A feminist, queer punk rocker with a mohawk and tattoos sharing her insight with the world.
AIM: punkrockboi25
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Thoughts of Jess Five
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Let’s Talk Politics! Here’s mine, what’s yours?
I am an anarcha-feminist. I believe in freedom from all forms of oppression and hierarchies. Peace, love, unity, solidarity, and punk rock. I don’t want to rule and I don’t want to be ruled. I don’t believe in any nasty isms - such as racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, classism, and specism. I am against homophobia, xenophobia, and transphobia. I detest violence. I am a pacifist. I am pretty extreme - I don’t watch violent movies or play violent games. I believe violence creates violence. That any peace held with violence - is a false peace. I believe that health care, food, water, and housing should be a right not a privileged. I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag - I want no nations, no borders. No human is illegal. I want community and people working to help humanity. I believe we have a responsibility to take care of our planet so all species can live in harmony. I believe thou shall not kill. Life is precious and should never be taken for any reason. I can see a world with no war - where people won’t ever want to leave their home because everything they ever need is right there in front of them. A world free of rape, starvation, slavery, and bombs. This world is possible - if you want it. The system is made up of people - with changing yourself, you being a person, you can change the entire world.
With that being said, I took a quiz which I took a couple of years back. When I took the quiz for the first time, my politics were aligned with Gandhi. 
Now, Gandhi looks moderate compared to me. See my results here.
What’s your politics? Take the quiz here. Post a comment with your results! I am curious to see what other people are. :)
Punk Rock 101: Anarcho-Punk
I consider myself to be an anarcho-punk. Anarcho-punk is punk that promotes anarchism. The band Crass was the first anarcho-punk band. Many anarcho-punks support peace, equality, freedom from oppression, and hierarchies. I found a cool website dedicate to anarcho-punk and you can download some music from there.
http://www.anarcho-punk.net/
Enjoy!
Alternative Rock Isn’t Really Alternative – Show Review
I went and saw a concert called “WreX the Halls 2009″ with a handful of bands, notable: 30 Seconds to Mars, Rise Against, and AFI. I was disappointed with 30 Seconds to Mars because they played a song called “Kings and Queens” and they claimed it was “about you” which it clearly wasn’t as it was enforcing a gender binary. The show was filled with heteronormalivity and the crowd was eating it up. It probably all went unnoticed by the people in the audience who claimed to be alternative. They’d go to a show about being against the establishment but work and live within the system with being the servant not the master. How do they expect anything to change?
30 Seconds to Mars released a new album called, “This is War” and the title track talking about battle and believing in nothing but the truth of themselves. I don’t think they can even begin to know “truths” being so caught up in illusions, gender roles, and maintaining social order. It was like going to a show filled of Hot Topic punks. It was corporate punk with corporate sponsorship trying to pass itself off at alternative. You can’t fool me.
Rise Against is a good band and I appreciate their music but the show seemed almost as a joke. At $39 dollars a ticket – it wasn’t a diverse audience with it being mostly white males in their 20’s and 30’s with their girlfriends. It was white men playing for white men. Rise Against is a bit political but I was surprise they had a song for the soldiers called “Hero of War” which is pretty violent and sounds almost patriotic of supporting war and not being given the support back home. They sing of the hungry and the poor to the middle class which will never do anything to change things. The show was full of a bunch of liberals who are useless.
I was wearing my sweatshirt with sheeps being abducted by a UFO and I had a pretty good response to it. However, one girl came up to me and was like, “That sweatshirt is gay.” I was like, “No, it’s not.” She was like,”Yeah, it is. I mean gay like absurd.” I just kind of stared at her blankly and was like, “I got to go.” It was neither the time or place to explain to her that gay doesn’t mean absurd. It either means homosexual or happy. The sweatshirt was silly but wasn’t gay. It might have been queer because I was wearing it but it was odd that the girl felt the need to stop me and use the wrong words to explain things. I also had a moment of gender confusing the ticket lady, “Ma’am… Sir…” I was tempted to say “Call me ze” but it really wasn’t a genderqueer safe space in the middle of lots of straight males who are angry at the establishment but are mere sheeps and pawns.
So, the reason I went to the show to begin with was AFI. They were amazing and put on a great show. I know, I know, AFI isn’t punk rock anymore but I am still a fan. One of my favorite album of all time is The Art of Drowning. I go to hear their old music. Their new music isn’t bad but not as good as their old music. I rocked out the entire time.
I just wished the alternative scene was really alternative with radical politics instead of supporting a liberal agenda and pushing faith in the system. The system was and is working for the angry people at the show who are just angry at their own banality. They are boring. Going to shows and having to drink to have fun. It’s like dude, you are at a show, you should be able to have fun without alcohol.
I was surprised at how much the music was about being broken inside with no solution how to fix it or make it better. Or how they didn’t want to make it better. Like being broken is okay and feeling nothing or pain is the way life should be. Experience, learning, is painful but life is joyous if you find the beauty in small and large. There was just a lot of hollowed shells of people, like the living dead, it was almost overwhelming.
I know I’m not perfect – but I am working on healing myself from past hurts so that I can be as productive in the world and help society. In order to heal the world, you first need to heal yourself.
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Punk Rock 101: Wearing Bullets
I have a tendency to wear bullets (empty shell casings). I have a few bullet belts, a bullet wallet chain, and bullet on a chain necklace. The idea of wearing bullets is to make people think. When something is out of sight, out of mind, like war being an ocean away it’s easy to pretend it doesn’t exist. The idea is to confront people and make them think about what their tax dollars are doing. It’s a protest. I am an anarcho-pacifist punk - so war is the last thing I want being served.
Today, I was confronted by airport security guards about wearing my bullet chain - a chain with some bullet shells on it. They didn’t like it because it might make people feel “uncomfortable.” Here, in captalistic America - it’s not PC to make other people uncomfortable and think. Being that I was in a zone with zero rights, I wasn’t about to explain my position that making people uncomfortable is kind of the idea so maybe they think about what’s going on in the world. That war is real and not just something you hear about on television. Anyways, the guards let me go with my chain as long as I agreed to be censored and keep the harmless bits of metal in my pocket since someone might be upset by it. What happened to my freedom of expression?
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Fighting Suburbia - A Reply to a Post
It is really hard in a capitalistic society to find the escape from the 9-5, marriage/domestic partnership, and suburbia. You have to fight against it tooth and nail and more. There are alternatives though. You don’t have to be a hamster in the wheel. It’s weird being on the outside of things when everyone else is in the “inside” and constantly trying to drag you back with them. You are picking a lonely path. It will be hard and long but the most rewarding. Friends and allies who where all for fighting the good fight fall to mediocrity and stagnation because they weren’t strong enough. It’s weird still identifying as a punk rocker and being 26. Most people who are punk rock are teenagers, raging against the system before conforming to the great machine. It is only in our capitalistic culture that “rebellion” is a stage of development - no other culture in human society has that. It makes me think of the Cocksparrer’s song, “Where Are They Now?”
Believed in Julie when she said how easy it could be
And I believed in Tommy and his written words of anarchy
And I believed in Joe when he said we had to fight
And I believed in Jimmy when he told us to unite
Where are they now
Where are they now
Where are they, six years on and they’ve all gone
Now it’s all turned sour
Where are they now
The kids always rebel, grow up, and conform so nothing ever changes. It’s easier that way, to fall into line, do what you are told to do, and be a cog. I, however, also chosen to resist. It’s really, really, really lonely though. It’s easier when you are young and in school. I don’t know how the system does it though, how it breaks the mind to consumerism and materialism.
I was sitting downstairs the other day, I am visiting my family, and they had newspapers and ads all spread out across the table. Something about some sports team was on the cover and I had this moment of realizing that all of it is fake. Just some giant masquerade being performed and speeding by you - that capitalism tries to make life a spectator sport. Like life is something that happens and sometimes happens to you if you get in the paper, but everything worth knowing or seeing is beyond you. This, my friend, is NOT true. Life is wonderful and happens all the time, all around you. You take part in it and help create this world. No god has ever come down from heaven and dictated this is the way the world is - the world is this way because of man. It has always been this way because of man. If you are a man, you can change it, just like men have done before you and will be doing after you. I suppose the secret to not becoming a causality of society, the living dead, a drone, an empty shell is to never stop living and thinking.
The moment you stop, they have you. It’s been said by Wendy O. Williams, “That the brainwashed don’t even know they are brainwashed.” And it is true. The machine and the brainwashed are inseparable - they are each other.
Another thing you will have to cope with is lots of flakiness. People in the machine relate to other people in the machine. They have common ground and on the same page. When you live outside of the system, you are outside of their comprehension. They might wear the same clothes as you, listen to the same bands you do, go to your shows, and talk a lot but they never do anything. They might listen to the bands but they don’t hear them or maybe they do and decide to ignore it. When faced with someone - something real, they get afraid and don’t really know how to act. They think they want something real but they don’t, they just want other condition drones. So, you’ll probably get treated pretty poorly by those who should be your allies. Your true friends might come from the most unexpected places but your connections will be real - not plastic. Sometimes these connections will last only moments or other times years, but when you run into someone who “gets it” - it’s really nice.
I guess the hardest part is how lonely it is. (I know I’ve mentioned it a few times, but it’s true.) I’ve had lots of friends who I thought “got it” who turned out to be plastic. You just got to brush it off and not dwell on it. They picked their life as you pick yours. Sometimes people get jealous of you because you are living life when they aren’t. You have to watch out for those people too. It’s by no means easy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Good luck!
