Theory Diaries: Androgyny, Punk, and Traces in K-Pop

Androgyny in punk was never just about fashion. It was refusal. In late 1970s London and New York, punk emerged as a cultural scream against Thatcher, Reagan, neoliberalism, and rising cultural homophobia. Ripped shirts, shaved heads, combat boots, smeared eyeliner, and Westwood’s jagged designs weaponized androgyny — turning gender itself into a protest.

Yet these performances were fleeting. Punk shows happened in basements, back alleys, record shops. They were ephemeral moments of anger, refusal, and survival. For queer punks — especially BIPOC, femme, and trans bodies — punk androgyny became a way to carve out a space of possibility. José Esteban Muñoz, in Disidentifications, describes this as a survival strategy: not assimilating into mainstream culture, but performing “in the cracks,” creating new ways of being seen without being captured.

Ephemerality is not the same as disappearance. Muñoz reminds us that performance always leaves a trace — a residue that carries forward, a glimpse of a world not yet here. Punk’s androgyny was never meant to last in its raw form, but its energy lingers.

I see these traces in K-pop and Hallyu today. The sharp jawlines softened with eyeliner, the pastel hair, the fluid stage movements, the refusal of rigid masculinity — all of these carry a faint echo of punk’s weaponized androgyny. The anger is gone, replaced by polish and choreography. Yet the gender play still performs an alternative: another horizon of possibility for audiences across Asia and the world.

Punk shouted “No Future.” Muñoz insists that queerness always gestures toward a future — glimpsed only in fleeting performance, in the trace. K-pop’s androgyny is not punk’s, but it carries its afterlife, a softer echo of a jagged scream.