Lisa Crystal Carver On Transgressing Mainstream Feminism

Lisa Crystal Carver, seasoned subcultural suffragette, could be more relevant today than ever. Indeed, the American's performance and writing transgresses a mainstream feminism that can be reductive - and prescribed.

The New Englander launched the hardcore noise performance act The Suckdog Circus - or just Suckdog - in the late '80s, conspiring with now ex-husband Jean-Louis Costes. Their mayhemic shows involved nudity, (simulated) sex, (unidentified) excretions, and "general audience agitation". Carver was compared to that extreme punk taboo-breaker GG Allin. Yet Thurston Moore declared himself a fanboy. In the '90s Carver focussed on writing. She edited the cult pre-riot grrrl 'zine Rollerderby, later publishing books - most significantly 2005's shocking memoir Drugs Are Nice (and the facetious guide How Not To Write). Recently, Carver wrote The Jaywalker - a collection of "true" short stories illustrated by Dame Darcy. "I feel like it was really influenced by Philip K Dick, but I don't think anyone else will think that," Carver says.

"I just don't like to be told what to do by anyone ever - I never have in my entire life and I really don't like it now."

Carver, warm in person, is making her first visit to Australia with a rebooted Suckdog - teen daughter Sadie along for the ride. In Melbourne she'll also participate in YWCA Victoria's TINAtalks #5 panel, 'Writing While Female - Subverting Expectations'.

There's been much theorising about the gendering of writing, with French-Algerian cultural critic Helene Cixous radicalising 'ecriture feminine'. For Carver, those differences manifest more simply. "I notice that all of my female friends kept diaries when they were little and it informed our way of telling the juicy bits, and the men that I know did not keep diaries," she says. "I think that men write differently because they don't keep diaries - and they don't talk to each other the same way that women talk to each other."

Carver's 'brand' of feminism is provocatively punk - almost anarchic. She has "problems" with feminism's young "social justice warriors". "I don't wanna be told how I have to see male/female relationships or how I have to see different sexualities or races - especially when it's someone who's not of that orientation telling me how I need to approach people because somebody might be upset about something," Carver says. "I think it all gets in the way a lot. I just don't like to be told what to do by anyone ever - I never have in my entire life and I really don't like it now."

In Suckdog's early shows rape was a theme - after all, their debut was entitled Rape GG. "The thing is that I was raped as a child," Carver starts. "And I got over it. I don't feel anything weird about it anymore. I feel good - I feel like a good, live, whole person - and so there's no rape in this one. I just don't need it anymore. I feel like the shows really helped me, more than anything - and I feel like they helped other people, too." However, says Carver, "there's still a lot of murder" - Suckdog's "gore opera" her protesting America's "horrifying" death penalty.

Carver admits that, for Suckdog, 'safe space' protocols are challenging. She considers it "wrong" that they "get consent" before performances because elements ("unexpected violence") may be "triggering" to audience members - this lessens potential empowerment. "What I wanted to do is wake people up and make people feel more fully alive and unapologetic and just celebrating themselves - including celebrating bad things about them."