If you haven’t been online in the past few days / have lived under a rock up until the point that you read this, you may not have realized that the usual clutter that makes up the typical newsfeed has created a smokescreen of sorts. The tacky memes, the occasional “I got a new phone” statuses, and the disgusting baby pictures that we all know you don’t care about have hidden the remnants of an explosion in music news which occurred this past weekend. From Saturday to even today, the Internet has demanded one thing: Bay area band Whirr’s collective heads on a platter.
While the majority of our readers are up to date on the issue, I’ll compress what happened for those who remain unaware. Whirr’s Twitter account, known for its sophomoric and extremely inappropriate, misogynistic content tweeted a slew of transphobic messages at hardcore band G.L.O.S.S (Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit) on Saturday.
G.LO.S.S. is made up of mostly transgender and queer individuals who have created a very loud, very audible name for themselves through their aggressive style of music along with their empowering messages aimed at uplifting the queer and transgender populations. The debacle is featured below. (disclaimer: these tweets have since been removed)
Obviously, this did not go over well for Whirr. In the past, their use of words like “pussy”, “bitch”, etc., have cost them a number of fans. But for the most part, the majority of fans seemed to chalk these childish attempts up to mere cries for attention. This time was different.
Social media exploded, with users tweeting at both Run for Cover and Graveface Records (Record labels that have both worked with Whirr) to drop Whirr immediately from their rosters for their blatant transphobia and misogyny. Both companies responded with very clear disgust at Whirr’s actions and evicted them from their respective labels. Run for Cover is in the process of making a sizable donation to an as of yet unspecified LGBTQ charity and Graveface posted a link to their twitter where people could donate to www.transequality.org. Whirr apologized the next morning, using a very poor, classic thirteen year old boy sort of excuse by saying “a friend of theirs did it”. No one bought it, and the band are now the equivalent of Indian Harijans (untouchables).
Easy enough right? They got what they deserved, so now everyone’s happy and can go about their business. Ahh, but not quite.
G.L.O.S.S. is not the only musical group that has been the target of a hateful attack targeted for their sexuality or femininity. When Chvrches’ Lauren Maberry posted a screenshot of a message that a fan sent the band’s Facebook page asking that fans stop sending messages like this, she found herself to be on the butt end of a wave of disgusting attacks. Comments like “Act like a slut, getting treated like a sluy [sic]” and “I have your address and I will come round to your house and give u anal and you will love it you twat lol” invaded the post, causing her no small amount of stress.
This is the trademark of what I would dub the “harmless internet persona”. Through the guise of the internet, users and fans are able to don a mask of anonymity or as one who can easily be lost in a crowd, saying just downright rude things to people, but following it up with a “just kidding” or an “Oh, I didn’t really mean that”. My favorite is “I would never say that out loud”.
Meredith Graves of hardcore band Perfect Pussy dealt with a similar issue at a show in Dallas. When Graves’ requests to remove a lewd flyer for one of their shows were denied, Perfect Pussy played a very furious three song set, at which point she ended the music to talk about the ways in which women have to deal with the sexist attitudes that are directed to females in every aspect of their lives, even in music.
“We shouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable, just because you come to a hardcore show, you expect to see tits… As women, we’re taken less seriously at the work we do because we work hard. When you see tits on a flyer you feel lonely, weird and isolated.”
Let us deviate from the music world for a moment. I came across an article from Al-Jazeera written by Alison Booth in 2013 which examined an issue brought up by the then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard who “gave an impassioned response to the leader of the opposition for his repeated use of sexist language late last year.”
Booth goes on to examine the issue of why women in power are frequently subject to more “personal and vitriolic criticism” than men in power experience. Women, POC, and LGBTQ that have managed to obtain this respect and this level of credibility have done so through hard work and talent. Booth asks “And these are desirable traits in a leader, aren’t they? Women who are in leadership roles are likely to have these characteristics in abundance, given that it is much harder for women to rise up through the hierarchy than it is for men. So why should they be vilified?” (Let us also accept the fact that a band does hold a certain amount of power in their own realm.)
But how is this caused? Misogyny is not an issue that is born in a vacuum, neither is homophobia, transphobia, nor racism.
We are the inevitable cause of this hatred. The way that we are raised, our environment-all of these factors reinforce our actions and our prejudices. It’s difficult to change the way we are brought up and the way we are conditioned every day to act but simply put, hate is hate. It’s a very clear cut statement and there is absolutely no way around it.
In closing, I am not here to dictate who you should and shouldn’t listen to. If you want to continue to support a band like Whirr, go right ahead. I know I’m in a minority when I say I actually did enjoy what they put out to a degree, but I have no interest in continuing to pretend to like individuals that maintain an attitude of such trivial ignorance. Support the message that G.L.O.S.S. perpetuates. Use your voice and call out these ignorant behaviors out when they make themselves apparent. The events that took place this past weekend proves that the voice of the public can create changes. Fuck this societal mold that we are told to fit into. Hatred like this has no place in music.