Cranky

five years ago i would make jokes about how people would still believe gerard was cishet even if he pranced around in miniskirts and heels and it’s not even funny anymore because that’s exactly what’s happened

the most infuriating part of this is that the skirts and heels aren’t even the most important part of my chem’s long, long history with queerness.

gerard way is deeply literate in queer media and culture. they’re part of a queer comic writer’s anthology. he was interviewed for and included himself under an article titled ‘queer innovators’ in 2018. they’ve spent this whole tour referencing fright night and camp films. he’s personally called in to drag shows just to tell trans people who were originally inspired to transition because of him that he’s proud of them and everything that they are. they formed their musical identity based on sapphic riot grrrl scenes. they were first drawn to bowie and nirvana specifically because of their bisexuality and gender nonconformity. they’re obsessed with rocky horror and drag culture in general. they deliberately curated their audience to center women and lgbt folks, using visible queerness to dissuade violent rock dudes from even wanting to attend their shows. they wrote personal narrative songs about gay sex in an era where having long hair made you a target for a hate crime. he made out with his male guitarist in front of an entire crowd of rowdy rock fans just to piss them off and decry homophobia in the early 2000s. they wore passing drag when they were in college because they wanted to see what it was like to live as a woman. good fucking god he spent two entire years openly and almost ravenously discussing his own lifelong struggles with gender incongruity, how they wished they’d had access to gender-focused therapy when they were younger, how when they, as a teen, learned what transgenderism was, they immediately understood themself as ‘more of a girl’, and how they felt like a light switch went off in their head when they read what laura jane had written about her experience with dysphoria, something that affected them enough they explicitly wrote about transfemininity and transphobia in a personal solo album where they only referred to themself with she/her pronouns. and this isn’t even fucking half of it! they tweeted their goddamn pronouns seven years ago! gerard is deeply, deeply rooted in queer culture, and he has been so despite extreme personal hardship.

god, it’s not just about gerard, either. the way people treat my chem’s queerness is infuriating as well.

mcr has always been a queer band. ideologically, identification-wise, politically, artistically, whatever you want to call it, they have always, always been a queer band. gerard wearing eyeshadow and deliberately presenting femininely during revenge was a declaration. frank pasting ‘PANSY’ in the biggest letters he could on his guitar was a declaration. gerard’s speeches against homophobia in the early days was a declaration. and these statements weren’t just political, they were personal. gerard has gone on record saying that they looked the way they did in 2004 because it was affirming to their femininity and gender identity! the reason they made those anti-homophobia speeches in the early days was in direct response to being called faggots backstage at that gig! my chemical romance has always been a queer band by queer people writing queer music for a queer audience and somehow people have managed, by some godforsaken feat, to twist that queerness into being purely coincidental.

during the breakup, mcr somehow became a ‘gay band’ the same way that hozier was ‘gay music’ or mushrooms were ‘gay culture’. people suddenly decided mcr was queer not because presenting that way was an extremely deliberate decision by the band members, but simply because gay people liked them. just like how mother mother became ‘enby music’, my chem became queer only by association. and what utter bullshit that is. after all they went through, after all they’d done and sang and spoken and curated, for their queerness to be reduced down to a simple coincidental aesthetic.

look. i get it. we don’t want to overstep. but this has bridged into complete overcorrection. the fact that all of this history has been capped off by a world tour where gerard has been, and i’m gonna say it, completely, undeniably, and wonderfully queer, out in public without any restrictions for the first time in their entire life, and people have STILL managed to raise their hackles at the thought of calling them and their band queer is…somewhat offensive to be honest! we’ve lost the language of flagging and subtlety (though i wouldn’t call any of my chem’s history with queerness subtle), and have overcorrected to the point of forcing people to come out with a pleasantly packaged and explicit label before they can ever be included in the political sphere of queerness. what happened to ‘cishet isn’t the default’ and ‘coming out on life magazine isn’t a necessity to be lgbt’?

this band has done so fucking much to find hands to hold, not just for their audience’s comfort, but to connect with people they can identify with. what a gift that is. if you look at mcr’s entire discography, everything the band has said about not fitting in and being bullied for being faggots, everything gerard’s said about their own gender identity, everything they have ever aligned themselves with, everything that has happened onstage these past five months, everything, and i can’t believe i’m saying this, including gerard yanking a trans pride flag out of the audience pit and literally waving it around onstage, and your conclusion is ‘well i don’t want to assume…’, you’ve missed the point in its entirety.

Why did we stop talking about the manson girl outfit? The manson girl outfit made so many of the other outfits make sense to me. I wanna talk about the manson girl outfit.

Let’s talk about more than that, though. Let’s talk about the textually feminine costumes—by which I mean the costumes that clearly and explicitly invoke femininity—that Gerard has worn on stage. Let’s talk about how all of them have referenced traditional American archetypes of female cultural and social power.

I want to offer one way of reading these outfits. Not the only way, of course. Also, I don’t mean to reach any concrete conclusions about Gerard’s gender, though I don’t think that anything I’m saying here contradicts anyone’s attempt to do so in any direction. Often I see dissections of these outfits supporting the point of Gerard’s gender non-conformity without addressing how or why he chose a specific manner of playing with gender.

To me, it’s incredibly obvious how intentional and deliberate these choices are. And I think a failure to recognize these outfits as a specific artistic choice does Gerard a disservice. Exploring the layered motivations for a specific kind of gendered expression does not preclude these costumes from being an important, interesting, and personal manifestation of gender nonconformity. In fact, I’d say it supports that interpretation even more.

Okay, all that said! As I mentioned earlier, the Manson Girl costume triggered these thoughts. I saw very little discussion of the costume at all, which I think is a shame.

[source: Trish Badger]

I know why; people struggle to talk about cults and the people involved in them. Obviously, it's a complex issue that requires nuance. Full disclosure, I am a cult survivor myself—and thus am uniquely acquainted with the complexity of victimhood and culpability for cult members from my own deconstruction journey.

But I think that Gerard intentionally chose to dress up as a female cultural symbol that embodies this uncomfortable gray area. Actually, I don’t think it’s the only one meant to evoke that frustrating moral ambiguity. The First Lady, The Nurse, The Teacher, The Cheerleader, The Devoted Follower—all of these important American archetypes symbolize feminine power, victimhood, and violence. When Gerard performs these identities on stage, he offers commentary on his own role in American society. 

[sources from left to right: Laurie Fanelli; Steve Pedulla; Jess Williams; Scott Raymer]

Sophia @sendmyresignation pointed out to me that these are not just important figures within general Americana; they hold significance within rock music specifically. Rock relies on the convenient metaphor of these women at their worst. The cheerleader stands in for every girl who never saw successful men for their worth; the female teacher stands in for oppressive authority figures holding men back. The Manson Girls, too, have become a cultural icon for music to evoke. Their violent, mindless devotion to Charles Manson (and more overtly, their beliefs surrounding the Beatles and Helter-Skelter) is an obvious parallel to the crazed devotion of fans to celebrity musicians. 

These representations of women are generally pretty misogynistic, as the songs that invoke them create distance between the successful male musician and the women who don’t understand them. But not here. Not right now.

Gerard, the rockstar, the cult leader, the most powerful person in the room when he’s on stage, takes these figures that are traditionally degraded by people in his position, and takes on their societal role. He’s not the president; he’s the president’s wife. He’s not the cult leader; he’s the cult leader’s devoted follower. He’s not the doctor you respect; he’s the nurse you trust. He’s not the man looking back with scorn at the popular girl who never noticed him in high school; he’s the cheerleader drowning in equal parts admiration and ire.

My Chemical Romance occupies a position within American society that allows them to wield substantial economic and social power. But every ounce of power they gain from their position in the industry further constricts them to specific roles, a specific life. And with more power comes the ability to cause real harm.

The female figures of Gerard’s costumes represent the only socially prescribed and socially approved avenues for women to obtain power. These women can’t be the politician, but they can exert influence over him as his wife. They can’t control the adult men in their lives, but they can teach children. They can’t go to medical school, but they can make many of the life-or-death decisions for their patients.

These positions—the First Lady; the Nurse; the Teacher; the Manson Girl; the rockstar—allow for violence, intentional or otherwise. In a horror context, these figures unsettle because of the blurred lines of culpability and victimhood they convey. This uncomfortable feminine danger is obvious with the Manson Girls, who committed brutal murders in the name of the abusive man who brainwashed them, but these other female archetypes exert power over others as a reaction to more abstract misogyny.

The nurse costume, for example, references in part the Nurse Ratched character, the heartless, sadistic caretaker of the all-male psychiatric care facility in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Even the adored Jackie Onassis, benevolent as her image is, represents a strata of American society akin to an untouchable nobility, an American aristocracy that only occasionally reached out to those below them.

Their violence cannot be separated from their victimhood. Their victimhood cannot be separated from their violence. The condition of their subjugation lends them the very power it limits.

Just as Conventional Weapons used military service as a metaphor for the predatory music industry, Gerard’s choice to wear these outfits can be read as specific commentary on his own institutional power, on his own ambivalence about his role as cultural nobility. He arguably occupies one of the highest positions in society one could achieve; yet as much as this empowers him, as much as this is the life he chose for himself, it also constricts him. It is uncontrollable. It can cause harm. Not so long ago, after all, the media demonized MCR as creating a subculture that glorified self-harm and suicide. Gerard wears the same dress and cardigan as members of a violent cult as someone who has been accused of starting a violent cult himself on multiple occasions and by no small number of people.

I think, too, that it shouldn’t be taken as a coincidence that he has chosen to perform as these specific women, these feminine figures who find power through their compliance in and performance of constrained, gendered roles. There’s something to be said about the stage, by nature a confined space, being a place where gender nonconformity can be expressed safely, where the costume can be put on and taken off, where it is expected to be put on and taken off.

It’s a distinctly feminine demonstration of horror; it’s a horror best expressed through the feminine.

my other MCR topic of choice is why Ray Toro isn’t recognized as one of the best guitarists of the 21st century

#prev yeah soph you get it #the general dismissal of mcr's music bc of homophobia misogyny and ableism #plus the fact that he learned in the style of the classic shredders but he wasn't necessarily emulating them#he always spoke about how he wasnt in mcr to shred - he never added gratuitous shredding or unnecessarily complex/showy solos #even though he could - and he did often add that kind of thing in on liveshowd where the atmosphere called for it - bc the song came first#the few times he actually has been interviewed by guitar magazines and the likes he's talked a lot about how much thought he puts into#deciding what Type of solo will fit the song and the message/atmosphere gerard's going for #and talks about where he drew inspiration from for each of them and who/what he was trying to emulate #like the summertime solo. fucking masterpiece in emotive playing and laughably simple #a beginner guitarist could play it - but it's remarkable in its simplicity and in the emotion it conveys...in melody and musicianship #like. he's not in the band to show off #so he's set apart from the rest of the rock bands in the noughties bc he's the stand-out best guitarist among them#but he was ALSO set apart from the classic shredders bc he was unapologetic about the band he was in and not looking to engage in that #kind of macho posturing. like neither camp knew what to do with him #ugh typing these tags on my phone without my glasses on they're probably incomprehensible but i should talk about this more coherently #another time #ugh. feeling emotional about how mcr is a truly unique band that could never and will never be recreated and the stars aligned to make them #t (tags via @raytorosaurus)

Why everyone so obsessed with peter from mc ride or whatever his name is. peter? whats his name ? benjamin?

whats his name damien? i see him everywhere. peter?

He looks like thihs whats his name ?

YES THATS HIS NAME

this isn't just about the streamer ignoring ray. 

yes, the conversation is focused around him, yes the catalyst for last night was because of a microaggression he experienced (again - it happens at least once a week), but this conversation is not simply about ray deserving recognition. 

this is about the broader context of how ray and every other person of color in this fan space are treated. last night was just one of the many catalysts for this conversation.

when poc on the dash discuss the visceral reactions we have whenever we notice ray being cut out of streams, you need to understand that we are operating under years of personal experience with microaggressions. we are operating with radars specifically tuned to covert racism because that is a survival tactic for us. when white people see ray being ignored or his value deprecated or his features insulted, they think 'that's so strange, he's so good at guitar and i like his hair! how could anyone possibly think this!' they think of it in the same vein as mikey getting ignored. when poc see this happening, we are aware within seconds that those little negs are surface-level symptoms of twenty years of violent and explicit bigotry ray had to experience as a man of color in the white public eye. he was cut out of posters, edited out of photoshoots, pushed aside in conversations about the band's musicality despite being their melodic/technical backbone, sliced from interviews, called ugly, bodyshamed, tone-policed, had his hair insulted, the list is endless. and that's just in the mass media. don't even get me started on online communities.

when poc see ray getting ignored, we see the entire iceberg. we see that these are simply the most visible oil slicks that rise to the top of the pot, and that there is so much more boiling underneath the surface. white people cannot, choose not to see that. 

people have completely blinded themselves to what ray went through for most of mcr's career. i think this is a mix of deliberate ignorance, time burying the worst of it, and new fans not knowing how the band's media experience traumatized them. new fans see ray being called a god,a king, a hunk with a rock legend certification, and other incredibly dehumanizing pseudo-worship phrases. new fans see ray being praised for his body only after he's lost weight, being praised for his hair only after it loosened in texture from the kinky coils it used to naturally be, being praised for his ethnic features that are only now starting to be fetishized instead of insulted. they see that, in the general fan consensus, ray is more popular than mikey. and they believe that means ray is being treated well. i cannot describe to you how glaring it is to every person of color on the dash that that is not true.

because ray is a celebrity, the way he's treated in a fan space is essentially the way an audience would treat a character in media. that's just how fame works. because of this, it is incredibly easy to identify the racial media tropes he's lashed with on the daily.

some of these include model minority, latin lover stereotypes, racial masculinization and de-feminization, heteronormativity, whitewashing, etc etc etc. look them up. ray's specific case also exposes unconscious bias almost unprecedently easily; because he's mixed, pale, and doesn't have a stereotypical accent, white people can hide under the guise of fucking somehow not knowing he's a man of color, despite the fact that he is very very identifiably and proudly nonwhite. remember that post about how bullies somehow always know what to bully you for even if they can't define it yet? the way white people talk about ray's hair, face, body, and entire being in general is not at all diluted when they pull the 'but i didn't know!' card.

it's not just ray, either. whenever i or any other ethnic person with big textured curls post a selfie, we get bombarded with white people saying 'wow, you look just like ray' or 'you could be toro's sibling' no matter how little we actually look like him. white people here are so underexposed to any scrap of nonwhite features that when they see people with a very common ethnic hair texture they immediately relate it to the one poc they can remember without looking him up. whenever i or any other ethnic person start this conversation for the third time in a month, we receive a barrage of defensive asks crying about how they don't know what to say because they're white, or just straight up being racist. we lose droves of followers. the entire dash, despite usually being bustling and wonderful, goes silent. it feels like a knife to the gut and we expect it every single fucking time.

so no, it's not just about the streamer. it's about the way ray and every other poc in this scene have been treated for decades. look shit up. donate to the poc taking hours out of their days and years off their lives trying to educate you. think before you post. and please god don't let this die. i don't know if we'll be able to handle another fucking cycle of nothing changing after the few poc on the dash rip themselves apart trying to get anyone to listen. keep talking about it. write a note if you have to. i am begging you to take last night and keep it close to your chest, because if you let the conversation be swept away just like every other time before, we are never going to heal from any of this. face it head on and relentlessly. and pay the people giving you education

michael? michael romance?

just saw michael romance

see the massive issue with gerard and ray finally loving themselves is that this means gerard is wearing dresses that show off their body and ray is MOANING directly into the mic every time they play planetary and when i say massive issue i AM referring to the lack of hole currently perched on my dick

the eyeliner mustache makes the entire drag look. how do i make sure the audience knows that i’m not just wearing a suit but that i am Wearing An Ironic Man Costume. oh i know

that was performing gender 200% more than any of the dresses have been

this is so funny. is that meant to be making fun of the previous tag. this post is quite literally about gerard way

Some of you guys are assholes lmfao people worked hard to stay hydrated, brought each other food at barricade, took shifts standing up and sitting down throughout the day to rest their legs, etc. etc. The crowd was poorly controlled to the point that many people could not breathe in the crush (there was at least one cardiac event and one seizure, neither from people waiting at barricade), security were actively being dicks to people at certain points, and multiple people were seriously injured with broken legs, head trauma, and similar issues. Boiling it down to "ohhh wahhh people passed out what do you expect after waiting around at barricade at the heat" is laughably gross

seeing posts about tonight as someone who got Fucked Up in the pit: i love you and appreciate ur fury and ur right but. i promise you the people making problems in the pit are a. not tumblr users and b. were in the minority. the real problem tonight was riot fest did NOT account for the fact pretty much everyone that bought a general ticket would be going to see mcr and create a huge, uncontrollable crowd. its on the event organizers for failing to understand the reality of mcrs concert sizes and that they were the closers (meaning there would be no other performances to pull and divide crowd sizes). what should have happened was ahead of time, the organizers built up more barricaides to seperate the crowd into further smaller sections because tonight was pure crowd crunch. I do not blame the security team who had so much to deal with and no good way to deal with it and i feel awful for mcr eho clearly had a fun show planned that got cut down and fucked up by poor planning

watching vids of desert song last night and mikey just wandering around placidly on stage bc theres no bass part for him to play 😭😭😭

LIKE….. hdkshdlsks

i’m so sorry but nothing kills me more than when gerard way leaves the stage covered in blood and guts once again and inbetween all the panic and debauchery there’s like five frank girls being like ok but my guy is in a little fag cardigan can anyone hear me

In honour of the grand 9/10/22 Gerard drought