FNM Fandom Drama 3

leperwitch

I’m an asshooollle (e-ol-e-ol)
I think 80% of the reason that I can’t get into Le Butcherettes is directly related to how stupid and borderline offensive Teri Suarez’s stage name is. The other 20% had to do with them sounding like Karen O singing over rehashed Josh Homme riffs. The influences are too clear and it feels like style over substance, and yet Ipecac promotes the shit out of them more than many other acts on the label. Very confusing.

in-this-psychodrome

She took that stage name as a way to counter machismo and sexism in her culture. Like I can squint and kind of see where “Gender Bender” might be offensive if she wasn’t actively subverting gender roles but that’s kind of her whole schtick. It’s like Hole being called Hole or Christeene’s stage persona, both of which are also political and potentially problematic.
She didn’t call herself Teri T****y, she used “Gender Bender” because she’s aggressively countering the gender expectations of the country she grew up in. She is bending gender - she’s not claiming transness or using a slur, she is doing exactly what the first paragraph of the LGBT Wikia definition of “Gender-Bending” says: http://lgbt.wikia.com/wiki/Gender_bender . (Please keep in mind that I’m non-binary and while I don’t speak for the whole LGBTQIA community I’ve never run across someone from that community who would have a problem with a person who was attacking gender roles calling themselves Gender Bender but it would be considered an insult if it was directed at someone who DIDN’T consider themselves to be engaging in gender-bending but instead identified as Trans - gender-trender or transtrender, however, are for sure slurs)

 

^ Here she is explaining it in HuffPo’s Latin Voices section.
As to Ipecac promoting the band, Ipecac has released six projects since September, two of them were Les Butcherettes, two were Melvins Projects, and the other two were Nevermen and Kaada/Patton. I’ve not been seeing much more promotion of Les Butcherettes over the other projects but they’ve got a more mainstream sound than Kaada/Patton and the label is likely to move a hell of a lot more units of  A Raw Youth than Bacteria Cult, especially, as you pointed out, since the band has recognizable influences and people who like Karen O are likely to like Teri’s voice.
Your criticism sounds like a lot of what people have said about Babes in Toyland or Bikini Kill or The Yeah Yeah Yeahs or other women-fronted punk/rock/indie bands over the years: they all sound the same and can’t write original music. Just like what people also said about Alanis Morissette and Four Non Blondes and Meredith Brooks in the nineties. And yeah, Teri has a contralto voice and writes staccato verses. She sounds like Karen O. And Jenny Lewis. And Neko Case. And Shirley Manson. She also sounds like herself - that’s her voice, it’s not like she can change it or doesn’t play with it: La Uva is a good example of her fluctuating between falsetto, and droning as a background voice; and Sold Less than Gold is a pretty clear Debbie Harry homage.
The “girl-rock band sounds like they can’t hack it because they sound too much like X” thing drives me up the wall. To me QotSA sound like warmed over Soundgarden. EoDM has clear, noticeable, Judas Priest and Metallica influences. Ghost sounds like The Vines trying to be edgy. I don’t dislike these bands but you can hear the obvious influences and similarities. I’m not going to say that I NEVER see this criticism of dude-driven bands but they don’t make up the majority of criticisms I see the way they do with women-fronted bands.
It’s cool if you don’t like the band, god knows there are a lot of bands I don’t like and I’m not quiet about it (suck it, Foo Fighters, you peaked with The Color and the Shape) but “style over substance” gets thrown out a lot at Ke$ha, Björk, Madonna, and Karen O, as well as just a shitload of artists of color - it seems a lot like a dogwhistle criticism of the person of the musician rather than the music. A band that writes songs about neoimperialist attitudes from the Bush administration and murdered girls and the contrast between Russian literature and American cowboy romanticism and the subtle violence of gender roles and stereotypes can’t fairly be said to lack substance.