Teen Gothic

I'll start this this off as this is a bit of a rant, I was just scrolling through instagram reels and that tiktok artist TX2 came up where he's fetishizing goth women. Naturally like the other people in the comments I also comment about not wanting to be fetishized for being goth and liking goth music. You wouldn't fetishize a woman for liking pop music.

Naturally this did upset people who fetishize goth women and during the argument I kept saying "I just don't wanna be fetishized for liking a genre of music." One of the men who was very defensive told me "You know it has nothing to do with the music." Along with "There is a fashion aspect to goth culture." Now I'm a firm believer that you don't have to dress gothic to be goth. This can be due to environment reasons, stimulation reasons, truly whatever reasons people have for just nothing being able to or wanting to dress gothic. I think as long as you listen to the music and respect the community and it's history then you yourself are goth. I think the fashion aspect is the least important to being goth. It's one of the fun parts for me as I feel good whenever I dress up even though I'm one of the people who gets over stimulated quickly I do love the look, but I only dress that way like 10% of the time.

It feels very frustrating when a non goth person who simply finds goths attractive and fetishizes them tries to tell me what is and isn't goth and then say that I'm disrespecting goths by….not wanting them to be fetishized and recognized as people who deserve to be respected?? I just wanted to kinda get that off my chest about how sometimes it just feels frustrating being goth in a world that treats goth women as an accessory. But I personally feel those same people would 100% call trad goths unattractive cause I've seen that happen online before where it's I want a goth girl but not to goth. Sorry if this rant was long and pointless just frustrating from the lack of people that actually care or know about the goth culture but try to speak on it.