Don't Punch Me in the Face

There's this really bizarre phenomenon happening in the New Orleans underage punk scene right now. Me and my friend Candice found out about this local band called Vapo-Rats. They are an old-school sounding hardcore band comprised of 17 year old boys. We were initially excited about them because they're so young, because they had a black member, and because the recordings they made with their old guitar player (the black kid) were very reminiscent of Void.

Candice invited them to play a show with her band Necro Hippies, and the show was awesome except for one thing. Near the end of their set, Vapo-Rats' bass player punched this girl in the face! I was standing up close and saw the whole thing. I saw her fall back rather theatrically with a smile on her face, and almost instantly jump right up to shake the bassist's hand. My initial shock at the blow was quickly replaced with an eye roll; to me it seemed like seventeen year old horseplay.

After the show, some older punks were talking about what had happened and lots of people were understandably upset. To others at the show, this behavior was completely appalling and intolerable. I went up to the bass player to ask him what was up and to tell him how it made people feel to see that kind of behavior at a show. I told him that to me it seemed like a joke but that it didn't look that way to a lot of other people.

Almost immediately, his girlfriend jumps in between me and bass player/girl puncher dude (Why do girls do this? Your dudefriend can speak for himself!) and starts to explain, “Thank you for understanding it's a joke. They play around like this all the time. She even asked him to hit her. See, look at them.” At this point, I look over to see the girl that got punched in the face pummeling the bassist in the stomach with her fists. It's obvious that they're just playing around. Bass player's girlfriend continues, “Sometimes people just wanna get punched in the face. I mean, isn't it sexist that guys can hit guys but guys can't hit girls?”

Good lord. What kind of logic is that? Why is that the way that this girl and her friends are choosing to exercise their power as women, and is that even what's happening here?

This woman named Breonne who is the singer in this local band named Small Bones, who also played that night, had a really interesting take on the whole thing. I've had the good fortune of being in non-violent punk scenes that were pretty gender balanced and woman and queer positive most of my adult life. Breonne came up in a very male-dominated scene and this experience made he question the nature of these girls' consent. Looking back, she realized that, yeah, girls might say, “I want you to hit me,” but they say so only because there's this pressure to prove themselves to the boys in their scene. Please, if you are a person of any gender and you exist in a straight boy-dominated punk scene, think twice about the inherent pressure of being “one of the guys” and how that pressure informs your behavior.

At the Necro Hippies show, there were more girls in the pit than I ever saw at the shows I went to when I lived in DC. I felt like I couldn't really superimpose my own experience on the experiences of these kids because it looked so different to me, at least on the surface. As a girl watching scrawny white boys get naked and mosh to Pg. 99 in a church basement in DC, I felt like a complete outsider. I was probably only there to watch The Others (long defunct girl-fronted pop punk from DC) or one of Katy Otto's old bands, anyway. Another huge difference is the amount of underage drinking that goes on here in New Orleans that I don't remember seeing nearly as much in DC, where there was (and hopefully still is) more of a straight-edge culture in the punk scene.

I finally took a side on this whole issue a few weeks later when me and Candice had some folks come and pay us a visit from Pensacola. We heard that Vapo-Rats was playing a show downtown and we decided to walk over and check it out. We had missed Vapo-Rats but the show was still going on. There were tons of kids, and some of them looked really young, like way younger than 17. This pretty, long-haired girl who was obviously wasted to oblivion kept coming over to us to talk. She was nice but she was sooo drunk.

We didn't pay to get in. We were just peaking through the back door at the spectacle inside, and I'm glad we were being total deadbeats that evening because I wouldn't have wanted to support what I saw with my hard earned cash. In the middle of some band's set, this dude raises his hand, halls off and slaps this girl who is obviously shocked and hurt. It was loud and it was hard and I immediately felt stunned and disgusted. Twice is enough for me to see it as a pattern. I turned around and left right away.

What the fuck, New Orleans?! Candice said she saw the girl go back and shake his hand as if it was all an agreement, but she also noticed that the girl had also turned around and left the space after she was hit, as if her first impulse was to just get the fuck out of that place. This time, it felt out of control, and not at all like horseplay. And both times I've witnessed it, it was women being assaulted by men, not vice versa, and not even men fighting other men. FUCK THAT.

I think the real reason I wanted to talk about this is to tie it into a larger conversation about accountability in the punk scene. Instead of boycotting their band, Candice set up a date with the singer in Vapo-Rats and she broke it down for him. Violence, particularly violence against women, isn't cool (unless it's self-defense, which is another topic for another day), nor is it cool to write stupid shit about clowns raping people in the liner notes of your CD. The singer, who wasn't directly involved in any of these situations, but who does have an influence on how his band's shows go down, was really receptive to Candice's comments.

I really feel like Candice did the best thing for the situation. I'm sure her reaction would've been much different if they were 25, or even 20 for that matter. But the fact is, they're kids who are making mistakes and who will hopefully learn from them.

I feel like if you're still involved in the punk scene as you get older, the best thing you can do with all of your experience is be kind of mentor or role model to younger kids who are just getting started. I know it sounds cheesy, but I remember being much younger, dealing with calling out a rapist in our community, and really feeling like it would've helped to have some advice from someone older who had already been through it. We had zines written by other women who had done what we were doing and we had each other, but we were all in our young 20s, and militant as fuck. We couldn't see both sides, the way I can now.

As a person who has both called other people out publicly on their behavior and been publicly called out on her behavior, I have so much to say about the process of accountability particularly within punk and radical communities. I am also very curious about how all people, but especially women and queers are handling their shit across the country and the world. If you're trying to tackle issues of violence, assault, abuse or rape in public or personal settings in your community I'd like to know about it. I also have so many things to say about what I call “call-out culture” within punk rock and when and how it should be used, but I think I'm going to have to save those comments for another column.

People like to say, and I myself has said, that the same injustices that are found outside of the punk scene can be found inside of it as well. I still think that's true, but let's not lose perspective. The fact is, many punks hang out in a pretty insular world and have no real gauge when it comes to comparing their interpersonal struggles with those that are happening in “the real world.” I guess all I'm saying is that even though I always want to see us confronting hard issues head-on, I also want to see less drama and judgment and more understanding and compassion when it comes to resolving conflict in our communities.

This is one of those columns where I feel like I've left so much unsaid but I promise to revisit some of this stuff later.

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