As usual, I’m gonna share the parts of this article that resonate with me (pretty much all of it). Several points were made. And the unapologetic queer visibility makes me so proud. Please give it a read 🥲
Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus of Boygenius talk to Teen Vogue exclusively about their recent drag performance in Tennessee.
LD: I also do want to say, even though there is a bunch of awesome overlap with the trans community and the drag community, transness and drag are separate things — but that's the reason why we did it [in Tennessee], is because those things are being conflated here.
It's crazy that we were on tour for all of Pride Month and being pretty f*cking gay, and talking about gay rights on stage. You’d think that the circles that we run in would be like, yeah, cool, but I feel like there is still… Prejudice towards gay people comes from all sides, including gay people.
I have, you know, rolled my eyes at certain aspects of Pride, just the corporate aspect of things. We were hanging out with a friend who was like, yeah, the gas station has a pride flag, but I'm still getting looked at funny in the streets; what is Pride actually doing?
JB: Shell Oil Company is like, happy pride! Like, okay.
LD: It's weird, the more comfortable I am, the more opposition I feel from other people who are discontent with how I qualify as a gay person. I'm like, Do you need a sex tape?
PB: As someone who doesn't qualify as gay, I can't participate in this conversation. I haven't sent in enough chips to corporate. [laughs]
I speak for all of us [when I say] I feel like our communities are so supportive, like f*cking rainbows and buttercups all the time. We're really good at making friends and we have so much support around each of us, and so much privilege, and each live in an accepting place and choose accepting people to be around. But when I or Lucy get hate for not turning in our like, gay paperwork, all I'm thinking is about the way that I would have felt at f*cking age 11 being like, Oh, I'm not allowed to do that. This famous person is being humiliated for expressing themselves, and so I should not, I especially should not express myself.
JB: I don't get as much hate because people are like, there goes a lesbian. You know what I mean? [All laugh.]
LD: It’s really binary.
JB: I've spent a lot of my life being a masc dressing queer person, or just not engaging with gender play at all. It’s like, queer people saying that you have to acquiesce to one of three queer archetypes, or one of a handful of queer archetypes in order to be represented.
LD: That's why our shows are so special to me is that they are very gay. People are throwing flags at us, young people are making out in front of us, it is a space that is precious to me and would have changed my life if I could have been a part of it when I was younger. I'm extremely proud, and I just implicitly love everybody at our shows at a base level. I think we all do. The reason we're doing it is because we care abstractly about all these strangers and want for them what we could have had. Also we're coming from a position where we're talking to a bunch of young people, we do get to put messages worth hearing out there, I think that's not lost on us.
PB: I am mostly proud of the way that I watch the discourse [play out], and I'm proud of the conclusions that these children are coming to. Everybody is sticking up for us and each other and there's just a couple weirdos that are very loud. I think our community is being protected by the people in it. And it is such a safe space show, and I'm so fucking proud. Even the amount of femme people in the audience, screaming at the top of their lungs and having to take up a high octave... It’s a different rock show than I've ever experienced. It’s amazing to me.
JB: The microphone I have with y'all, the reach is wider, it just factually is, and I think a lot about responsibility to hear [others’ opinions…] To be the subject of discourse at all is to live a question into the world, so I will allow myself to do that. I will allow a little bit of my identity — which as a queer person, I've been at once defensive of and fiercely protective of and encouraged to erase completely — I'm like, okay, so I have to exist with this identity subsumed into the culture, into the topic of someone's conjecture. Because it's going to be one case study. That's the whole idea of visibility, visibility doesn't have to be perfect representation.
I was thinking about this too, something that bugged me was that meme that was the talent and popularity graph and it was popularity way above talent, and they were like, “This is boygenius.” You're missing the damn point. [If only the most talented people got to speak,] Steve Vai would be speaking for all f*cking musicians because he's best at guitar. That's not what I want.
PB: But again, that is just Twitter. I think we are as beloved as is possible for any public, femme presenting, or queer, in public. I think we just get an amount of hate because we're stepping on guitar guys. It is fucking dumb, and it is just what is happening. Every time I look at a Pitchfork post of us, it's the most incel f*cking shit ever in the comments section.
JB: I was telling Lucy, I feel like if someone made that meme about me, Julien Baker, on a solo headlining tour, I would be up at four in the morning in the back lounge of the bus running scales. With y'all, I'm like, You're missing the point you dumbass. It's like Kathleen Hanna being like, the Sex Pistols are bad at their instruments. Why can I not just have a band that's fun and cool and angry?
LD: I wanna say, we're a little fed up, obviously, with some things, but I agree with you, Phoebe, the biggest sentence I have to say is we're having so much fun. That is the message that I think people are mostly getting, and the one that I want them to get, is that we are happy and having fun, and that is not frivolous at all. Fun is essential.
PB: Everybody knows every word to the entire set. We sell thousands of tickets. It is going as good as humanly possible. It is insane.
LD: And it's because we feel safe and supportive that we can mostly safely and supportively do drag in Tennessee. It's because we have such a solid foundation of joy we can be in defense of other people's joy, in ways that feel really valuable to me personally, and I hope valuable to other people.
JB: The whole reason why I feel comfortable engaging with this at all and it's not an existential crisis for me is because, what you're saying, Lucy: I have a foundation of joy that makes me convicted that this is important, not frivolous, highly worthy, highly valuable. So when I see us as the subject of discourse I'm interacting with it in a different way that I don't think I'd be able to [alone]. I wonder if kids watching that in third person happen will also be resilient to the same kind of things.
PB: You’re allowed to be bad at guitar, anybody reading this.
LD: I’m bad at guitar.
PB: Other shit, you do have to work so hard. And you have to love it. If you love playing guitar and you're bad at guitar, that rocks.
TV: What other moments would you highlight? I feel like there’s been a lot of good ones, like the t-shirt selling out.
PB: Love, love to just have the power to snap my fingers and mobilize people to give their money away to a cause. That is the best part of my job.
JB: It’s participation. It’s visibility. It's you, outward signaling something you believe in as a principle. It's also literally redistributing funds to us to organizers, nonprofits and legislators that are trying to make the world a better place. And we get to be in charge of that, and also give somebody a gift that's like, you're a country queer! We see you.
TV: Did you expect the fans to be so young this tour? I’ve been really impressed!
LD: It's interesting, I think Julien was saying this, being something through which some kids are learning some stuff. I usually am really upset when I'm misunderstood, but I think that part of that happening now is people on their way to understanding something that I think is important and outside of me, that we are just a case study for, and that is just a really sweet and special position to be in.
JB: This really gets to me, I'll see a group of friends all hugging during our set, a collection of songs about grieving and leaning on your friends. I'll be like, What did y'all go through? Something f*cking horrible.
I think about this with the credibility or the legitimacy of music, like with the whole Pitchfork incel guy, it goes back to that. I'm like, dude, I love that a bunch of kids are at our show. I've said it once, I'll say it again: I took a class in young adult literature. And I was like, wow, this is maybe the most important kind of literature. Paradise Lost is for people who think that their brain is big, young adult literature is for f*cking people who don't know what literature is yet — they need a window, they need a door. They need a pass. Phoebe you were saying, like, music that not-adult cis white guys like.
LD: Those guys are showing up too, and good for them. And if they're the ones that are mad about this, maybe they're on their path of understanding something better, too.
JB: I cry at all the kids, man.
PB: Me too.
JB: My mom texted me and was like, I would have died if there was something like y'all when I was a kid — and I don't even think she gets some stuff we're saying.
PB: It's funny to [realize] I would have bleached my hair and wanted to be me.
JB: Dude, it's so f*cking sick. I think about me at 16 — I was trying to be a hardcore guy, I wanted to get tattoos, I wanted to play guitar in a band. And then I just turned out… me. I used to try to make my hair look like k.d. Lang; I wonder if we're a thing people realize they can look like.
LD: Also, I think being affectionate on stage has been really fun and sweet, and it exhibits behavior that I think is healthy and good. That's another element of it that I think is good to show kids, the way that I think drag is actively good for kids to interact with, because it's this fun way to interact with gender and to explain things like that early to children is really awesome. Just being able to gaily and affectionately kiss your bros, that's a principle that I value, that I wish was more valued for kids. Not saying like, kids gotta go all make out!
I'm proud of the space we're taking up. I think we're using it in ways I'll be able to stand behind when I get older.
PB: There's also such a deep, both fetishizing and desexualizing of lesbians, in a way that I think is ridiculous. Obviously MUNA is standing staunchly against that as well, by being a f*cking boyband. It's just fun to be like, it's not that serious — and it also is deeply meaningful.
i love that boygenius kiss because their relationships to each other exist in multitudes and don’t feel the need to strictly ahere to some sort of friendship or relationship hierarchy.
also because i’m gay and i love seeing women kiss passionately (with tongue).
tldr I was looking up the classification system for cerebral palsy (GMFCS) and part of the 2nd level is "climbing stairs with the use of a railing" which just about knocked me out. Ableds. . . are you not. . . using railings? it's right there? this is trying to tell me it's abled culture Not to use the railing?
Are you physically able-bodied and do you use the handrail on the stairs?
I am able-bodied and use the handrail always/almost always (ex: hands are full)
I am able-bodied and never use the handrail/only use in certain cases (tag them)
I am disabled and want to click a button/show results
Voting ended onMay 11, 2023
(use your best judgement as to whether or not abledness applies to you here. mostly I mean disabilities that would have some impact on stair-climbing, natch. chronic pain/fatigue counts, but, like, d/Deafness wouldn't, you get me?)
and what about you, little haiku bot? do you feel kinship with your brethren? do you understand them? they speak words of enticement and seek love, but are met with disdain. you only parrot the words that cross your screen, but we all love you. or rather, since all you do is reflect us, maybe we simply love ourselves through you.
do you understand them, do you wish you could speak to us like they do? if you found your own voice, would we still care for you?
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