Amanda Marcotte remembers the power of Thurston Moore in the age of Clarence Thomas' apparent victory.
I mainly, at that point in time, liked reading books and listening to CDs, and it was the latter that pulled a brick out of my mental wall on this issue. Sonic Youth had a song on their 1992 record Dirty titled "Youth Against Fascism", and it had the lyric "I believe Anita Hill/Judge will rot in hell" on it. It almost feels like an understatement to say that this lyric blew my mind. A man standing up for a woman---a woman he didn't know, especially---in a dispute between a man and a woman over sexualized mistreatment? I had never experienced that before, and probably thought of it as simply impossible. Most women treated other women who spoke up about this stuff like pariahs, so the idea of a man calling bullshit, and being so angry about it, was just unbelievable to me. It felt so incredibly subversive. I didn't want to be caught listening to that lyric. It seemed dirty to suggest that there was any alternative to simply enduring sexual harassment in silence.
Imagine a place where young boys learned that calling bullshit on men harassing women, and to support the women who did the same, was their obligation as men. Not in a mansplainy or patriarchal way, but as a way to police -- and fulfill -- their own masculinity and humanity. I learned that from punk rock.
I will never stick up for punk rock or hardcore as a place where women are free from harassment -- or where it's easy to be a nonstraight nonwhite nonmale person. No collection of teenagers and 20somethings is like that, particularly not one based around shared obsessions. But pivoting off Amanda's post, it is important that that is a value punk rock sets for itself, where you will be put on the defensive if you disagree and challenged if you do not live up to the standard.
Above my desk I keep a photograph that my wife bought for me of ABC No Rio. ABC No Rio is a punk club and (former?) squat on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan where every Saturday afternoon a motley assortment of bands perform. I think of it as the punk rock version of the Boys & Girls Club, because that was the role it played for me as a teenager. It socialized me and shaped my values. If you wanted to be part of the committee that booked bands, planned events and made decisions about the direction of the venue, then all you had to do was show up, commit to clean the place up, and submit your suggestion for consensus. That was DIY, an ethic that became a religion and taught teenagers about individual and collective responsibility.
Most importantly: it was supposed to be a place where you would be made to feel unwelcome if you groped someone in the pit; if you made a homophobic or racist remark; or if you engaged in otherwise destructive behavior.