Ashe Kilbourne ’14 is a versatile musician and DJ, as well as an activist for queer and trans* issues on campus. Since Her freshman year, she has deejayed a variety of venues and continues to produce, promote, and play electronic and hardcore punk music at Wesleyan and around the East Coast. The Argus sat down with Kilbourne to talk about creating music, trans* issues at Wesleyan, and how to make the University’s music scene less oppressive.
The Argus: What makes you a WesCeleb?
Ashe Kilbourne: Good nail color, at least recently. I’m loud in some places, I can take up a good amount of space in some places, so yeah. I make and play music, do stuff around music and organizing it.
A: Can you tell me a bit about your music output here at Wes?
AK: Let’s see, I hadn’t really played or done any music when I was in high school. I learned to deejay when I enrolled at Wesleyan. [I] learned to make music, learned to play the guitar. I did a lot of deejaying on campus here. More recently, I’ve been trying to play around the East Coast. And I’ve booked shows; that used to be through the Concert Committee, more recently it’s been mostly in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
A: What kind of music do/have you played?
AK: I produce instrumentals for rappers. I make mostly Philly Club Music, some Jersey Club, and some Hardstyle. I played in a garage-y band in sophomore year. The band I’m playing in now is called Pyka; that’s, like, powerviolence grindcore.
A: How have you found the crowds to be at Wesleyan?
AK: I’m pretty done with worrying about that; I don’t know what people want. I feel like people usually position punk and hardcore as a cool fashion accessory of a greater personal brand. I’ve just had people who are very rude and off-putting when I book hardcore shows here. So it’s hard to work around that, I suppose. I hope people who need [hardcore] or like it find it, I hope it’s something that has some kind of positive presence for Connecticut.
A: Can you tell me about Pyka?
AK: It’s hardcore; it’s trying to be pretty fast, pretty political. We talk about [feminism], trans* issues, queer issues, race and antiracism. I definitely view the Wesleyan music scene as pretty misogynistic, white supremacist, and transphobic, so we’re trying to figure out creative ways to make it a safer space. We made a demo; it’s five songs under five minutes. We recorded it at Dead Air Studios in Massachusetts. We’ve got cassette tapes! We’re definitely trying to play less on campus and more around Connecticut.
A: Tell me more about trans* issues on campus.
AK: Being trans* has been a part of why I dislike being here. I view it as a space that, through its ability to engage in educated, liberal “diversity-speak,” affords itself a sense of satisfaction so that it doesn’t need to interrogate its innate transphobia and trans-misogyny, also its racism and classism. I’m very sick of people who laugh at how wonderful and accepting the campus is. It’s no longer a point of politics; it’s very post-ideological, post-racial, post-gender, refusing to see things in terms of historical, institutionalized oppressions.
A: Within the administration and student body, what are some major patterns of transphobia?
AK: Some of the ones that are most visible happen around misgendering, lack of interest in pronouns of people, assumptions that everyone is cis. Just a general feeling of entitlement and access to other peoples’ gender histories and identities. That allows people, especially cis queer people, to feel like they have greater access to transness, because they “get it,” which they don’t. [They] ask about your body configuration, use you as an interesting way to experiment with their sexuality. A great place to start looking into thinking about these things is the zine “Bros Fall Back,” reviewed by Suzy X.
A: What have you been doing to raise these issues in the campus discourse?
AK: It’s difficult, because speaking about trans* issues in cis-supremacist spaces is potentially really triggering, so it’s difficult to make a constant pursuit of it. I don’t know, I helped organize a trans* potluck meeting that happened last year; I’ve started trying to create a transfeminine potluck this year. [I’ve been] encouraging many people to be aware of how they gender others. I think an example of that is, you see a lot of that in Wespeaks, perhaps Argus and Wesleying articles, the use of the pronoun “ze” for a third party or unspecified person. Usually, those people have no interest in checking on those pronouns, have no problem with [violently gendering people]. But because they have that access to the academically charged language of something like the pronoun “ze,” it’s like a fun thing for them to do instead of a serious part of people creating a system to legitimize their identity history themselves.
A: Do you have any advice for student-run publications on how to be less transphobic?
AK: Advocate for more all-gender spaces on campus, stop committing gender violence by assuming people’s pronouns and gender histories. Self-educate and make yourself known as an ally through your actions and support that you give to trans* people, I suppose.
A: Anything else you’d like to add?
AK: I’d like to encourage people to consider how their participation in and creation of the music scene here creates more space for sexism, racism, assault, harassment, violence. Through locating your events at things like fraternities, through allowing oppressive people and oppressive presences to have privileged roles in the planning, allowing them into the space at all. I hope people feel an entitlement to protect themselves and their friends and to give themselves community, and not bend to the feeling that they have to make room for every asshole who thinks they can be in any space. Many of the venues where music takes place on campus have long histories of sexual violence and sexual assault. There’s a sort of routine, interpersonal aggression towards women, folks of color, trans* and queer people.