| |
|
But that's not about being a goth, is it? It's about being a huge hairy cock...
First up, I always thought "mundane" was the most irritating term - a means by which people could group together everyone who didn't want to join their little club as unexciting, dull, stupid and, god damnit, not as damn sexy as themselves. Given that I first encountered the term being used by a particularly malodorous Comic Book Guy in a Best of Queen T-shirt, the irony seemed a little too close.
Subsequently, I've been far more annoyed by the term "pikey", to describe overweight, uneducated, tab-smoking commoners, presumably to distinguish them from the overweight, undereducated, tab-smoking goths who use the term - see the lovely Smogo. But this isn't goth behaviour - it's git behaviour, and is just as common on the other side of the barricades.
The safe space issue is a more complex one - and PM, I think my favourite comment on the transpeople issue is from Deva, who said of Ladyfest that it is probably the duty of the organisers to continue to exclude transwomen and the duty of the trans community to continue protests against their exclusion. In general, though...goths, and fetishists, and gay couples (etc) can get a pretty rough time if they act as they wish in the outside world; people see them as different and react accordingly, often with abuse or violence. I myself have a bad habit of declaring "Goth! Pointy pointy goth!" or "Oh, look at the lovely Spooky Kid! Isn't he just the princiest Prince of Darkness!" when I see our darker brethren, purely out of habit. I see it as a joyful celebration, but it might be a bit disconcerting and I have tried to tone it down.
Point being goth clubs, or fetish clubs, or gay clubs, are there for good reasons; one being perhaps that the rest of the world can feel like a casual, vanilla, or straight club enough of the time to make paying for a bit of shared space where you can let your hair down with others of a similar mind an enticing option. Which is why having somebody apparently belonging to that club in the middle of your safe space might be a bit discombobulating, especially if they have numbers and are looking lairy.
So, if you are in the middle of someone's safe space, and not sending out the right signals, it is incumbent upon you to be polite and not to get upset if people are a little confused at your presence. That is, after all, what they get to do every time they pass a non-goth in the street. Likewise, as Gothic Miss Manners insists, goths should be friendly, polite and informative if non-goths ask about their outfits or their subculture in the street. Part self-preservation, part simple politeness. In no part rocket science.
However, non-goth partners of goths seem to do OK at Whitby (I'll dig up a photo gallery if I can); possibly because they are wearing non-goth clothes because they happen not to be a goth, rather than because they are trying to make a point, or because they have come to peer at the freaks, a sad but fairly obvious reason for both door codes and suspicion of MissLenore's kind. |
|
|
.