On gatekeeping in punk

[in response to this photo]

Did I already reblog this? If not it doesn’t matter, I had someone at a show try to test me on this shit last week.
He was a very friendly man. He was there with his wife, he was a little drunk, he was very chatty. He let me stand in front of him at the show because it was my first time seeing the band and his fourth. But that meant that he got to see the Dead Kennedys patch sewn onto my vest.
Him: “Oh, wow, I like your vest but how old are you?”
Me: “Uh, 30?”
Him: “Oh, OK, so long as you didn’t read about the Dead Kennedys in a book or some shit, I guess you can have that patch.”
Dude. Dude. I’m 30. The Dead Kennedys broke up when I was three months old. Of course I read about them in a book. I got this patch from Hot Topic when I was in high school and the only DK song I’d ever heard was their cover of “I fought the law” and I heard it on the Freddy Got Fingered Soundtrack.
I like DK now, as a grownup. I’ve listened to all of their music and even had a chance to shake Jello’s hand once. I like how political they are and songs like “Police Truck” have been hugely influential to  the politics and sound of my own punk band.
But fuck your gatekeeping, man. If I was seventeen and had the patch on my jacket maybe I’d have listened to all of their records twenty times and I’d be a huge fucking fan even if I had heard about them in a book, maybe it would be the way it was when I was actually seventeen and thought the patch looked cool and had heard one song and knew they were punk and I was trying to look cool as a seventeen-year-old who didn’t know anything about anything.
Maybe I’ve never heard of the Dead Kennedys but I’m a huge fan of Winston Smith. Maybe I hate the band but really like acute angles. Maybe I hate punk but my name is Debbie Knudeson and I’m into irony. Maybe I fucking love DK but the 22 year old dude next to me has no idea who they are and you aren’t bugging him about his DK tattoo, are you? (fucking literally and seriously, the much younger kid next to me had a DK stick-and-poke clearly visible on his arm)
So this guy lets me stand in front of him and complains about the scene and how it’s full of kids and at some point three people shove past me toward the stage.
Him: What the fuck? I give you that spot and you’re not going to fight for it? Why’d you let them past?
Me: Dude, that’s the band. The show’s starting.
Him: Oh shit, ha, my bad.
I didn’t ask him if he was some kind of fake fanboy but maybe I should have.
(side note: he kept *really creepily* asking me if I was a happy girl through the whole set. If you ever find yourself asking an adult woman “are you a happy girl” in public please reexamine  your life choices.)