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5. Do you write music with a message or desired effect in mind? ie. what would you like the audience to walk away keeping/thinking?
KC: I think it’s pretty hard to get away from the message, which is just a long exasperated “fuuuuuuuuuuuck” at everything. followed by the small, basic testament that we exist (and deserve to exist) in the world. and we’re saying “fuuuuck” not just the straight world, which is invalidating and easy to make fun of by default, but also the queer world, which has its own faults in the form of erasure and dismissing and outright disowning POC/gender variant folks.
like one of the songs of our first EP,
“clueless”, is about how “no blacks
or Asians” has become such a commonplace catch- line for hookup app profiles that gays have actually developed “witty” (read: fucked up) tag lines like “no chocolate no rice” to express the same sentiment. beyond the blatant racism, it’s like 1. why are POCs, even in literature, always described in terms of food? like we are dishes to be consumed? and 2. how can u say that shit and then turn around and use terms like “the lgbt community” with a straight fucking face? not in my name.
I think the message is that shit is broken. not just in the world at large, but the lgbt “community” as well. transgender folks continue to be fucked with by the cops, brutalized and killed on a regular basis, with im- punity. 25 -40% of homeless youth are queer or trans. over 40% of incarcerated female teens identify as queer/trans, and y’all talkin about marriage?? (we talk about this in the song “50 million wrong”).
GAY Inc is complicit in this violence because it has chosen to ignore these issues for the sake of GQ- lookin upper middle class white cis gay male inter- ests. historically, they separated themselves from the
trans community to present themselves as palat- able for straight ppl, and this fissure still exists today. so exhaustion, misanthropy, and a hint of hope that the rage of little brown queers/trans folks will feel at least a little represented/reflected in our songs, are big intended takeaways.
6. Social Work- what does that mean to you? What role does that practice play in your life?
KC: social work and advocacy have always been part of my and my family’s life. the first social worker my family interacted with, diagnosed my twin brother, kevin, with autism at age 2. in the 90s, my mom organized social workers to advocate
for kevin’s right to be included in regular k-5 day classrooms (as opposed to lesser resourced and segregated special ed classes). kevin was the first special needs student to be included in a regu-
lar classroom setting in the san francisco unified school district.
i came out in the seventh grade and started seeing a clinical social worker early on. freshman year of