Photo via Tanner Ross
June is Pride month, a recognition of how some first world cultures have evolved to accept marginalized and often criminalized queer subcultures, when we celebrate an openness that was not possible mere decades ago. This is all well and good, except for the fact that there's been a litany of homophobic and otherwise prejudicial rhetoric in dance culture, a space many assumed was progressive because of its queer roots. In recent weeks a slew of DJs and producers have outted themselves as bigots. Writ large, it’s been more of a month of shame in lieu of pride.
This week Tanner Ross—Wolf + Lamb affiliated DJ/producer—went off on a bizarrely graphic, homophobic tirade directed at Resident Advisor's editor Andrew Ryce, purportedly in response to Ryce's review of the Jamie xx album, of all things. After being appropriately pilloried, Ross later apologized, citing his unique brand of humor as the reason he was misinterpreted, before being sent to DJ time out. Except Ross is not a comedian, and even if he were, the defense of "it was a just joke" is as tired of an excuse as they come. Rule of thumb: if you have to claim something was a joke, it's not funny. And definitely not a joke.
Scroll back to earlier in June when Lithuanian producer/DJ Ten Walls tried to equate homosexuality with pedophilia. His brief career was vaporized overnight. His statements were never intended as a joke, so at least he spared us the excuses. The silver lining in his gaffe was that it inspired the president of Lithuania to address the country's long road ahead in trying to catch up with other developed nations' stances on gay rights.
That same week PC Music's GFOTY made some misguided remarks about cultural appropriation that were defended as a joke gone very wrong and, also, racist. And it’s not just a couple of isolated incidents. Consider the rampant use of Native American headdresses at music festivals, the active exclusion and derision of women in the dance scene, carelessly named party crews like Gypset, and the fact that Borgore is still a thing. And then factor in that these musical controversies have coincided with certain millionaire mainstream entertainers who are complaining of the shackles of political correctness, at the hands of young audiences specifically. Clearly those millennials are just too damn sensitive. Society’s mores are too sensitive. After all, we’ve transcended racism and sexism and homophobia, right? I guess we’re all being overly sensitive, huh?
The main rhetorical challenge when discussing this wave of stupidity is overcoming the tired paper tiger refrain of "it's [insert bigot]'s First Amendment right to say [bigoted thing]." Sure, in America, everyone has the right to say dumb shit. But no one is going to jail. No governmental entity is trying to curtail anyone's speech or trample anyone’s inalienable rights. Critics—civilians—are simply expressing their right to disagree, shame, protest, and boycott, which—you guessed it—is what the First Amendment is all about. But it's not a question of legal rights. It's a question of class—and these DJs that have none. Just because you have a gay friend or respect a certain trans DJ doesn't give you the cultural permission to say whatever you want without consequence in a public forum.
So why is DJ culture exposing itself to be just as full of homophobes as any other cross section of American culture? Gay producers, DJs, promoters, and club owners helped pioneer and catapult house, techno, disco and beyond into mainstream culture, but straight white bros (SWBs) took over in the '90s, for all intents and purposes. Just like in pretty much every other industry. Of course, not all SWBs are full of xenophobic, racist, or homophobic bile. Even Diplo can say reasonable things sometimes. #notalldjs
The most tbh https://t.co/2IMlqWSDET
— PEACE IS THE MISSION (@diplo) June 18, 2015The through line is that all of these outings are indebted to social media, our collective perpetual regret generator. Specifically Twitter, now reduced to a playground for bad ideas. A virtual Hamsterdam for assholes like ISIS, porn bots, and homophobic/racist/misogynist DJs. But maybe there's social value in amplifying and publicizing variations on hate speech. Perhaps we won't have widespread galvanizing political movements like the Arab Spring to prove social media's value. Maybe it's a war of attrition, where, one by one, these social platforms will help expose rotten ideas and the rotten people behind them until hopefully people learn something from these mistakes. Or just get left behind. Maybe this was the point of Twitter all along, to be an accidentally progressive tool that allows people the freedom to be regressive and rattle off the gross thoughts from the innermost sanctum of their lizard brains. It might even be constructive that these SWBs are effectively eliminating themselves from the civilized conversation and whatever scene embraced them and helped them pay the rent, leaving them with their tails hanging between their legs.
So, keep the "edgy" jokes coming, DJs. Keep toeing the line. Keep courting attention. Keep stumbling over your edginess with your witty subtweets and Instagram screenshots. Keep spending time in ad hoc MRA message boards and keep sniping your "too-PC" enemies. Keep spending your layovers trying to think of a really cool hashtag and punchline about racial appropriation. Keep the First Amendment martyrdom coming. Keep digging that hole. Keep the invective rolling, whether it's explicit or tacit. Turn on. Tune in. And turn off the part of your brain in charge of impulse control. Tell us what you really think. Not that there's anything wrong with that.