Drinking With The Jocks

Album: Transgender Dysphoria Blues (2014)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song finds Against Me's transgender frontwoman Laura Jane Grace detailing her attempts at camouflaging herself as a heterosexual man. She told NME: "Being in a punk band, more and more I'm in a situation where it's a bunch of dudes sitting around making homophobic comments, or being sexist or racist, and I would find myself laughing along and feeling disgusted with myself afterwards. I hope it makes people uncomfortable."
  • Grace expanded on the song's meaning to Spin magazine: "That song, in particular, was inspired by a night where I wasn't necessarily hanging out with punks," he said. "It's more self-criticism of knowing that, okay, I'm a transsexual, but no one else in this circle of people here knows that, and everyone else is laughing at faggots and everyone's being homophobic, and you're laughing along, too, and you're lying to yourself."

    "It didn't necessarily have anything to do with punk rock," she added," but at the same time, just being that I've played in a punk band for as long as I have, a lot of my experiences, of course, are going to be around that world or are related to that, and I have seen an unfortunate amount of, be it sexism or homophobia or whatever, in the punk-rock world, where people are like, 'I'm not really racist, but here's a racist joke' or 'I'm not really homophobic, but here's a homophobic joke.' And it's a shame to laugh along."

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