ABSTRACT
This chapter reexamines the punk moment in Britain in the 1970s from the perspective of gender resistance and difference, informing author’s discussion with original research material and interviews from women band members undertaken between 2001 and 2010. It revisits the response by the music press to the female-focused punk bands, discussing their activities and music in the context of more recent writing on queerness and subcultures, and explores the détournement they undertook within the already subversive punk subculture. There was a parallel specifically women's music making scene based around women's centers during this time period, but here the chapter shall be concentrating on those women band members who specifically aligned themselves with punk in collaboration with, or in contrast to, male punks. For queer women, punk music provides a rich source of affirmation, in spite of and because of its marginal nature; from the turbulent challenging of gender roles in the 1970s onwards when it demonstrated.
