Straight Edge

Straight edge (sXe) is a clean-living youth culture that emerged from the punk rock subculture in the early 1980s. Originating in Washington, D.C., it appealed to kids drawn to punk's subversive style, music, do-it-yourself ethos, and “question everything” mentality but turned off by the alcohol and drug abuse common in the scene. Minor Threat's 1981 song “Straight Edge” provided the movement its name, and the chorus of its 1983 song “Out of Step” furnished its credo. Straight edgers abstain, completely, from alcohol, drug, and tobacco use, and many also abstain from promiscuous sex, reserving intimacy for ongoing relationships. They frame their abstinence as a lifelong commitment, with most insisting that even a single drink forfeits any claim to the identity. Straight edge quickly spread across the United States and then the world. By the early 1980s, straight edgers were visible in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Reno, and very quickly in nearly every city in between. Although many straight edgers still maintain a connection [Page 697]to the hard-core scene, others identify with emo, punk, goth, hip-hop, indie rock, and other youth cultures, and some maintain little connection to music scenes at all. Straight edge has thousands of adherents in countries as diverse as Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Japan, and Italy. Straight edgers make for an interesting case of deviance, simultaneously resisting and reinforcing dominant social patterns. Their abstinent ideology sets them apart from many other youth while reinforcing more mainstream notions of temperance and self-control. While some are indistinguishable from their more conventional peers, many adopt subcultural fashions, including being heavily tattooed and pierced, marking them as deviant.

Straight edgers often display the movement's symbol, an X, on their clothing, in their tattoos, or marked on their hands with black marking pen. The symbol emerged in the early 1980s when club owners in Washington, D.C., barred underage kids from attending shows (the legal drinking age then was 18 years). Because venues made substantial profits from alcohol sales, they typically catered to an adult clientele. Underage drinkers also posed a risk of fines or even revocation of a liquor license. To accommodate young fans, venues marked underage kids' hands with large Xs as a clear signal that club workers should deny the youths alcohol. Youth quickly transformed the X from a social stigma to a symbol of pride and defiance, a way to say, “not only can't we drink, we don't want to drink.” Straight edgers, even those of legal drinking age, began marking their own hands prior to shows and wearing shirts with slogans such as “It's OK Not to Drink.”

Some straight edgers consider themselves part of a diffuse lifestyle movement challenging the cultural pressures to drink alcohol, do drugs, and smoke cigarettes. Believing alcohol and tobacco companies intentionally market to youth and profit by others' suffering, they seek to both carve out a space for young people to feel valued for not drinking and also to set an example for other youth. Other straight edgers claim that straight edge is purely their own individual choice for their own health or well-being. Many believe that abstinence allows them to have a “clear mind,” helping them to resist peer pressure and the pressures to conform to the larger culture. Vegetarianism and veganism have been associated with straight edge since the mid-1980s, with many adherents seeing animal rights and environmentalism as logical outgrowths of their self-styled “positive” lifestyle. A significant minority of straight edgers participates in causes such as feminism, antifascist, antiracist, peace, and other progressive movements, and a few blend their straight-edge identity to religious traditions, primarily Christianity but also Islam and Krishna Consciousness.

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