Straight Edge Sisterhood: An Interview with Kelly-Brother Leonard

Kelly-Brother Leonard (aka Kelly Sisterhood) is a Connecticut based hardcore music lifer. She is best known as the person behind xsisterhoodx, an online community and webzine devoted to empowering girls, women and non-binary people who identify as straight edge.

xsisterhoodx started in the mid 1990s as a straight edge social network with personal profiles, messaging system, message board, etc. Nowadays, it features a lot of great reviews, articles, interviews, commentary, giveaways and more.

How did you find out about straight edge? What made you want to be part of this community?

I grew up in New York, not the city but not upstate either. The area is pretty rural. There were lots of field parties, and drug and alcohol use and abuse. I had friends making decisions that lead them into some pretty terrible and often abusive and scary situations. I instinctively knew that that wasn’t my scene, but I hadn’t been exposed to straight edge.

It wasn’t until my sophomore year in high school that I was introduced to the concept through the singer of my boyfriend’s band. My boyfriend wasn’t into hardcore or straight edge when we met. He was super into progressive rock, think Dream Theater, Rush, etc. He was an accomplished drummer, and when a local, fairly established hardcore band asked him to play with them, he went for it.

The singer for the band was a bit older than us. He was straight edge, married, and was pretty much a walking metal/hardcore encyclopedia. Every week he would bring us a new mixtape and zines to read. I was hooked. I can’t remember the exact moment, but my boyfriend and I both came to the same conclusion, we were straight edge.

In NY in the ’90s the straight edge scene was exploding. Most of our time was split between OCNY and Albany. I realize now, looking back, that we were extremely lucky. The band that my boyfriend was in was pretty popular locally. They often were on bills with bigger, nationally recognized bands. It was an amazing experience being exposed to and meeting so many people who were passionate about straight edge.

I think xsisterhoodx was among the first straight edge sites I have ever found on the Internet. How did you come up with the idea to establish a straight edge community for girls/women in hardcore as far back as 1996?

I wish I could say it was my idea but xsisterhoodx was the idea of someone else. About two years ago or so she emailed me and asked me to NOT use her name in connection with xsisterhoodx. So, I’ve attempted to honor that and have scrubbed her name from the site. However, I think the reasons why she started it, and why I went looking for it were the same.

At the time I was running a small online club, The Girls With Moxie club. I had created a website with profiles. I would hand laminate membership cards and mail them out. It was silly, but a lot of fun. We had members from all over the country. When I started to get more into straight edge I began to look for other girls like me. There weren’t many of us. So, I started searching for a community. I found that on the xsisterhoodx listserv. Not long after I joined the girl who was “moderating it decided she no longer wanted to do it. She asked if anyone wanted to take over. I raised my hand. I took everything that I had learned from the Girls With Moxie Club and poured it into xsisterhoodx. I started to build the membership profiles and content.

Things were different back then. Phrases like “No clit in the pit” and “coat rack” were common. I was told over and over again that girls couldn’t be straight edge, and I needed to “know my role”. I can remember feeling like I always needed to prove myself. It was hard because people would assume I was into straight edge and hardcore because of my boyfriend. When the reality was that we came into it together. I thought there had to be others like me who felt the same frustrations.

A lot was going on in the ’90s into the early 2000s in the straight edge scene that was pretty cringe-worthy. The forums/boards about hardcore and/or straight edge were super toxic. I tried hard to ensure xsisterhoodx was less toxic. I wanted to give others like me a place where their voice could be heard, uninterrupted, and without being instantly called a slut or a “band-aid”, or have their motivations questioned.

Things started to come together for the site in the early 2000s. Myspace took off and made networking MUCH easier. By then my high school boyfriend and I had parted ways, and much to the surprise of some, I was still going to shows, and still straight edge. I started working at the radio station at my college. I became the Metal and Hardcore director, and I started to work on those connections to start offering contests and giveaways on the site. I would do a weekly radio show and would stream and upload it to xsisterhoodx. Our radio station had a pretty wide range for a college station. Thirty miles in all directions! We hit parts of Long Island too. We also were streaming, which increased our reach. Just about every week a random guy would call and “test” my knowledge of the music, or accuse me of having someone else make my playlists.

How did the website and its community evolve over the years? Do you think that today’s straight edge scene is different compared to 25 years ago (stupid ‘Kill Your Local Drug Dealer’ or ‘Bring Back Prohibition’ shirts, a culture of toxic masculinity and misogyny, Pro-Life, etc.)?

The website evolved, much as I did. As I aged and matured, so did the site, and so did our audience. The vast majority of our followers on social media and visitors to the site are over 30. That wasn’t the case twenty years ago. It was a youth movement. I’m not sure it still is. I’d love to see more kids get interested and involved, and if I can facilitate that, I will.

I was never a huge fan of bringing back prohibition, there was a real religious tone to some of the dialog that didn’t sit well with me. I could understand how straight edge would appeal to kids who grew up in religious homes. It gave them a way to rebel, without actually breaking any of the rules. But it wasn’t the straight edge that I knew.

I don’t feel the threat of violence or fascist tactics is a good idea. Be like us or else? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I think it could have led to some of the decline I’ve witnessed. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who walked away from the scene, not because they didn’t think living a clean lifestyle was right for them, but because they didn’t want to be associated with the nonsense that was going on. I don’t think some people liked defending straight edge or being associated with gangs, elitism, and bad attitudes.

I was talking about this recently with a friend of mine, who is still straight edge and in his forties, he said there was a time, around the height of the media’s coverage of the “straight edge gangs” and the talk shows that he just stopped using the term. He didn’t change his behavior, just distanced himself a bit because it was just all too much.

I think now that we are a bit older, it’s just easier to not care what some elitist, finger-wagging, rule maker is saying about who can be straight edge and who can’t.

Straight edge is interesting because the people that started it never meant to. They never wanted to be leaders of a movement/lifestyle/ideology etc, and because of that, there is a lot of room for interpretation. There is no leader, no designated enforcers. In the ‘90s into the 2000s, I think people took it upon themselves to become the enforcers. This created a toxic environment that not only pushed people out of the scene but left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. I can’t imagine any of that resonating with kids today.

Before I relaunched xsisterhoodx, I wondered if it would resonate, if there still was a need for it. I wondered if the space had been filled by something new, better, and with younger voices. It seems that there is a pervasive feeling that things aren’t quite equitable. Progress has been made, shows are more diverse, but there’s still an undercurrent there. I think there are a bunch of us that crave community.

Is it being inclusive to trans women and queer identities something you haven’t been much aware in the past?

I think the Sisterhood was a safe space, long before the term safe space was in the lexicon. We have always had members that were queer, trans, or just didn’t feel accepted in the scene/society, regardless of their gender identity or sexual preference. In the early 2000s we published the article “Building a Hardcore Scene That’s Not So Fucking Sexist and Anti-Gay” fast forward to 2020 and we published “Dear Hardcore Men”—which attempts to tackle the subject of toxic masculinity. Can we do more? Yes. Can we do better? We’re gonna try.

Do you make any conscious efforts to grow xsisterhoodx beyond the narrow limitations of the hardcore punk subculture and non-mainstream music scenes?

A conscious effort, no. I have difficulty extracting straight edge from hardcore punk. The music is important to me. It’s what got me into it. It’s passionate, exciting, promised brother and sisterhood, a community. I would love to collaborate with others outside of the punk & hardcore scene. I think that would be a really interesting and fun project to work on.

I really love xSisterhoodx’s Interview Project! Asking excellent questions and the respondents are so inspiring and great individuals. Can you explain the project a bit more?

When I first decided to re-launch xsisterhoodx I wanted to make sure that there was still a need for it. I did some internet searching and quickly realized that there wasn’t a lot going on. Especially compared to what things were like into the mid-2000s. There were tons of websites/blogs/zines about straight edge. Today, not so much. People don’t seem to be writing a lot about it. So, I decided to go for it. I rebuilt, ported over all the old content, and thought if, for nothing else, it would be like a museum. I didn’t want all the work we did to be lost.

I started posting on social media, and I had expected a bunch of kids to tell me to fuck off—that I was old and irrelevant. But, that didn’t happen. Many of the girls, now women, who were active on the site are still straight edge and still looking for community. They are grownups now, with amazing and interesting lives.

In a lot of ways what girls/women have contributed to straight edge is treated as a footnote. A mention here or there, but most documentaries, books, etc. focus on the same guys, in the same bands—Being straight-edge dudes, in straight edge bands. I’ve always felt that there is so much more to it. I looked at my daughters and I wanted to show them how amazing these women and girls are.

When I got the idea to do the project I wanted to include the community in the process. I asked our audience to submit questions. I didn’t want the questions to just focus on their favorite bands (even though that is one of the questions), and how long they’ve been straight edge. I wanted the readers to get an idea of how diverse and accomplished the women/girls who are straight edge are.

I was hoping that people would read the stories and feel connected. Like, “Hey, I’ve felt that too”, there’s power in that. I wanted people to see that you don’t need to be crazy active in the scene, or listen to hardcore 24/7 to be straight edge.

What do you think are the main reasons for so many people to break edge? What’s your take on ostracism towards edge breakers, or victim shaming towards people in recovery from substance abuse who relapse?

I think there are many reasons why. I’ve had a lot of friends walk away for a variety of reasons. I think the most common, that I’ve heard, is that they just grew out of it. It was no longer important and didn’t resonate with them any longer.

I think some people get tired of being on the outside—and just want to go with the flow and live a “normal” life. I worked in a corporate environment for years. There’s a lot of business that gets done over a drink and a handshake. It can be difficult trying to explain to someone what straight edge is. In my case, some of my co-workers took it as a challenge. They made it a goal to get me to drink.

Some of these kids claimed edge in their early teens, maybe they felt they were missing out on something, broke edge, and then realized they weren’t. Who am I to say they can’t claim again? My stance is, if you’re in it for the long haul, I’m with you.

People make mistakes. Beating an addiction is hard, and relapses are often part of the process. Sometimes it takes a few times of falling off before the lessons that someone needs to learn stick. I think it’s unfortunate that there are those who can’t offer compassion to others.

What is it that you still find attractive in straight edge? How do you see straight edge and sobriety as part of the youth culture of the future?

I’ve been straight edge for twenty-six years now. It’s a part of me. I have never struggled with wanting to drink, or smoke, or do any sort of drugs. It’s not so much an attraction as just this is what and who I am.

I don’t know where I see it. Sometimes I worry that the toxic masculinity present in pockets of the scene will further force it’s contraction. I can’t see today’s kids, who crave inclusivity, and diversity, being drawn to the scene as is. I am hopeful that kids will discover the concept and start some new bands, with new ideas, and energy and kick off a fresh wave of interest and I hope that xsisterhoodx can be a part of that.

Source: diyconspiracy.net