The Subculture I Belong to

我们生活在被主流文化支配的社会，告诉我们要相信什么，不要相信什么，该做什么和不该做什么。然而，在21世纪，越来越多的年轻人不满意这种方式，所以他们开始了一个新的文化分支。这些不同的文化分支是代表年轻人的方式反抗权威和主流。作为一名学生出生在1990年后，作者是一个文化分支的坚定支持者。因为权威和主流媒体已经淹没我们的声音，作者认为我们年轻人仍然能够创建一个新的文化分支来对抗主流。本文将以作者的个人经历来证明这一点。

We are living in the world where mainstream culture has been dominating us and telling us what to believe, what not to believe, what to do and what not to do. However, in the twenty-first century, more and more young people are not satisfied with the way that the world has been running so they started on a new subculture. These various subculture is the way to represent young people rebelling against authority, against the mainstream and against the last generation. As a student born after the nineteen ninetieth, I am a firm supporter of subculture. Because the authority and the mainstream media has been drowning our voices, our thoughts and our protests, I think it is a comfortable thing to know that we young people are still able to create a new culture that stands against the mainstream.

I would like to write about my personal experiences to demonstrate how important it is for us to create more subculture. While I was a teenager, I was not the students that are capable of getting straight As and being the favorite student of the teachers. On the contrary, I disliked learning boring scientific subjects such as physics, chemistry and mathematics, so I was drowned in my own imaginative world in classes. Later on, I was obsessed with the punk culture. The punk culture is punk culture. The punk culture is the musical culture that focuses on the punk rock music. It is similar to the rock and roll’s loud and aggressive style. Acting as the electric guitarist back then, I was able to lead the punk culture, share my left-wing and progressive views, wear super cool clothing and cosmetics, designing unique band T-shirts. However, most importantly, the punk culture that I was obsessed with is able to give me confidence since I was not able to find it in school. I started to see myself as a brand new person that is not talented in academic studies but gifted in being a musician, a leader and a cool person.

One of the biggest influence that punk culture has been bringing on me even until now is the explicitly outward identities of sexuality it teaches us. I would like to share one of my dialogues with a conventional Chinese relative back home. My aunt is the opposite of my subculture. She always tells me, “homosexual love is sick and sex before marriage is shameful.” However, every time she said that, I argue back, “homosexual love, pre-marriage sex and the love between an old man and a young girl, should be brought to the front. No one shall be ashamed to hide their love affairs as long as he or she feels happy about it. ” I even brought my homosexual friends back home to demonstrate to them that the conventional thoughts are no longer suitable in the 21st century.

Also, punk music resembles that rap music in some way because they both express blunt sexual messages such as making love, being involved in incestuous love or enjoying homosexual love. Therefore, the ideologies that punk music that has been instilling in me has made me obsessed with another subculture: Sexuality and gender identity-based subculture. In fact, this is a subculture that is consisting of people who have shared experiences, interests and backgrounds about sexual and gender identity. (Hephaestus Books, 37)

The Sexuality and gender identity-based subculture has many different branches. First, the most popular one is the LGBT culture. Although it is thought to be the culture for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgender, I myself am a firm supporter of the LGBT culture. In fact, I have many friends who are homosexuals and have the same-sex lovers, so I myself can feel their anxieties, their unhappiness about being mocked and their worries about their parents’ snapping. Now, there are many protests about the gay culture. People are protesting on the streets, waving their rainbow flags at the aim of getting the equal chance to get married. A year earlier, the president of the United States Barack Obama has helped the Congress pass the bill for homosexual people to get married. This is a good sign that the sexual subculture has inserted impact on the mainstream. (Hephaestus Books, 58)

However, also the LGBT culture has pushed the authority to pass the bill for gay marriage, the mainstream media from time to time still mocks at people’s sexual orientations. For example, when a congressman’ homosexual love is exposed to the public, the public media immediately makes the big deal out of it, writing jokes about him or composing sick love songs about his affair. Therefore, as a supporter of the LGBT subculture, I have noticed the importance of expressing this subculture to the public more often until the majority can accept it. Several days earlier, I have read a blog dairy about a conversion about a gay couple. They are called Andrew and Tom. They were exchanging views and opinions about gay marriage. It is mentioned that this issue has been debated in the whole nation furiously. Because of all the protests and debates and strong opinions made by the subculture grouped, average people are no longer “allowed” to have opinions or judgments about the issue.(Net 1) However, the author who wrote this dairy has mentioned that he does not believe the gay marriage is equal to the traditional marriage.

Right after he claimed it, the gay couple got a bit annoyed and offended so they called him a homophobia. However, later on, the author went on to explain it, “I worry about what will happen to our society if everyone starts thinking that marriage is about any two people doing whatever they want.” (Net 1) so he made it clear that his opinion has nothing to do with antigay, it is only a simple concern about human nature. In the dairy, the author has also mentioned that he is being proud of being Catholic and he has converted to Catholicism because it gives all “human a prescription for living a life of peace, in harmony with one another.” It is mentioned that the Catholic ideologies do not single out any group of people in an unfair way. However, they later has an aggressive argument about how gay couples cannot bear any children and the social doctrine sometimes do not allow people to do whatever they want even thought they are allowed to get married because it is a human duty to breed the next generation. However, I personally disagree with this opinion. This is a way of looking down upon gay couples. If it is morally wrong for gay couples to get married and not give birth to babies, it is also wrong for traditional couples to get married and not have babies.

That is why I think that LGBT culture is the culture that I need to support to get the public to know the importance of acknowledge it. Some mainstream opponents always argue that gay lovers not truly spiritual loving one another and they believe that it is the physical love that they only enjoy. However, I personally disagree with that. A lot of homosexual men have made it very clear that they have poured their heart and soul into their lovers. A famous poet Tchaiknovsky has written a lot of love letters to his nephew Bob Davidov. However, Tchaikovsky was not easy about his sexuality and he is not like his brother Modest who is also gay, but he lived very frankly and openly about his sexual orientation and he made his relationship with the boyfriend Nikolai open. I used this example to claim that gay couples can also love one another spiritually instead of only physically because Tchaikovsky’s brother has fallen in love with the boy who is deaf and dumb. They had form the attraction towards each other because of the tutor. Later on, Tchaikovsky’s brother has lived for his boyfriend for about 17 years. When he was experiencing a mid-life crisis while has was thirty-six years old, he wrote a letter. In the letter, he expressed, “I have decided to get married. It is unavoidable. I must do it, not just for myself but for you, Modeste, and all those I love. I think that for both of us our dispositions are the greatest and most insuperable obstacle to happiness, and we must fight our natures to the best of our ability. So far as I am concerned, I will do my utmost to get married this year, and if I lack the necessary courage, I will at any rate abandon my habits forever.”

Clearly, the homosexual subculture has already been quite popular many years ago. And his heart wrenching love letter is the prove that gay couples do not only get attracted to each other by the physical love, they also get attracted to one another because they form the deep affection for one another.

Besides, another Sexuality and gender identity-based subculture is called Polyamory. Polyamory has not been accepted by many people because it is a practice that people get involved with more than one person in the marriage or in the relationship.

Most of my conventional relatives believe that loyalty is one of the most important attributes in a relationship. However, since I support subculture, I constantly argued in front of my Chinese relative,” This conventional value that has been straining a person from enjoying the free love they are supposed to enjoy.”

Polyamory has still been controversial. This is sometimes viewed as a sin. For example, although Percy Shelly is a famous poet, he gets the infamous name called womanizer because he abandoned his pregnant wife to be with Mary Shelley. Right after they got married, he even encouraged his wife to have an affair with another man if she likes him. Clearly, he is the supporter of Polyamory. Although he did not live a long life, he has tasted every bit of happiness that a human is supposed to enjoy.

The mainstream media has broadcast programs that criticize or mock the politicians who have an affair. Bill Clinton is the victim of the main stream ideology. After he had an affair with Monica, not only him but also his mistress was bombed with a bunch of criticisms all day long. In the end, Bill Clinton apologized for his misbehavior in front of the whole country.( Lauren Berlant, 66) However, according to the Polyamory subculture supporters, they deemed Bill Clinton’s affair sole as his personal business. They claimed that It is not morally wrong for him if he likes his mistress and he can have the cake and eat it, which means that as long as he is the good husband for Hilary Clinton and the good father for her children, he has the right to enjoy an affair with another girl he is in love with.

However, this subculture that I belong to is different from the mainstream culture for relationship. The majority of my Chinese friends support the mainstream culture for relationship, they keep telling me, “It is only morally correct if a person starts a relationship with another one but he or she can never flirt or cheat on his or her partners.” Once I have a friend who was found cheating, the other immediately badmouth and insult him, by saying “You are a jerk” or “You are the trash on earth”. I believe this is only an old-school and silly doctrines that prevent people from living that life that want. In fact, only less than 10 percent of the people in the United States are practicing this subculture. I admit that I think differently in this matter but that does not mean that I do not value loyal in a relationship. Here, I would like to unravel my opinion in detail about why I support this subculture although it is deemed to be “immoral”. We see these cases about celebrities cheating on their partners happening all the time and what the majority and the mainstream media do is judging. The way I see it, probably the reason why people judge them is not because they are nobler or have greater morality, but because they want to do the same but have no guts or dare not. Or we are all hypocrites in some way. The sexual subcultures liberate people’s desire and the supporters of the sexual subcultures do not let the conventional value obstruct themselves having fun. They mock the moral and loyal people as “hypocrites”. The truth is, as I see it, love is something which cannot be measured by a single aspect alone such as loyalty or honesty or consideration or how much you devote to it. Some people claim that loyalty and responsibility are the most important aspect in one’s marriage or relationship, that’s why when his or her spouse cheats, that’s the end of world for them. Plus, their spouse then becomes the worst and most egregious person in the whole world. However, as a supporter of Polyamory, I have to argue that who says and decides which moral principle is the most “important”? For me, I believe consideration and the affection is the essential, how happy you make one another feel and how fast your hearts beat together. Sexual subculture celebrates free love and we believe that only be getting rid of the chains that mainstream culture and ideology put on us, can we only taste that simplest joy of being a human.

Also, there is the third Sexuality and gender identity-based subculture is called the sexual fetish-based cultures. According to the sexual fetish-based cultures, it allows people who have sexual fetishes or other paraphilias to enjoy their lives. The fetish subculture encourages people to enjoy themselves in a strong nightclub scene. These paraphilia is about any sexual behavior that the general public deems as abnormal. For example, it is often thought to be abnormal if an old man gets married with a girl half on his age. Whenever this happens, the old man and the young girl would be seriously criticized for their “sick love” by the media. I believe it is unfair for the majority to lash out while their relationship has nothing to do with them. From time to time, the public will think of their love as a sick affection. Sometimes, they call the young girl as an “expensive prostitute” and sometimes they mock at the old man as a sick man who is not able to perform sexually. The sexual subculture group I belong to is different from the one that mainstream ideology set on us.

For us, we do not care about the chains that conventional thoughts put on us as long as we are happy. I believe that it is important for the sexual subculture to influence more people because this is the true value for human beings to liberate from all these restrictions and finally be able to live the most out of it.

Reference:

Hephaestus Books, 2001, Articles on Sexuality and Gender Identity-Based Cultures, Including: Bdsm, Swinging, Hijra (South Asia), Modern Primitive, Separatist Feminism, Hephaestus Books

Lauren Berlant, 2001, Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest, NYU Press

Sandra L. Faiman-Silva, 2004, The Courage to Connect: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Community in Provincetown, University of Illinois Press

Donald Vining, 1993, A Gay Diary: 1975-1982, Pepys Press

Kelly Boyer Sagert, 2010, Flappers: A Guide to an American Subculture, ABC-CLIO

Micah Issitt, 2009, Hippies: A Guide to an American Subculture: A Guide to an American Subculture, ABC-CLIO

Randall Herbert Balmer, 2006, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America, Oxford University Press

Net One: the conversation I have with a gay friend:

http://www.google.com.hk/url?url=http://www.conversiondiary.com/2012/07/a-conversation-with-my-gay-friend.html&rct=j&frm=1&q=&esrc=s&sa=U&ei=zC5jVZOBNMPVuQSHnoC4Bg&ved=0CBoQFjAB&usg=AFQjCNEqNqd2MHOBkJ6KJ98REjTnyRKGVQ  

Net Two: Gay love letters through the centuries

https://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=en-HK&source=hp&q=gay+love+letters+chivosky&gbv=2&oq=gay+love+letters+chivosky&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12...0.0.1.3339.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0....0...1ac..34.heirloom-hp..37.0.0.CN7cN8zpsT8

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