Perverters of Culture — Homocult, Queercore and Public Space (Chapter 2: Queercore and Anti-Assimilationism)
This is part 4 of the dissertation I wrote for my Masters in art history with the Open University, which I completed in October 2022. It’s also the basis of the PhD I’ll be starting at the end of 2023. This is pretty much exactly as it was when I submitted it, at some point I hope to do some posts/videos talking about the issues it explores in a less academic/more accessible style. I’ve uploaded the bibliography, but unfortunately the Medium formatting doesn’t allow footnotes. If you’d like to see a version with footnotes intact please do get in touch.
The question the dissertation is answering is: “In What Ways Were Homocult’s Interventions Into Public Space A Response To Queer Marginalisation?”
Chapter 2: Queercore and Anti-assimilationism
‘Are You a HARMLESS homosexual? OR are you QUEERCORE’ - Homocult
The above text is taken from a poster by Homocult (2) created after their publication of Queer With Class and given to David Flint, editor of alternative culture magazine Divinity, in 1994. It is placed above a cutout photograph of two smiling topless men wearing sunglasses, one with their head cut off, and additional text underneath reading ‘fuck the middle class take it up your punk white ass.’ It raises the question of who this ‘harmless homosexual’ is and how ‘Queercore’ contrasts against them. Homocult received criticism from those who felt they attacked other LGBTQIA+ people more than homo/transphobic cis-het people and structures. Homocult believed that assimilationism and lack of intersectionality and class-conscious politics contribute to and uphold the harm done to the most marginalised within the community and that the ‘harmless homosexual’ perpetuates the structures that keep all marginalised people oppressed. They were highly critical of what they saw as the privilege of those running the leading lesbian and gay activist organisations at the time, saying in the intro to Queer With Class ‘[…] fuck minority politics […] The only minority we see are the pathetic rich who try to control us.’ Regardless of whether one agrees with Homocult’s perspective, understanding it and where it came from is integral to understanding their work and their approach to visibility. This chapter explores the emergence of Homocult and the Queercore subculture as a backlash to the lesbian and gay assimilationism that was prevelant in the early 1990s, the practices they used to do it, and the ways this split shaped the art produced, the language used, and the kinds of visibility pursued.
Queercore can be defined as a community, a subculture, a political tactic or a movement and is generally considered to have begun in 1986 in Toronto, Canada, with the release of JD’s Zine by “art-porn provocateurs” G. B. Jones and Bruce LaBruce. It then spread across North America through zines, music and events and emerged in northern cities of the UK around 1989. Participants in Queercore subcultures criticised the capitalist nature of the production and distribution of cultural material such as art, music and publications and the power wielded over culture by the institutions that control them. They challenged the dominant gay culture for what they saw as homoginised and commodified ideas of acceptable expression and a ghettoisation of queer people and culture. They criticised the proliferation of a political approach that focused on the acquisicion of rights denied to queer people rather than understanding the system that had the power to confer or deny those rights as a source of oppression in itself and in need of dismantling. The Queercore attitude was expressed with the commonly used slogan ‘not gay as in happy, queer as in fuck you!’ While Queercore artists and groups have always been dispersed and fragmented, they share a rejection of hierarchical models of cultural creation and the use of community-based tactics inspired by punk subcultures to undermine them. As described in the introduction, Nault said Queercore ‘challenge[s] the oppressions of the mainstream and the lifeless sexual politics and assimilationist tendencies of dominant gay and lesbian society.’ This criticism of both mainstream cis-het society and a dominant lesbian and gay culture perceived to be pandering to it describes a division apparent in contemporaneous sources and throughout Homocult’s work, which reserve much ire for this ‘harmless homosexual’ and their assimilationist tendencies.
Most contemporaneous references to Homocult are in the context of discussions about this division, with their emergence seen as representative of the divide. In 1995, actor Jackie Clune praised Homocult, writing ‘[…] queers are taking to the streets and fighting back […] they are insistant, uncompromising and above all unashamed.’ She contrasts them with lesbian and gay charity Stonewall whom she describes as ‘self-appointed worriers and protectors of disempowered nice homosexuals [who seek] to create a dialogue with their oppressors.’ Journalist Terry Sanderson gives an alternative perspective in a 1992 edition of his Gay Times column Media Watch in which he calls Homocult ‘nihilistic and homophobic’ and accuses them of ‘[…] trying to bully us into a separatism that few of us want.’
While Homocult would argue they were drawing attention to separatism that already existed within the community, accusations of homophobia are understandable given how they wrote about other queer activist groups. Their book Queer With Class contains a piece of writing titled ‘Libertation?’ which states their intention to ‘[…] make war on our lesbian and gay leaders.’ Homocult describe them as privileged and say they want to ‘[…] blend in with sick society rather than change it’ due to how it protects them ‘[…] in every other way than their tiny minded “1 in 10” sex lives.’ They talk about themselves as part of a demographic of marginalised queer people, who they refer to using reclaimed slurs. ‘Liberation?’ connects the rejection of words that have been used as slurs to privilege and a desire to assimilate. This refusal to have their language policed is reiterated in the book’s introductory text, which reads, ‘Our language is […] the language of our class.’
In ‘Liberation?’, Homocult compare the 1969 Stonewall riots, generally considered to be the start of the modern gay liberation movement, to the recently formed lesbian and gay charity Stonewall named after them. The charity Stonewall formed in 1989 as a political lobbying group focused on legislative campaigns such as same-sex marriage and lifting the ban on gay people serving in the military. Their focus on gaining entry to state-controlled institutions, single-issue campaigning and their exclusion of transgender people that stood until 2015 drew criticism from more radical segments of the queer community. The original Stonewall was a riot against police persecution of queer people that predominantly consisted of working-class queers, queers of colour and transgender people. Many queer people considered it inappropriate for a group invoking these riots by name to not focus on the most marginalised within the community, leading to Stonewall becoming viewed as representative of an assimilationist approach to gay politics.
An assimilationist approach to activism is based on the idea that queer people should have access to the same opportunities as the cis-het population and that the best way to obtain this is by working with policymakers to change laws. As one leader of USA-based assimilationist gay rights group The Mattachine Society said in 1953, they believe ‘[…] homosexuality is irrelevant to our ideals, our principles, our hopes and aspirations.’ This approach has received criticism from those who say it lacks intersectionality and is focused on obtaining additional cis-het privilege for those already most privileged within the community. In The Trouble With Normal, Warner presents an argument against assimilationist politics, which he defines as the desire to be seen as ‘normal’ through acceptance into political and capitalist institutions. He argues that, despite claims by assimilationists that their sexuality is irrelevant to their inclusion in societal institutions, heterosexuality and the gender binary are so foundational to these institutions that queer people cannot simply fit into them without denying a large part of themselves, if they can at all.
Alongside this move towards assimilationist politics, there was a growing assimilation of queer identities and culture into capitalism as corporations began to recognise a lucrative and largely untapped market. Marxist feminist writer Rosemary Hennessy discusses this growing commodification of queer identity and visibility in her 1994 paper ‘Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture.’ Hennessy describes businesses referring to queer visibility as a ‘[…] good business prospect’ and speaks of how corporate images of ‘wealthy free spending gay consumers’ began to ‘cultivate a narrow […] definition of gay identity as a marketing tool.’ This causes the cultural idea of what queer identity is to be defined by the interests of businesses, and assimilation into for-profit institutions that define media and culture, such as publishers, producers, and performance venues, lead to queer cultures and communities being defined by capital rather than the queer population itself. This commodification can also be used by corporations to hide oppressive practices. For example, Hennessy talks about US jeans company Levis engaging in what could be one of the earliest examples of what people now call ‘rainbow washing’ or ‘pink washing’ by promoting themselves with ‘gay window dressing.’ Rainbow/pink washing refers to when businesses publicly express support of queer people to create a positive image of themselves in the eyes of consumers while in reality either doing very little or actively harming queer or other marginalised people. Levi’s spoke publicly about their Lesbian and Gay Employees Association, their support for HIV-positive employees and the health insurance benefits they offered to employees’ same sex partners, and the company’s queer managers openly discussed their relationships. This was very progressive for the early 1990s and allowed them to be seen as a company that cared about the treatment of marginalised people. However, at the same time, Levi’s poor treatment of the mostly women and POC factory workers who made their clothes, including low wages and cramped living conditions, was actively hidden from public view. The lack of intersectionality in assimilationist queer activism means the benefits from the acquisition of rights are only felt by the most privileged within the community, rendering those who cannot access them invisible. The commodification of queer identities can increase queer visibility overall as corporations have the resources to create more widespread and visible queer publics than individuals or community groups. However, as capitalist entities driven by financial growth, they only have the incentive to appeal to those with the resources to consume their products or services, perpetuating the invisibility of less privileged members of the community.
An example of queer commodification is ‘lesbian chic,’ which became a media trend in 1993 after several magazines printed articles on the subject, including cover articles in Newsweek, Vanity Fair and New York magazine, in which the term was coined. Lesbian chic rejected the cultural stereotype of the lesbian as masculine, frumpy and humourless, instead presenting her as feminine, stylish and edgy, whose sexuality was non-threatening, and even appealing, to a cis-het male gaze. Responses from the community were divided, with many criticising this media-friendly image of lesbianism. The first issue of UK-based lesbian magazine Diva, released in 1994 and centred around issues of visibility, includes a piece on lesbian chic with a range of lesbian journalists and others in the public eye responding to the subject. Most responses are cynical of what they see as a commodified image of lesbianism that erases more than it makes visible. However, the largest and most prominent space is given to Guardian Journalist Tilly McAuley who celebrates the opportunity for an alternative to traditional lesbian stereotypes. While Diva was made by and for the lesbian community, its position as a for-profit venture may have influenced this support for positive perspectives on the phenomenon of lesbian chic. While not sharing McAuley’s enthusiasm, the magazine’s editor Frances Williams expresses a grudging acceptance of the rise in mainstream lesbian visibility, quoting Mae West saying, ‘it’s better to be looked over than overlooked.’ In New York, fierce pussy produced a poster on the subject that read ‘LESBIAN CHIC MY ASS’ in scrawled handwriting around an equally rough drawing of a bare behind, below which is the text ‘Fuck 15 minutes of fame. We demand civil rights. Now.’ This piece expresses the awareness of many that increased visibility does not always lead to improvements to the lives of marginalised people. While Hennessy primarily focuses on how commodified queer visibility causes harm to invisible workers, these contemporaneous responses to the rise of lesbian chic show how they can alienate queer people from the images that are supposed to represent them.
The growth of assimilationist approaches caused many of those most marginalised within the community, such as queer people of colour, working-class queer people, transgender people and those unable to conform to cis-het ideals, to feel they were being left behind in favour of the ‘harmless homosexuals’ who would not pose too much of a challenge to cultural norms. As Queercore artist Bruce LaBruce put it, they felt the mainstream gay community was fighting for ‘the right to become as bland and boring as the straight community’ and that ‘The oppressed started to covet the role of the oppressor.’ They began to distinguish themselves through language; while groups like Stonewall described themselves as ‘lesbian and gay’ (the precursor to the term ‘LGBT’ used by many organisations today), Homocult and others adopted the reclaimed ‘Queer.’ The term ‘Queercore’ developed from this as a reference to the punk music genre known as Hardcore. As this language suggests, many within Queercore took inspiration from queer theorists within academia like Judith Butler, particularly their deconstruction of gender binaries and rejection of an essentialist approach to sexuality and gender. However many within Queercore subcultures have asserted these queer theorists were in fact inspired by them and either reject or strongly criticise academia for its elitism.
Queercore artists could create non-institutional counterpublics to represent themselves outside of capitalism and avoid assimilationism using an approach known as ‘DIY’ (short for ‘Do It Yourself’) adopted from punk subcultures. DIY refers to the creation and distribution of art, music, events, and publications using resources available to the average person without deference to authorities or experts or the pursuit of financial gain. To many within punk subcultures, DIY practices are more of a defining factor than style or aesthetics, with punk and DIY cultural creation viewed as inseparable. In a 1997 paper analysing Queercore subcultures, queer theorists Michael Du Plessis and Kathlene Chapman stated that the goal of the movement is to ‘deny legitimacy to the public sphere […] and to turn to the networks created by queerzines, clubs, music and other subcultural practices so that a counter-public sphere can be created.’ By collapsing the binary between producer and consumer, Queercore communities formed based on cooperation and shared creativity instead of consumption.
Xerographic copiers became central to the creation of DIY and Queercore counterpublics as their widespread availability in the late twentieth century allowed individuals to easily and cheaply mass produce images for the first time. Marginalised people took advantage of the accessibility and anonymity of this new technology to produce and distribute work considered too niche, offensive, or just not economically viable enough for institutions such as publishers and galleries to pick up. Eichhorn describes the xerographic copy machine as ‘[…] the Trojan horse of the punk movement — a machine capable of reproducing the most vile, offensive and controversial materials without the censorship, cost or delay associated with printed forms of reproduction.’ This made it the ideal tool for marginalised people striving for visibility by allowing the culturally invisible to represent themselves on their own terms. While it was primarily pasted in public spaces, Homocult’s work was also featured in various anarchist, punk and queer zines, as discussed in chapter three. This created different experiences for their work’s publics, as while its presence in public space turns any passer-by into an unexpected, and maybe unwilling, public, the zine requires an individual to choose to become its public by picking up and opening it.
The distinctive grainy black and white xerographic prints became part of a recognisable punk aesthetic, along with text that was hand or typewritten or cut out of magazines and newspapers and mistakes intentionally left in or even highlighted. They include images appropriated from mainstream commercial publications in a remixing and reclaiming of culture reminiscent of the collage art of Dada and the Situationists and use simple, provocative slogans similar to those graffitied by the Situationists. While these aesthetics developed due to limitations of the medium, they became associated with DIY ideals and created ‘[…] a language of graphic resistance steeped […] in the ideology of punk and its anarchical spirit.’ Creators used these design techniques to highlight their position outside institutions and give their work the appearance of authenticity by drawing attention to its handmade, non-professional nature.
These techniques appear throughout Homocult’s work, expressing their anti-authoritarian stance as much through their aesthetics as their text and unauthorised presence in public space. The piece introduced at the start of this chapter can be read as a rejection of assimilationist politics. The text is a mix of upper and lower case lettering and moves around the page rather than sitting on a straight line, suggesting the words, or even the individual letters, are cut out from magazines. While this initially appears random, the use of capitalisation and the thickness of the lettering leads the eye down the page to read the phrase ‘HARMLESS OR QUEERCORE,’ highlighting the central message of the piece. The picture of the two men appears to be from an advertisement, showing a commodified image of gay identity. A circled capital R, The symbol used to indicate a registered trademark in the USA, floats above their shoulder, emphasising the connection to institutions and commerce. The detached head invokes the guillotine, the image standing in for the process of assimilation and the structures that cause it, and presenting Queercore as a revolutionary tactic to overturn them.
As Warner states, publics and counterpublics are created through the circulation of media, and Queercore counterpublics were brought into being through the creation of media using DIY tactics. Anti-assimilationists such as Warner and Homocult believe queer people can only achieve visibility under an assimilationist model by rendering parts of themselves invisible and distancing themselves from those who are unable to. The horizontal nature of DIY cultural production allowed members of the community to see and be seen by each other, placing their visibility in their own hands. This is reminiscent of a description by Warner of an image depicting a group of drag queens photographing each other at home who he describes as ‘[…] making possible a different style of embodiment, a new sociability and solidarity.’ Through DIY tactics, Homocult and other Queercore creators formed their own styles of queer embodiment, sociability and solidarity, so creating new kinds of counterpublics. Queercore’s deconstruction of the binaries of creator/consumer and private/public can be seen as an extension of queer theory’s deconstruction of binaries of gender and sexuality. Homocult publicly displayed the false nature of these binaries and revealed what had been erased by them.
