As far as I am aware, the only requirement to be goth is to like goth music. And, I love goth music. So, I guess that makes me goth. I also have a tattoo of a raven on my back, so the aesthetic is clearly also apart of my life in some capacity. Artists like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Lebanon Hanover, Bauhaus, Christian Death, Fields of the Nephilim, Cocteau Twins, Joy Division, and other more modern goth groups like Mr. Kitty, Sidewalks and Skeletons, Drab Majesty, Chelsea Wolfe, and Light Asylum have dominated my Spotify for the last few years.

Now, hopefully you recognize at least one of those bands, but for those who don’t I’ll explain the general concept of goth rock. Because, here’s the thing: Most people have a severe misunderstanding of the goth subculture. And, honestly, its on purpose. Goth wants to be countercultural and thus don’t try to dispel negative perception.

Gothic aesthetic is characterized by a fascination with dark topics, the mystical, and general apocalyptic tone. Lyrics in goth music often make allusions to religious symbology and negative affect in order to subvert them.

In my favorite movie, Sing Street, which is a great Irish film, they describe The Cure as “happy-sad” or perfectly content with the negative as a foil to the mainstream toxic positivity so pervasive in modern society. In essence, goth music works almost as a shock value satire.

Though their exterior may seem unapproachable and “hysterical,” the goth community will be the last to discourage experimentation with gender and sexuality and will advocate for equity. Oftentimes, people describe goths as crazy, or depressed, or psychotic. The general perception of the goth community is not unlike the perception of Dora in Hysterical Girl.

Well, one of the defining features of the goth subculture is a total disavowal of gender and gender roles, while also embracing non-hegemonic sexual orientations and kink culture. Since the late 70s and 80s, goth culture has evolved to be inclusive and non-judgmental to everyone. In reality, goths are some of the kindest people I have come to meet.

These examples are both from the 80s. For another example from earlier that I would consider to be goth, watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). In the movie, Tim Curry (an icon you should know) plays a trans woman who builds a man a-la Frankenstein for her pleasure. It features an incredible soundtrack that makes my little goth theater major heart sing.

For more modern acts, a lot of the groups I found have begun to play with androgyny. This shift from trad goth cross-dressing or at times near drag to the neo-gothic absence of gender is very interesting to me. I hazard to guess that the goth community has come to accept genderqueer identities so strongly that at this point the shock value project has become to do away with gender entirely.

Then, is being goth a kind of hysteria? Are we mad? I think many goths might actually embrace being called hysterical. That general invalidation of emotion and overall emphasis on “your emotion is inconvenient to me” is the goal of gothic aesthetic. We want the adverse reaction because it lays bare the exact social rules that cause so much suffering in society. When we insist that happiness is a “good” emotion and sadness or anger is “bad” we also instill a sense of guilt for experiencing negative emotions. If instead, we accept all emotion as valid then we are far less likely to spiral anytime we feel something profound or difficult like grief or outrage.

It’s interesting, because most people when they hear I like goth music are confused because listening to it all the time must be so depressing. But, I find that the acceptance of negative emotions to be empowering and uplifting. If we apply the same to Dora, I feel like we might be able to find a way to unchain her from Freud’s narrative.

If Dora was to, say, embrace her right to be afraid of Herr K. and to resent him, and to be saddened by the experience, then, she could find empowerment in the fact that her story is valid and her right to protect herself is absolutely fair to employ here. When Dora ended her sessions with Freud, I’d like to think she realized exactly that. She could finally validate her own story without the need to defer to any of the men in her life. She was empowered enough to advocate for herself even when it was dangerous, even when no one else would.

And indeed she did, she would go on to become a writer, marry a would-be musician, and birth a baby boy. Even still, she reportedly “found all men detestable.” Which is honestly a fair response given her experience with her father and with Freud. Nevertheless, she prevailed as that baby boy would go on to be Kurt Herbert, famous opera director. Ida then was targeted by the Nazi’s for her brother Otto’s Marxist affiliations, so she fled to New York by way of Paris. Where she then died.

I imagine that underneath Dora, or Ida Bauer’s, petticoats she might have some killer goth boots for crushing misogynistic men.

Similar to Ida’s story, Goth subculture was always about resisting existing systems of power. Thus, it was hardly surprising that goth came to represent the kinds of “freaks” who would play with gender and resist gender norms. Also like the case of Ida, I would argue this subculture, and Ida herself, was hardly hysterical, it was the cultural response which fit the bill of hysteria: The satanic panic.

Starting in the 80s, as counterculture gained momentum, people began to complain of satanic ritual abuse and general satanic practices or beliefs among their neighbors, friends, and even family members. In fact, much of the modern interpretation of why the satanic ritual abuse epidemic occurred is because of the implementation of mandatory reporting laws in the 80s for child abuse. At the time, it suddenly became required to report instances of suspected or known child abuse, and as conservative Christianity gained power in the same time period, it became a miasma of Christian panic, psychotherapist interventions on behalf of children’s safety, parental paranoia, and the foreboding shadow of law enforcement and its consequences.

As such, its not surprising that in trying to resist what essentially became Christian fundamentalist paranoia and law enforcement’s coercive practices people turned to counterculture. For example, law enforcement readily investigated a story told by a child that they had been flushed down a toilet into a ritual room where they were abused and then returned to their parents after the fact.

Some religious figures also emphatically used the stories of satanic ritual abuse to further their goals, citing the alleged stories as signs of the devil come to corrupt children. As such, parents then became even more horrified by the Goth subculture’s inversion of religious iconography. Parents interpreted the satirical blasphemy as heretical Satan worship. Thus, the play that Goth had come to embrace with gender became a kind of satanic symbol, associated with abuse.

Sources:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/bauer-ida-1882-1945

Also, in case anyone wants to listen to some goth music and similar genres I’ll attach some playlists below.