community organizer, specifically working with folks in the sex trades. So when I got to “Black Me Out” and heard the lines “I don’t want to see the world that way anymore/I don’t want to feel that weak and insecure/As if you were my fucking pimp/As I was your fucking whore.” Laura, I love you, but really? You, as this album’s earnest lyrics demonstrate, understand that stereotypes are bad. So why are you pushing this tired analogy of the pimp-whore dynamic? For starters, I doubt you have any idea whatsoever what it feels like to be pimped. But the big issue is that, as I said, you are clearly making an effort to write for trans women’s experiences. Which is awesome. And a lot of us, like myself, have experiences in the sex trades, few of which can be simply described as being insecure and weak enough to have someone sell us for sex. You don’t need to write about every trans woman’s life: that’d be impossible. But you should also try your best to not throw any part of this community, like those who do sex work, under the bus for a cheap lyric.

You should listen to “Transgender Dysphoria Blues.” It is historic, beautiful, and you’ll love singing along to it. I’m sorry I ever doubted you Laura and Against Me!: I hope this album is just the first to come of many like it.

—

Emma Caterine is a sell-out who has gotten kinda desperate for affirmation from younger trans women that she’s still cool (she’s not). Though she spends most of her time community organizing with Red Umbrella Project and writing non-fiction about police brutality and prison abolitionism, she also pens the occasional sci-fi story, memoir piece, or not-so-subtle mockery of Buzzfeed style articles (see Maximum RocknRoll #368).

You can reach her at [email protected] or @emmacaterine on twitter.

Finished this punk rock ball of adorableness! ⚡️

I’ve decided to try out the wet paint brushes on Art Studio and I think this looks pretty good! Galarian Zigzagoon and it’s evolution is becoming one of my faves cause they’re all so cool!

dead kennedys headers for twitter :)

•like/reblog if you save pls

Debbie Harry

Debbie Harry

lunamoonarts2:

This is how I feel today in this heat

Elvis Costello

Quote of the Day: November 9, 2020

“Can a mere song change a people’s minds? I doubt that it is so. But a song can infiltrate your heart and the heart may change your mind.” ~ Elvis Costello