DEGENERACY
Being called a ‘degenerate’, playing the role & whether or not the Nazis would have enjoyed Weird Al
I had a feeling things were beginning to turn for the worse a couple of years ago. I was on my way back from a comedy gig (I can’t remember where exactly, but it must have been paid to get me out of the house at the time). I was on the underground train, which I mostly had to myself, save for one noticeably intoxicated business bro who, for some reason, had decided to sit right opposite me. At various points along the journey, deep under the ground, he would smile at me. Motion for me to take off my headphones, which I dutifully did, interrupting whatever rotation of Killswitch Engage, Charli XCX or Weird Al Yankovich I was primarily listening to at the time (I contain multitudes).
I probably shouldn’t have taken my headphones off for him. Usually, in situations like that, ignoring the strange man is the most effective strategy. But, always nagged as I am by an internal monologue of insecurity, I wanted to leave open the possibility that I might somehow be helpful. Maybe he wants to know if he’s on the right train? Maybe he’s interested in what I’m listening to? Of course, none of that was the case. Instead, he looked me up and down and asked if I was single. Not sincerely, of course. He did it in the sort of goading, cruel way a school bully might. The way which implies: I know what you are. You can’t get one over on me. You’re toying with me, so now I’m going to toy with you.
It was far from my first rodeo, so I didn’t reply - instead I just rolled my eyes and put my headphones back on. His eyes rolled too, not in exasperation but from intoxication - his white work shirt undone half way and his face tomatoesque. For the next couple of stations he made due with little kissy faces at me, and when, mercifully, we finally reached his stop - Waterloo - he got up, waved, and just about made his way off of the train.
Before the doors closed though, he motioned one last time for me to take off my headphones, which I did - morbid curiosity once again getting the better of me. As I removed them from my ears, and Weird Al’s seminal Girls Just Want to Have Lunch faded down, this Western Salaryman made sure to get in the last word, and let me know what I am.
“Fucking degenerate! Look at you, fucking degenerate…”
The doors closed on him and he just smirked as the train pulled away, knowing that I had no opportunity to reply. Not that I would have done anyway. I mean, what do you even say to something like that? ‘Degenerate’ was a new one for me. I’ve been called plenty of nasty things over the years: tranny, she-male, ladyboy, tranny, faggot, tranny faggot, batty, tranny. Mostly tranny, you get the idea. But degenerate?
In The Sopranos, there is an episode where Tony ‘Daddy’ Soprano encourages a man to engage in borrowing money from the mob, only to then take advantage (classic Daddy) knowing that he’d gamble it all away and Tony would end up getting the man’s business and son’s car as collateral. Tony refers to him as a ‘degenerate gambler” and threatens him physically. Tony hates this man’s weakness, but counts on it all the same - perpetuating the very cycle he claims to disavow. Similarly, it’s a fair assumption to make that this tipsy corporate shit most probably watches a fair amount of trans porn himself.
Up until the encounter on the tube, that was the most often I’d heard the word ‘degenerate’ being used. But afterwards, I started to notice it everywhere. It was being thrown around a lot online when referring to queer people - whether it be ‘gay indoctrination’ rhetoric or trans panic. The person most responsible for this campaign, I would argue, is Chaya Raichik - who runs the terrifyingly popular ‘LibsofTikTok’ account, where she shares ‘cringe’ videos of, usually young, LGBTQ people in order to demonstrate the decline of the west. She is an awful individual, but an effective propagandist.
The online Cambridge dictionary describes the meaning of the word ‘degenerate’ as:
“Bad or worse in quality or character, or (of a person) morally bad”
I tried first to look it up on the Oxford dictionary online, however they now make you sign up for a membership to view their definitions. You could say the online version is worse in quality. In fact, I often find myself worrying now that websites I used to trust are just merely feeding me AI garbage summaries, so how do I even know that that definition is correct? AI has taking over, its wiry limbs spread across seemingly everything. Every work place, department, initiative. Human beings are outsourcing effort to some nebulous, mysterious digital force that, by design, relishes in tricking us. Who needs to know the definition of words, when now we have a new, singular word which adequately covers everything - Enshittification. For the first time ever, corporate tech demons have, in their coked up, drunken revelry, created a world in which the ‘truth’ of images on film, or audio, or photographs, or even writing, can’t be trusted. Yes, we should always have practised healthy scepticism, but now even the most compelling CCTV footage could simply be images pulled out of the cyber-ether with a filter plastered over it, and none of us in the jury could ever really be sure. This article you’re reading now could have been generated by AI. Perhaps it was? Does Jen Ives’ writing normally have so few spelling misyakes? Was that last one intentional, so as to throw you off the scent? Did a large language model generate this? Generate… de-generate.
The Nazi Party (see: WW2) infamously referred to modern art as ‘degenerate art’. Deemed as an ‘insult to German feeling’ it was banned from museums, and artists engaging in the ‘degeneracy’ were at risk of strict sanctions. Paintings and sculptures weren’t the only pieces at risk - this included writing, music and film too. It’s a pretty common racist, anti-intellectual position held by a fair amount of ‘traditionalists’ even today who fetishise the Roman High Renaissance period - who insist that ‘white-made’ art, focusing on capturing ‘likeness’ with classical technique is superior. Interpretation is a waste of time. Time that could be spent doing coke and vibe-coding an app to schedule further coke sessions. The fear of modern art, or jazz, or expressionist film is, I think, rooted in a longing for ‘truth’. One, singular, exclusionary ‘truth’, to act merely as a symbol for white supremacy. When you’ve only got one accepted truth, the world simplifies. Capital can be accumulated more efficiently.
Expression, or the inquiry toward new truths, is viewed by the unphilosophically minded as a regression back towards animalism. A deviation away from complexity - grey area - is sold as scientific regress. Everything is neatly stored in its manageable little box, ready to be locked up in the attic.
Either that, or they’ve just been to the Tate Modern too many times. The older I get, the less and less sure I am that it’s the best representation of modern art. I recommend the Tate Britain, personally. It’s a bit less ‘full on’.
But look, I’m no art expert. Sure, I’ve read some John Berger. And sure, I personally love modern art. It’s dead zany. And yes, I think there’s plenty of uninteresting examples of bad modernism too. But at least they’re trying something. At the end of the day, if you’re constantly harkening back to the ‘glory days’ of the past, you’re mentally stuck. This mentality is peak-conservatism, in that it romanticises eras that none of these individuals have actually even experienced. They feel that it might have been better for them back then, but they don’t actually know for sure. It’s just nostalgia cosplay. There’s actually a cowardice to it, I think. A weakness, even - to seek safety in the tried and tested - rather than to explore new ground, like some intrepid cosmonaut.
Aw, does da wittle baby want da pictures to look like a photogwarph? Poor wittle baby can’t undewstand da modern art…
I’ve long been a fan of John Waters, the American film maker responsible for Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble and Hairspray. Waters understands the power of ‘degeneracy’ and he wields it freely. Released in 1972, Pink Flamingos introduces us to Babs Johnson (Divine), who lives in a mobile home with her deranged, egg-eating mother, and is on a mission to reclaim her title as The Filthiest Person Alive. To prove this to us, she engages in outrage, promiscuity, abuse, murder, cannibalism and, in the films infamous climax, eats fresh dog shit off of the floor - for real - cementing herself (the character) and the actor (Divine) as, inarguably, at least the ‘filthiest person’ alive at that time. The film is still shocking, even today, and is (if you’re not too squeamish) a riot. Sure enough, there are some things in it that don’t hold up especially well today, like the scene with the chicken, but it came out in 1972, so you do, unfortunately, have to expect some of that. Animal welfare in film wasn’t thought about too much back then. The film feels like a lashing out. Just a year previous was the trial of Charles Manson and his murderous hippie disciples. The Vietnam War was still plodding along, so resentment was building for those of a countercultural disposition. Maybe this inspired Waters to start his own rag-tag group of hippies, homosexuals and transsexuals - to provoke the society he was living in. To perform a relatively safer version of reality, where people don’t actually get hurt. Chickens, sure. That poor chicken…
Like modern art, John Waters’ work isn’t for ‘everybody’ but, it is for somebody. Me, I guess? It is, at its core, for the marginalised and the outcast. It’s a celebration, not so much of ‘degeneracy’, but of those who are accused of it. Nobody believes that Divine ate dog shit in his off-hours. He performed a spectacle for an America unconcerned with the wellbeing of homosexuals. Many Americans probably did think that queers consumed shit. So Divine gets to play the part of the ultimate depravity, thereby making normal queer people look quite quaint by comparison. Just as soldiers in Vietnam played their part dutifully, until its shocking climax and revelation of horrendous war-crimes, so civilians could thank them, then hate them, then thank them - for doing the unthinkable. Just as Manson played his part, as the wild and crazed hippie cultist that fascinated America (and still does), until some took it all just a bit too far. Yes, I was bad your honour - but I’m no Charlie Manson. If only Manson had taken up filmmaking instead of racist cult leading. What sort of a film would he and his disciples have made? Probably something quite bad, honestly. Filmmaking isn’t a vocation for everybody, and yet - we still allow Osgood Perkins to do it.
Things that are for ‘everybody’ tend not to be very good, because you can’t please everybody all the time. To get close, you have to keep things moving along quickly - to distract and bamboozle those who might not be ‘liking’ a certain section of the work. You have to pander, and simplify, and over-explain. I’m not trying to be a snob here - I like plenty of ‘normie’ things. I saw The Holiday at the cinema, and loved it. But, the campy, haphazard way in which Pink Flamingos is presented conceals a profound subtext - a hidden joke at the ‘normie’ viewer’s expense. It aims to shock them, playing a prank on their own conservative nightmares - daring to show them the absurdity of the supposed ‘degenerate’ future we’ll be in for if we continue to promote queerness. And the queers who engage with the film - who embrace its philosophy and quote its iconic dialogue - they too are in on the joke. They’re showing the stuck up chair of the Concerned Christian Mother’s Association that, if they continue to paint us in a disingenuous, unflattering light, our only destiny will be to become the thing they fear most. Not out of a natural inclination toward ‘degeneracy’ but instead as a spiteful protest against the wrong that has been done to us. If we are to be a monster, then they, as the dominant hegemony, are our creators. Only kindness can subdue Frankenstein’s creature (named Frankenstein), but no - you had to light those torches didn’t you? I’m glad I threw your kid in the river.
One of my all-time favourite quotes is in Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night - it opens the book, and it goes: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”. The context of the quote is slightly different here, being that the book is about an American Nazi Propagandist, who attempts to convince the reader that his misdeeds were in fact a sort of 4-D chess spy manoeuvre to disseminate false information for the good guys. His claim is, that he paid the ultimate price - to ruin his reputation - all for the greater good of his assignment. I’m not saying that that is what we’re doing, I’m just recommending you a good book, but that quote about pretending to be something, and then becoming that thing has always stuck with me. In fact, there’s rarely a day that goes by when I don’t think about it. I’ve considered getting it as a tattoo, but it feels a bit too long. Maybe as a tramp-stamp?
When I was doing stand up comedy (which I haven’t done for about a year now because I hate it), I witnessed a few fellow performers, who were when I met them, perfectly nice people. Amiable and kind, and perfectly capable of being among diversity. Their sets weren’t especially controversial, and - like all of us - they were just trying to get noticed. As the years passed, I saw these individuals take up jobs for right-wing, transphobic media organisations like GB News, or start their own similar podcasts dedicated to spreading the idea that queer people and immigrant people were to blame for the apparent ‘degradation’ of British society. I saw them talk openly on TV about trans people in ways which they would never have spoken to me face to face, all for the pathetic prize of having their byline read ‘Comedian’ on the screen - that label finally cemented in pixel, and clipped on YouTube, where no one can deny it. These people may well have hateful views, but they’re also pretending to, too. Hamming it up. Simply because ‘being on TV’ is still regarded as a ‘meaningful’ end-goal for the stand up comedian - the thing we were all shooting for. No one ever stipulated, after all, that it mattered which kind of channel you were on. It could be UK Gold, or Dave.
We all build ourselves in one way or another. The forming of a personal identity isn’t exclusively a trans exploit. The first step towards becoming is always experimentation. You ‘try it on’ and ‘see if it fits’ and then, if you can live with it, you push on and see what else you can handle. Somewhere along the way, you start to learn just how truly malleable human beings really are, and how unfixed so much of our previous life really was. The difference here, is that queer people go through change in order to be better. We know that, if we are happier, then we can live better lives - be nicer, friendlier people. To transition, actually, is to throw your hands up and accept that you don’t have all the answers. To give yourself over to a greater power - the mystery of possibility. But, to venture into fascism, as some seem to so willingly be doing right now, is the inverse. To notice that the world is moving into intolerance and hostility, and to choose to go along with that… that is a degeneracy that is so unforgivable. Rather than bravely wading into the unknown possibilities of the future, it is instead a spineless snuggle, down into the bosom of certain oppression.
I’ve been fascinated lately by a woman named Ashley St. Clair. You might have seen her doing the rounds of a fair few leftist podcasts recently (if you’re into that sort of thing), and she is notable because she used to be a MAGA / Turning Point USA influencer who, for her sins, once dated (and had a child with) Elon Musk. She co-wrote a transphobic children’s book called Elephants Are Not Birds, which is as biologically unimaginative as you might expect. She has since had her name taken off of it, and claims to receive no money for its sales. The reason for her recent influx of appearances on leftist podcasts is that she has renounced the MAGA movement, and is now ‘spilling the tea’ on some of the most insidious, hypocritical aspects of it’s inner-workings. She uses these podcasts to apologise to the various communities that she’s contributed harassment to. She is, at the time of writing this, 27 years old - and says that her journey into hate was primarily one of youth ignorance, and to some extent - political grooming. The whole thing is fascinating, and does at least feel genuine to me. She doesn’t appear to be attempting to promote anything right now, and after my whole spiel earlier about the nature of transition - it’d be a little bit hypocritical of me to not entertain the possibility of her redemption. The thing that makes St. Clair different, I think, is how she speaks about forgiveness. She doesn’t necessarily expect it, and is trying to wear her failures on her sleeve. And I am certainly not saying that anyone ought to forgive somebody for the harm they’ve done - that’s going to change on a person to person basis. But, the truth is, people like Ashley St. Clare are incredibly rare. It’s so unusual to have somebody so able to swallow their pride and try to atone, that I think so many of us in the queer community just simply don’t know how to engage with it. We’re dumbfounded by it, being how it’s almost unprecedented. So, I totally understand some of the negative reactions she’s getting. It’s difficult to trust anyone in this climate of shallow clout-chasing and personal branding. The attention economy would suggest that there must be a financial incentive here - a repositioning, while she’s still young enough, to change her trajectory. To flee the sinking ship while there’s still plausible deniability. And for me, at least, it’s a risk I’m willing to take - just so long as it doesn’t include an erasure of her past. There is no valuable growth without something to compare it to. The better she does, the more impressive it’ll be, relative to the hatefulness of her past. But we can never be sure, can we? Unfortunately, all we can really do is keep an eye on it from a safe distance. We have, after all, been burned before. All that aside though, what she actually has to say about the movement she no longer identifies into is extremely fascinating. We ought to, at the very least, listen to what she has to say about it - if not just to know. This is the sort of insight into our oppressors that we so rarely get access to, and we should probably be taking notes.
The accusation of ‘degeneracy’ is always levelled by the most degenerate, whether it be openly or hidden. And when I say ‘degeneracy’ I’m not referring, for example, to secret affairs, down-low homosexuality or a bimbofication fetish. I’m talking about true degeneracy - hatred. Is it not the ultimate form of gaslighting to accuse others of such a thing, when the alternative is stupidity, cruelty and violence? If we’re talking about ‘social decline’ then what falls most neatly into that category is the clear decline of tolerance, equity, social intelligence and human rights. If being counter to that is ‘degeneracy’, then call me De-Jen-erecy Ives.
Fascists decry the ‘fall of western civilisation’, but if anything is ‘falling’ right now, it’s our (albeit slow moving) history of social progress. Racist groups like Reform UK want to drag us back into Blitz spirit and rationing, and supposedly ‘leftist’ parties like Labour are now only ‘leftist’ in the most abstract way - in contrast to groups like Reform. Institutions which once prided themselves on their inclusivity are now pandering in the most despicable ways possible, toward the sensibilities of bigoted voters. Keir Starmer pretended himself and his party right into Vonnegut’s nightmare.
As the underground train takes me closer to my station, I can still hear Weird Al’s Girls Just Want to Have Lunch playing through the headphone speakers down on my lap. I wonder what the Nazis would have made of Weird Al. Would they have considered his delightful parody versions of popular songs as ‘degenerate art’? I would think so, probably. The idea of girls, who - above anything else - just want to have lunch, would most likely be viewed as degenerate. To a Nazi, girls would most likely be expected to stay at home, and prepare lunches only for local Nazi Youth groups instead. To contribute to the Aryan effort. It’s due to social progress that girls no longer have to take on such outdated, misogynistic roles. Due to right-wing degeneracy, the prospect of being a ‘tradwife’ is now appealing to some.
The irony of this sauced-up, cokeheaded stranger calling me a degenerate, simply for daring to exist on a train, is that I’m actually incredibly boring. I don’t take drugs and I only drink on very rare occasions. I have a boyfriend, with whom I am very much ‘going steady’. I spend most of my time thinking about how horrible the world is becoming, and writing long, obtuse articles like this. I doodle on my iPad, and watch films sometimes. I enjoy gossip. A friend of mine has been trying to persuade me to give pole dancing a go, and I keep dodging it because I know I’ll be far too clumsy and probably fall off onto my face, knocking out my front teeth. Sometimes I wish I were more degenerate, though. It’d give me more to talk about, and would make me significantly cooler. I wish I did spend more time out dancing at the queer clubs, but I get tired by about 9pm nowadays. But it’s just as well really, because it seems that simply by virtue of being transgender, I’m already degenerate enough for some.
But, if that does make me a ‘degenerate’, then I’m happy to take that on. If, somehow, it can help the next generation of trans people to look better by comparison, then I’ll eat the dog shit. Bring over the dog… that’s it, nice and fresh. Are you rolling? Okay, I’m gonna do it. You’re definitely filming, aren’t you? Because I don’t want to do this for no reason. You are? Okay okay, I’m going for it.
“Some girls like to buy new shoes
And others like drivin’ trucks and wearing tattoos
There’s only one thing that they all like a bunch
Oh, girls, they want to have lunch
Oh, girls just want to have lunch”
(Girls Just Want to Have Lunch - Weird Al Yankovich, 1985).
Thank you for reading this piece. Writing & animations by Jen Ives. There will be a new long form article, like this, every Sunday going forwards. If you enjoyed it, and would like to look into more of my writing/work, you can do so here: www.jenives.net - where there are links to everything. You can also email me at jeniveswriter@gmail.com if you fancy giving me some paid work or publishing my novel. No pressure, though.
Follow me on Instagram here
Below, is an exclusive article for paid Substack Members & Patreons. If you’d like to read it, please consider joining - as it really helps me to continue doing what I do.
Members Article:
Are Trans Women Allowed To Provoke?
Also, some recommendations and personal stuff.
Weeks ago, I made a video. A comedy sketch, I guess you’d call it. In it, I play the exaggerated part of a trans woman (of which I am in real life) who has discovered a ‘life hack’ to gain respect & passibility in public - by wearing an ‘I’m Pregnant’ badge on London buses. Nothing about the video is remotely believable. It feels silly to even type this, but it’s so unequivocally clear that it’s satire that, I wish I’d actually gone further with it. Muddied the waters just a little bit more to ensure it’s effectiveness. And, as such, it would be silly for me to complain then when, inevitably, strangers online do end up falling for it. That’s the paradox of satire really, isn’t it? You want people to buy into it - at first…
