Women in punk creating queer identity spaces: strategies of resistance revisited

This research presents a contemporary snapshot of queer engagement with punk fields in an Australian and UK context. Conducted from an ‘insider’ position, the study finds that queer women and gender diverse people are configuring resistance to hegemonically masculine music scenes by building communities of praxis. Through a Do It Together (DIT) spirit, marginalised groups are dualistically initiating resistance and collectivism at gigs, making zines and forming bands, as well broadly positioning intersectionality as key to creating safe(r) punk spaces. Queer punx are using resistance as practical tool of foregrounding productivity and longevity in their scenes though generating ephemeral archives where remembering is both affective and transformative. Queer punx deconstruct what we know of the spatiality of resistance – how it is invoked, configured, unpacked and reconfigured. Incorporating affective atmospheres into an analysis of queer(ed) punk space as sites of resistance, this research analyses affective, spatial and temporal spaces of collective embodiments. Drawing on interviews, formal participant observation, as well as reflexively drawing on 15 years of lived experience and relationship building within punk scenes, this study revisits Halberstam’s concepts of strategies of resistance and rewriting narratives to add a new perspective to understanding punk practice. Considering Muñoz’s queer futurity as well as Hammers’ collective authorisation, queer women and gender diverse people’s experiential knowledges and identities are explored to contribute new knowledge to a queer archive. Importantly, this research problematises feminist constructions of women and gender diverse people as invisible subjects, instead remarking them as hypervisible but unknowable.