Gender, respectability and emigration

Abstract

This chapter again works with two interviews, in this instance with Hector Heathwood and Claire Shannon, to consider the importance of gender in the punk scene. Beginning with Hector’s interview, it suggests that punk allowed Hector to express a critique of some of the edicts of hegemonic masculinity in Belfast, while also leaving some elements of this masculinity intact. It also highlights punk’s role in opening Hector’s eyes to alternative possibilities and modes of living, even while material and social conditions made some of these possibilities impossible. Turning to Claire, it suggests that punk, again, functioned as a means for her to transgress certain boundaries of respectability; but it also highlights Claire’s critical sense of the limits of this transgression, and of the reproduction of certain regressive or reactionary politics within the punk scene. In conclusion, the chapter proposes that the specific trajectory of both Hector and Claire (as people who no longer live in Northern Ireland) may explain some of the particularities of their narratives.