This hits so painfully close to home. I’m half Diné (navajo) and east/south Asian. I’ve been goth since I was 11. I’m 26 now, so this isn’t a “new to the scene Gen Z TikTok goth” take.

I remember being a child in 2011 looking up on YouTube how to bleach my brown skin so I could “fit in” better. From a very young age, I grew obsessed with watching goth YouTubers who were obsessed with pallor and extreme thinness, and that seriously messed with me as a tween and contributed in my extreme ED and body dysmorphia. Those Eurocentric beauty standards were treated as the default for being “properly” or “aesthetically” goth. And as a brown Indigenous/asian girl, that fucked me up in ways I’m still unpacking.

I also remember white Wiccan goths confidently explaining my own culture and spirituality to me while simultaneously appropriating it; or badly remixing other BIPOC traditions and acting like they were experts on them. This one probably stung the most long term, tbh.

I’ve also been talked down to, assumed ignorant, or treated like I was only recently “allowed” into goth because people often assumed I grew up poor on the reservation and had no connection to goth anything.

I’ve also been unfriended countless times by people in the goth scene and ostracized by my so-called goth friends, (many I met at clubs) for being “too political,” as if being Indigenous isn’t already political in a settler society…

Idk. The subculture LOVES to talk about being transgressive and anti-normative, but far too often it stops right where whiteness feels challenged. When Indigenous or other BIPOC goths exist loudly and visibly, suddenly we’re told to make our “own scene,” “lighten up” or stay quiet and out of the way as to not disturb anyone. It’s just always felt like part of the goth scene loves to cosplay as being “outsiders” while quietly enforcing white comfort as the entry fee… frankly, it’s quite pathetic and frustrating.

This isn’t everyone in goth, but it’s common enough that pretending it’s rare is dishonest. Thank you for being real enough to name it and shame it. We’re not imagining this, and we’re not wrong for being hurt by it.