Evolving Gothic culture still a lure in Brisbane
NEWS.com.au - Mar 25, 2009
While the clubs come and go – Warman was recently out of action for three months while he found a new venue – one thing that hasn't changed is the placid nature of the crowd.
"In 27 years, we've never had any trouble, never had the police called out," he says. "They're a polite, gentle crowd. But they can bitch a bit."
Taunts turn to violence - bullying exposed
NEWS.com.au - Feb 17, 2009
The family of one teenage male student told how their son was subjected to a series of assaults at an elite Sydney private college, which included:
* A BROKEN arm sustained in an altercation with another student;
* A KING hit from another student leaving him with a bruised neck and cheekbone; and
* HARASSMENT by five students who called him an "emo" and told him to cut his own throat and wrists.
A familar story..
Read Tori Matthews-Osman's story about bullying
Geelong Advertiser, Australia -
Another article points out music has little to do with slf harm and it is a myth:
Generation ‘whine’ and other self-harm myths
On Line opinion, Australia -
This interesting article reveals how prejudice against emo feeds into prompting people with mental problems into feeling even worse about themselves:You tried it once because you wanted to feel alive, and when you tried to stop, your mind declared otherwise. You replaced one kind of pain with another, which felt a lot like self-help, and the logic of your universe came undone.
Or perhaps you've never cared about self-harm, maybe you just read about it, and became interested in the lore of “cutting culture” - how it is a fad promoted by the “emo” subculture, how it is all about attention-seeking, all about suicidal intent, all about manipulation, how it drove some kid in America to shoot his classmates. Perhaps you don't care about self-harm at all.
Well, now would be a good time to start.
Young people who self-harm* provoke plenty of vilification, but not enough care. Figures published recently by The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) show that hospitalisation for self-harm among people aged 12 to 24 has risen by 43 per cent in 10 years.
But while the jump is disturbing, so too is the hidden number of young people who self-harm but don’t seek help, silent casualties of moral panic and mental health stigma. Ignorance has allowed self-harm to become something ridiculed and taboo, something to talk about in whispers, with cynical sneers. Much is said about self-harm; very little of that is true.
So let's clear up a few misconceptions. Self-harm is not a fashion statement. It is not about exploiting the goodwill of others in order to be noticed. It does not “cause” homicidal behaviour, unless you are a darkly imaginative journalist with a penchant for attention-grabbing sensationalism. Self-harm’s tenuous link to emo (short for “emotional”) comes from the music genre’s lyrics - intimate, confessional - and though they’re certainly an acquired taste, it’s naïve to believe that counterculture is the poison in the well of mainstream society.
Rather, self-harm is a coping mechanism. It is a way of controlling, diverting or communicating overwhelming feelings. (The relationship between self-harm and suicide is complex; in most cases it is not intended to be fatal.)
After making the long arduous climb out of depression, 16-year-old Di Sha Phillip wants to extend a hand to others trying to make the same difficult ascent.
The Brampton Centennial Secondary School student is a bright, articulate young woman determined to remove the public stigma that clings to those suffering from mental health disorders and creates a potential obstacle to recovery.
While battling depression, Phillip found stigma stained the way others saw her and even how she viewed herself. Neither perspective aided in getting help or recovering from the emotional fall that landed this teenager in a mental health unit at the local hospital.
Phillip has bravely stepped forward to put a face on mental illness and establish a grassroots organization she has dubbed Students Erasing the Stigma. Her hope is to start youth chapters within local schools to raise awareness about mental health issues and assist troubled students looking for help.
“I’m doing this because I got out of a really bad situation last year with depression and I’ve been involved in the mental health system and I realized there isn’t a lot of youth activism going on, like at a local level, to help people understand mental illness and mental disorders,” she said.
Phillip is a high academic achiever who, at a glance, might seem an unlikely candidate to experience serious mental crisis. However, experts agree mental illness has no regard for intellect, gender, age, race, ethnicity or socio-economic standing. It strikes without discrimination, can be paralyzing and sometimes be fatal.
Last year, Phillip was a Grade 10 student in Turner Fenton Secondary School’s highly regarded International Baccalaureate (IB) Program. The demanding pre-university course challenges the academic and life skills of high school students with the Peel District School Board. Program graduates can access universities all over the world.As depression began to take a firm grasp, other students in the highly competitive IB program started to see her as emotionally weak. She found herself shunned by peers, bullied and the topic of gossip. She has since transferred out of the IB program to Brampton Centennial.
Some schoolmates last year referred to her as an “emo— a popular culture term and stereotype used to sometimes describe someone who can be emotional, introverted, depressed, prone to self-injury and suicidal.
“I didn’t necessarily fit that kind of image, but I was very unhappy,” she admitted. “I did say a lot of negative things about my life, how I didn’t like myself and I didn’t like the way I was and the person I’d become and I guess they kind of didn’t really understand what was going on with me and they kind of started to ostracize me in that way.”
High expectations, academic demands, stress and competition in the program, coupled with her poor self-perception, grandmother’s death and depression eventually led to a nervous breakdown.
“I understood my feelings, but it took me a while to realize what I was feeling was depression and it was a serious mental illness.”
April 27, 2008 12:00am
SECONDARY students are dividing themselves up in Queensland school grounds into groups called Plastics, Gangstas, Goths and Emos, pupils say.
Anyone who refuses to join are labelled nerds – or, worse, become nothings or rank outsiders to be bullied or, in extreme cases, bashed and have their home invaded.An 18-year-old former Gold Coast secondary school student, who has survived two bashings and a home invasion, told The Sunday Mail last week that the school gang culture was on the rise and a direct import from American campuses.
The former student, parents of bullying victims and psychologists pinpointed several reasons for the bully/bash revolution. They included:
• The negative influence of some American films and rap music.
• The internet, which provides plenty of opportunity for cyberspace bullying.
• The failure of working parents to police some sort of moral code for their children.
"The Americanisation in our schools is really bad," the 18-year-old former student leader said.
"Kids even talk in American accents, use their phrases. I've got a friend who has arrived from overseas and she has never seen anything like it. At school, everyone is broken up into different groups like you see in those US movies like American Pie. There's Plastics, the Gangstas, Emos and Goths."
The groups are large and easy to identify from their fashion accessories and their arrogant attitudes, but only one – the Gangstas – presents a violent threat.
"The Plastics pack on the make-up. Their hair is really hacked at, they work on it so much," the former student said.
"They change their uniforms to make their shirts tighter and their dresses shorter. The guys love them, but they're called Plastics because they're so false."
The female schoolgirl obsession with good looks surfaced last week at St Patrick's College in Mackay, where students had ranked themselves from 1 to 21 – they write the number on their wrists – as part of Club 21 or Big 21.
Gothics are identified by their dark clothing and heavy-metal taste in music, and Emos (from "emotion") by being sensitive, introverted types obsessed with depressing rock bands.
But it is the group stealing the US gangsta-style culture, with its love of violent rap music, which students fear the most.
A gang of suburban teenagers armed with bats, machetes and a sword stormed a school assembly at Sydney's Merrylands High School early this month injuring 18 students and a teacher.
Queensland students told The Sunday Mail they were aware of similar gang members carrying pocket knives around secondary schools in southeast Queensland. "They all have baggy clothing, they're all bling, they have the hats with the stiff shades worn backwards and the pants around their knees showing their undies," the 18-year-old said.
"They carry boom boxes (sound systems) around the school. The Gangstas are the ones you worry about. They need to be so cruel all the time."
A parent who has a 16-year-old son at a southeast Queensland school, and an older daughter who recently graduated, has kept a diary of dozens of assaults on her children since 2003.
The concerned mother, who asked not be named for fear of reprisals against her children, described the gangs as "organised groups of thugs".
Some of them had been gang members since primary school as 10-year-olds, following the "career" of their drug-addicted parents by robbing homes before bashing students at secondary school, she said.
"There were six or seven of these students in Year 8 who surrounded my daughter. They punched and kicked her, rammed her into a brick wall. They picked her up and dumped her head-first into a garbage bin. She ended up with renal bleeding," the distressed mother said.
Police from the Juvenile Aid Bureau later cautioned the most violent bully but the other girls, including the ringleader who organised the bashing, escaped without punishment.
It took the school six months to get enough evidence to expel the female gang leader.
"These gang members single out the kids who are good kids, kids who don't want to smoke or drink," the mother said.
She recalls making many complaints to Education Queensland and school administrators, but after disciplinary action the gang would choose a more indirect form of bullying: "It becomes more covert and indirect. The student is usually defamed. This is through verbal abuse in the playground or through the internet."
The parent took notes of conversations. An education bureaucrat told her: "Your kids have to learn to swim in the mainstream. Society has changed. Get over it."
But the impact on her son, a Year 12 student with a promising sporting future, has been devastating and he recently took several weeks off school after receiving threatening emails.
When he considered returning to school this term, he sat down, in tears, and wrote a letter to his parents:
"I don't want to go back to (school name) because I have no friends.
"I get bullied by (group) and teased by (group). When they come out from the office seeing the principal . . . it's all back to bullying again.
"What do I need to happen for me to feel OK about (the school)? The two groups gone, that's what I need."
The concerned mother's diary also includes many entries recording that her children have woken up early in the morning after nightmares about being bullied at school.
She said many gang members roamed the streets as late as 10pm on school nights and appeared to have no parental supervision.
She believes a key reason for the violence in schools is that many of these non-academic children were forced to remain at school.
In previous decades, they would have left by Year 10 for a trade.
"These kids are like magnesium. These kids – they're white light. They're in your face immediately," she said.
"And they're sneaky. They make out they're OK when they go to your place, and then they go up to our local park and club the plover population to death."
Dr Marilyn Campbell, lecturer and psychologist with the School of Learning at the Queensland University of Technology, agrees there is a problem created by having the less academic children stay at school longer.
"I'd agree, and in some ways . . . we are keeping children as children longer," Dr Campbell said.
"We're prolonging their adolescence. You no longer go to work (full-time) at 12 years of age."
Dr Campbell makes two critical points in the gang debate, which provide some balance about the role of schools and parents in reducing the amount of bullying.
She explains that gangs of teenagers are not a new phenomenon, but the lack of parental supervision and advent of the internet and bullying in cyberspace is.
"The Mods, the Rockers and the Beatniks (in the 1950s) had a huge American influence. So I don't think it's an incredibly new phenomenon," she said.
"Young people have a seamless online and offline life (now). Bullying happens in both worlds.
"Any violence is a worry, whether it is imported or home-grown. But if you look at the five groups (including the nerds), only one-fifth of them identifies more with a violent culture and I would say only one-fifth of that group would practice violence."
Part of the solution would be to provide schools with more resources to handle troublemakers, and steer those bored students earlier into apprenticeships and trades.
But working parents could not expect schools, which have their children from 9am to 3pm, to be responsible for teaching them a moral code when their focus was on preparing their class for maths and English exams.
"High schools don't teach violence, but TV and the internet and their parents do.
"Schools aren't the ones to raise children. Parents are supposed to raise them," Dr Campbell said.
Police raise vigilance after 'emos' incident
El Paso Times, TX -
By Daniel Borunda / El Paso Times
The mall incident, which police said might have been sparked by an exchange of words, might have been a copycat of highly publicized attacks on emos by mobs in Queretaro and Mexico City. Juárez public safety secretary Guillermo Prieto Quintana in a news statement on Thursday said the police anti-gang unit would increase patrols at teen hangouts to discourage problems. Prieto Quintana said that Mexico's northern border has traditionally been tolerant of all types of expressions, and he urged teens to respect others' right to self-expression. The emo is a style and musical offshoot of punk music. Emos often sport dark hair covering part of their faces, dark clothing and an emotional outlook that has been described by some as effeminate, which might have fueled the mob attacks in the macho culture of Mexico. The attacks on emos in Mexico have gained international attention, with television news airing videos filmed by the punch-throwing mobs chanting, "Kill the emos." On Thursday, Time magazine's Web site had a report titled "Mexico's Emo-Bashing Problem."A confrontation in the upscale Las Misiones mall between teenage cliques of "emos" and "punks" on Wednesday night has Juárez police officials stepping in and asking for tolerance.
Latest from Daniel Hernandez:
In Mexico, violence against a youth subculture known as the emos ...It was supposed to have been a multi-tribe peaceful march for tolerance for the emos, from the Glorieta de Insurgentes to the one-and-only El Chopo street market, where for 25 years nearly every branch of alternative youth culture in Mexico City has gathered on Saturdays. Nevermind. It failed.
On a hot and rainy day here, emos arrived to El Chopo and were received with nasty resistance from some punks, skinheads, and darketos. It should have been expected. At the start of the march, I barely saw a single sympathetic member of any another tribu urbana.
In a familiar pattern in Australia alternative teens face hassle from authorities and shop keepers:
Civic dubbed a 'pit of harassment' - News - General - The Canberra Times
20 January 2008
CIVIC shop owners have expressed fear and outrage at what they say is a growing culture of anti-social behaviour and pack youth mentality in the area.Coupled with the complaints were allegations police were complacent in patrolling the area.
According to one retail outlet owner, the Beats Police office looking over Garema Place is staffed only at night and periodically at weekends, allowing unlawful and aggressive behaviour to escalate.
But according to an ACT Policing spokesman, the office is not a police station and is used only when Beats foot patrols are on duty. "The community expects high-visibility policing and for the beats teams to be away from their desks and out on the streets. In close proximity to Garema Place, the City Police Station is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and there for anyone who is in need of assistance," he said.
None of the business operators Sunday Canberra Times spoke to in and around Garema Place were willing to be named, citing safety reasons. "A pit of harassment and aggression. That sums this place up," another owner said. "Once these kids know that their scare tactics are working, they are like vultures to a dead carcass. They just won't go away."
The Sunday Canberra Times spoke to a group of youths in Garema Place yesterday about the complaints raised by business owners. Twenty-one year-old Natalie Stevenson, of Braddon, cuts a striking figure, her short bleached hair contrasted by a uniform of black on black, a ripped pink singlet tied around her waist. She acknowledges her appearance is out of the ordinary but says she and her similarly attired friends are misunderstood by a majority of the public.
"We get just as much abuse from passers-by and shop owners. They call us emos [a term for a subgenre of youth] and tell us where to go. We have been followed store to store by security guards who reckon we are going to steal from them," she said.
"I work in Civic, hang out here and have just as much right to this place as anyone. It is a free world. We are not aggressive. It is narrow-minded people who are so quick to place us in that basket."
Danny Lannen
22Nov07
SWEET MATE: Students, from back left, Max Mitchell, Zac Janev, Sam Veal, Jason Janev, Mark Formosa, and Chia Wong Yen and, front, Chris Miller. Photo: ALISON WYND
Jackson, Chris, Chia, Sam, Zac and more, they're all part of the mix at Geelong's school for teenagers who couldn't quite find a fit in mainstream learning _ and they're over being stereotyped.
They say the way they choose to express their individuality means they are often at risk of being bullied.
``Kids in town recently tried to kick the cr ap out of me because of what I was wearing, a lot of people can't accept who you are because you look like someone else,'' Chris Miller, 16, said.
``They want you to be sheep and follow the flock.''
The kids know about acceptance because they've come from diverse backgrounds and met many personal challenges but they don't like carrying the emo tag. Emo is short for emotional and is used to describe a teen culture which is descended from Goth and characterised by the wearing of dark clothing, body piercings, lank hair over an eye and avid interest in metal and Goth music.
The teenagers from Diversitat's Success with Education, Employment and Training program, SWEET, reckon the term also comes with insinuation of depressive behaviour.
``Some people are actually proud of it (being called emo),'' Zac Janev said. ``We're not them. We're dressing how we dress for individuality.''
Many of the teenagers in the SWEET program have experienced bullying because of their choice of appearances and have lived with issues including homelessness, drug and alcohol use and mental health complications.
Trainer and youth worker Deb Isaacs said they focused strongly on respect during their studies in areas including literacy, numeracy, art, electives and environment.
``It's less school based and more jobs based, and we're all entitled to our opinions,'' Chris Miller said.
``We have this instead of dropping out of school and doing nothing. This is our corridor into the workforce.''
Thugs use goon bag to bash goths - Queensland - BrisbaneTimes
Another articles adds a few new details:Two men have faced court over a violent assault which saw a group of goths bashed with a goon bag.
Luke Anthony Harrison, 21, and Mereki Ian Pryor, 19, were each sentenced to jail for the attack, which left five members of Brisbane's gothic community nursing cuts and bruises.
The District Court today heard Harrison and Pryor had been drinking goon - or cask wine - in a park at the corner of Wickham Terrace and Ann Street in Fortitude Valley about 10.30pm on July 30, 2005 when the group walked past.
After shouting insults such as "freaks" and "faggots", Pryor approached the three women and two men, aged between 19 and 24, asked them if they wanted to fight and began throwing punches and kicks.
Harrison, carrying the bag of goon, also became involved, using it to take a swing at one of the women, knocking her glasses off her face. Another woman was also hit.
Crown prosecutor Chris Minnery said one of the group managed to grab the cask.
"F*** off or I'll break the goon," she said while threatening to stomp on the bag.
The attack stopped when the group managed to flee to safety at the nearby Orient Hotel. None were seriously injured.
Pryor's defence barrister, Megan Robbins, put her client's behaviour down to alcohol abuse, telling the court that at the time he was drinking up to three litres of cask wine a day.
"His judgement was obviously impaired to a significant degree," Ms Robbins explained, prompting Judge Julie Dick to fire back: "His liver can't have been too good either."
"This is public violence on a group of people who were just going about their business," the judge told the pair, who both pleaded guilty to charges of assault occasioning bodily harm in company.
"They are entitled to dress and look how they like as long as they don't interfere with the rest of the community."
Pryor, who is already serving a three-and-a-half year prison term for unrelated offences, had an extra six months added to his sentence, but will be eligible to apply for parole today.
Harrison received a 12 month term and was released immediately on parole after Judge Dick accepted he had played a lesser role in the assault.
By Christine Flatley Two men have faced court over a vicious street brawl where a cask wine bladder was used to beat up a group of "goths" in Brisbane. ...Pryor - who had a severe alcohol problem at the time and was drinking up to three litres of wine every day - approached the group and began to provoke them before hitting one of the men three times in the head.
The court was told a fight erupted, with Pryor and Harrison kicking and punching the men and the women, who tried to defend themselves.
The court was told Harrison picked up the wine bladder at one point and used it to smack one of the girls across the face.
Pryor and Harrison then knocked one of the men to the ground and kicked him repeatedly.
The group managed to escape and took refuge in a nearby pub.
They suffered bruising and cuts to their faces and bodies.
Harrison and Pryor pleaded guilty to four counts each of assault occasioning bodily harm in company.Pryor also pleaded guilty to one count of common assault.
THREE Hobart victims of bullies have blamed subculture rivalry for attacks on them and fear there may be a turf war. The trio were all assaulted last Thursday in three separate incidents around the city centre. Nathan, 18, was bashed unconscious in the Hobart bus mall on Thursday afternoon and collapsed to the ground covered in blood. Soon after, Michael, 15, was punched in the face and then pushed up against a bus near Franklin Square. Then Sebastian, 18, was hit on the back of the head by a group outside the Commonwealth Bank in Liverpool St. The three have said the bullies are a group of 'bogans' who target those from the alternative scene, such as 'emos' and 'goths'. " Read more...
The same paper which told us Emos are under attack in Tasmania a few days ago said back in May that Emo is connected to self harm.
The Mercury: Fears for teens :
"HOBART teenagers are being drawn to a youth subculture which actively promotes self-harm. The Emo movement, which grew out of the punk movement in the 1980s, recently hit the national news when two Victorian girls who had links to the subculture committed suicide. The movement also made the headlines in March when South Australian police investigating the murder of 15-year-old Carly Ryan uncovered a trail of internet-based Emo message boards and websites involving bondage, suicide and drug use. Tasmanian Catholic Schools Parents and Friends Federation president Bill Button said parents were very concerned about Emo culture. 'I reckon the Emo culture is more prevalent than people realise or want to face and is becoming even more prevalent because of the internet,' Mr Button said. 'Parents are concerned because all of a sudden their child, if they have access to a computer, can turn into an Emo.' Department of Health and Human Services Community Resilience and Mental Health Promotion project officer Dion Butler said the popularity of the subculture was growing in Hobart.
But it is not unique to Hobart," Mr Butler said."It is also very strong on the mainland where often the term Emo is seen as an insult.
"Emo stands for very emotional, and so, Emos are seen by some to be very depressed individuals with a mental-health issue.
"The reality is that apart from the self-harm issue the Emo subculture is no different from any other youth subculture and is really about young people finding a place to belong," Mr Butler said.
"Indeed it can be argued that all youth subcultures have both positive and negative effects. For example, the sports culture is seen to be positive for youth, but to an extent it encourages drinking."
Mr Butler said the only real concern was the self-harm issue.
"I understand that some Emo groups require youth to cut themselves as an initiation -- if they don't cut, they can't join," Mr Butler said.
"However, self-harm is not an exclusive Emo practice. An alarming number of teenagers engage in it, but it does appear that teenagers who identify as being Emo are more likely to engage in self-harm because of the Emo culture."
Queensland psychiatrist Graham Martin, who started researching the Emo movement when a relative started dressing in their style, agreed there were positive and negative aspects to the subculture.
"We know that young people who are resilient and connected to a group are largely protected from behaviours like self-harm and suicide," Dr Martin said.
"So the fact young people are connected to some sort of group is positive. My concern is that this subculture is about the joining together of disaffected young people who are often angry and distressed about their lives. They are then in a position where they rely only on that group and don't seem to reach out to other avenues for help."
Dr Martin said his research, particularly online, had blown him away.
"What I found was an incredible mix of extraordinary information," he said.
"There was material that was fun, material that was very intellectual and material that was absolutely horrible -- like pictures of knives and wrists with dotted lines drawn on them."
Dr Martin said he feared young people who identified with the Emo subculture were at greater risk of self-harm.
"A UK study on the Goth subculture found there was a significantly increased risk for self-harm within members of this group.
"Emos become enraged with people who suggest they are similar to Goths -- they say the distinction is that Emos hate themselves and Goths hate everyone -- but, as the reported incidence of cutting behaviours is said to be a key feature of Emo culture, the risk appears to be there."
Dr Martin said parents should not panic. "Parents should see it as a sign their child feels they can no longer talk to them and make an effort to resolve that by really listening to what their child wants to say."
Dr Martin said the community should also be concerned that growing numbers of young people felt alienated from society.
"We have to provide an environment which lets these young people talk and be heard before this gets out of hand."
Marilyn Manson at Challenge Stadium | PerthNow
October 14, 2007 12:00pm
Actually he was talking about Asa Coon.MARILYN Manson was one star who was certainly not in town for Telethon.
While a plethora of stars joined forces to raise money for sick children, over at Challenge Stadium Manson and his army of black t-shirt sporting supporters were more concerned with celebrating the seedier side of life. ..
The only mildly controversial statement Manson made was when he declared: "as you know I am responsible for every school shooting that ever happens". His statement was a response to his name being linked to almost every school shooting from the Columbine High School massacre to the recent shooting at SuccessTech Academy in Cleveland.
Loyal Perth fans have been waiting more than 8 years for their goth idol to return after Manson stormed off stage at the Big Day Out back in 1999. Manson was at the start of his performance when he left the stage after being pelted with bottles and cans. This time around Perth punters were far more appreciative of Manson. They were even willing to overlook the poor vocal performance and bad sound mix and the fact that Manson's new band cannot match previous line-ups. But can anyone really hold a candle to the guitar genius of John 5?
