M?fiwmt
BROS
FALL
BACK
kill the

bro in
~ yr head
a bro is someone who assumes
that any space they enter is meant
to cater to augmenting their
personal experience. they “don't
give a fuck,” even at the expense
of everyone around them.
regardless of the presence of
oppressive and problematic
behavior, a bro will tirelessly try to
appear aloof. a bro cares about
doing interesting things only when
enough people are watching.
interesting things, to a bro, are
shocking, ironic, edgy, but vapid
activities that are manipulated
according to the environment. a
bro is too cowardly to express
anything sincere.

with this understanding of "bro,” consider the following terms:
“bro enabler”

“bro by association”
“broing out”
“bromophobe”
“bropologist”
BROS FALL BACK:

1a reminder that if
you're likely to bro
out its on you to
check yourself and
stop

2a warning that if
you don't you are
subject to being
forced to stop and/or
leave

zwe don't need a
solution in order to
try to destroy a
problem
“safe spaces”

Advocates for Youth have defined a “safe space” as:

“A place where anyone can relax and be fully self-
expressed, without fear of being made to feel
uncomfortable, unwelcome, or unsafe on account of
biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender
identity o expression, cultural background, age, or
physical or mental ability; a place where the rules guard
cach person's self-respect and dignity and strongly
encourage everyone to respect others.”

“I think many who use this language cither believe that onc
can create a safe space within this world, or arc limited by
the language they have picked up in these subcultures. The
need for spaces where one can feel comfort, physical
security, love, and support is real, but, outside of specific
moments, this is impossible without the total destruction of
this world.” --VirulentFlowers

We often delude ourselves as punks or radicals; we act as
though we've made a complete break with our cultures, as
if we've created a space free of domination. We scem to
think that we can simply walk away and lcave it all behind
1f we really want to actualize the spaces we want we'll have
10 do better than that; we'll need to burn the bridges behind
us.

Safe spaces don't exist. We can attempt to protect cach
other, and even make moves to screen who we deal with
but until we end the world there's no way we'll ever be
safe, even amongst ourselves. We've all gone to similar
messed up schools, grown up among crecps, liars and
bullies and we can't simply undo cverything that has led us
to become the people we've become, not without actively

unlearning who we are, and without undoing what made us.
This isn't to say that we shouldn't take care of each other,
heal cach other and empower each other, only that we need
to understand our context. That we are surrounded by
misogyny, white supremacy, and every other despicable
form of domination that holds this world together. We
should probably acknowledge pre-existing hostilities.

Starting from a place of hostility, what would it mean to
keep cach other safe, to protect each other in our spaces, to
hold our ground and potentially take more?
lol @ yr intent

I know that life’s a party and bros just want to have fun but
your well-intended but shitty behavior isn't welcome here.

T'm not an idealist, I'm not an optimist, my perspective isn't
remotely positive, and | don't care about thoughtfully
introducing strangers to my political trash talk. What I do
isn't motivated by the desire to create an “alternative.” a
safe space, or raise consciousness. Sorry, I just don't have
enough time to help you unpack your baggage.

Booking shows isn't a righteous, revolutionary pursuit. |
just don't want to have to tolerate the racist, patriarchal,
queerphobic, bullshit that | have to tolerate in most other
spaces. I'm about alicnating my enemics, not embracing
them. If you're thoughtlessly policing someone’s behavior
or making fucked up jokes you're acting like my enemy
and this means much more than a slip up that amounts to
personal offense.

Whether or not you meant to reflect the dominant culture
that we hate, fall back and own up to your mistake:
Claiming you didn't have ill intent won't save you and is
not a thoughtful, thorough apology for your unacceptable
behavior. Remember, good intent both invisibilizes and
substantiates the justification for countless american
horrors - from the monstrous genocide of indigenous
people to the inarticulate violence of the war on terror to
the miserable ramifications of post-industrial capitalism.

Abrois a bro is a bro that didn't mean 1o act a bro.
bros fall back means
queers get weird

1 always feel awkward when 1 first get to a show. Often Il
misjudge the punk-time delay and arrive half an hour before the
first band. 11l find a place to sit or a wall to lean against and
open a beer. Clusters of people will be talking around me but I'm
100 shy 10 enter the conversations of strangers and usually my
friends are busy becaus they're in the bands or setting up the
show. It’s embarrassing, but Il pull out my phone and pretend to
text someone. At most shows I'll notice someone else across the
room with their phone out and Il be pretty sure that they are just
pretending too. That makes me feel both relicved and sad. I don't
want 10 seem all cool and aloof, I want 10 be approachable, but
it's hard. 1 try to remind myself that no one is thinking about me
as much as | am and sometimes that helps. Other times, when
I'm feeling really awkward, I'll go to the bathroom for a few
minutes 5o 1 can be alone. Il try to remember why I go 1o things
like this. 11l swear I'm never going to again. And then, hopefully,
by the time 1 go back to the main room, more people have will
have arrived and Il feel better knowing that my solitude is
hidden. The first band will start to set up and I'll go to the front
and stand there. 'l try to make sure I'm not blocking anyone too
much, that I'm a lttle off to the side, and then there’s the moment
where everyone around me gets quiet and there's a litle feedback
or the singer says something or the guitarist sways or they all
give a little nod to one another, and then, maybe, the room
breaks like the surface of water when a whale breaches.

During a good set my feclings of isolation and inadequacy
disappear because, even though | am standing by the same
people that 1 was just a few minutes carlier, how 1 am oricnted
towards them changes as the music plays. During a good set a
space is created where our bodies, which often only see cach
other through windows or on the other side of counters or across
rooms, can meet cach other in different ways. | know that my
own boundaries relax. Like sometimes if people are running
around and jumping into cach other I'l join them, even though
I'm normally not into being around sweaty strangers, and if
someone starts o fall I'll put my hand out to steady them or if I
fall Il let someone help me up and thank them. Other times I'll
want to be doing my thing, like hitting my leg or stomping or
shaking my head or whatever, as others run around and get
rowdy, but no matter what I'm doing I think these physical
exertions and togetheress is what is important about shows.
Where else can it be socially acceptable to publicly hit yourself
or run into people or yell or get wild or weird or whatever? A
sporting event? A protest?

Sometimes it can go badly, of course. Sometimes | can’t get
into a band o out of a shitty mood and sometimes someone gets
100 wild and gets hurt. Other times groups of people can ruin
shows by taking space away instead of moving within a space
that we can all inhabit. For the sake of simplicity of we can call
these people bros. Sometimes these bros literally take space,
like when they physically attempt to control a space with their
‘bodies, and other times it happens through language and all
those more subile ways of displaying power.

In cither case separation between bodics is reinforced and the
show becomes, once again, just as lonely as everywhere clse.
auto-pilot asshole
macho chauv,
normy
thoughtiess
inconsiderate
absentminded
attention hungry
ignorant/insensitive sense of humor
desires to be influential
waits for exciting things to happen to take over
patriarchal chump
alpha-male
scenester
inauthentic interests
self-important (never self critical)
entitied to privilege
0 humility
feeds off positive broinforcement
social capital hoarder
is going to live a pathetic existence
destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem

destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem

destroy the problem
destroy the problem
destroy the problem

destroy the problem
destroy the problem

destroy the problem
riot hurl [it at your enemy's
skull]

In my imagination, bros fall back was very obviously
understood as a reference to the Riot Grrrl slogan, “girls to
the front.” Here's a little explanation of where it came from
for those that don't get the joke. Or whatever.

“Girls to the front” was used by Riot Grrils to describe
shows where women were encouraged to hold down the
front of a show and push back against the punk dude
energy that normally consumes it. I can get down with
grrls rioting but the riot grrr scene wasn' that, it was very
exclusively white, transmisogynistic, and classist.
Mimicking the slogan intends to point out the inadequacies
of the riot grrrl approach, not add to the history of The
Rebel Girl.

The phrase “girls to the front” is a feminist failure. It
claims that dismantling patriarchal dynamics in a show
space is the responsibility of non male people, those who
most frequently get fucked over by it. This isn't much
different than an attitude of victim-blaming, shaming folks
that can't assert themselves in male dominated spaces and
indebting non-male people with work that belongs to their
oppressor. Even if there are no “grrrls” at a show, bros
need to take it upon themselves to commit to undoing years
of patriarchal socialization.

None of us are likely to witness anything more than a
temporarily liberatory environment where we aren't subject
1o displaying and receiving patriarchal, authoritarian,
controlling behavior. Filling a space with “grrrls” won't
eradicate patriarchy and bro behavior, no one is safe from
repeating and projecting what's picked up from bro culture.
There are bros of all kinds~ racist bros, transphobic bros,
classist bros, lady bros — and “bros falls back” tries to
abandon the myth that a space primarily composed of non
male people is a solution of any kind.
why being aware of racialized
tension within the context of
philadelphia's rapidly
gentrifying landscape is fucking
important

or

if you're not about waging war
against white supremacy &
gentrification you're on the side
of our enemy

When we have punk shows we are expressing a sentiment
of ownership and belonging to the neighborhood, an
entitlement to impose our culture on a specific geography.
When we have punk shows we are paving the way for
artists, hipsters, university students, and yuppies to feel safe
and welcomed. We inspire economic desire in those who
pursue an appropriative derelict aesthetic, we make low
income areas desirable in the worst way possible. We are

the wamning signs of gentrification, we ar
subculture. When we have punk shows we are inviting a
historically white population to take up space and make lots
of noise in neighborhoods that are currently experiencing or
already have experienced a certain degree of gentrification

aless dangerous
We're necessarily placed within the complicated arena of
gentrification. W arly placed in a position where
it's near impossible 1o not contribute to the strength of

white society's literal take over of the ncighborhoods of
people of color and working class populations. We're
necessarily placed within an ongoing war and will be
grouped with gentrifiers if we aren't active in our fight
against white supremacy.

the politics of being cool...or
whatever

1
1 stopped going to hardcore shows in the th grade because by
then | had perfected my indifferent stank look and had wasted
cnough time on myspace trying to get all the friend | could. | was
bored with the relationships that fronted to be about “friends are
my family” when the scene's fondness for floppy emo haircuts,
clothes and attitude determined social standing overall. The

shallowness of the southern new jersey music scene put me off,
even at a young age.

Faccbook has replaced myspace

nd more punk and various other
s with shitty screamo and other
post hardcore. For the past couple years of my life | have been
ng to periphezally attend shows. Despite the changes of plac
age, and aesthetic too many things have remained the same.

types of music have traded pl

Perhaps it has been my distaste fueled by a larger understanding of
the Spectacle we call society. Maybe it has been that 've heen
making the same face and crossing my arms in an angry way for
so long, that whenever 1 attend a show it feeds the black mold
growing on my soul and makes me an even more bitter person
However | fecl that the real point of contention with shows is the
scrambling for social status and cult of cool that structurcs many
teractions at shows

My problems with these politics of coolness do not stem from
cither my inclusion or disclusion from any certain scenes. Im not
writing this as a forum akin to a xanga or burn book because the
popular girls won't let me sit at their lifestyle lunch table. My beef
runs much deeper.

The ways in which people are able to survive during this
current manifestation of post-industrial capitalism depends to some
extent on individuals selling their labor, to be allowed the right to be
consumers. We all partcipate in some exchange of capital, it is
inevitable. Even the crusties on the comer are laboring at flying a sign.
<o they can consume the pieces that cars allow them to consume. The
current state of living in a world where the old industrial specialization
models have corroded. Now, selling our labor means making us seem
like a profitable investment for whoever is going to employ us. We
have to literally take ourselves to market.

There are also all different roles and parts that at some
time, each of us also inevitably contribute to consuming.
producing, and accumulating capital. In this whole process of the
current state of capitalism the ways in which we are abte to
consume, produce, and accumulate capital is not only regulated
but also brought into existence through the apparatuses of
different forms of power all working at once. The state,
corporations, the police, universites, ete. This whole process that
i delegated by these various interconnected apparatuses alicnates
us from being able to provide for ourselves in any way that is
outside of the capitalist system completely. It forces us to rely
upon work and their machines to live.

it ]

Capitalism is dependent on the fact that people are
not only consuming, but that they are actively consumers.
‘The different media apparatuses have helped make that a
daily reality. This same sentiment of being a participant in
capitalism through producing and accumulating hold true,
there needs to be active producers and accumulators.

This need for active participation has helped
forced capitalism into the very fabric of our lives. The
ways in which we relate to one another has been
structured by these exchanges. Even how we relate to
ourselves i influenced by this spectacle.

To be worthy of the title of cool there needs to be
a reason worth bestowing onto a individual this title. To
be an “individual” individual you need embody some
new, something that puts you apart from others. This
constant reproducing ourselves as new entitis that others
find interesting and ultimately worth consuming as cool is
based off what they have produced, their labor.

The work that people do to constantly create who
they are is reliant upon many different apparatuses. Some
of these are the electronic apparatuses of facebook,
tumblr, blogs, whatever. Portraying snippets and media
reproductions of themselves that others can asily
consume. Also there are the apparatuses of style and
acsthetic that people employ. The apparatuses of the
names that people make for themselves through social
interactions, and playing in bands with other members of
the social elite. " o

Social capital and the cult of being cool is dependent upon how
successful we are being able to recreate ourselves as new, creative
or maybe a “game changer”

Every idenity is able to consumed into capitalism,
whether it be queer, punk, DIY, or whatever. There is no such
thing as an individual in a post modern, post industrial world. No
one is a snowflake, we are all tainted with the past present of
future of all that has come before us.
The ways that our exchanges are structured by capitalism
is due to the apparatuses that employ the power to keep them in
place. We cannot live outside of capitalism without striking the
material conditions that keep these apparatuses in place. Also
even after this pie in the sky rev, and utopian future. the influence
that capitalism and powers at be have had on us will still be there.

“This is not an answer on how to make a better, more
welcoming scene. This is more of an exploration of the multiple
factors that exist in the social interactions at shows, scenes and
life in general.

There may not be one concrete solution, however we can
still ruminate on the consequences of social capital. and the cult
of cool has on us.

When individuals who have rode the wave of popularity
into the cult of cool they are able to hold onto the accumulated
Social capital they've gained. With this capital like any real capital
they become institutions and a part of the apparatuses of power

themselves.

With the power that these individuals, who have
maybe paid their dues being in the scene for a long time
climbing the social ladder, or new and interesting look
have gained them access to this secret club hold not only
cocial capital but also access o resources. Also they are
bl to control the landscape of what s considered
ucceptable in the scene. They are able to discern who is
considered too “PC" and those who have something
orthwhile to say.

All of the oppressive dynamics that exist also help
hose who jump rungs on the ladder. Race, Gender, Class.
Ability, and all the other -isms are at play big
circus act we call the scene.

Also it is worth being wary of the false
Iokenization that occurs at the same time of those: who are
1ot actively examining their racism or prejudices 10 Uy
und gain access and social capital.

Instead of autonomous individuals coming
Logether to help create spaces where people are able 1o
- cpress whatever creative urges that they wish. we rely
< this free market social-capitalism to shape the scenes
it we put time and effort into

The next time that you hear someone describe a
7ty dude in the scenc as a “sweet heart” you have the
1 ght to go ahead and cringe. The next time that you try
and talk shit on someone jocking someone elses style. remember
hat it is like being a post modern girl in a post modern
world...sorry honey you just a carbon copy of a carbon copy.

There should be more space o self-criticize ourselves, our
fricnds, and our scenes without a defeatist attitude. Instead we
can use tilize our politics for more than catchy song lyries and
patches, and try to employ them for uses that lend themselves 1©
more valuable* conversations.

Maybe one day when the scenester is laying dead in the
grave we can meet each other in more dank basements and
sweaty crowds 1o joyously dance 10 the new songs we one day
may write in the future.

*(LOL)
this zine is the work of a few different
babes written in philly may 2k13

secret society of femmes (W)
antneverythingshows@gmail.com