When I found out Canadian male rock duo Death from Above 1979 was not only reuniting but visiting my town I almost burst with excitement. After ten long years I would finally be able to belt along to “Sexy Results” in a sea of sweaty friends.

However, the actual experiences from the concert – yet again – left me disappointed. I got to the front (and trust me that was stellar) but what was not stellar were the cutting remarks and non-consensual touching. Comments like, “You are such a badass for being a girl and putting yourself in the pit,” and, “do you want me to protect you? I’ll just wrap myself around you – don’t worry,” were accompanied by my hair being pulled and my bra straps being held on to.

Why was I being treated like a weird sexual unicorn just because I’m a girl at a show? I asked my friends after and they had similar experiences, and we get it every time.

The riot grrrl movement of the 90s used this stigmatization in the core of their movement. Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill called ‘girls to the front’ at their shows and it was a lot more than just giving a good view. Creating a safe space for women or anyone feeling marginalized at a punk show was (and still is) essential. Allowing girls to come take a seat on the stage created a visual and physical example that the macho-punk mentality wasn’t acceptable at riot grrrl shows and shouldn’t be allowed elsewhere.

But why was this necessary and why don’t we practice it today?

Women and LGBTQ people are still under represented in mainstream genres. Because of this, there’s a serious inadequacy of positive role models and advocates. Music festivals, conceptually, can be seen as a gathering for diverse bands and genres and still are primarily white males. This is a problem at all festivals it seems. I ran some math on two of the big ones. Squamish Valley Music Festival has a total of 64 bands, of which only 13 include women making it a sad 4.9% representation. I ran the same formula on Coachella’s first weekend and only 31 of the 206 bands included women. That’s still only 6.7%.

Punk is most notorious for its macho-violent culture, characterized by moshpits and oozing noses filled with blood. Since the 70s, the scene has certainly been dominated by straight whites dudes but women, queer and other races have always been present and demanded space be made.

Even before riot grrrl, queer punk began a big underground movement. Similar to grrrls, it began with zine culture and mutual support. Popular publications included Homocore by Tom Jennings and other blatant, strong titles. From there, it turned in to bands and music. But as it strengthened, so did its opposition. Homophobic comments like “…all these homos go around thinking that they are the most oppressed group of people on Earth. It’s just not true. They are, like, fourth or fifth down the list,” said to the American Music Show, violence towards artists and internal fracturing of the movement kept queer punk and the LGBTQ presence away from the mainstream.

The next big shift towards inclusiveness was in 2012 when Against Me! leader Tom Gabel announced he would begin the long transition to living as a woman, changing his name to Laura Jane Grace. To the music scene and their devoted fans, this was a shock. But Against Me! fans understood from the lyrics of 2007s The Ocean, in which he proclaims,

“If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.”

Like the queer punk movement, riot grrrl used literature along with music to carve out a place for women. The riotgrrrl manifesto boasts loudly,

“BECAUSE in every form of media we see us/myself slapped, decapitated, laughed at, objectified, raped, trivialized, pushed, ignored, stereotyped, kicked, scorned, molested, silenced, invalidated, knifed, shot, choked and killed. BECAUSE a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit”

The need for safety and representation of women in music is at the heart of the movement. The need for this continues today. And, its not only in punk. How many times do we need to defend our knowledge of music to men? “Oh, you are a fan of techno? I bet you don’t know about this obscure underground duo from Berlin.”

Music continues to stigmatize and recreate the boys-club culture it knows best. When Warped Tour’s founder was asked about his disproportionately low inclusion of female bands, his response was almost laughable. Journalist Megan Saling asked, and this was the result:

“If you’ve got 20 bands that have women in them out of 120 bands, that’s one out of six bands.”

“You think that’s OK?” I ask, surprised that he would be so comfortable with such a one-sided ratio.

“That’s absolutely OK,” he says.

Diversity isn’t just about sticking a couple girls in to please the womanfolk. Music lovers aren’t just 20-something white guys. Riot grrrls’ ‘girls to the front’ mentality is still an important concept we can translate to be more inclusive. Creating a safe space for anyone feeling marginalized or at-risk at shows makes a physical and verbal statement that says, “hey, we’re here and we aren’t going anywhere.”

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