Frontwoman Laura Jane Grace Proves That the Personal Is Always Political

The punk rock trailblazer on fighting for what she believes in

- JONAH BAYER

Laura Jane Grace has been minutely scrutinized since she started the band Against Me! as an anarchist inspired solo project in 1997. Punk purists frothed as the Gainesville, Florida group’s sound evolved from lo-fi-folk to full-on anthemic pop punk, leading to a major-label record deal in 2007. (These days, the band releases music on its own Total Treble imprint.) Fans and critics stopped and stared when Grace came out as transgender in 2012—an event with few precedents in the testosterone-drenched world of punk rock. This November, two months after the release of the seventh Against Me! album, Shape Shift With Me, Grace will cap off her odyssey so far with a memoir titled Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout.

Back in May, Grace made headlines for burning her birth certificate onstage in North Carolina to protest the state’s anti-trans bathroom law. But her music and writing signal a more intimate strain of activism: Listening to Against Me! songs such as “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” and “True Trans Soul Rebel,” it becomes clear that Grace has always lived where the personal and the political collide. Her painfully honest, deeply human way of articulating that friction is the definition of Grace. And she still believes in the scene that has sustained her, even as it has threatened to drown her in expectations. “The influence that punk rock has had on my life is astounding,” she says. “I just think music is infinitely important.”

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