Abstract
Through ethnographic data and discourse analysis, this article exposes the presence ofsexist practices within an ostensibly egalitarian Russian punk scene in Saint Petersburg.Specifically, this article examines how female punks use mat (swear words like “fuck,”“shit,” “whore,” and “cunt”) to transgress hegemonic notions of femininity, while atthe same time performing a masculine ritual that Russian punks highly value as subculturalcapital. This article examines linguistic practice surrounding mat and demonstratesthat mat is not “male” but instead performs stances of authority and masculinity,which are in turn associated with gender. The article’s close examination of linguisticpractice among female punks helps elucidate some of the ways that punk women attemptto claim authority within a scene that otherwise physically and socially marginalizesthem. By drawing on the ethnomethodological theories of indexicality and stance,the analysis shows how micro instances of mat simultaneously interact with—and drawupon—macro conceptions of the traditional gender order. Because mainstream gendernorms strongly proscribe women’s use of mat, punk women can effectively exploit thiscultural proscription to create distance from mainstream conceptions of femininitywhile simultaneously exploiting their subversion of the traditional gender order to accruesubcultural capital. Rather than separating linguistic practice from macro discourseson gender, this article traces how macro conceptions of the gender order help structure—and are structured by—talk in interaction. As such, this article provides criticalinsight into how micro instances of mat interact with macro conceptions of the genderorder to create an alternative punk femininity. Article in English. DOI: 10.25285/2078-1938-2018-10-1-5-28
Highlights
Through ethnographic data and discourse analysis, this article exposes the presence of sexist practices within an ostensibly egalitarian Russian punk scene in Saint Petersburg
By drawing on the ethnomethodological theories of indexicality and stance, the analysis shows how micro instances of mat simultaneously interact with—and draw upon—macro conceptions of the traditional gender order
In this article I argue three related points: (1) Russian punk highly values performances of masculinity and marginalizes the feminine; (2) mat directly indexes authoritative stances that in turn indirectly index masculinity; and (3) that female punks use mat to align with a punk community that often bars them from key performance spaces
Summary
In the span of 15 seconds Lena lets loose more mat than I heard in the span of 12 months from all of my female colleagues at Zenit—and this to express surprise about the abundance of wild strawberries. In a single use of mat, Lena accomplishes three simultaneous social actions: (1) she uses mat to create an authoritative interactional stance that aligns with Aleksei’s, (2) creates solidarity between herself and Aleksei by projecting the use of a shared code, and (3) thereby signals shared affiliation within the punk community. All this is accomplished through a seemingly trivial moment of picking wild strawberries in the Russian wilderness. In the excerpt below Aleksei and Lena use mat to negatively evaluate mainstream values and create an interactional stance that aligns with punk anticapitalist values.
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