Late last year, Vegas-based metalcore band Survive This! was embroiled in a quiet controversy across the punk internet (punkernet?) due to it graphic lyrical depiction of violence and misogyny. I was pleased to see the band called out on this, first on Absolutepunk’s article that shined a light on this lyrical nugget: “just wait until I get my hands on you, bleed bitch bleed […] I’ve never hit a woman but you’re wearing me thin” and shortly after on For the Love of Punk’s call to boycott the band’s label, Epitaph Records. Epitaph, founded by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, is the most successful punk label of all time, helping to break punk rock into the mainstream with Offspring’s Smash (the highest selling independent record ever) and many, including the writers of the FTLOP article, thought Epitaph should have more accountability in their signings.

While the misogynistic lyrics greatly disappointed me, I was even more disappointed, though not surprised, by the replies these stories got. A slew of “stop being so PC and stepping on the band’s first amendment rights” and “punk is supposed to be offensive” comments flooded the sites, completely missing the point of what free speech and “PC” really means. The first amendment grants protection from the government, meaning if Obama came and took your Bad Religion shirt away because he didn’t like the anti-Christian message, you would have a case. Choosing not to support something is one of the oldest and most successful forms of non-violent protest and is perfectly acceptable in this situation, and putting out the call for equality and better discourse isn’t a form of political correctness, it’s just correct. Period.

Just a year prior to Survive This!-gate, five members of Moscow’s Pussy Riot were arrested and jailed after a show at Christ the Savior Cathedral. The Russian government took issue with the band’s music, which condemned the Russian Orthodox church’s close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Decades earlier, political punk pioneers The Clash took a cut in royalties on Sandinista! to ensure that the album would be affordable so that more people would have the opportunity to hear songs like “Washington Bullets,” which casts light on our country’s support of Third World fascist regimes and how the Somozas’ Nicaraguan government fell to the Sandinista National Liberation Front. This obviously ruffled a lot of feathers, but the right feathers, the kind that work to enact positive change in the world. These are the kinds of statements I can get behind. Not statements that make entire groups of people wary of ever even attending a punk rock show.

If the only people you are NOT offending with your music are affluent, cisgender, heterosexual, Caucasian guys, then you’ve failed at punk (and, likely, life, but that’s another discussion altogether). “PC” seems to be used more often as a quick defense mechanism for the refusal of honest self-introspection. When someone is called out for saying something offensive, it’s easier to try and deflect the blame and say that the disenfranchised party is being too sensitive than it is to admit that maybe what you’re saying is wrong and putting in the work to challenge your long-held beliefs.

Denigrating women, the LGBT community and ethnic minorities doesn’t make you “punk” – it makes you an asshole. What makes you “punk” is standing up for the person that an entire room is making fun of. It’s being open to the possibility that your worldview is narrow and might not necessarily be right all the time. We’re in control, with our wallets and our creative output, of what “punk” stands for. Let’s keep it controversial but controversial in ways that matter. Ways that make racists, sexists, bigots and fascists feel uncomfortable around us.