"Suspicious Suicide"

Most people more than tangentially acquainted with feminism are aware of the media's tendency to obscure, trivialize, and even downright lie about cases of rape. I, however, was not aware that they did it in terms of murders, too.

The story I've been hearing on my TV is that a woman was found hung outside of a window, bound hand and foot, naked. They were calling it a suicide.

My immediate thought is, "How the hell does one manage to hang themselves with their hands and feet tied?" And why the hell wouldn't anyone else wonder this?

It got worse when I looked for the story online. (Link provided here-> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20079761-504083.html )

I found out that her hands were tied behind her back.

Not only is this a feat of Houdini-like proportions, if it IS a suicide (and I'm going to just go ahead and say it's not), one has to wonder what the point of stripping naked and tying oneself up would be. I have been suicidal. I have had serious and deliberate thoughts about how I wanted to do it. None of those plans included stripping naked and doing odd, uncomfortable things like tying myself up. If people give enough thought to their choice of clothing before the deed, they usually choose to wear the least humiliating thing to be found dead in. In addition to that, suicide victims usually try to find the most painless and convenient way to die. I know how I sound right now, and I apologize for not using a more appropriate tone with a grave situation like this. But I am just so confounded and furious with the media.

I'm going to go on the record as a civilian and say:

Rebecca Nalepa was found murdered in Coronado, California. She was thirty-two. May she have justice.

Goths, Emos, Punks, and youth culture.

This was something I had wanted to write about for a while, and I do think it has relevance to Satanism, as far as I believe most issues of justice have to do with Satanism (I don't know that it's a tenet in any of the forms of Satanism similar to what I practice, but I know that liberation is often a theme surrounding Satan), and as far as those who choose these subcultures and identify as Satanists.

It must be said here that although anyone wearing predominantly black, or dressing in a flamboyant fashion, is read by the dominant culture as Satanic, there isn't a staggeringly high correlation, but as I don't have any statistics to quote, I'll speak from personal experience. Most Goths I knew growing up were atheists, and the rest were generally Wiccan or Pagan. But I identified as a Goth, and ended up a Satanist, and I'm sure I wasn't alone.

There is a lot of hatred in American culture for its subcultures. I think a good deal of that spawns from ageism, because it's usually our youth who are representing subcultures. That's most of what fuels anti-Twilight bashing (along with misogyny) which hides behind the reasonable critiques (it portrays abusive relationships), I can see it when I see any commercial that characterizes a young person as a self-absorbed idiot with hir nose attached to hir phone. (The hate is so palpable to me that I actually get nervous while texting around older adults. I still look sixteen, and people don't seem to consider 21 year olds as a separate group from teenagers.)

To America, teenagers are willful, self-destructive, melodramatic, impossible to understand or relate to (and thus not fully human). And anything they like, or wear, is subject to an intense backlash of hatred.

The other part, of course, is standing out. People rationalize away their reaction by pointing out that "all Goths/Punks/Emos look the same", as if anyone could really truly look unique, or live their own isolated culture, or if that were even the goal. The point is not to be original, or unique. It's to be Not You. And by You, that's usually the dominant culture, in whatever form the young person's developing mind is beginning to perceive and label. And of course, we want to be able to spot each other in a crowd. It's not about the viewer. It's about finding, and creating community, and trying in a small, symbolic way to reject the hatred in this world. It's not different from every other person in the world, not different from every other black-wearing kid, it's just different from the usual, and that's enough.

For me, starting to identify as a Goth was me starting to identify that something didn't sit well with me about the world. And in that stage, it really was an elementary "us vs. them" sort of thing. I didn't trust people who wore casual clothes. And I wasn't being given any reason to, because I kept being bullied, and having my reasons for dressing the way I dressed interpreted to me, having people ask me "why" without really caring about or valuing my answers. There was the classic victim blaming that is so easily identified in feminist spaces except for when it applies to young people in black- "You draw attention to yourself," "You alienate yourself from others," "If you don't want to be bullied, just dress normal."

All of the things Goth kids put up with, are easily recognizable as oppressive behavior in social justice communities. The interpreting of the culture by the outsiders, which were often condescending and insulting. The invalidation. "Goth kids only think they're depressed because they think it's cool."

If you ever told someone in the neurodiversity and anti-ableist movement that they just thought they were depressed, they would justifiably give you the verbal smackdown. But kids in black are free game.

I did grow a more nuanced view of the world, that was more than just Kids In Black vs. Everyone Else. I don't think I could have reached that nuanced understanding without having first claiming Goth culture. I began to find words for all the gross feelings I had inside from the world around me- first from books about abuse, and then from feminism, and then from neurodiversity, and so on.

I would like for those who read this post to re-examine any negative feelings they have about our young, and about our young Goths, punks, emos, scene kids, and et cetera. I think they need a safety net the most. And as I get more involved in my community as a Satanist, I want to help build that safety net. Satanism was a safety net for me after Goth culture and before feminism and neurodiversity, and I want all of those things to come together so that we can create safe, validating, and loving groups for young people. They need us. Kids In Black need us. They need us to listen to their reasons and not laugh at them, or explain their emotions to them, or examine them under a microscope like bugs. Young people are so vulnerable, especially those who stand out. Some say we have a choice in whether or not we stand out. We can just put on the jeans and T-shirt. But for those of us who persisted throughout years of bullying, it meant so much more than just cloth. Even now I can't explain what it meant to me, and still does- the best I can say is that it was safety. It was home. It was my own skin. It was a choice in a culture that strongly discourages choices. It wasn't meant to be a groundbreaking critcism of our culture, or completely original. It was just meant to be for us.