zeegoeshere

Yeah, okay, I'm on hiatus but I just read this post and the comments and wow, I have SO many problems with the ideas expressed there. There's the conflation of racism against black people and homophobia, which seriously, I don't even know where to start with how wrong that is; there's the fact that the original poster and many of the people commenting are calling bandom gay when they clearly haven't done the research and are basing their opinions mostly on vague impressions; there's this comment implying that MCR might not know much about queer theory because they're from a lower class background (?!?!) the commenter has since apologized and retracted her statement; there's the assumption that any touching between these dudes is 'faking gay' instead of genuine affection expressed physically, which is okay for girls to do but not for guys, and imo if you're pro-gay rights you should be pro- anyone expressing their feelings and their sexuality in whatever way they feel; there's the assumption that bandslash's fanon and fic is *all* based on this onstage 'fake gay' as opposed to Pete saying that if he woke up and Patrick wasn't there, he'd disappear to wherever he was, to Frank saying that if there's a God, he thanks him every day for bringing them Bob, to Gerard and Bert spending the night together after making out in public and then writing a song about it. And, um, that was a really long run-on sentence, sorry.

And something else that I didn't quite realize until seeing Projekt Revolution this Sunday. This was a show where My Chem was not the main act, was just one of many other goth/metal bands playing that day. I'm used to teenie fangirls at bandom shows, but at the festival there were men wandering around with 'show us your tits' written on their chests, in t-shirts with offensive slogans, and plenty of drunken assholes behaving rudely to miss_saigon and I. It was a fairly sexist and homophobic environment--and that's the norm for the rock industry, not MCR and FOB's bubbles of tolerance. But Gerard put on a show where he asked the guys to take off their shirts for him--he made a real point of asking the girls to keep theirs' on--and all of the guys around me did. I think that these bands *are* making progress towards making their environments less sexist and homophobic. They're doing their part to change the music industry atmosphere.

None of these bands are selling records because they kiss each other onstage. Personally, I think it's awesome that these bands are reaching out to gay fans with the way they sometimes behave, and yet are also mainstream; I'm thrilled that bands can write songs about gay prison sex and gay not being a synonym for shitty and still be hugely commercially successful. And I'm pretty saddened by the number of fans I've seen talking shit about bandom either because of music elitism, or because of these mistaken ideas about bandom's homophobia. Geez, I know you're all jealous because bandom has the best canon going right now and is clearly having an awesome time while all your shows are on hiatus, but suck it up instead of mouthing off offensively and ignorantly.