Goth, Hate and Ignorance

☠ WARNING: RANT AHEAD ☠

I am in foul mood, and a rant is ahead - you have been warned. 

Amongst the slurs aimed at Goths, I have noticed a trend - I think a lot of the people who hate us have only met those amongst Babybats who are perhaps the least representative of the subculture, not even representative of Babybats, and are more in it for the shock factor and to seek attention than Goth being a true representation of themselves.

The Negative Stereotype

Goths are sullen, moody teenagers. We're white, from a middle-class background, and complain without reason in the face of a privileged life, or are always depressed. We dress the way we do to "rebel", we think we are special snowflakes, unique and individual and soooo non-conformist. We listen to Marilyn Manson, Evanescence and My Chemical Romance. We self-harm, and self-harm for attention. We wear white-face makeup and lots of chains. All male goths are gay, or transvestites, and all female goths are lesbians. Goth girls are promiscuous and all goths are into fetishes. We live with our parents, will either grow into sad, unemployed adults or give up looking weird at college. We're rude, anti-social and cliquish, and we think we're a cut above the rest. Goths are either anorexic or morbidly obese. They're ugly, using their freakish style to try and hide behind, etc. Goths are Nazis, or shoot up schools. Etc. etc. 

This is the view I see come across in various goth-bashing post on the internet; on YouTube, on forums, in the comment sections of various pages. I'm pretty sure if you've seen a Goth video on YouTube you'll have come across some of this sort of nonsense in the comments section. It's also surfaced in real life situations where people have expressed their intolerance towards Goths. You might have noticed the latent homophobia and sexism, and also the fact that it is self-contradictory. The self-contradictory nature is probably because it is coalesced from a variety of hatred spewed forth on the internet and real life (although there are quite probably people who hold these self-contradictory views too). Anyone who has spent any time in the subculture or is friendly with actual Goths will see this as nonsense far removed from the actual nature of the subculture, but this is the stereotype that remains.

Mostly, it is ignorance, closed-mindedness and an intolerance for people who are different, but somewhere in there I think there's people who have had bad experiences with those they think are Goths. Now, I don't doubt that there are few adult Goths who are neither young nor Babybats who give the subculture a bad name and act deplorably - especially as I have met a few - but the majority of these stereotypes reflect the behaviour of the more obnoxious younger pseudo-Goths; not a reflection of Babybats as younger members of the subculture or as those just starting out in the subculture, or even as those meandering through subcultural identities in search of their own, but a reflection of those people who use the subculture as a means to play the rebel or seek attention or who seem so caught up in the false stereotypes of the subculture that they become living embodiments of them. 

Goths are not all depressed, but this is a common stereotype. There is this concept that we are indulging in melodramatic angst when there is nothing really wrong with our lives. Most Goths I know are actually relatively happy people, they have their ups and downs, and I think are more likely to be open about when they are down than those in the mainstream, but are not, on the whole, particularly miserable people. Maybe it exists because Goth music has been dark and a bit depressing since the days of Joy Division, and this has probably been around for as long as the subculture. In recent years this has been worsened by the conflation of Goth with Emo, and the negative portrayal of Emo being all about depression, or worse, affected depression for attention.

Goths and Emos are often conflated in hate comments, and there seems to be a genuine lack of distinction made between the two, although one would think that on looking at a Goth and an Emo that they even look vastly different. This conflation is really annoying me, especially when perpetuated by the media., and so do people conflating Goth and Punk. It's like not being able to tell the difference between deer, sheep and goats. Lots of people have already written about the differences between Goth and Emo and between Goth and Punk and suchlike, so there is no need for me to go into it here.

The stereotype of the sullen teenager writing angsty poetry, acting in a melodramatic manner exists for a reason. Teenage years are complicated, confusing times which make a lot of young people unhappy, especially in a modern world where so much pressure is put on young people to have flourishing social lives, be sexually active, and keep up to date with trends as well as deal with the sorts of issues that come with puberty and with secondary education and whatever may be happening in their family lives. A lot of teenagers seek release in various subcultures, and sometimes do so in less than advisable manners, but that is no fault of the subculture, and while the teenagers who do this do need to be held responsible, there should be full acknowledgement of how even with all modern technology and trained adults, that the teenage years will always include mistakes, mistakes we should learn from to become better adults. That is what being a teenager is about.

The part that does, however, get to me, is the part where people do things for attention. Self-harm is a serious issue, real mental illness is very serious too, but there are people who fein mental illness for attention, and will even go as far as to self-harm for attention, or to emotionally manipulate people, and this causes a lot of problems for people who do have self-harm problems and mental health issues. I had mental health issues as a teenager, and self-harmed, but it was often pushed aside with me merely being an 'attention-seeker' in the eyes of those I was trying to seek help from and my subcultural interests I think did not do anything to sway their opinions in my favour. This sort of behaviour causes real harm to people.

There are also those who use  Goth, among other subcultures as a method of getting attention - these are the people who wear all the "gothiest" things at once regardless of whether or not they clash, that claim that they really are vampires to everyone in their school, threaten to curse people, or even threaten to shoot their fellow pupils, say rude things about "preps" or "chavs", claim to be Satanists while ignorant of actual Satanism, graffiti things with scrawled pentagrams, think Marilyn Manson is shocking, and generally try and act like they are spookiest, most evil thing to ever go to secondary school/high school/college/etc. They want to shock, they want to get attention, and they don't necessarily realise that they are embarrassing themselves and making the subculture look bad, and if they receive negativity for their behaviour, claim it is discrimination on account of their subculture. Attention seekers often think of themselves as special snowflakes, too, and are people who try and gather to themselves labels that set them apart from the majority, to make themselves ever more esoteric, and Goth can be a convenient label.

If someone is seeking attention then they are making a determined effort to be noticed, and it is these attention seekers that are therefore more likely to stick in people's minds. Those who are particularly negative in one way or another are also more likely to be remembered than those who behave politely and decently.

I have explained before how Goth is not an act of rebellion, simply a set of differing tastes, a subculture rather than a counter-culture. We are not trying to be "nonconformist". 

The mental image that many have of a Goth, as someone with white-face makeup, badly done or over-done eye-makeup, lots of chains and the sorts of clothes and accessories that were available in Hot Topic in the early '90s or in Claire's Accessories now (although I admit I have bought gloves, socks and  earrings from Claire's, as there are some nice things in amongst the tat, but my experience has usually been of things of low quality and over-priced), trying very hard to act the spooky part, perhaps being sarcastic and cliquish, or acting with pretension and superiority (such as referring to non-Goths as "mundane mortals" in seriousness) is not a representative of Goths, it is representative of Babybats and Mallgoths, who either are just learning in their subcultural beginnings or are going through a phase. Most people do not think of the many talented artists and musicians in the scene, or the elaborate outfits of Whitby Gothic Weekend or Wave Gotik Treffen, or of anything representative of just how amazing, well-done and classy Goth can be.

The homophobia, sexism, heteronormative bias, and suchlike inherent in the sort of hatred that says "Goth guys are gay because they wear makeup" or "all goth girls are dykes because they wear combats and have piercings and listen to angry music" and similar is a representation of just how inculcated into mainstream Western culture these attitudes have become. I am not here to write about gender and sexuality and society; there are reams of articles already in existence on these topics, and I am not going to paraphrase people who are far more studied and eloquent on the topics than I am. 

A lot of people who have, for one reason or another, felt uncomfortable looking "normal" have found Goth and other alternative-looking subcultures helpful to them. There are certainly Goths with eating disorders of various sorts. There are also Goths who are not traditionally "pretty" or "handsome" and suchlike. Some people find being able to create their own appearance through creativity and artifice a whole new way to be beautiful when not happy with the way they naturally look, and that is a) not necessarily a bad thing and b) not unique to Goth. There are Goths of all shapes, sizes and Goths of all colours, from paler than pale to goths of colour who are more than just black in terms of their clothes. Goths are vastly variant in appearance and body-type. 

A lot of Goths remain so long into their adult years and have successful careers, often in careers that require a significant amount of education and are certainly respectable, and often well-paying. Just look at blogs such ::Siouxsie Law:: or ::Sophistique Noir:: or ::The Dancing Maenad::  (previously ran Le Professeur Gothique) for proof of well-educated and successful adult Goths (as well as really interesting blogs). 

The last three paragraphs are things that members of the subculture already know, but yet somehow elude those outside of it, as do many of the ways in which the stereotype differ wildly from the actuality of the Goth subculture. As to the BDSM community confusion, ::this article:: at The Everyday Goth should be helpful, and as to the "goths are Nazis that shoot up schools", most of the blame can be put on the shoulders of the media coverage of the Columbine massacre. 

I am not blaming Babybats or even Mallgoths for the discrimination Goths face - only the people who discriminate against us are to blame for their actions. Babybats are not bad people, they are not deliberately giving Goth a bad name, and a lot of them are simply new to the subculture and people judging Goth by the efforts of Babybats are as misguided as people judging the whole of archery by the people who do it for an afternoon on an adventure holiday. Even attention seeking pseudo-Goths are not to blame, however annoying they may be, for the actions of others. People are ultimately responsible for their own actions. 

The Babybats a person meets at secondary school, or the Mallgoths lurking in the local shopping-centre may be the only Goths and Goth-like people that a lot of people outside the subculture interact with, partly because they are the most numerous as those for whom Goth is a phase will often have it as a teenage phase, and partly because a lot of older Goths tend to keep their subcultural affiliation fairly quiet. 

I do think, though, that more needs to be done to show the positive side of Goth, to show what the subculture is really about. The resources are there, but somehow both the mainstream and younger Babybats are not getting them, because the stereotypes remain, and even people who are interested in Goth seem to be getting stuck at the level of these stereotypes. I think the answer is for ordinary Goths to stick their heads above the parapet a bit more, for all the beautiful, creative, and wonderful sides of the subculture to be allowed to outshine all of the flawed characters and fringe members and things that just go a bit wrong that come with it being a subculture made of real human people with all of their human strengths and weaknesses, and for the subculture to encourage the best in its members and make it clear what Goth is really about, so that however much the term is abused by people twisting it for their own ends, that such abuses are infinitely outweighed.