LGBTQ Archives - Haulix Daily

Anyone who has spent more than a few days browsing our content will have no doubt noticed a number of contributions from the fine folks at Punk Out. You may or may not be aware of this, but Punk Out is not a music blog. Okay it is, but it’s not a music blog that typically features news and reviews. Punk Out exists for a much greater purpose, which we at Haulix believe is very important and today PO founder Michael McCarron is going to tell us the origin story of the organization.

I became really good at hiding in my own skin. I mean, ”date a girl for 4+ years” good. For most of my life, though, I was living this little game where I’d say all the right things, kiss all the right people, do all the right mind-numbing drugs. But eventually, that schtick fell flat, that “passion” got called out, and those decisions drove me into the ground. It took 18 years (six of which I spent rocking out in the dank VFW halls peppering the outskirts of the Philly metro area) for me to pull the plug on who I was. It took another two years for an upgraded model to be plugged back in.

Six years later, and I’m still surprised there was even an updated model of me available.

This is the context for the origins of Punk Out, the non-profit organization I began back in March 2014. This is the motivation behind every benefit show we put on, every discussion group we organize, and every Op-Ed we host. In its simplest incarnation, Punk Out is an organization dedicated to keeping kids from experiencing the same shit I went through. But if you check out our 501©3 tax application, Punk Out is an organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT+ musicians and fans. Red tape can be so constrictive.

At Punk Out, we believe in one simple mantra: Louder. Prouder. We aim to connect and support LGBT+ musicians and fans through the music they create and love. We see connections (real, flesh-and-blood connections) as an avenue for tangible change. See, here’s how it works: when musicians feel empowered to share their experiences, they serve as microphones able to amplify our message of inclusion and respect to their fans—far better than any blog post or Facebook status. But how do we empower musicians? By creating a support network where musicians feel as if they are equals amongst their peers, regardless of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

Here’s the thing though: that support network, that diverse community adhering to a set of core values, that doesn’t exist in our scene’s current incarnation. But those core values are what we’re working on creating. We see a music scene that encourages musicians to express themselves organically. We see a scene where our straight and cisgender peers support our queer peers and enforce the mores of inclusion and mutual respect. We see a scene that embraces diversity of all stripes. And we see a scene that provides the helping hand needed when so many of us fall down.

Punk Out is not the panacea. But we hope to help develop the music community we all deserve. We can’t do it alone though. It’s easy to toss out idealistic rhetoric and to promote a positive agenda. And it’s even easier to tear down others when they slip up. You can talk a big game, but armchair activism only takes you so far. Ask yourself, what are you doing to improve the community you owe so much to? Are you out there pushing back when someone spits bullshit homophobic nonsense at a random kid at a show? Are you giving money to bands or labels who promote inclusiveness and empathy? It starts with taking a good hard look in the mirror because real change is going to come from the individual level.

This is an amazing time in our music community, despite what some may tell you. Do we have problems? Undeniably so. But the future looks bright. Hell, if you asked me when I was a teenager if I ever thought I’d feel secure enough to be an out gay man, let alone start a queer organization in our music scene, I would have scoffed at you. But here I am. All I want in life is for others to feel the same sense of comfort in being who they are and in writing music about what they’ve truly experienced. No filter. No pronoun switches. No apologies. We, as a community, need to pull together to encourage everyone to feel safe and secure. Because being who you truly are—that’s punk as fuck.

Michael McCarron is the founder of Punk Out. For more information on his efforts, please visit the organization’s official website.

Punk Out is a 501©3 non-profit organization dedicated to connecting and supporting LGBTQ musicians and fans through music. We at Haulix believe the mission of Punk Out is very important, and to show our support we have collaborated with the leaders of the organization to share engaging blog content that is aimed at furthering their outreach. In this post we learn how blogger, musician, and music fan, Emma Rose, found confidence in a place most would not assume a woman would find confidence: at concerts. In her honest Op-Ed, Rose explains how seeing Lynn Gunn of PVRIS and Jenna McDougall of Tonight Alive live gave her the confidence to face down the hurdles in her own life. Enjoy.

I woke up at 5 AM on a summer morning to the sound of rain pounding on my windowsill, building in intensity by the second. Two hours later, I arrived at Manhattan’s Webster Hall, armed with ponchos, umbrellas, and enough food to survive an apocalypse. Despite the torrential downpour, I took a rush hour train, navigated the subway system by myself for the first time, and walked in circles in NYC’s East Village just to sit outside of the venue for 12 hours.

Nobody seemed to understand. Passerby’s stared at me as I sat alone on a city sidewalk with the bitter wind chill and rain drops soaking through my clothes and into my skin. My mother called me every 20 minutes with a sense of worry and confusion in her voice, wondering why her child would do something so crazy. My friends rolled their eyes when I told them where I was…and they all asked, “Why?”

Why did I want to wait half a day to see the band PVRIS? It is because concerts give me the self-confidence that I have been unable to find in any other section of my life. Being in that crowded venue allots me a few hours to be myself, but the waiting in line and finding new friends can be just as exciting.

As the line wraps around the block, I share my ponchos with a few fans who soon become friends. The small talk slowly turns into conversations usually shared with best friends after months (maybe even years) as trust is built up. Before I know it, we are exchanging stories of middle school bullies who left us crying on the bathroom floor and how it fueled our internal fire to become better than those broken fragments.

Suddenly, all the weight on my shoulders is lifted. How is it that these people who were just strangers a little while ago are the reason I feel less alone? I can’t even begin to tell you about the relief that comes from knowing that someone else has fought off the same demons as yourself. The concert community taught me not to be ashamed of the nights I spent questioning who I was or the petty mistakes that I kept hidden in the depths of my chest. And to think, all this empowerment before I even step inside the venue!

Once the wave of darkness overtakes the sweaty room, the real magic happens. For me, this isn’t the music. It’s those brief moments in between where the drummer and guitarists are tuning their instruments and the vocalist has to entertain the rambunctious crowd. While I’ve had a plethora of amazing encounters during these fillers, a few have sent chills through my bones despite the blazing heat created by being in close contact with sweaty kids.

Since this all started with PVRIS, it only makes sense that I talk about Lynn Gunn. In a music scene lacking in female representation, Gunn is the much needed bright light–even though she wears only black–that will inspire a younger generation of girls to pick up a guitar. Watching her on stage, I am mesmerized. Not only by her impeccable vocals, but by the confidence she has in herself that somehow makes me feel just as secure in myself. As someone who has struggled with identity for way too many years, there’s some comfort in seeing an openly gay female musician proudly sing a song she wrote for her girlfriend (Love, Robot vocalist and fellow role model Alexa San Román.) People say it gets better, but I only actually felt the potential for things to improve after seeing someone who has probably gone through similar tribulations and emerged on the other side.

Speaking of “the other side,” I must also bring up Tonight Alive vocalist Jenna McDougall. Like Gunn, McDougall transforms a concert from a night filled with music into one of hope and fading feelings of self-doubt. She doesn’t use the lulls in a set to just interact with the crowd, but to inspire them. On the Future Hearts Tour this past spring, McDougall adopted a mantra: “From this day, I refuse to live in fear of someone else’s judgement.” I may have been to a few shows on that tour, but the words hit just as hard each time. When she repeats this phrase with passion and asks the audience to recite it back, I scream it while tuning out the world around me. It’s one thing to hear someone else say it, but hearing the sentence roll off my tongue actually makes me feel and believe every single word.

Before discovering concerts, I was always a quiet, soft-spoken kid who hated seeing that reflection in the mirror. Then music came crashing in and welcomed me into a new world where I was encouraged to wear those pizza converse my friends made fun of me for and where nobody cared who slept on the left side of my bed. From the petty to major things, concerts gave me the confidence take the person I was inside the venue and bring her into the light of day.

I will forever be grateful for the songs, band members, and music-obsessed friends who broke through my thick skin and pulled out a person I never knew existed. Because of these events, I can look at myself and smile, because I love me just the way I am and I no longer live in fear of anyone’s judgement.

Emma stumbled into the music journalism field when she saw an ad for a blog in need of writers. Since that day in January 2015, she has been a founding member of the team over at ShuffleBeatMusic, a blog that interviews musicians and reviews shows. While cataloguing the success of performers helps her to stay engaged in the scene, Emma’s dream is to some day be on the other side of the industry. A self-taught musician who plays drums, guitar, bass, and keys, she has just recently formed the band Heartless Bones and hopes to grace the stages of Warped Tour someday. Of course, there must always be a backup plan. Emma is currently studying Public Relations and music business at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Wherever life leads her, it will always circle back to music.