Abstract:

This article examines the relationship between extreme metal and gender, specifically the sexual representation of women in a relatively obscure ‘underground’ metal subgenre that developed in the 1990s dubbed porngrind. This is a subgenre of metal that fuses the lyrical content and sound of death metal with a sustained focus on sexual explicitness, sexual violence and misogyny, and it is best represented by underground American and European bands such as: Soldered Poon, Anal Penetration, Anal Whore, Waco Jesus, Lividity, and Meatshits. The article explores the relationship between porngrind and feminist positions on pornography, most significantly the anti-pornography approach of Andrea Dworkin. The article argues that porngrind centrally reflects the salient perceptions Dworkin levels at pornography within her seminal text, Pornography: Men Possessing Women: that it expresses patriarchal oppression and sexual violence against women. However, the article contends that the subject-matter of porngrind actually identifies a degree of proximity between it and Dworkin in that they both perceive pornography to be reducible to, and representative of, sex as an act of domination, brutality and the aggressive possession of female bodies.

Author: Lee Barron