Queer As Punk: A Guide To LGBTQIA+ Punk

Punk rock has 101 origin stories, and most of them are true. After all, punk rock springs from a myriad of local scenes, and is as much about the music as it is about the venues where it is performed, the audiences and listeners who participate in its performance, clothes and style, politics and approaches to the world. And punk has always had an affinity with sexual outsiders, from the Sex Pistols dressed in bondage gear from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's infamous King's Road boutique Sex, to the Buzzcocks' pansexual anthem "Orgasm Addict." "Queer punk" might be a redundancy then, if making belligerent, redundant, over-the-top statements at the top of your lungs wasn't precisely what makes punk "punk" and queer "queer."

The term "punk," by the way, has a long queer history predating its use in contemporary music. A "punk" has always meant a person up to something disreputable and socially deviant. In Shakespeare's English, it meant a female prostitute; later it also connoted young men who sold sex to older men. Punk and queer are a match made