Wednesday 6 May 2020

Reviews of a couple of 2020 albums

I wrote these reviews for the site rateyourmusic.  Reviewing contemporary albums is a much more difficult task for me than writing about old weird records is.  There's no benefit of hindsight there.  I don't know anything more than what these artists know, can't draw on decades of critical discourse, can't place it in its proper historical context, all of these little tricks I use to distance myself from the music.

Because otherwise it becomes a big fight.  Regardless of what Red Crayola has to say about the revolutionary potential of culture, it's something I genuinely believe in.  What are my other options, you know?  Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun?  That's not my way.

Rateyourmusic is a fight, the Internet is a fight, and I am done being drawn into fights.  The politics of music are even more fraught than the politics of food, and the politics of food are a fucking mess.  All the arguments over Clams Casino (the musician, not the food) and "I'm God", whether it even _deserves to be evaluated as music_, it's so fascinating and, you know, absurd, the gatekeeping on that.  The desire to be "accurate", to be "fair"...

But it has its purpose, you know?  RYM has this continual pipeline of 4chan refugees, of edgelords, of, you know, men, and what I can say there publicly, what I can "publish", has to meet certain standards.  And these reviews, I'm proud of them, they're honest and worth sharing, and they don't meet those standards.  If they didn't have the standards, I'd probably feel even less comfortable there, feel less welcome, than I already feel.

So I guess I'll put them here, even though they're technically out of the purview of this blog, just so they're not gated.  Even if nobody but my friends will read this, it's important that people who aren't my friends are _able_ to read these words.  Because all of us women need to be able to have somewhere to speak for ourselves, to tell our own stories.  Because Sewerslvt's story isn't mine, because Feminazgul's story isn't mine.

Sewerslvt - Draining Love Story:

Transition was a difficult and drawn-out process for me.  One of the more difficult aspects was that the spaces I socialized in were spaces that, in practice, excluded cis women.  This made it easy for me to think of women as unattainable, alien, Other.

I don't spent a lot of time ruminating on what I would have done differently, because I have so many other things to ruminate on, because the nineties were a different time, but I do allow myself some regrets.  One of those is that I wish I had spent more time listening to women.  Once I started listening to women, really listening, it became possible for me to understand that they and I were not quite so different than I had assumed.

I feel this is perhaps not an uncommon experience among trans women, that it is perhaps an artifact of being raised male.  A certain popular interpretation of (cishet) masculinity teaches men to avoid women for anything other than sexual encounters.  This practice is damaging to both men and women, cis and trans.

If the only encounter one has with the feminine is anime, well, it's not a surprise that this is how trans women frame their goals.  And when your goal is unattainable, misery results.

It makes me sad to see this misery perpetuated, to see it celebrated.  Everybody has their own ways of dealing with their pain, and if a record like this helps people live with themselves, helps them accept themselves, well, then there's value in that.  And there's value in Sewerslvt having expressed herself, having spoken her truth as a trans woman.

I will say that my experience as a trans woman is not like Sewerslvt's.  That I am happier than I have ever been.  Everyone I know loves me, accepts me, and values me.  I am at ease in my own skin.  None of this is a question of being passing or being beautiful or anything like that.

I wish I could say this publicly, to everyone here who feels hopeless like I used to feel hopeless.  But I am of course not talking about the music at all here, can't say this in a way that will meet this site's published review standards.  It's a message I will continue to try and speak, though, as often and as loudly as I can, because this is my truth.

Feminazgul - No Dawn For Men:

I don't follow metal terribly closely.  I like a lot of it, but there's a lot of it and the combination of the quantity and the intense devotion it inspires can be overwhelming.

That said, I have been keeping half an eye on Feminazgul since the release of their debut EP in 2018.  I am therefore quite happy to hear of the release of their full-length, and happier still to hear that it delivers on the promise of their fascinating debut.

I am not surprised that this record is not thought of highly in certain corners.  It's not just that the record is "political", or even that it is avowedly feminist and antifascist.  Feminazgul are, to be blunt, misandrist.

I make no apologies for this because Feminazgul need no apologies.  I do not forgive them for this because, as they say on track five, "Forgiver, I am not yours".  Black metal is, at its core, intense and extreme music, music of hatred, and Feminazgul, as a project, are committed wholeheartedly to that hatred.

What this means is that if you are a man, Feminazgul hate you for who you are.  You do not deserve this.  I don't mean to say that you don't deserve to be hated - I surely am not in a position to make comment either way on the larger issue - but only that _nobody deserves to be hated for who they are_.

Which is why I, personally, am not misandrist, why I do affirm the positive value of masculinity.  And also why, having extensively had the experience of being hated for who I am, I affirm the music of Feminazgul as being... instructive.  It would be a fine thing, a good thing, if nobody were to be hated for who they are, but I can't see how we can get to that without knowledge, without a world full of people - full of men - who know the pain of being hated unjustly, being hated simply for how they were born.

Feminazgul's music is inseparable from their politics, and their politics are inseparable from their identity.  Which is to say an essential part of their music is that it is black metal made by women, for women.  This is, I recognize, not the sort of "identity politics" one usually encounters in black metal.

In this case, though, their politics are unusually powerful.  Again, to be blunt, black metal is not a genre of music that is particularly welcoming to women.  One can speak of, perhaps, Myrkur, who gets her own variety of shit, and in contrast to Feminazgul she is not even antifascist (is in fact, I have heard, fascist).  Feminazgul is so impressively powerful to me not just because, as a woman, I have had the experience of being excluded, marginalized, hated, but because of the subversion of their work, the glorious power inherent in using the weapons of the oppressor against them.

I don't believe hatred is worthy as an end in and of itself.  I don't celebrate hatred, choose not to carry my hatred.  I acknowledge it, though.  I acknowledge hatred as part of who I am, the inevitable result of what I have experienced, and I revel in music, powerful, feminine music (a lot of what I have seen as dismissals of their work on aesthetic grounds I do see as a positive good, a divergence from the accepted masculine cultural norms of black metal) that speaks to these experiences, and these feelings.  Because until I acknowledge them, I don't have the choice of whether or not to lay the burden down, for the burden is buried deep inside me.  What "No Dawn For Men" does for me is to exhume corpses long-buried, to bring that pain to the surface, make it comprehensible, and yes beautiful too, but beautiful in the way of intense tears, not beautiful as a lie.

9 comments:

  1. Hey, I know this post isn't totally recent now but I'm a friend of Sedric's and a trans woman who uh, reading this has given me a lot of feelings that I'm not sure if I can usefully express or do anything with but I guess I'm bringing myself to mention so.

    "If the only encounter one has with the feminine is anime, well, it's not a surprise that this is how trans women frame their goals. And when your goal is unattainable, misery results."

    This sits with me, I don't feel I can refute it and I'm afraid that it may at least partially describe me.

    I'm forced to ask myself, am I, when I fear I'll never be anything but ugly to myself and others, never have an appearance that isn't dysphoric for me to see, never feel that the body I have to live in is meaningfully myself, am I comparing myself more to fictional characters than to real people?

    Am I beset by a completely unattainable, unreal image of what could possibly constitute a body and appearance that I'd ever be happy with?

    If I am, what do I do with this information?

    I don't know if it's worth posting this reply. I'm sorry if I said anything bad or made you feel uncomfortable or like you said anything that hurt me... I don't feel you said anything that I didn't on some level already worry about.

    Maybe I'm overstating, to myself and in how I'm communicating it here, how much it's an issue for me.

    I feel conflicted over the nature of escapism a lot of the time. I'm very escapist, generally, and I do feel that's because it's a coping mechanism for how empty my life often feels and how little I often get out of existing in the real world and how afraid I am of real people. How much social anxiety I'm carrying around.

    Sometimes escapism is the only thing, in the moment, that I can do. But at the same time, it ultimately doesn't really solve a lot of things.

    I'm sorry for spilling my guts all over your post.

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    1. Dunno why my username is "The Author of This Blog". I think it was just from my own blog. I'm not the author of THIS blog obviously.

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    2. Okay wait good it says entropicdecay now sorry

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  2. Hi entropicdecay, sorry in turn it took me so long to get back to your comment. This is, uh... this is embarrassing, see, it turns out that I have a plugin installed in my browser that blocks comments. So it took me a little while to figure out that you'd commented, and once you did, it took me a little while to figure out how to view what you've said.

    First off absolutely no apology necessary. You have a voice, you have a right to your voice, and you have the right to feel how you feel. I am honored that you feel comfortable expressing your feelings about my post.

    There are a lot of things that all of us have in common, a lot of things we all share, and unfortunately a lot of those things are destructive, harmful, and false narratives we've been told. But we're all different people. We all have different stories, different experiences, different things that work for us and different things that don't. For you, as a trans woman, you should do what works for you, what makes you feel right, and if anybody else - cis, trans, whoever - tries to put shit on you for being who you are, that is their shit. It feels bad when someone else does that, always, but my experience is that at least recognizing and acknowledging that I'm not the problem helps take some of the sting out of it. Being hated sucks, but hating myself sucks more, so I try not to do it.

    Anyway, if you ever want to talk to me - and if I haven't made it clear, I am myself a trans woman - please let me know. Sedric can put you in touch with me. I know that, as much as it is absolutely worth doing, transition is really hard. We all need all the help we can get. It's important to me to try and help in any way I can.

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    1. Hi! Thank you for reading and responding to my comment. No worries about the technical issues that made you not see it for a while, that's alright.

      Thank you. I'm glad you're alright with it and me expressing my thoughts wasn't inappropriate or anything. I'm glad you appreciate me talking about it.

      Yeah, I see what you mean. I definitely need to try not to hate myself so much. I've struggled with a lot of self-hatred for a very long time. Some of it is coming from dysphoria, some of it is coming from internalising people's judgements of me (and a tendency to emotionally harm myself exposing myself to transphobic crap even if the context sometimes is trans women talking about the crap they deal with, I need to get better about handling my usage of social media and such in a way where I won't hurt myself so much) and a lot of it I'm pretty sure is from unprocessed trauma (I'm trying to get a therapist but the healthcare system isn't making it easy). But you're absolutely right, the way that people try to put shit on me or on trans women in general and trans people in general is their shit and I'm not the problem there and I should try as much as I can not to hate myself so much.

      And yeah it's clear from this post and some others (I've read quite a lot of the posts on here, they're good posts) that you're a trans woman too. That's why I commented on this post, because it gave me some stuff to think about in terms of how I relate to self-image and the potential risks of unattainable self-images or unattainable images I may sometimes be judging myself against. The post was sitting with me in ways I felt I had to try to process.

      I would be willing to talk to you, yeah. Thank you for being willing to listen to me. There aren't any other trans women I know very well at this point, so sometimes there are things that to an extent I just don't really have anybody to talk to about in that regard.

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    2. And yeah, transition has definitely been hard so far, especially because I started going on testosterone blockers (unfortunately have not been able to get oestrogen yet but it seems like that'll hopefully be somewhat soon) practically right before the pandemic hit. And have had to have that coincide with stopping my antidepressant because it was making it harder to lose weight, which I need to to get rid of sleep apnea, and because I have diabetes, and to get under a certain weight (which I'm now under at least) before they'll let me get oestrogen.

      So it's been a lot of stuff going on that's resulting in a very emotionally difficult time of the last several days.

      Thanks for listening.

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    3. Though I've known I in some way or another wasn't cis for years before starting to medically transition at all. Partly because of the difficulty of knowing for sure that hormone changes I'd never experienced would help (knowing how something will mentally affect you before you experience it, y'know), partly because of the difficulty of getting things moving in the healthcare system (one time I went to a gender dysphoria clinic only to be told they couldn't help me, then later got on the waiting list to try going there again only to be told the wait would be two years)

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  3. Hello there, I came from the ILX/ILM boards to read this.

    First of all, if you are on social media I do much better at following people on Facebook and Twitter so let me know if you are so we can be friends/followers (if you're not or keep it separate from the likes of me, no worries at all.)

    I wanted to mention Feminazgul here. I fell in love with their record when I heard it, and I am a white(-passing) hetero cismale to the nines. And as such a person I didn't feel misandry, mainly because I didn't think I was the kind of white(-passing) hetero cismale that Margaret Kiljoy is taling about.

    Maybe that's naive on my part, maybe I feel I am above the fray because I am an ally and try to be a good one. But she did accept my friend request on Facebook. So there's that.

    Anyway, I like the words you write.

    Brian (aka NYCNative on ILX, aka TheNYCNative on Facebook, aka NYC__Native on Twitter)

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    1. Hello Brian! Unfortunately, sort of echoing what entropicdecay said above, I do find Twitter and Facebook to be incredibly toxic places so I don't use either of those sites. I wish there were better alternatives when it came to interacting with people on the Internet, but right now unfortunately sort of self-isolating is the best thing for me. :( I'm glad you were able to come here and share your feelings on the album, though! Drop by anytime :)

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