Goth's Dark Empire

4. Boys Don't Cry: Brandon Teena’s Stories

4. Boys Don’t Cry Boys Don’t Cry Boys Don’t Cry Boys Don’t Cry Boys Don’t Cry Brandon Teena’s Stories As I hope is clear from the previous chapter, Goths are not merely the innocent victims of persecution by authorities who erroneously believe the Columbine shooters were motivated by a philosophy generated by this subculture . Yes, Goth has been misunderstood in that way. But it does, because of its emphasis on demonized sexualities, disrupt abstinence education and other official doctrines meant to regulate young people’s sexual expression. Whatever else Goth has been as a youth subculture, it has not been innocent. The novel Narcissus in Chains, by Laurell K. Hamilton, a best-selling erotic horror fiction author popular with many Goths, offers a blackly comic example of the sort of attitude prevalent in the subculture toward the values promoted by the abstinence education regime. The novel’s heroine Anita is seen by most readers as a highly sexualized version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—the television character whose eponymous series Baddeley calls, “at best, ‘Goth-lite,’” despite its success with Goth audiences (104). In Hamilton’s fiction vampires and shapeshifters, including werewolves, belong to packs or groups mentored by a dominant male, female, or couple. Under the tutelage of these mentors, newly made supernatural beings learn to control their transformations , which otherwise occur spontaneously during moments of intense emotion, and the outbursts of often deadly aggression that accompany the changes. In one scene, Anita discusses with her werewolf king lover, Richard, a new member of his pack, Louisa. Richard is distressed because he “respected” Louisa’s religious “convictions” and thus allowed her to retain her virginity until after her wedding. Her consequent ignorance of the power of sexuality resulted in her transforming during her first intercourse and tearing her bridegroom to pieces. Richard often functions in the novels as a foil for Anita, establishing her authenticity and lack of hypocrisy. Their discussion of this event serves in this way. At first Anita is confused about how the wedding 94 G G G G Go o o o ot t t t th’s h’s h’s h’s h’s D D D D Dark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire ark Empire night tragedy could have occurred. She says, “if she could control herself during nonintercourse orgasm, then she should have been able to control herself during intercourse, too” (428–29). Richard must enlighten her. “Please tell me you don’t mean she wanted to wait for any sexual contact until the honeymoon ?” Anita asks, in amazement (429). When he tells her this is exactly what he does mean, she is unable to console him “[b]ecause it was a waste, a waste because Richard and the girl and her fiancé had been more worried about appearance than reality” (430). For Goths reality, or authenticity, includes taking action to experience one’s own bodily pleasures. Disciplining the body to conform to others’ concepts of what desire should be or to some idea of consistent sexual identity is deemed not only dishonest but dangerous, because such discipline may create forces that can tear apart everyone they touch. Never has the central thesis of Foucault’s histories of sexuality been more graphically illustrated than by this deadly proliferation of desires resulting from the imposition of taxonomies (such as virginity) and norms (such as chastity) on young bodies. The book virtually screams of the body, “let it bleed!” To understand how this attitude is received by adults in authority over young Goths, once again a comparison to the Punk subculture is instructive. While, as Lauraine Leblanc notes, “American punks’ construction of a deviant image became accepted at face value” by “sources of conventional socialization —families, peers, school authorities, and employers,” resulting in “intolerance , ostracism, harassment, abuse, [and] threats of expulsion,” Goth has been even more severely suppressed by school authorities and other regulatory agencies (58, 101). This seems illogical, since many Punks do value violent confrontation with members of mainstream society while most Goths eschew nonconsensual violence. However, the logic of the discrepancy becomes apparent when we compare the expressions of sexuality and gender identification that most typically characterize participants in each of the two subcultures. Leblanc characterizes Punk as “a predominantly heterosexual subculture,” including heavy emphasis on “norms and codes” that reinforce traditional masculinity (101, 125). Moreover, “punks rarely challenge the mainstream norms governing sex and romance” (125). Instead, “[s]exual...