Punk and Disorderly : Acting Out Gender and Class in First-Wave British Punk

A discussion of the 1970s British punk scene, this book foregrounds the participation of women as performers and songwriters in early British punk, and examines how women in the scene crafted expressions of social alienation that were informed by the intersection of classism and sexism.

Early British punk rock is often associated with male bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, the Buzzcocks, or The Stranglers, whose songs capture and reflect a historical moment in Britain that was defined by unemployment, nationwide strikes, racial strife, and the growing sense of hopelessness within a seemingly deteriorating British Empire. While lesser-known, the work of female punk bands like Penetration, The Raincoats, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, and X-Ray Spex also engaged with these themes, but added a gendered perspective on what it meant to be “an underdog” in Britain in the 1970s.

Through a close reading of punk art, fashion, and music, this book examines how female contributors to the early British scene responded uniquely to the alienation expressed by their male peers, and demonstrates how social alienation was inflected by the intersection of classism and sexism in the work of those women who helped to shape the early British scene.