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She laced her perfume up with death
I feel it in my lungs
So I'll pull in my deepest breath and
Drop my head

Lately I've become somewhat fascinated with the Straightedge - or sXe - subculture, not because I want to join (God no!) but because it's a revolution built on deprivation, not excess. To me this seems odd: counterculture youth are rebuilding the conservative moral compass that the hippies raged against in the 60s and 70s. Abstinence. It's what's for dinner and breakfast and midnight snack.

The foundations of straightedge philosophy were built by subsects of the 80s hardcore movement. Minor Threat is widely percieved as sXe's grandpappy, and one day the band kindly offered some advice to the demented kids thrashing around in their mosh pit: "Don't Drink, Don't Smoke, Don't Fuck."

The kids were all like "aight", and eventually the X's that adorn underagers' hands at the bar became a symbol for personal restraint. One X for not drinking. One X for not smoking. One X for not banging. A fourth, invisible, X for not eating animals and sometimes you aren't allowed to eat eggs or yogurt either, depending on how hardcore you feel that day. If you get sXe or XXX or straightedge tattooed on your body, it is commonly believed that you will stop being Straightedge not long after and your tattoo will remind you of your asinine hypocrisy and hollow dedication forever and ever. So don't get an sXe tattoo, basically, or you'll be addicted to crack before you know it.

What do I think of these shenannigans? Well, frankly, it seems a bit ridiculous to build a rigidly structured subculture around not doing something (or several things, as the case happens to be). I understand and respect the desire to be "Poison Free" and the need for others' support in this matter, but Straightedge seems to be the converse equivilant of the peer pressure bullshit that we all saw out in the Smoking Pit in high school. Purity is imposed in the same way that impurity is pushed by the "popular kids", and the whole dealie quite honestly reminds me of those medieval religious sects where monks would whip themselves and starve and never get laid in the interests of moral superiority. It didn't seem to be very productive then, and I don't know if things are any different now.

Being Straightedge seems to involve an intense compartmentalization of identity: "You're either with us, eating tofu, or against us with your filthy barbeques." This mentality usually leads to a great deal of discrimination and hipster elitism and snobbiness, which nobody likes. If you ask me, Straightedge sacrifices the personal vestment involved in actively choosing not to engage yourself with certain sassy pastimes. Instead, you get membership in a blatantly un-secret society, complete with magic X logos and group regulation through the power of contempt. You get to mosh at hardcore shows without getting your ass kicked for lighting a smoke. Yay. Nothing like homogenized acceptance to make a better person of yourself!

It's also hilarious that the Straightedge acronym (or whatever) is sXe, which can easily be rearranged to read seX. I do it without even thinking. Most people who are not In The Know probably look at sXe kids and think "Well, that's sweet that this little punk rocker loves sex so much, but tragically retarded that he spelt it incorrectly on his forearm."

Anyways, preach as you will but I think life is for the living and poisons belong in the blood. It's what they do! It's their job! You wouldn't want to put poor Mr. Cold Beer and Mrs. Ganja and Professor One-Night-Stand and Corporal Steakums out of business, would you? WOULD YOU??

Posted by Chris at 02:20 PM >> Commentations (7)