If we look at people's culture nowaday, we can see that straight edge is a non-smoking, non-alcohol, non-drugs abusing, and non-free sex culture among hardcore and punk scene. Seems like if you want to be a straight edge you have to play and love that genre of music.
It's true that straight edge culture was born in hardcore punk scene, but that's not the point. Straight edge firstly introduced by an 80's hardcore punk band, Minor Threat with its vocalist Ian Mackaye who wrote a song named Out Of Step which its lyric contained straight edge things like “don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t fuck, but at least i can fucking thing”.
The “X,” Straight Edge’s universal symbol, emerged in the early 1980s, when music club owners marked the hands of underage concert-goers with X’s to ensure that bartenders would not serve them alcohol. Soon the kids intentionally marked their own hands, both to signal club workers of their intentions not to drink and, more importantly, to make a statement of pride and defiance out of not drinking. The movement appropriated the X, a symbol meant to be negative, transforming its meaning into discipline and commitment to a drug-free lifestyle.
Being a straight edge doesn't mean that you have to listen exclusively to hardcore, to wear a certain kind of clothing, to collect sXe (popular abreviation of straight edge) tattoos, to attend shows twice a week, or to be a pretentious, judgemental jerk. Straight Edge, at its core, is none of these things. Despite its misconceptions, the movement has a long way to go to live up to what I see as its true potential. Yet for all it’s contradictions, sXe has inspired thousands of kids to live intentional lives.
Being straight edge is not because you want to be cool, that’s why there's a slogan “straight edge isn’t cool anymore”. You don’t join straight edge, you take on the straight edge. You just get involved in the scene and start thinking for yourself.
It's not about the music you listen to, it's what’s the inside that counts.
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