Straightedge Youth: Complexity and Contradictions of a Subculture

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Straightedge Youth: Complexity and Contradictions of a Subculture

by Robert T. Wood

2.67 · rating details · 9 ratings · 1 review

Emerging out of the American punk rock scene of the early 1980s, straightedge youth have held their ground and made important inroads on the broader terrain of American youth culture for the last twenty-five years. Known primarily for their militant opposition to drinking, drug use, and casual sex, as well as for their commitment to vegetarian and vegan lifestyles, straigh...more

Hardcover, 180 pages

Published October 30th 2006 by Syracuse University Press

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Jun 18, 2010

Caris rated it

Shelves: 2010

For about half of my life, I have identified myself as, for lack of a better term, a punk rocker. This music dramatically changed my life from the first time I really listened to it. The mid-nineties were a good time for this to happen, as there was an influx of punk bands forcing their ways into the mainstream. There was Green Day and Blink 182, great bands for young, unthinking teenagers to listen to. Light poppy stuff, just edgy enough to be appealing.

But that wasn’t what I was li...moreFor about half of my life, I have identified myself as, for lack of a better term, a punk rocker. This music dramatically changed my life from the first time I really listened to it. The mid-nineties were a good time for this to happen, as there was an influx of punk bands forcing their ways into the mainstream. There was Green Day and Blink 182, great bands for young, unthinking teenagers to listen to. Light poppy stuff, just edgy enough to be appealing.

But that wasn’t what I was listening to. Sure, I had a Green Day cassette that I’d been listening to in elementary school, but when I hit junior high, everything changed. For some reason unknown to me, I became unreasonably attracted to straightedge Boston hardcore.

The lyrics these guys were yelling at me had nothing to do with difficult parental relationships. They had nothing to do with girls. They had everything to do with the scene and the lifestyle, stuff I had no concept of. I was a lone seventh grader with no punk buddies to influence me. My path was carved by my own sense of exploration. So in school, while kids were listening to Freak Nasty and Everclear, I was quietly absorbing the words of Slapshot and SSD.

A couple of months ago, my wife was watching a documentary on straightedge culture. It showed a side of things I’d never known: gang violence, mob mentality, and homicide. I was a little shocked and even more enthralled. This was what I was into? Really, I wasn’t. All of that shit happened when I was learning to walk. All the same, despite the violent lyrics, I considered straightedge to be something good. Something smart.

So I found this book. It’s a sociological study of the culture. It’s short, so I decided to give it a shot. At first, the novelty of sinking back into that world was enough to keep the pages turning. But once that wore off, I saw the work for what it really was: a poorly researched dissertation. It is evident that the author was close to the movement in some way. He is most definitely sympathetic. However, his work is uninteresting. The straightedge movement involved a lot of people, but he somehow manages to work with around ten. These people are not representative of the culture and, in several instances, were simply found online. Their stories are unverifiable and their opinions are worthless. His citations deal primarily with the study of subcultures and focus on the variability between members of the in-group.

The highlights, hands down, are the candid comments by Ian MacKaye, the mastermind behind the groundbreaking band Minor Threat. Through MacKaye’s words, the reader gets a glimpse of how the movement started, what sustained it, what went wrong, and where it went. MacKaye is the sort of primary source this book could have used more of. Instead, Wood interviews people today who identify as straightedge about a movement that happened twenty years ago. Wood’s own analysis of the heterogenic populations within the subculture prove that these opinions are not terribly useful. What does some kid posting to an online discussion board in 2003 have to do with a fragmentation of punk rock that happened in 1981?

For someone without a background in both straightedge and sociology, this book might be interesting. I, however, found it to be boring and felt that it didn’t add to any established understanding of either subcultures in general or straightedge specifically.

On the plus side, this brief investigation persuaded me to jump back into my old hardcore collection. It turns out the Slapshot and Minor Threat make for good workout music.
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