Goths are not an oppressed minority…
The language on the Death Guild website explains that their choice, to use a lynching scene as their logo, was one to show solidarity and identification with marginalized people who are murdered for their lifestyle:
“Our logo, a hanged man blindfolded and swinging from the limb of an oak tree, is representative of many things. It is a rallying point for those escaping oppression for there(sic) choices of lifestyle. It is a depiction of the fate of an ignorant society. It is the darkness that so many fear as they are terrified of dying. It is a symbol of strength, the oak, a guardian of sanctuary. My roommate Cathy painted the original picture of an actual oak tree, its location is known only to her and myself.”
The choice of words suggests that they are referring to vigilante lynch mobs which rounded up and murdered people for miscegenation (race-mixing), homosexuality and the like. The problem is, goths are not an oppressed minority group like those who have been historically executed by vigilante groups for homosexuality, being transgender, being in an interracial couple, or just plain being black.
After leaving the club on Monday upset because I have been bullied by thin, white, cis newcomers in a club where I – a 51 year old African American pansexual enby woman who has been a part of the goth scene since 1981 and a part of that club since it opened in 1993 – reflected upon what a woman named Barbara Ditz told me about how she protested the logo from the start, and how it sent a message out to people of African American heritage like myself who are in the club which is hard to miss:
“We feel oppressed and don’t have any problem appropriating Jim Crow era images that are hurtful to black people in order to express how oppressed we feel as goths and how that is just like black folks being lynched”
No. Just no.
So I post this petition and the response is just… wow, some of the comments. So culturally tone deaf, apologistic, defensive, and down right bigoted. I will try to get some screencapped and erase the names and put them in here later. Shameful.
Here is my petition. Please sign it.
https://www.change.org/p/death-guild-ask-death-guild-to-retire-the-lynching-scene-logo
Sumiko Saulson 