/ Dancing Politics: Connecting Women's Experiences of Rave in Toronto to Ageism and Patriarchy Julie Gregory, Master of Arts Social Justice and Equity Studies Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Faculty of Social Sciences, Brock University St. Catharines, Ontario © November 2006 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It has been a long - and at times gruelling - process, but my Master's thesis is complete! There are so many people I would like to thank for their time, support, and love during the past two and a half years: First, I would like to thank the ten women who graciously shared with me their time and stories. This project would have been impossible without you. I only hope I have done your stories justice. Sincere thanks also go out to my supervisory committee, Dr. David Butz and Dr. Rebecca Raby, for your consistent enthusiasm about my project, both substantively and theoretically, and for giving me the freedom to work at my own pace, while always being there to provide engaged and thought-provoking responses to my questions, feedback on my written work, and reading material when I needed it most. Specifically, thank you David, for providing sound advice when I began to question what I was doing in graduate school, for giving me the freedom and time to shape (and re-shape) my thesis until I was comfortable with the ways I represented myself, interviewees, and rave, and for giving me the opportunity to work for you as a Teaching Assistant and as a Research Assistant. You have challenged me in ways that only a good supervisor can. Rebecca, thank you especially for challenging and nurturing my sociological analysis of subcultures, for the opportunity to come speak in your fourth year seminar, for all the great reading material, and for your "How to Get Through Graduate School Sanely" tips. It has been a pleasure to work with you! Thank you, Dr. Tina Fetner for serving as my external examiner, and for being a kindred spirit. Thank you also, Dr. Michael Ripmeester for taking the time to read my thesis and for acting as program director at my defense. Also, thank you Dr. Andy Bennett for allowing me to audit your fourth year music course, for meeting with me on a few occasions to talk over my project and suggest readings, and for providing me with feedback on a much earlier version of my literature review chapter. Linda Landry and Jill Debon, thank you for always having answers to my never-ending questions, putting students' interests first, making me laugh, and coming out for "shmoke" breaks. Stacey Byrne and Meredith Pilling, thanks for the much-needed evenings of venting, laughter, music, homemade soup and muffins, and of course... TEQUILA! Thanks family Sabra for your love and support, particularly Bilo for feedback on my thesis and late nights figuring out the world with me and Samah, and to Samah for being the best support system anyone could ask for, both academically and personally; there are no words to express my love and gratitude. To my parents, siblings, and cousin, Ericka, thank you for always having confidence in me and always supporting the decisions I make - even when you don't agree. Last but not least, thank you to my husband, Angelko, for being my personal connection to Toronto's rave scene, for your constant love and encouragement, and for finding a computer forensic to retrieve my lost thesis! I love you! UiuifU'W. ; gnilaB-so'} btw mtn .;b1 Inn ».! t •' •-•/'' 1" ' -. '•: y- (• i - . -I " 'iT a\ -- -;. grfl ni . ,, . ,'1 <.i* , ' -i: TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT Chapter One: Locating the Author in Rave 1 Rewind: Locating tiie (Academic) Text 3 Fast Forward: Foreshadowing Rave's Political Implications 8 Play: Structure and Main Argument 11 Chapter Two: Situating (Toronto's) Rave 14 What is Rave? 14 Is it Mainstream and Compliant, Promoting Hostility, Antagonism, Tension, Elitism (HATE)?..24 Or is it Underground and Resistant, Fostering Peace, Love, Unity, Respect (PLUR)? 29 Searching for Resistance and Politics in Canadian Rave Literature 36 Locating Toronto's Rave within the Subcultural Literature 38 Locating Toronto's Rave Scene within a Larger Academic Context 40 Rewind and Re-play 43 Chapter Three: Reflexive Ethnography and In-Depth Interviews 46 Research Sample and Methods 46 Epistemology 49 The Necessity of Actively Listening for Women's Voices 55 Dispersing Power 58 Rewind and Replay 60 Chapter Four: Age, Gender, and Becoming a Rave Participant 62 Female-Dominated Drug Activities: Initial Attractions 64 Co-ed Rave-Related Activities: Deeper Immersion 67 Male Links: Getting There 71 Male Links: Be(com)ing His Raver 75 Rewind and Re-play 79 Chapter Five: Resistance, Difference, and Being a "Raver" 81 Questioning Resistance 82 Financial Constraints and Age 87 Race, Ethnicity, and Gender 90 (Re)Insert Power, Resistance, and PLUR 93 Rewind and Re-play 1 00 Chapter Six: Age, Gender, and Ceasing to be an Active Rave Participant 102 Reproducing and Internalizing Ageist Discourses 104 Experiencing Ageist and Sexist Discourses 113 Internalizing Discourses of Age and Gender 119 Rewind and Re-play 1 26 Chapter Seven: Dubbing Politics EXPLICITLY into the Mix 128 Rewind: Reviewing the Text 1 29 Fast Forward: Re-locating Rave's Political Characteristics 1 34 Final Rewind: Reviewing and Re-locating the Text 136 APPENDIX A 142 APPENDIX B 144 APPENDIX C 145 REFERENCES 149 ABSTRACT Based on a critical analysis of recent Canadian and British media, academic, and political representations of rave, in conjunction with the author's and ten female interviewees' past experiences as active rave participants, the purpose of this thesis is to show the ways that rave can be understood as political. Drawing on a post-structural understanding of politics, which understands macro social issues and micro personal experiences as intimately linked and inseparable, this thesis fills a gap in the existing rave literature by explicitly drawing out (a) the ways that active rave participation is entangled in dominant understandings of age and gender-appropriate activities, and (b) the implications that these entanglements have on the ways that some women experience and construct their past active rave participation. Specifically, the author examines the ways that age and gender intersect and inform the discourses on which research participants drew to describe and rationalize their experiences of becoming, being, and ceasing to be active rave participants in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. At the same time that the majority of research participants' introductions to rave followed heterosexualized and hetemormative patterns, they also constructed active rave participation as a way to challenge popular representations of rave as an inappropriate activity, especially for young women. When rationalizing the cessation of their active rave participation, however, these women reproduced depictions of rave participation as a transitory and juvenile phase where older women are particularly misplaced. The various ways that these women simultaneously challenged, experienced, and facilitated dominant ageist and patriarchal discourses about who does and does belong in rave are interpreted as evidence that micro rave experiences cannot be divorced from macro discriminatory discourses, and that ''the personal is political.'" Chapter One; Locating the Author in Rave To say that 'everything is political' is to recognize the omnipresence of relations offeree and their immanence to a political field; [...] it is to set oneself the barely sketched task of unravelling this indefinite tangled skein. -(Foucault 1979:72) Since 1994 I have been a rave enthusiast, participant, and researcher. Over the past twelve years, I have gone from listening to electronic music with female friends, to dating an older male deejay and going to my first rave events, to attending raves regularly with a girl friend to find solace from a broken heart, and finally, to relinquishing my active participation to study rave within the academy. During my period of most active rave participation - from the spring of 1999 until the summer of 2000 - 1 spent most weekends and some weeknights losing myself in the "vibes" created in Toronto-area after-hours clubs/spaces.' Since 2002, 1 have spent a lot of time contemplating these experiences in relation to some of the subculture and rave literature. My examination of the rave literature has led to the realization that questions about the political and resistant qualities of rave participation often are entangled with binary representations of rave as either a liberating subculture or as a co-opted mainstream club culture. Thinking through my past rave participation in relation to the subculture literature leads me to conclude that not much has changed since Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber (1991 [1975]) argued that women's experiences are often omitted from accounts of cultural activities. Women continue to be marginalized in terms of participation in, and representations of, contemporary sub and club cultures - including rave. To address some of the problems with simplistic and partial readings of rave, and to contribute to ongoing debates about the political characteristics and implications of membership in youth subcultures, in general, and women's rave participation in Toronto, in particular, I elected to interview ten women about their movements in, through, ' In Chapter Five I discuss the use of the term "vibe" to describe intense feelings of being connected to the lights, drugs, music, and/or participants at particular rave events. (V 9k bnd. oi .,g;-ifev,' {h&fifi' .-i sfU imr^i ~ m'tii'^hiif':- 1o^f.| . ^P^y-^: 'J Kii i .!:(] 'y a-fUli . '.<jrf? !.<»i,>Hi^ li M ^itli «)*• b^ .i.iJlJ(;,r>dul-i ;i: •t ilOJftjtG" r; noit (p't't M'^/i ) -t- i nOHMV// ..;- J '/ii'j.. iKIlfMi;^' «w: %-;:q,( ^., ;;>;-.;< ; ii^nuJ^io-'q 5fi/'h, t^mOE 8«&il>fcu;«:i .