Origin of Species

Let’s start with a little background.

Once upon a time (1982), in a marketing meeting far, far away (Rhode Island), Hasbro decided to take on the My Little Pony intellectual property. They marketed it pretty much exclusively at girls. The toys were sold with world-shakingly innovative features such as brushable hair and a unique mark on each character’s butt.

The theme continued with a couple of animated series – in which the ponies partook in such riveting activities as going to school and dating – and even a feature film. This was pretty standard stuff for Hasbro, who had long since realised the value of getting kids involved with a cartoon. My Little Pony continued on form, with few variations on the core premise, until 2010.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Everything changed in 2010. Lauren Faust, animator supreme, was roused from her cryogenic slumber. Her mission: to turn a tedious, gender essentialist franchise into something that would break gender boundaries and interest a whole new generation in animated ponies with magical tattoos.

There’s also the horse porn fanart, but we’ll get onto that later.

Faust lists the things that she hopes to achive with MLP:FiM in her Ms. Magazine article about the issue. To quote –

There are lots of different ways to be a girl.

[…] This show is wonderfully free of “token girl” syndrome, so there is no pressure to shove all the ideals of what we want our daughters to be into one package.

[…] Cartoons for girls don’t have to be a puddle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness. Girls like stories with real conflict; girls are smart enough to understand complex plots; girls aren’t as easily frightened as everyone seems to think. Girls are complex human beings, and they can be brave, strong, kind and independent–but they can also be uncertain, awkward, silly, arrogant or stubborn. They shouldn’t have to succumb to pressure to be perfect.

Yes, My Little Pony is riddled with pink, the leader is a Princess instead of a Queen and there probably aren’t enough boys around to portray a realistic society. These decisions were not entirely up to me. It has been a challenge to balance my personal ideals with my bosses’ needs for toy sales and good ratings. […] There is also a need to incorporate fashion play into the show, but only one character is interested in it and she is not a trend follower but a designer who sells her own creations from her own store. We portray her not as a shopaholic but as an artist.

Lauren Faust, I think I love you. And, apparently, I’m not the only one. MLP:FiM gained a fucking enormous audience, across all gender identities. For example, let’s take a look at this video.

;

Just fucking look at it.

Right, good, so what actually IS a Brony?

Wikipedia will know, right?

Brony is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Krzyżanów, within Kutno County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. It lies approximately 12 kilometres (7 mi) south of Kutno and 40 km (25 mi) north of the regional capital Łódź.

No, probably not. Let’s try Urban Dictionary and ignore anything referring to a sex act or requiring specialist equipment. It might take a while.

A name typically given to the male viewers/fans (whether they are straight, gay, bisexual, etc.) of the My Little Pony show or franchise. They typically do not give in to the hype that males aren’t allowed to enjoy things that may be intended for females.

That’s better. Pretty accurate, too, though I understand that it’s not a gender-specific term (so pay attention to the word ‘typically’ there).

So what do bronies care about? Why are they bronies? I wouldn’t dream of putting uninformed words in their mouths. I went digging for some My Little Pony forums, and put out a little questionnaire via Twitter and Reddit’s /r/mylittlepony.

I didn’t have much luck finding any insights on the forums, but I found this post very sweet…

…and this reply absolutely hilarious when taken out of context…

…but I digress. I digress pervily, but it’s definitely digression. Let’s move on to the questionnaire.

The Bronies Speak

“What is your gender identity?”

I discovered after putting the questionnaire online that some female MLP fans call themselves “pegasisters”, so there’s potential selection bias in the results. Still, it validates what I was hoping for – that the majority of responses were coming from the male-identified side of the fandom.¹

“Were you a fan of the My Little Pony franchise before Friendship is Magic started?”

The community seems to be nearly exclusively focused on the new iteration of My Little Pony, without any pre-existing interest in the older material.

“Would you be happy for most or all of the people you know to know that you identify as a brony?”

The number of positive responses to this surprised me. MLP fans get a hard time online, and it can only be worse in meatspace. Perhaps the show’s message of love and tolerance results in a more optimistic viewpoint, or attracts those already predisposed to one.

“What appeals to you about the show itself?”

I thoroughly enjoy the idea that a show can be feminine, and ‘made for girls’, without being an overblown, over-prissy tea party. The deconstruction of gender binary and gender stereotypes present in the show is admirable and wonderful.

– anon

It is refreshing to see a show, even amongst children’s programming, that is completely lacking in cynicism. The show and the characters within it are un-selfconciously idealistic and positive. It provides fantastic role models for children of all genders, and the world it has built feels rich and fully occupied.

– Tim (@trivia_lad)

The entire show just feels right. When I’m watching MLP:FiM, it’s like I’m a kid again and I can enjoy the childishness of the entire thing without care.

– Shawn X (@shawnyall)

The character diversity (for once in a children’s show, the fashionable one isn’t the bad guy) and I’m a sucker for the innocent humour included. The characters also have tragic (in the classical sense of the word) flaws: the representative of loyalty is self-centered, the representative of generosity manipulative, and when the representative of Kindness gets mad, even the Hulk would tell her to calm down.

– anon

“What do you dislike or resent about the show itself?”

The vast majority of responses to this question were “nothing, nada, zero”. It seems the community is generally very happy with the show.

It’s a shame Faust had to leave, season 2 was a very different show compared to the first and even though it’s still good something felt like it was missing. I attribute that to Faust’s absence.

– Bret (@the_red_bobcat)

Although strong, not-even-slightly sexualised female role models are a wonderful thing, I am not wholly comfortable with the representation of male characters in the show. With only one or two exceptions, male ponies are represented as stupid, or comic foils, with roles that tend to be service occupations. Unless an episode requires a stallion MacGuffin (See: a Canterlot Wedding, where you get a male character of high social status, though he is very easily manipulated by a strong, evil female character).

– MiaVee (@MiaVee)

“What are you particularly proud of about the brony community? What do you enjoy about being part of it?”

I’m proud of what we do. We start charities, we raise money, we’re so united and loving. Really, I enjoy the love in the brony community. Everyone is just so understanding, caring, and enjoyable. When I first started watching and putting myself into the community, I didn’t know what to expect. But as I opened up more and more, they accepted me without question. They gave my life an entire new part to enjoy, and changed me forever.

– Shawn X (@shawnyall)

I particularly enjoy the community’s openness towards almost every type of person (at least this is true for the Reddit section).

– anon

I am proud of the grown men who are not ashamed of watching a girls’ show just because it is for girls. I like the “love and tolerate” message and the lack of outright trolls.

– Meghan E

I think one of the strongest indications of how the brony community aren’t all creepy, socially inept, hygiene-incapable, sexual predators is the eagerness of the producers and actors on the show to engage with them. The Hub ident produced to promote the second series, a reskin of Katy Perry’s “California Girls” called “Equestria Girls” gives a shout out to bronies, Tara Strong on Twitter actively engages with bronies (as does Andrea Libman, to a smaller extent).

– MiaVee (@MiaVee)

“What negative experiences have you had or known about in the brony community? What would you change if you could?”

The only real negative experience that I’ve known about is the discrimination against a sub-section of bronies called ‘cloppers’ – people who fantasize/look at lewd pictures of characters from the show. The cloppers themselves don’t bother me – it’s the fact that most of the fandom acts like it’s this skeleton in the closet and are extremely ashamed of it, when really it’s not a big deal.

– Rpspartin (@rpspartin)

Anything involving shipping. No no no no no just stop. The show is cute and fine without shoehorning madeup lesbian relationships.

– anon

The only bad times I’ve seen are all the haters that continue to try to bully us. But I wouldn’t change anything. Some of these people just need a friend and we’re more than happy to be that.

– no name provided

Having people approach you and say “My Little Pony? Are you an 8 year old girl?” is part of being a brony, but you can live with it because once you tell them to watch the show it’s an amazing feeling to have that same person come back to you and say “Yeah, sorry bro. That show is amazing!”. Anything that’s rock and roll enough for Andrew W.K. (who’s hosting a “What Would Pinkie Pie Do?” talk) is rock and roll enough for me!

– Bret (@the_red_bobcat)

There is still a lot of misogyny and ableism. Many bronies seem to think that because it’s good, it can’t possibly be for girls, and thus deny that it’s a girls’ show. Alternatively, many get offended when it’s called a girls’ show because they still equate “girly” with ’bad.“ I’d rather seem them embracing the girliness of it, and responding ”yes, it’s for girls, because girls are awesome. Everything for girls should be this awesome.”

– Meghan E.

I’m reluctant to use the term “brony” to describe myself because in every corner of the internet are snarky non-fans seeking to smear every adult fan of the show […] as a fandom overall it seems a lot more welcoming, gentle and understanding than the elitist bullcrap you can get around diehard fangirls and boys for any other show/game/movie.

– MiaVee (@MiaVee)

“Free text time! Tell me whatever you think that I should know. Trivia, gossip, you name it. This is your moment.”

The brony community is huge, and rapidly growing. Like any other community of fans, it is impossible to define the composition, interests, and behavior of its members succinctly. I’d ask, gently, that you please keep this in mind while writing your article.

– anon

I became a slightly more positive and confident person by watching the show.

– anon

All ponies are equal, but some ponies are more equal than others, including Rarity exclusively.

– DocTavia

Rarity is best pony. Anyone who says otherwise is just jealous they aren’t as fabulous

– anon

The only thing I request is that it be made known that Rarity is easily my favourite.

– Bret (@the_red_bobcat)

“The Derpy Controversy”

Derpy Hooves is what’s called a ‘background pony’. She appeared in the crowd in one of the early episodes, and her unusual eyes earned her an instant cult following in the MLP fandom.

Ever attentive to their fans, Lauren Faust and the rest of the team decided to put Derpy in more prominent positions, and even give her a few lines.

This prompted a few equality-minded fans to complain – ‘derpy’ being a reference to presentations of learning disability. From One Survivor To Another wrote an open letter to Lauren Faust on the issue, and followed up with a smackdown to many of the privilege-tastic counter-arguments that were made.

A modified version of the episode featuring Derpy was released on iTunes with ‘fixed’ eyes; however, the original version was contained in the DVD release.

I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of this one here – you can read more about Derpy Hooves’ history on Know Your Meme if you like – but my point is simply that there was discourse in the fandom on the matter. There were strong feelings on both sides, but it’s nice to know that at least the argument could be conducted (mostly) reasonably.

What did we learn?

What, other than the fact that anyone who has expressed a preference wanted to be very vocal about their love for Rarity?

Well, it seems that the MLP fandom are extremely accepting. “Love and tolerance” – a term so popular that I presume it’s from the show – is paramount. We’ve seen this before, in communities like furries and otherkin. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an admirable trait – but it does lend itself to being accepting of the extremes of the community without significantly challenging them. Deserving or undeserving, that’s something that can get a community a bad name in general.

There is an undeniable degree of childish naïveté in the community. Potentially expected due to the nature of the show, it does seem to result in marginalising those who ‘clop’ or enjoy fanart/fanfic of the characters in adult situations. Controversial one, this, and this is only a personal view – but I see it as slightly odd but harmless. The fanart and fanfic are drawn and written, and so they don’t harm any real person. If someone wants to pat their flanks to imaginary ponies in compromising scenarios, it doesn’t harm anyone else.

The community seems to revel in the fact that the production team for the show is interested in what they care about, and are willing to name or give cameos to formerly nameless ‘background ponies’ that gain popularity with their fandom.

Bronies – and the ‘pegasisters’ that I’m sorry to have neglected in the survey – seem to be, on the whole, genuinely lovely people that just so happen to like cartoon ponies. Is their fandom a bit strange? Sure. That said, though, how many fandoms aren’t?

And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to watch the first few episodes of the first season. It might be terrible – it might be great. What I’m fairly certain of, though, is that it’s not going to piss me off.

1. Ed’s tiny note: I’m wondering how our trans* readers may feel about the way we’ve differentiated our categories here. On reflection, it might have been more inclusive to label the “male” and “female” categories “cis”. We did want to avoid any implication that someone who is trans* cannot simply have access to the general terms of “male” or “female” – this is not a view we hold! – but we may not have succeeded, and it’s just as arguable here that we’ve done the opposite. Similarly, the question of whether to involve more or fewer ‘categories’ took some ruminating, and Dave took a while crowdsourcing views on this. In any case, I thought I’d say we’re always happy to receive feedback for future surveys.

Hi, I’m Jo. I’ve been calling myself a feminist for as long as I can remember. And I listen to black metal. As in, while I appreciate other forms of music, the overwhelming majority of my time, attention and love is lavished on black metal. I can’t help it – I just love black metal, and the filthier it is, the better.

Black metal is purposefully alienating. Its logos are unreadable; its practitioners often wear corpse paint; its lyrics revel in references to hatred, violence, nihilism, death, Satan. The music itself is typified by screeched vocals, blastbeats, fuzzy guitars; songs stop suddenly.

The genre is also overwhelmingly white and male. Of the 46 black metal bands on my iPod, only one of the bands has a female member (LSK, bassist/backing vocalist for Secrets of the Moon from Germany), and as far as I know, none of the members of any of the bands identify as a race other than white.

As I said up top, I’ve identified with feminist ideas from an early age. Unequal representation of women in places like government, the boards of businesses, the upper echelons of journalism and the law and churches and so on make me angry and upset. So how can I justify investing so much in a type of music produced, in the main, by men? A type of music which is often linked to vile white nationalist ideologies, such that NSBM is a thriving sub-genre?

Er. It’s tricky.

Black Metal and Me

I operate from a position of relative privilege, being white, cis, currently able-bodied, in a relationship with a white cis man, UK-born, and so on. My various forms of privilege allow me to ignore some of the more problematic areas of black metal, and have surely insulated me from encountering prejudice at black metal gigs. For the record – as a cis woman attending many dozens of metal gigs in London, I have very rarely encountered sexist treatment from fellow gig-goers. From anecdotal experience, black metal bands also attract more women to their live performances than, say, death metal bands. Which is not to say that black metal audiences are gender-balanced, because they’re really, really not, but they’re relatively better than those observed at concerts of bands from other metal subgenres.

I sometimes wish I did like more ‘acceptably feminist’ types of music – or, at the very least, types of music where women performers aren’t a vanishingly small minority. The problem is, if it ain’t black metal, I’m (probably) not interested. The intensity of black metal gives me an emotional ‘hit’ I don’t get from many other types of music (live classical music can produce the same effect – but not as reliably as black metal, whether live or recorded). I fully acknowledge that black metal isn’t for everyone, and I fully understand why most people do not enjoy it; I don’t want to come across as ‘judging’ people for musical taste, which, OK, I did when I was 13, but that was a long time ago.

Which leads on to another of the problems with black metal, from a feminist/progressive point of view. It is, as I said above, unapologetically impenetrable to outsiders; more than that, the scene contains a strong current of elitism.

Kvlter Than Thou

One of the stereotypes of black metal fans is of the elitist “kvlter than thou” forum-poster who spends obscene amounts on deleted demos by long-defunct bands, limited to three tape copies. No, three reel-to-reel recordings, two of which were burned as part of an occult ceremony by the band before they went and attempted to torch a church. Black metal enthusiasts often proclaim themselves proud Nietzscheans, which, in their (often rather simplistic) worldview, boils down to I proclaim myself to be better than everyone else. As a feminist, I have a problem with any philosophy which deems some to be superior to others. Black metal is imbued with it. The elitist fans take their cues from the bands themselves, from Varg Vikernes onwards. Black metal is fiercely individualistic; feminism is rooted in solidarity with others, a concept that is incompatible with the proclamations of the most influential black metal bands.

Incidentally, the concept of “black metal as expression of individualism” has led some in the scene, notably He Who Crushes Teeth of the band Bone Awl, to describe NSBM as oxymoronic (warning: long article – ctrl+f “nsbm” for the relevant section); black metal based on a philosophy which is inherently ‘optimistic’ is paradoxical, he says, and Nazism counts as ‘optimistic’ because it aspires to be all about building a ‘better’ future – ‘better’ if you deny the humanity of groups you don’t like, of course. Black metal should be nihilistic, in his view, and nihilism as a philosophy is as antithetical to Nazism as it is to socialism. But I digress.

As part of my sometimes uneasy ongoing attempts to reconcile my feminist/lefty political beliefs with my love of black metal, I do not listen to any bands which are classified as NSBM on Metal Archives. It’s nothing more than a gesture, really, but it’s an important one to me. I’m cutting myself off from many bands whose music I am sure I would love; but I just can’t bring myself to give them any playlist space. For many metalheads, my shunning of black metal is treated as illogical (I’ll listen to songs about the destruction of all life or the murder of Christians but I won’t listen to songs glorifying the ‘Aryan’ race) and ‘wimpish’. I think, for, me, the difference is that persecution of Christians is not something that happens in the West, despite what the Daily Hate-Mail would have you think, whereas we still live with the repercussions of what happened when a lot of Europeans got rather too worked up about racial ‘purity’. And a song attacking Christianity written by people from Europe or the US is a very different proposition to the same group of people attacking Muslims, who are an often-vilified minority in Europe. (Bands from Islamic countries attacking the theocracies under which they live, such as Janaza – that’s very different, and something I can get behind, mostly.)

Theatricality and corpse paint

Another reason I feel able mostly to disregard the lyrical content of non-NSBM bands is the theatricality of black metal. There is a definite tension at the heart of how many black metal bands present themselves. The spikes, the shining black leather, the corpse paint, the OTT references to Satan – they can’t be serious, can they? Well, the best reply to this I can formulate is yes… and no. It’s pretty impossible to parody black metal bands, because however hard you try to come up with something ridiculous, an actual band somewhere will have beaten you to it. (Watain store their stage outfits with dead animals so that they pick up “the stench of death”, FFS.) Fans – the non-über-kvlt ones, anyway – tend to treat bands with a mixture of affectionate humour and deadly seriousness. We go and watch monochromatically-painted and -clothed bands who follow the style rule that there is not a single type of apparel that can’t be improved by the addition of spikes, lots of spikes, singing songs about being the devil’s executioners or whatever; it’s all a bit silly. Yet at the same time, it’s taken quite seriously. Singers exhort audiences to hail Satan. And they/we do. Not because we’re all practising Satanists – most metal fans I’ve met tend to be of the cheerful atheist variety – but because it’s part of the act.

Black metal’s theatricality can be seen on one hand as being about escapism. Of course I don’t believe in demons, I’m far from being a nihilist, and I can’t even watch horror films because the sight of blood makes me feel all wibbly, but I’ll happily listen to bands singing about all these things because, on one level, it’s so outrageous, I can’t possibly be expected to take it seriously. Yet I do, truly, deeply love the music, and spend large amounts of energy seeking out new bands, going to gigs, talking about metal to friends with similar tastes, and generally being a huge fan. So I take it seriously – and not seriously. This allows me to worry less about the violence inherent in the genre’s lyrics and its underlying philosophy; it’s all part of a big joke, and everything is on a continuum of unseriousness, so I can ignore the less-than-savoury aspects of black metal fairly easily. (Again, I am sure that my relative privilege plays a large part in this luxury to ignore what I don’t like about the genre.) And hey, that church-burning and murder unpleasantness was years and years ago – we’re past all that, aren’t we? Unlike the stark black and white of corpse paint, I’m in something of a grey area; I can blur boundaries enough to quieten my social justice instincts. Is this an ethical position to hold? I’m not really sure.

“Not for girls”

The overall metal scene is seen by outsiders as bloke-dominated; there’s a lot of truth in that, but I am constantly annoyed by mainstream publications’ disappearing of women in metal, be they performers or fans. Just because we’re a minority doesn’t mean you can ignore us, dear music journalists taking sideswipes at “that boy from school who had a bumfluff moustache, constant body odour and an unwashed Megadeth T-shirt that he always wore on non-uniform days”. And please, as the mighty Grim Kim says, don’t dismiss us by trying to fob us off with “girlfriend metal”.

Having said that, though, I have a horrible snobbish tendency when it comes to outward signifiers of musical taste – which, in the metal scene, means t-shirts and patches. Moreover, it’s a pretty gendered snobbishness, which makes me feel even guiltier. Whenever I see a woman wearing a Nightwish t-shirt, I feel absurdly, un-feminist-ly disappointed; we female fans of metal are already characterised as liking ‘girly shit’ like Nightwish (symphonic, melodic, female-fronted, no Cookie Monster vocals), so why, I find myself thinking, do you have to go reinforcing stereotypes? This is a really bad habit of mine and one I am trying to break. It spills over into my own wardrobe choices: I’ll borrow my boyfriend’s Absu t-shirt to wear to a metal gathering, but not his Sólstafir one, despite the fact that I love the band – because Sólstafir is on our playlist of “stuff that’s safe to play for non-metalheads”, whereas Absu certainly is not. I don’t want to be thought of as one of “those” female fans of metal, you know, the ones who like metal with actual clean vocals and stuff. Ugh. As a relatively unstereotypical fan of black metal, it’s all too easy to think of myself as a special snowflake as a consequence – a tendency I have to be on my guard against.

If I were in a relationship with black metal, our Facebook status would definitely be ‘it’s complicated’. With depressing frequency, something happens to make me roll my eyes in feminist outrage (the “girly” t-shirt for the band Shining [Swe] which says “I have a boyfriend at home but I think of Niklas Kvarforth when he fucks me”, a blog post like this…), but I don’t want to give up on the scene. In fact, the recent internet flap over Sady Doyle’s article on Game of Thrones (spoiler alert!) reminded me why I want to stick with black metal. I’m a huge fan of GoT, and yet I agree with most of Sady’s points about its problematic nature. As with GoT, I don’t deny that there are many problematic aspects within the black metal scene. But I am and will remain a fan nonetheless, because a) if I leave, I’m not working within the scene to make a difference, and b) I love it and am not prepared to give it up.

*

• Jo lives in London, and goes to far too many metal gigs. She got into metal at a relatively late age, thanks to last.fm. She’s toying with the idea of writing the dissertation for her MA on black metal, if the university will let her. Say hi to her on Twitter, or at the Underworld next time Taake comes to London (19th October, as it happens).