‘Take the toys from the boys’: Gender, generation and anarchist intent in the work of Poison Girls

Alongside Crass, Poison Girls were the central catalysts for the emergent anarcho-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although the work of Crass has been subject to an increasing degree of retrospective scrutiny in recent years, the singular contribution of Poison Girls to the anarcho-punk rubric has remained largely unexplored. Poison Girls shared the anarchist impulses of Crass, but refracted their anti-capitalist perspectives through a distinctive anarcha-feminist prism. Reflected throughout the canon of the band’s work was a twin focus on the politics of gender and of generation which was arguably unique amongst their punk contemporaries. After a short and intensive period of close collaboration with Crass, Poison Girls opted for renewed independence and (as the wider anarchist punk movement expanded and diversified) began to explore a very different approach to the practice of being an anarchist band from the model established by Crass. Willing to break with the ‘shibboleths’ of anarchist punk, Poison Girls nevertheless retained a strong fidelity to its underlying principles even as they moved away from its more stringent, ‘outsider’ DIY assumptions. Poison Girls’ own punk practice provides an illuminating counter-point to the experience of Crass, and puts into sharp relief the tensions raised by the attempt to be anarchist interlopers in the musical mainstream.