Author: Emily Hurwitz

Vivian Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-Punks, which boasts dozens of tales from Goldman’s experiences as a journalist in the early punk scene, offers a refreshing female-centered take on the evolution on punk.

Punk music presents a history of white, working-class males rebelling against authority through brash music and controversial messages. This genre exploded in the late 1960s in London and New York City, and while it is easy to reduce it to a homogenous, angry genre that disappeared in 1978 when U.K. punk band Crass declared punk to be dead, punk still thrives today in spaces where youth rally for change in their communities. New punk scholarship offers a more globalized view of the genre, one that often deals with identity within the scene. In Vivien Goldman’s new book, Revenge of the She-punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot, Goldman further refashions the narrative of punk identity and bridges the gap between academic scholarship and rock journalism through tracing the triumphs and struggles of female-fronted punk bands.

Goldman subverts gender stereotypes from the beginning and discusses in the introduction, aptly named “Womanifesto,” the impact of punk on her own life. After an opening quote from an article that she had written forty years prior in Sounds, a U.K. pop/rock publication, Goldman opens the book stating, “It all began with glitter.” A first read of this quote captures the audience’s attention, but seems odd in a feminist-angled book, as likening women to glitter seems stereotypical at best. That initial reaction makes the quote all the more effective, as Goldman immediately subverts that gender stereotype with the subject of this opening paragraph: David Bowie. Bowie, the international superstar most known for his contributions to glam rock, inspired Goldman’s music tastes from a very young age. She followed this love for music and went on to cover the initial exposure of punk rock in the U.K. as a journalist before becoming an adjunct professor at New York University.

Within the first page, she presents her impressive resume of engagement with the punk music scene. She states that “music has been [her] dance partner throughout life… waltz[ing]” through roles such as “press officer, journalist, author, songwriter, singer, producer, club-runner, documentarian, blogger, editor, video/TV/radio writer, director, host and producer, and publisher.” Through a life-long history engaged not only with punk scholarship, but also directly working in the industry, she holds more than enough credibility to write this book. While it is evident that placing the book’s narrative within the context of her own life makes sense as she engages with storytelling throughout the book, the list of her various roles seems like an attempt to establish credibility. This aspect of her book reads as ironic (although probably necessary within a male-dominated scene): a female music historian needing to list her career highlights so scholars will take her work seriously.

Goldman presents a brief history of women in punk music and the issues they face before she dives into more specific themes, each of which is complete with a playlist of songs that she discusses. To motivate the reasons for the book’s title and why she chose the word ‘revenge,’ she weaves facts about the oppression and silencing of gender minorities with her own experiences as a woman involved in the early punk scene. While some punk musicians felt that they did not “do” revenge, Goldman asserts that “in the case of punky females, revenge means getting the same access as your male peers, to make your own music, look and sound how you want, and be able to draw enough people to ensure the continuation of the process.” A major strength of Goldman’s book is its intersectionality: rather than focus on the prominent punk scenes in the U.K and U.S., she deliberately “assembl[es] at least some voices of various waves of women’s punk from disparate communities and consider[s] their differences and connections.” Intersectionality became important in fourth-wave feminism but was only introduced in the late 1980s, after punk music had already been established. Goldman recognizes the histories of those who were not traditionally represented in these spaces and discussing how they contributed to punk music both globally and locally.

Self-image is an important theme in many musicological narratives but is essential to the re-centering of punk history around females. Goldman tackles the question of who the she-punks are, what they stand for, and how the different movements of female punk gave rise to each other. She first discusses Poly Styrene, the lead singer of early British punk band X-Ray Spex. When Styrene entered the music industry, identity formation was a novel concept, especially for a young mixed-race girl in a white male-dominated scene. Goldman stresses that Styrene was a leader in this field, not only for female punk music but also for defining British punk music in a broader sense. Before the term was even popularized, Styrene was an intersectional role model. Later musicians in the 1990s riot grrrl movement further affirmed the importance of authenticity in music, with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl” creating a safe space for lesbians and those who experienced the negative side effects of simply existing as a woman in a patriarchal society. Goldman draws out this metaphor of Bikini Kill acting as a doctor or therapist for these girls, saying that Kathleen Hanna, Bikini Kill’s lead singer, “realized that her musical clinic was America, and her client list of girls damaged by rape, incest, school bullying, and violence of unimaginable kinds inflicted almost entirely by males seemed to be infinite.” Through stories of she-punks creating communities for themselves and others like them, Goldman holds that bonding together as females lends strength and willpower among generations.

As with most punk musicians, money and consumption were major factors in both the daily lives and music of the she-punks. Goldman recounts a time where she went thrift shopping with Patti Smith, the godmother of punk, in 1976. Smith grew up poor, but thanks to her successful music career in New York City’s Lower East Side, she had more money than her parents ever did. An outsider to wealth but also then an outsider to poverty, she wrote the song “Free Money,” which Goldman notes is about “an expansive rejection of the frugality that she had grown up with in her hardscrabble New Jersey working-class family.” Some blocks north of Smith’s home, funk-rock-dance-punk band ESG made their home in the Bronx. As young artists, they never officially signed a record contract, yet 99 Records, the label that distributed their records, financially exploited them when the business collapsed. ESG’s lead singer, Renee Scroggins, stresses that music is a business, one that is notoriously hard to navigate for yourself. While Goldman does not connect this particular fiscal abuse with the little financial independence or knowledge that women had at the time, in the 1970s, women were hardly financially responsible for themselves. For example, a British woman could not open a bank account in her own name until 1975. The personal stories of Goldman’s interactions with struggling musicians during these times create a fascinating personal connection, and though she later broadens the context of the stories by discussing the gender pay gap in depth, it would have served this theme well to better connect and develop each story with such discourse.

The best — and most nuanced — theme that Goldman traces is that relating to love, sexuality, and abuse. Whether in media or music, women are stereotyped for being overly emotional in romance and are often subject to sexual violence, a topic that has only been widely discussed in recent years. Through these themes, which she discusses as love and unlove, Goldman relays poignant stories of both today and yesterday. While Cherry Vanilla, a New York-based punk singer, wrote one of “punk’s most innocent love song[s],” and the riot grrls pushed for safe spaces for girls at concerts, punk was also ridden with sexual violence against both women and minors. Goldman acknowledges that while the very core of the punk movement was to question structure and boundaries, “some taboos never should have been broken,” and the punk scene’s atmosphere made it at times impossible to speak out against injustice, especially within bands. Many female punk bands did take strong stances against these injustices, especially riot grrrl bands like 7 Year Bitch who wrote songs like “Dead Men Don’t Rape.” However, Goldman stresses that not all bands responded like this — some took very conservative approaches. The Mo-Dettes, an all-female post-punk band, “loved to subvert leftist orthodoxies,” especially with opinions that “fighting for ‘equality’ actually defines you as seeing yourself as ‘less than.’” Similarly, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders blamed herself for her own rape and subsequently “was vilified by some feminist factions for her views on date rape.” There is never one side to a story, and although Goldman may not agree with these musicians, their experiences are their own and serve as important moments in both personal histories and the larger narrative of punk. Goldman adopts a feminist viewpoint in this book, but including the diversity in opinions on sensitive subjects allows her to create a more complete history of female punk.

Goldman completes her narrative by highlighting the role that female punk musicians played in protesting both gender inequality and other injustices. Throughout the book, she presents ample evidence for the seminal role that the she-punks have played in advocacy, but the concluding chapters underscore her argument that these musicians have fought for equity that reaches far beyond the music scene. Bands like Colombia’s Fertil Miseria wrote songs with wide-reaching messages of equality and solidarity, but that is only the tip of their advocacy.

Their concerts often serve as sites of mutual aid, with concert-goers donating food, clothing, and toiletries for those in underprivileged living situations. Goldman asserts that music is not the sole avenue for the she-punks’ leadership; rather, “these women all have their own front line — national, global, or domestic — and use punk as their weapon.” This punk barrier-busting proves to be equally, if not more, essential in non-Western countries where freedom of expression remains limited. Spanish punk band Las Vulpes caused major controversy in Spain after releasing “Me gusta ser una zorra” (“I love to be a slut”): not only did their career prospects vanish, one of the members was murdered. For some male punks, the punk lifestyle means nothing more than the old trope, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. But for women in punk, it meant the constant need to reaffirm the legitimacy of their very existence.

Goldman’s perspective is unique for academic scholarship in that form fits function: her own experiences in the punk scene serve as proof that other women’s experiences and livelihoods should be taken as legitimate knowledge, especially regarding cultural history. Armed with an accessible yet eloquent writing style, she combines familiarity with scholarship. Though she covers a long list of artists, many of whom won’t be easily remembered after reading a few pages on each, the artists’ stories serve a larger purpose in tracing the evolution of pioneers of female punk to modern-day feminist musicians. The stories Goldman tells demonstrate wide breadth, yet her overall narrative is cohesive down to the last sentence in which she brings back the glitter imagery from the book’s first phrase. “Amid the grime and grit, there will be glitter,” she writes. The grime and grit of both the punk scene and society more broadly do not threaten the glitter that is female punk; rather, the glitter is all the brighter when it stands out. The glitter shines globally in environments where people wish to quell its sparkle, yet as anyone who has ever crafted with dots of childhod magic knows, it is impossible to fully extirpate. As Goldman describes through both personal anecdotes and scholarly research in Revenge of the She-Punks, glitter is here to stay.