This is the fourth track off our new EP Survival Songs. Coming out this summer on Start a Fire Records. After talking to some friends, I decided to write up some liner notes for this last song. It's maybe my favorite song on the ep, and one I've been trying to write for a long time. It deserves some explanation.

All of the songs on this EP deal with the validation of existence. Whether it be one's right to exist at all times of day without the fear of violence, one's right to exist as a radical revolutionary in solidarity with those who have gone to prison or payed even greater prices for justice, or the rights of impoverished citizens of a country to not be brainwashed into thinking that joining in military service is their only chance to move up in class or succeed in their society.

This last track deals with the concept of gender. For the most part gender is a created concept, and everyone has the ability to transcend and subvert the ideas and stipulations that we as a society ascribe to male and female identities.

I think the idea for this song started when my friend Rocko who was previously calling themselves Em, decided to adopt their current name for good. The blockhead that I am was confused and somewhat startled, because at the time in my head, Rocko was the name of a cartoon wallaby, or a very fat and hairy Italian man who slings pizza in Essex Vermont.

Besides the obvious issues surrounding these assumptions, the main thing that I needed to come to terms with, is that while my two chosen Rockos were fictional, my best friend Rocko was a very real person, who I interact with not as much as I think either of us would like, becuase they make really fucking great bagels and am at band practice or too lazy to walk the three blocks to eat said bagels and talk to said person.

So what I needed to come to grips with is that a close friend of mine had decided to change their identity to something that was more preferential and comfortable to them, because that's how they chose to exist, and no one else should have any say in that matter, especially me.

I needed to understand that the values that I find commendable and admirable within a human are much stronger than a name, much stronger than the idea of gender, and perhaps this name change wouldn't change the person that I was used to, but actually represent the correct title of that person, instead of the incorrect one that I had been used to for the 2-3 years prior that I had known them.

I can source pretty much everything I know about gender construction and breaking gender binaries to Rocko and I learn more every day from them and how their confidence and how their resilience shapes the same characteristics within me, and how I've come to view my own identity. This songs is and will always be dedicated to them.

We're a punk band and to me punk has always been about unapologetically, and vehemently being yourself. Following down that logical path, it seems that gender. which is so confining and rigid is something as punks we bend, and snap, as is our nature.

So the statement that I really want to get across in this song, is that all of the definitions and characteristic behind the gender that we were all assigned at birth are just the start, and you as an individual have every right to be whoever and whatever you'd like to be (provided that you are not hurting anyone else), and in a perfect world not be punished or judged for those choices, this includes preference of sexual practices, choice in sexual partners, and a choice in different dynamics within those relationships, from everything to being completely asexual, to BDSM, (don't yuck someone else's yum). but this isn't a perfect world so the next best thing we can adopt is a big fuck you to anyone who would seek to control our identities, actions, or thoughts in any way. That's what this song is about.

I am nothing you can define, we are nothing you can define.