Teen Gothic

Hello there everyone, hope y’all are having a lovely day. So I would say that I’ve only realized recently that I’d think of myself as a part of this subculture (always loved gothic horror in video games, music and movies like Castlevania, black metal and what have you, but recently for the past year or so I’ve been listening to a lot of goth music to the point where it’s more than half of what I listen to,) but I feel kinda guilty for calling myself a goth because I don’t dress the part.

The thing is I live in a country where that is very frowned upon (to the point where I don’t think we even have a goth community here, and if we do they’re definitely minuscule, because I have literally never met another goth person before.)

Even the way I dress now I get a lot of funny looks from people (aka I literally just wear metal band T-shirts and I’ll still get funny looks from people.)

Like I remember I once wore black nail polish and got a lot of shit from people because apparently I looked too “gay” for them (for some reason a lot of people are very backwards and think you can look “gay” and they still think that being gay is a bad thing and is something you can use to insult people) and mainly for all this from my parents as they believe that men should have short hair, dress nicely, etc. (btw I know I sound like a teenager but I’m not that young, I just turned 20 last week and still live with my parents because of college.)

Over the past two years I’ve been really getting into the goth subculture (before this I’d say that I was more of a metal head and industrial person that had gothic tendencies haha,) but because I can’t dress the part (even though I’d love to) I’m not sure if I can still be considered a part of this sub culture.

Do let me know what you guys think yea, and apologies if this question turned into a bit of a rant.

Due to unfortunate circumstances , I have two tickets to she’s past away’s sold out show in LA on 12/11/21 as I am unable to attend. If anyone of you would like take them off my hands(not free), send me a message!

Disclaimer: respectful discourse only please, I don't want to fight about politics, I just want to know if this is a thing

So perusing through tiktok (my first mistake), there seems to be a huge argument going on about how it is "impossible" to be goth and "anything except left-wing", claiming that since goth stemmed from punk then this scene is also inherently political in nature, thereby excluding anyone who doesn't follow the same political ideologies/opinions.

Do you consider the goth subculture political in nature? I'm not American so this both fascinated and baffled me. I would say that the majority of us have similar beliefs but it is not inherent to the subculture or a necessary requirement as long as everyone is respectful of each other. But I'm also old and maybe the scene has evolved in this way?