Su Cassiano

Chichi is a queer trans Afro Latina spiritualist and DJ.

They ‘reclaim being Mesoamerican indigenous and west African through fashion that is written off as ghetto when worn in the white Australian landscape.’

Divinia and Nettle have been housemates and friends for a few years before starting to date two years ago. They live together with Ghost, Nettle’s dog. They are part of the Melbourne vivid punk scene. I first met Nettle in 2012 as she was busking in the street.

Sign found at Scarlett's house, Melbourne 2022

Aheda making falafel from scratch in her kitchen. Aheda is a chef and a refugee from Palestine. Because of the ongoing occupation of Palestine, her family is scattered around the globe. She dreams of opening a Palestinian food truck in Melbourne and works very hard to accomplish this.

Arrow is a non binary punk artist living with chronic illness. They just moved back to Melbourne.

Divinia and Nettle have been housemates and friends for a few years before starting to date two years ago. They live together with Ghost, Nettle’s dog.

Mariam is a musician and illustrator based in Melbourne

Milk bar were corner shops and a stop in people’s daily life in Melbourne, but they disappear because of gentrification and supermarkets competition.

Luigi and Nicole recently became fiancé after three years together. He’s a rapper and she’s a DJ and dancer. They just moved together in this house in Kingstown.

Xristi is a pagan artist who does all kind of divination including tarot and palm reading. She lives with her partner in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Xristi is a pagan artist who does all kind of divination including tarot and palm reading.

Ali is from the south of Iran and sells all kinds of Persian food and items on Sydney Road. He speaks Persian, Arabic and English in the shop.

Every time I go there, he gives me a sour sweet.

Sydney Road is an extremely long Melbournian street that starts the journey towards Sydney, a solid 10h drive from there. This street is famous for its multicultural shops and restaurants brought by the different waves of migration to Melbourne. Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Iranian, Turks, Lebanese people make this part of the city vibrant with culture.

Sultan selling Lebanese sweets during ramadan. He works in the family business with his mother and twin brother.

Divinia is a punk originally from New Zealand. She lives in Melbourne with her girlfriend and their dog.

Nettle is a queer punk from Melbourne. She plays in multiple bands and is also a multidisciplinary artist, a street medic and a community organizer. She’s also invisibly disabled.

Bao and Lyndal in their front yard.

Xristi is a pagan artist who does all kind of divination including tarot and palm reading.

Polly is a Queer, Chilean-Syrian immigrant who is interested in hope, love and community care as a paradigm in which to move through their world.

Alda is a punk tattoo artist and illustrator from Bandung, Indonesia. She sings in the band Jalang in Melbourne.

Kin is a non binary person who works as a program manager for a Melbourne festival. Part of their cultural heritage is from Myanmar, which they are trying to learn more about and connect with.

Melbourne's alleyway system is where people's waste used to be collected before the creation of a sewage system.

Scarlett is a trans Aboriginal woman who grew up in Tasmania. She is a musician and sound engineer.

Pentridge, now a shopping mall with apartments, once was one of the most secured Australian prison from 1851 to 1997.

Debbie and Steven are playing with Ella while Ava is posing for the camera. Kids nowadays are used to being photographed by their parents and develop a sense of performance in front of the camera early on.

Chong Keng, a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor, at her office in Coburg

Young women going to a party in the city on a Saturday night

Frankie is a Singaporean film maker, photographer and potter who resides in Melbourne with his best friend and cat, Elvis.

Cut arm, swords and toilet paper.

Hamed and Mahnaz rushing to get everything ready for Nowruz dinner, the Persian new year that celebrates the return of Spring

Melbourne holds one of the largest diaspora of Greek community in the world.

Reflection room in a Vietnamese church, Collinwood.

Customers rushing to get the best price at the end of the market, Queen Victoria Market, Melbourne

Zackarie and his father at the TAB, a popular venue to drink and bet on horse racing that can be found all around town. They are mostly frequented by men.

Butcher girl in a shopping mall

Luigi and Nicole recently became fiancé after three years together. He’s a rapper and she’s a DJ and dancer. They just moved into this house together in West Melbourne.

No Trend: Women and non binary people in Punk is an exploration of identity and its meaning in the contemporary DIY punk scene around the world. In societies dictated by beauty and uniformisation, these women and non binary persons take the risk to be different and to embrace some features that question gender normative identity. Nowadays, to be punk is to take control of your existence, to choose the liberty of being yourself and to auto determine as a creature beyond conditioned codes and gender enforced through education, culture and society. These portraits present people that have been involved in the scene for years, helping out, putting up shows, playing in bands. But they’ve been less visible because men will take a lot of the space. These persons are a challenge to the status quo and incarnate the essence of DIY culture being who they are ; strong, true and independent.

"I don't consider myself a punk in the narrow sense of the word - that is, I don't dress in the way people expect 'punks' to dress and I don't exclusively listen to punk music. If we're thinking of a broader definition, one that embodies a critical attitude to social injustice, a desire for self expression but with an ultimate focus on community centered values, in that sense I definitely identify as a punk. It's those values that attract me to punk and alternative spaces, although admittedly not all of them end up representing that. That, and the music itself. I think the anger and energy of punk music is really important, especially for anyone who isn't a white cis male. I see myself as a woman and a POC before I see myself as a punk. Punk is a natural outcome of my musical tastes and dislike of oppressive systems - but it isn't what I'm thinking about when I think about how I present to the world. It is what I'm thinking about when I'm making and listening to music, though." Isobel

Isobel plays bass and does back vocals in the post punk band Hexdebt. She works and lives in Melbourne.

"For me it has a lot more to do with the way that my mother speaks, and the kind of tumultuous relationship I have with her. Incidentally I had a lot to say in a time where three other people had a lot of things to say in their own way, and that’s how Hexdebt started. I needed to be in a project where I could scream, talk about my feelings and be in a conversation with other people about that.

And Aife, Isobel and Lucy have introduced me to so much music, punk classics and post punk and that’s still playing out. I really needed to get something out all of the time and it was going into my relationships. In the past I used to think that if you had a lot of fire in you people should be able to take it, but then I realized that the issue was that it wasn’t a conversation.

So playing music with these guys came so naturally. It’s a state with a lot of energy, where that could be put somewhere potentially positive." Agnes is the vocalist and guitarist of the Melbourne based post punk band Hexdebt. The first time I saw them perform they blew me away. They have their very own way of performing that isn't trying to look or sound like anything else. It's not following any punk codex, and in this manner they are for me punk as fuck.

'The meaning of being a punk would be I guess completely accepting yourself for who you are. Do what you wanna do. If you wanna rock up in a suit do it. Whatever you feel like.

Someone who’s not worried about his look or scene points. Like who’s got the best Nikes or owns the most records or goes to most shows. People who support women, POC, trans people in the scene. People who support people who are not as privileged as them.

Sydney needs to bloody shape up."

Serwah

I met Serwah Attafuah when she was 18 years old, but she already has been playing guitar for over a decade. She plays guitar in politically driven heavy metal band Dispossessed, and is the vocalist of Nasho, a punk band from Sydney. She's also a painter and a digital artist.

“I feel like nothing’s ever one way. Being a punk is different for everybody. My idea of punk is looking up for the existence of animals and the planet. Basically just not being shitty to each other, trying to take care of each other instead of fucking each other over.”

Kallie is from Auckland, Aotearoa, where she grew up listening to The Brats, X Ray Spex and a lot of cheesy metal. She then started to go to punk shows and moved to Wellington, where she started to sing in Sparkle Motion. She then toured Australia with The Poodles and started later on to sing in Scum System Kill. She sings now in Thorax and lives in Sydney, where she raises her kids.

''Being a punk nowadays for me is way less about the music, more about the politics. I mean the punk scene is over saturated with straight white men screaming about their feelings. And I just don’t think that a lot of what’s out there really matters. You can have the right sound and play the right shows but now it’s more about some form of social change. It's about empowering more diversity in the scene, more women and queer people. And supporting these bands and their messages."

T.J. is from Melbourne and lives now in Sydney. She's been involved in a lot of bands ; bassist in Shitweather, MSVBCP, Glory Hole, and vocalist of Circuits and currently Canine.

« Growing up in Christchurch NZ I was always a little music nerd who liked being different and dressing to match. When I moved to Wellington I finally went to a local hardcore show and it clicked. A lot of the NZ scene when I was a part of it 03-08 was fairly interchangeable between punk and hardcore, but I always swayed to the hardcore side and a sense of belonging, like happiness, was always fleeting or in the moment. 

Nowadays I do pretty much consider myself a punk, sometimes proudly and sometimes in a defeatist way. » Nellie

«I grew up in Singapore, where underground subcultures are not as visible or readily accessible due to authoritarianism and censorship.
Being a punk is about finding different ways of existing outside the status quo. It doesn't have to be the way you look, but the mentality is always there. Understanding how to live and love in a way that's critical, creative and communicative. Taking the things you do seriously but never taking your self too seriously. Learning how to be accountable to yourself.

This meaning hasn't hugely changed for me over the 14 years I've been involved in DIY-punk. Without it I don't think I would be alive today.
Punk has always been built on an utopic vision that desires for more. And what this "more" is greatly differs depending on who you talk to. As a subculture it will always remain a microcosm of the general culture we exist in, and as a result we bring in our biases, flaws and general disagreements to it regardless of the kinds of values that it claims to espouse. » Cher Tan
.
Cher Tan is the vocalist of Grimalkin, as well as a writer and essayist. She lives and works in Melbourne.

« My femininity and masculinity are not separate parts of my identity. I embrace both aspects and it makes me more aware of social limitations and implications of being publicly perceived as too much of one or not enough of the other. The gender-less aesthetic of the queer scene has always been liberating.

Absolutely love yourself and zero tolerance for anyone who would attempt to put you down, put you under. Zero tolerance doesn’t mean retaliation. It means that you believe in yourself so strongly that you can exist without fear. A lot of people don’t exist. They feel so confronted that they feel they have to hide within this scene or that scene. But out and proud! That’s my moto. » Christina

"I grew up in Bogota going to a strict girl's catholic school where you had to wear your skirt under your knee and be a ‘good girl’. My parents tried to keep me in a safe bubble because Bogota can be a very violent city ; people stay within their social class and you know you'll never venture into certain areas. I remember being attracted by what was outside the box from a young age. When I met punks I was about 12, and I felt attracted by their style and their attitude. Just seeing people that were different was more appealing to me that the regular people I would see around me.

I would see these punx doing what they wanted and that was inspiring. A friend was wearing a short skirt and that was a revolution! I wanted to be different, far from the masses. I wanted to take control over my own life"

Daniella

Daniella is from Bogota, Colombia but moved to France years ago. She’s a feminist, a tattoo artist and also makes some zines.

"When people think of punk they think of masculinity I think.

At first I wanted to change that, I wanted to make punk girly and all about women, a sensitive, loving movement. But I just got burned out and tired from trying and I really respect some incredible women who are still doing that. It can be really crushing to keep trying saying things like ‘women to the front’ or that you don’t have to wear those patches or those studs, you can be in your floral dress and it’s fine. Men can be in floral dresses too! You don’t have to adhere to this uniform. I just got tired.

Being a woman in punk or being anything other than a cis dude in punk is an exhausting work and everyone I talk to that has been in the same position says the same thing."

Aisyiyah is the vocalist of anti colonial power violence band Arafura from Sydney.

Sarsha has been involved in the punk community for almost two decades in Aotearoa. She plays bass in Rogernomix, Freak Magnet, Bonecruncher and Fantails. Sarsha is Maori and wrote a thesis about Indigenous People in the Punk community in Aotearoa. You can read her thesis here : 

http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10063/3626/thesis.pdf?sequence=2

"When I met Robin (from Piss and Transylvania) it was the first time I felt like this feeling of being displaced was gone, and through him I met a lot of people. I was in my mid 20's and all a sudden I found myself in a social environnement that finally fitted me. I don’t like everything in the punk scene though.

I’m not for matching into a scene, having the codex of the scene on myself or in my biography. Wearing the scene’s fashion or doing what the scene wants you to do. I don’t fit into the codex and I feel disconnected to that, but I like the general ideas of that scene. The independence factor, the fact that you work with your friends and that's really D.I.Y."

Martina is from Berlin and started to play in Batalj. She since left and plays guitar and does vocals in The Cuntroaches and Assface. She's also an actress and a movie director.

“I think I used to know what it means to be a punk, but I was in my early twenties and had lot of convictions. I didn’t see the world in a broad view, it was much smaller for me. Since having children it’s definitely changed. I suppose because I’m not thinking about myself all the time, so then you beginning of thinking of the world differently. It was a lot more careless or fearless before and now I’m a bit more calculated in terms of what would happen if I do these things, or what will happen to my kids if something happens to me. I’m less inclined to get in trouble, at protest and stuff like that whereas before it didn’t matter, I would go out and do what I needed to do. Now I feel I have more responsibilities to them than my own self.

I’m also a lot more freaked out about what’s going on in the world where before I would get drunk and try not to think about it. I’m way more anxious about the world. I don’t know if it’s always been that fucked up and I would just not see it before or if it’s all of a sudden gotten crazy and shitty. And I now have to think about that in terms of what they have to grow up to. Then I feel guilty in that sense that I brought them into a world like this and they’ll have to cope with that shit. That’s very bleak.”

Kallie

"Punk is many things to me but I think first punk is a rejection of normality, of being in a system.

Just not play by the rules of normality basically. You don’t have to have a 9 to 5 job, you can live just for the love of music, you can get your food out from the dumpster. It’s a reaction to society and social norms.

It’s also a way of life, a way of though. It’s a way to be, beyond the fashion and the music which is also a big part of punk identity."

V is from Brisbane (Australia) but moved to Berlin 8 years ago where she lived in the unfamous squat Tacheles and became a punk. She has a solo project called V, plays bass in Transylvania, keyboard in Holysix, and is a former member of Batalj. She recently moved back to Australia and now lives in Melbourne. She’s also a stick n’ poke tattoo artist.

“Maybe a freak is more relevant… Punk is music and it’s also a fashion statement attached to music and politics. If you identify as a punk, you know when you see it because of particular aesthetic choices, including the sound. It’s a challenge against whatever else there is or maybe just to yourself.

As a teenager, I was attracted to live music, politics and art, and those things mix into any DIY scene. Even in Indie scene.

I started going to numetal and metal core shows because that’s what was available to me in Brisbane, they were all ages, and then I realized it was all a bunch of dudes. Then i retreated and I did a bit of homework and find out about women’s history in punk, but couldn’t find anything in a local self made level. So I started to go to anything that looked kind of weird. I developed an eclectic taste. I was always looking for another option.

When I was a teenager that was numetal and metalcore that was happening around punk. Then I found out other stuff that were resonating with ideas that I had anyway, because I was always the cynical, questioning kid in school, not made to fit in. Asking too many questions.”

Lena

“If I’m being brutally honest, femininity has always been something that I have struggled with, having a mediterranean heritage I’m quite a hairier woman than usual. So it was always something I was picked on about, especially before playing in bands, it was always something I was really conscious of. And now I made a point where I don’t even shave my armpits or my legs anymore.

I think punk has actually made me more comfortable with my femininity and made me realize that there are a lots of different types of women, and you don’t have to be one cookie cut shape of a woman.

You can be whatever kind of woman that you want to be. And femininity is a feeling rather than a look. I feel feminine or I feel masculine. That’s actually something I never really though about, I kind of just realized now that music probably really helped me with it.”

Mariam

Mariam is the vocalist and guitarist of Diploid, a hardcore/grind band from Melbourne. At only 23, she already toured outside Australia three times including in South East Asia, New Zealand and South Korea. She also created a platform called Cat Fight that helps women and non binary people to get involved in the DIY scene.

"There can’t be equality when there is so much structural sexism and homophobia. For the most part there are not too many safety problems compared to the larger Sydney community, but how many is too many? Perhaps it is more about everyday microaggressions rather than physical violence.

I do occasionally hear about instances of physical and verbal violence in other parts of the Australian scene. Certainly when I go to the more abrasive punk scene shows hearing sexist and homophobic language is pretty standard."

Rosie plays guitar in queercore band Glory Hole as well as in punk hardcore Canine in Sydney.

.“I didn't really relate to anything that was happening in mainstream society. I felt like i was travelling along with no direction as nothing that was offered in life was appealing. I didn't agree with peoples views on life, what we should do, how we should act, who we should be. It seemed like some deranged life package deal that we were suppose to lap up and be grateful for. Punk was this mystifying scene that existed within that space, different, relatable. Relatable because people shared similar views of not belonging or not wanting to. Maybe even embracing so called dysfunctionality and making it feel welcomed. Having that exist made my anxiety levels dissipate dramatically. Feeling at ease with the space i was holding amongst these people. » Alicia

Alicia, who is originally from Wollongong, is a sound engineer and a musician. She's been involved in many projects, including Hacker, Deep Heat, Infinite Void, The Diamond Sea and Masstrauma. She works and lives in Melbourne.

“I chose punk because it made the most sense and it gave me a langage. So I identify with punk because that’s what I always come back to, if I’m questioning myself or what do I like.

I can’t imagine what my life would be, if I hadn’t found punk. I always felt kind of alienated elsewhere, and that has to do with my gender as well in other communities or scenarios. Being a woman in punk is awesome, but it’s also very confronting or it has been at least. There’s been a lot of changes, it’s also about surrounding myself with people that I want to be around.”

Lena Molnar is from Brisbane, Australia, where she started to play in bands when she was around 18. She’s been involved in Heavy Breather, Overrun, Manhunt, Tangle, Thinking and Harriet, as well as distroying feminist zines and records from around the world that other places don’t have with Trouble is a Brewin’. She now lives in Melbourne where she is a sociology PhD, her study field being feminist social justice for media. Music wise, she’s involved with Bloodletter and 100%.

" I identify as a woman and I guess that’s really important to me that femininity doesn’t have to look any particular way. I think it’s really important to be able to be a really strong woman and not automatically be seen as a butch versus a typical femme.

I just think that when you’re doing something that is seen as stronger or more aggressive, like singing in a heavy band, I’m proud to be a woman in that role - compared to the idea that I'm just taking on a masculine role, which just kind of erases all the work that women do.''

T.J.

"Punks in Germany are mostly white. Even if they look different because they’re punks they still get the best of the best because they’re men. They don’t have to worry about much and it’s not acknowledged except by people who got out of their way to educate themselves.

When I try to communicate to my male punk friends about the fact that they receive a huge amount of privilege they reject my point and say they don’t receive any kind of privileges, that we’re exactly the same, we are equal. Well in a perfect world ? Cause we live in the same society that treats us completely differently.

Living in patriarchy is fucking hard in any scene you’re part of."

V

"The alternative to mainstream society and being able to live however you want with respect with everyone else around you is what attracted me to punk in the first place. That’s what it still means to me.

In Maori culture, at least in my family, it was quite matriarcal. When I think of women I think of them as strong, leaders, and at the fore front of how society is organized.

And then colonisation comes and it flips it on its head and how women should stay at home and not say so much. So it’s really complex what femininity is and it depends on the context I guess and where it’s used."

Sarsha

" I think femininity is different for everybody. I’ve been doing a lot of research about Akan tribe that is my dad’s tribe in Ghana. 

It’s so hard having roots in so many places and feeling like in a grey area. My mum is Italian-Dutch, and my dad is Ghanaian. When two members of my african family that I never met came to Australia, it was basically ‘ Hey, that’s your sisters, make them feel at home'. They were calling me 'red', which is a derogatory term. I was like whoa?!?. Then I go to my white side of the family and they would be like ‘ Why don’t you change your appearance, straighten your hair, dress properly’ etc?

I didn’t choose to be like this why can’t you accept me as I am anyway?

It’s so hard to accept the differences between both sides cause they’re so different and contradicting at times.'' Serwah

"I wouldn’t mind being part of what I think a queer movement should be where we just look at the people and who they are. Never mind if they have a dick or feel like they’re a man or whatever. Let’s look at how we’re though to be different. How we're taught to be strong, to be sensitive or how we're taught not to have our emotions. Men also have been told to be these genders and it’s also hard for them. It’s not just the women who have been screwed up.    I feel the feminism movement is somehow just bullshit cause all of a sudden people with vaginas could work in the world that was made by men who were taught to be men which means they were taught to be the characteristics that are supposedly masculine and the whole society was made like that. I think gender is bullshit so being a woman yeah, I think I would call myself that. I’m a person."

Rosa is from Canada and Greenland. She moved to Copenhagen years ago and plays guitar and does vocals in Illegal to Exist, she also plays guitar in Mantilla.

"Regarding assault and apprehension that women can get in the street, when you’re a man you don’t even think about it. You go out in the street at 3 am and are carefree. When you’re a woman, you have to think about it, anticipate, and if you’re walking down the street and a man is behind you, you’re freaking out.

Fortunately a lot of women are taking the streets back and deal with daily life in their way. It’s really important not to fall into a discourse of victimisation or fear that would lead to a paternalist vision where women should avoid going out to limit the risk.  =>

"I recently read this shocking article that could help cis straight men to understand this climate of rape culture. It was saying that in jail for example, there is the fear of being sexually assaulted for men, the jokes about soap bars etc. Well let’s face that the apprehension felt by a woman in the street late at night is quite similar to the threat that a man in jail would feel.

The life of a woman outside nowadays, that’s what you’ll think of you if you were in jail.

For cis straight male, jail is one of the only place where they’re put in this position of fear of sexual assault."

Alice, drummer in dance punk band Trashley and queercore band Hormones in Paris.

“Unfortunately we didn’t get to play with any other band with women involved while touring South East Asia, which sucked, so when playing a show a lot of people didn’t know I was a woman. So when I will start setting up on stage I noticed a lot of women in the room would come to the front. And after the show they would come to me and take pictures with me, asking me lots of questions. I was a bit nervous before going to SEA cause some touring bands had bad experiences there.

So I was ready for it but most people were very friendly. I made a point to surround myself with women. It was very interesting to talk to women in Indonesia, Muslim women wearing hijab and safety pins with punk patches, I was like “fuck yes!” Growing up with a Muslim dad, for me it was like Yes Muslim women are empowered, fuck people who say they are down trodden and that they have no rights!. It’s a personal choice to wear the hijab. So it was really cool to hang out with them.”

Mariam

"The most amazing thing about punk is the punk community and the friends you make. For many years of my life I was putting up shows in Warsaw and then in Barcelona. 

 We’ve been really lucky to squat this great place in Barcelona. I got evicted from my place before the tour but I feel great cause every night I feel I’m home. And that’s really beautiful about punk.

I feel very feminine but I also feel some strong male elements inside. I don’t like these terms. I am a mix. I feel like I’m around this binary stuff."

Patrycja grew up in Warsaw, Poland. She's been putting up gigs and playing in bands since she was 18. She's been living in Barcelona for a while and is the Vocalist of Belgrado.

"In Korea we don’t care about politics. You can have skinheads in the scene, because the scene is really small. People don’t care about lyrics. That’s why we’re all together. A lot of punk band in Seoul are right wing and have an internet community.

In Korea men pay for women, a lot of men hate females.

There's this saying in Korea that "Three times a day, a man should beat his woman". Cause if they do, women would be great to men. The punk scene is safe but Korea is a dangerous place for women."

Juyoung is from Seoul. She started to play D-Beat when she was 19 years old after seing a punk band playing on a TV show. She plays drums in Scumraid, published a photo book about punk The More I See and organizes a major punk festival in Korea. She's also a designer.

"I think most women probably have a struggle with their gender identity at some point in their life, because of patriarchy obviously. Everything is telling you to hate yourself and to hate other women so it’s really hard to get over that.

I’m still working on that, I still have a lot of internalized misogynie that I need to work on to love other women completely and not have any jealousy towards them or competitiveness. So I’m still working out what it is to be a woman.

It’s not just womanhood, it’s also race, sexuality, it’s a whole package basically. I think it’s good to be able to say ‘I am a woman’, just because I have confidence in that. Identifying as a woman has allowed me to discover my femininity which I suppressed for a really long time, because if you’re a girl in punk you can’t be feminine or something. That’s how we felt for such a long time."

Aisyiyah

"I think it’s already hard enough for cis women in the punk scene. The punk scene has just started to catch on this queer and trans thing. It’s hard for us to exist as trans persons in the scene where cis women already don’t really have space.

It’s hard in political spaces too. Even when we go to a feminist demonstration with my best friend who is a trans woman, we feel uncomfortable because people are gonna assume that I’m a woman, and that she’s a man. So as trans people we can’t really exist anywhere.

Sometimes I’m more comfortable going somewhere I know people are stupid, because I don’t have to expect anything. Then I go to a political space and get left down, and I really didn’t expect this to happen."

Noa lives between Stockholm and Copenhaguen.

"I feel very comfortable being who I am and what I am. I never questioned my gender or my sexuality, I’m very happy with it. In the current society it’s hard in a lot of different ways and situations since this whole world is ruled by men. Of course a lot of women are fighting against it and trying to find the actual equality and climb the latter. But it’s ridiculous how you as a person don’t really matter but how as a woman you’re categorized."

Iina, former vocalist of Deathrace in Helsinki, Finland, lives now in Berlin.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that women won’t/should not feel comfortable in punk because of what I’m attracted to about it and what keeps me in it.

This is the place for everyone who has been challenged. However, part of that is a whole bunch of gatekeeping practices by a bunch of dudes who think they’re the leaders or that they’ve been more enabled to participate more easily for longer.

And part of the gatekeeping practices that they will challenge you, to make you feel you don’t belong. That would probably be more confronting if you’re not a white dude because you’re not able to relate to them immediately, and they’re not able to relate to you immediately. By you being there you bring up a lot about their feelings about themselves and their position in this community as well as in the world. And the ideas that they have and their sense of belonging.

They want to test you because you don’t look like them. You can also do the same to them if you want, or you can ignore it. It’s a space where there is a lot of hypocritical conversations as well as contradictory conversations and politics and behaviors which we are all sort of privy to as we grow up as well but punk is a challenge. You wouldn’t pretend to like distorted music, it sounds terrible to most people.”

Lena

"Being a woman in the punk scene is different because it’s a man's area. Sometimes they might think that you’re just a groupie. Now in Jogja people are changing because they read more or meet some other punk who come from abroad and visit your scene and maybe learn something from them.

I still experience how people from the scene look at you. If you wear eye liner or short skirt at a gig people just stare at you. You can’t even be yourself. But maybe now it’s changed.

In the society people stare. If you have tattoos or if you smoke they can easily say that you’re a bad girl or a whore. If you hang out in the street dressed differently or drink, they abuse you verbally."

Fenda is from Malang ( Eastern Java) but moved to Jogjakarta when she was in high school. 2 years ago she moved to Liverpool.

"I consider myself as a person, as a human being more than as a female. It’s a bit complicated to be a female but you can deal better with stuff if you consider yourself as people, as human being. Basically do what you want with respect for other people, and enjoy your fucking life every day.

I always feel comfortable with men. There’s not many women in the scene  but I never felt I was kicked out because I was a woman. Probably because I met good people to support me so I never felt being left out.

Berlin is good, people have a lot of freedom to be what they want to be. Here no one looks at you, no one gives a fuck about your gender. In Spain it’s a bit more closed minded. We could make a line from France. The countries from the north are more open minded."

Patricia is from the Basque country. She squatted in London when she was 18 and then moved to Berlin where she plays bass and does vocals in Piss. She recently moved back to Spain and is starting a new project called Susu.

“Growing up in regional Queensland led me to the DIY alternative scene early in my teens. At that time we had a thriving music scene and the community was diverse and inclusive. Punks , goths, gay, and Indigenous found strength in solidarity in what was sometimes a hostile environment.

I have always maintained a punk perspective in my creative practices , music, film, writing, spoken word, or performance. Punk is a part of my identity and history. The amazing queer punk scene that was forged in the 70s still shapes my social narrative today . There are some incredibly influential people in the punk scene who inspire me to be fearless in my self expression.” Christina

"For a lot of people punk is an expression against everything sort of problematic or wrong, it’s an expression against extreme patriarchal control, against capitalist structure. Punk is probably the only place that I found as a platform to express how upset I am with so many things. It's also about finding like minded people who understand things that frustrate you, real frustrations that kill people.
Frustrations that keep us in poverty. There are class divisions, there are discriminations on so many levels and in so many different forms.
My actual band Lai is a place to rant about all the shit we are angry about and it’s still a huge problem because they’re still people within the community - I won’t name names for other people’s sake - who don’t like us and don’t like what we do, and that’s why we keep doing it. Because we think that punk is about acceptance and it’s supposed to be about some sorts of morals. But people are still people and some punks are still so misogynistic and incredibly entitled and threatened when something new comes in to take their fucking reign of power. There’s a huge patriarchal hierarchy within punk and everyone sees it." Nissa

« Well there is a Thorax song called Shit Chute to Oblivion and it’s about the world, and how people don’t seem to realize that everything you do has cause and effects. Basically we’re flushing our existence down the toilet and taking everything with us.

And people don’t seem to realize that you need trees in order to breathe. The majority of people just don’t seem to give a fuck!

I sometimes daydream about there being some kind of zombie apocalypse, like The Walking Dead, where we all just have to go back to basics, survival, self governing, community based. Got to look out for each other, got to fight to live, how it’s supposed to be. And not just complacent and consuming, relying onto money. I don’t think it’s far fetched. A way of living rather than existing. It’s living rather than just existing. Yeah, zombies, apocalypse. Something. The downfall of society, please. I can’t wait! »

Kallie

Lucia and Elliot started dating in Berlin, where they both live. She is from Argentina, he is from Australia. It was the first time Lucia came to Australia to visit Elliot's family. She said that getting outside of Berlin's alternative bubble would always be a reminder of the rampant intolerance of the greater world, and that being queer was not that well accepted everywhere. Lucia doesn't really like it here and told me that in some places people would really stare at them. This is a crucial period in Elliot's life as he started transitioning gender, and they support each other a lot. Even though Australia recently voted yes for same sex marriage, there is still hostility towards LGBTQIA people.

Beyond our bodies is an ongoing feminist project about female and non binary people's narratives in the contemporary world. It's about giving representation, voice and empowerment to marginalized bodies through an intimate gaze. It unfolds how our culture and gender shapes the building of our identity.

While gender roles and representations are slowly shifting in modern societies, it is important to redefine terminology and show people who break the rigidity of gender boundaries in their daily lives, by challenging normative gender structures enforced by society since they were born.

This diary of encounters is mostly captured in the intimacy of people’s homes, because it's a safe space for them to express their truth. It’s about holding space from the private sphere into the outside world, filling it with personal narratives.
Showing that in the end, gender is mostly a performance, and that the boxes made by men will always be too limitative for most of us.
In order to change the dominant narrative, bringing visibility is the first step.

"I've always found myself on the periphery of peripheral groups: punks, queers, Jews... I'm always too A for B, too B for C etc. I've been very lucky to create my own communities and spaces with other queerdos and freax who exist in the same liminal ways that I do. These days I find my identity as a butch dyke to be the most prominent way that I connect to people, and the closest thing to a core description of who and what I am. Living in the 'margins' is challenging, but I'll take doggy-paddling through the world over wearing floaties and never learning to survive. »

Shoshana

« Dear Raynen, you will have support - that won’t mean that you won’t feel alone or scared or anxious - in fact you will have a few solid years of anxiety ahead of you, but it will teach you.

I’m wary to write to you. I know we have different ways to communicate. Sometimes, I feel like I’m a different beast from you, but maybe that is age, and maybe that is dissociation, and maybe that is deciding and moving forward and building from the base of where we’ve come from. I know you are scared in a way that makes you adventurous and bold. I miss that, we had a lot of fun then. I wonder sometimes where that has gone.

As we make way for each other I will return and circle back, and integrate, and remember and pay my tiny homages to you. In 2012, you will say your first kind words to yourself -they will seem at odds and disbelievable at first - by the hops plant. Come 2019, you are building home within yourself. »

"When I was way younger I went on dates with a bro who mansplained to me what a femme was, and he was telling me that I was a femme, that femme didn’t have to have long hair etc. That just really pushed me away from identifying as femme for so long. I wasn’t gonna let this bro dictate my gender. So people were constantly assuming I was femme, adding me to online femme collectives.

Being femme is subversive and intentional but not necessarily aligned with being cis femme. It’s an intentional celebration of queer femininity and I felt like this person was telling me I was a lady! I’m not a girl, I’m not a lady. I’m a creature and I love feminism but I’m not a girl. » Mini

Mini is a black queer crip non binary person from Melbourne, living on Wurundjeri land.

They perform as the solo hip hop artist Racerage, do spoken word and visual arts.

Knz left Algeria with her mother when she was ten years old to escape the black decade, a troubled period. They asked for the political refugee status. At that point, Knz's mother's husband was about to take a fifth wife and her mum wanted a better future for her daughter. But after arriving in France her mother, who was a pretty liberal woman in Algeria, was completely isolated and found refuge in Islam, which was a link to her homeland. It started to clash with Knz when after seeing her friend's note her mum accused her of being a lesbian and threw her out. That's why Knz started to squat when she was 16.

When she went back to Algeria after 10 years of absence, her cousins picked her up and asked where was her hijab, that there was no way she could walk around their neighborhood without covering up and dishonor the family. Knz said there was no way, she grew up in France and didn't receive a religious education, how could they ask this from her? She met feminists there who were asking for the right to drink coffee at a terrace. They would go during the quiet time and sit down but they would get beaten up and thrown in jail. When Knz came back to France, she thanked her mother for leaving Algeria, thing that changed their relationship because she always blamed her for migrating without asking her opinion, kind of cutting her from her roots. She told her that now she understood.

Knz in La Petite Maison, Paris, 2017

"Actually I don’t identify so much with a group of people or with a gender. I can be very masculine sometimes. It’s really about what the system tells you what you should be or not, it’s also about how hormones work for you at that time of your life, it’s really chemical and we have a lot of this going on. To be free is not easy sometimes, the system tells you that a woman has to be this way, a man that way, now it’s a little bit more mixed up and open minded that it used to be. But there is still jugement and the way people look at stereotypes is still strong. Beauty types for example… A lot of artists are trying to push on the other way but it's hard to break the structure." 

Monica, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2017

"I am conscious of being a pile of breathing flesh that moves around. But I feel like some moving slime that take a shape to present itself in front of people.

I feel neither male nor female.  Physically I ended up being aware that I would be seen as feminine, and it will always surprise me. My thoughts have no gender, no sex. My body feels like a prison of flesh with the cage of people's judgement on top of it. I can't control people's gaze. Whatever appearance I would give myself, I would be seen for what I am not".

Margot, Paris, France, 2017

"I always felt alone in my life since I was born. Because my mother left me and gave me to my auntie, as she had no daughter and my mother had many so she took me. Once I was in her house I was a slave, nobody cared what I ate or what I did, I was slowly educated. Education of Thai people is just to work like a slave. I could not communicate to anybody. I had to survive alone and work very hard. Now my daughter is 14 years old, my son 16 today. These kids were born in a comfortable life, full of abundance. If the wind blows in her eyelashes, she cries. She’s gonna be fucked up in the future. The kids born in a comfortable life never have to face any struggle. Their parents take care for their kids not to know the struggle side of life, and I think it makes them too fragile. From now on I want to educate my kids in another way.

Because if I look at my self in any situation I know how to live. I have 100 baht I know how to live. I'm not crying. I think it is very good to be able to face any side of life. I never want my daughter to be in that stage though. I don’t want to depend on men or anybody if I don’t feel like it. Myself is the god, is the center of hope. If I wanna fuck up my life or do something new it’s my decision. We need to have self center, to strongly stand here with ourselves, then whatever happens you’re not going to fall down easily."

Waree ran away from home and studied successfully to become an accountant. She is now a Thai massage teacher in Chiang Mai.

" I think femininity is different for everybody. I’ve been doing a lot of research about the Akan tribe that is my father’s tribe in Ghana. It’s so hard having roots in so many places and feeling like in a grey area. My mother is Italian-Dutch, and my father is Ghanaian. When two members of my african family that I never met came to Australia, it was basically ‘ Hey, that’s your sisters, make them feel at home'. They were calling me 'red', which is a derogatory term. I was like whoa?!?. Then I go to my white side of the family and they would be like ‘ Why don’t you change your appearance, straighten your hair, dress properly’ etc?

I didn’t choose to be like this why can’t you accept me as I am anyway?

It’s so hard to accept the differences between both sides cause they’re so different and contradicting at times.''

Serwah plays in the heavy anti colonial band Dispossessed and is also a multidisciplinary artist.

"Im a solo artist named Quashani Bahd, I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe. I came to Melbourne 17 years ago with a suitcase pack full of hope, dreams and inspirations and three pairs of shoes. My life is music, art, and fashion. Being a black woman just means that I need to work harder because I’m a woman but then I need to work twice as hard because I’m a black woman. Femininity for me means being hard and also soft. It would be like brick and laces. Growing up the perception of being a woman is that women are sensitive and therefore it makes them weak. But you can be sensitive and still be pretty tough. Often I get told ‘you’re so tough, you’re so strong’ and I didn’t realize what people meant is this endurance, this resilience. And only a woman would know what that is like, because men take it for granted. Don't get me started on male privilege or we'll need a whole volume!!!" 

Quashani, Melbourne, 2018

"If there is one adjective I hate being described by is SEXY.

It repulses me, I find it disgusting, even by a woman. I don’t wanna be sexualized by my friends or by strangers. I’m not someone’s object. I get sexualized enough by people on the street!

I suppose the better way to describe my gender is androgynous.

I don’t want to be a man, I don’t want to be a woman."

V

"Outside of any gender consideration, it’s hard to identify to its own skin when you’re born in a so called female body. Because women are mainly represented from fake and unreal prospectives in movies, books, magazines… To win the right to be represented they first have to be judged as ‘feminine’ and ‘pretty’. The definitions behind these terms being really limited, these women are expected to have all the same body, the same attitude.

The body has to be young, thin, without muscles, without hair, without scars and without stories… They are not persons anymore but some beauty allegory. Disembodied. The attitude has to be smooth, soft, light, ethereal, kindly, harmless. From persons they become empty shells, while their being of flesh and blood with a unique story is being suppressed. This femininity is the negation of the person. It’s unreal and unreachable, and toxic as it is dissociative. How could one identify with this, make the link between this representation of femininity and a real body? =>

“While there is nothing more divers, troubling, violent and sometimes painful, often dirty than the experience of our own bodies and life itself ? From birth in blood to pimples, hair, fat, blood, disease, wounds, then wrinkles, and degenerescence.

We also need to express sadness, anger, hatred and frustration to exist. Violent feelings are inherent parts of human existence and reactions towards life experience.

So why ‘femininity’ looks like the absence of vital forces and of darkness that makes us complete human beings?

I would like to see women capable of violence, of anger, ready to fight for what’s important to them, their flesh marked, carrying themselves with only their own sense of self, existing without any consideration of beauty. Bestial and monstrous for others, humans for me. Then I might feel like the start of an identification and could feel like I can relate.

My appearance does not reveal or reflects who I am. It should not have to.

I neither express neither represent femininity when I dress up, when I wear make up, when I move, talk or write. I only express and represent myself. »

Margot, Paris, 2017

"With Java being a very muslim place it’s really important for me to say I’m Javanese polyamorous queer, and I’m not ashamed of it.

About feminism, if it’s about actual empowerment I’m into it. But if it’s about some people trying to be the authority to dominate other women it’s just bullshit.

I think now the feminist wave in Indonesia is interesting and changing, being positive about what some want to do. I’m sex positive too. At that time some so called feminist would say that you’re not respecting your body if you’re sleeping around, that you give your body to men. It’s not giving it, it’s using your body in any way you want it, I don’t see how it’s not empowering.

I don’t like the feminists that are really hateful of sex workers or transgender people.

"There’s been a moral panic triggered by the Facebook rainbow filter. A lot of people in Indonesia believe that LGBT movement is part of American propaganda to destroy the nation’s morality so we stay as a third world country.

After the Lady Fast - a punk festival involving lots of women - was raided, people made leaflets saying that if the government didn’t punish these people they will do it in their own way and punish them throwing them from the highest building around, or stone them or burn them.” =>

“In Aceh this gay couple got arrested and they got publicly caned on a stage in front of a crowd who was cursing them for being gay. It’s becoming common for neighbors to look into your house if they suspect that you’re living or making out with someone you’re not married to or worse, someone from the same sex. They will try to kick you out of the house to mass shame you before kicking you out from the neighborhood.

Raids happened in big cities in Java.

If there’s some sexual act happening, the police would feel justified to arrest you ; there’s a pornographic law that they use for everything.

Having erotica photos of me and my friend was a statement, and we knew the risks." Deliriousink