Silent Drive Vocalist Zach Jordan Under Fire for Transphobic Joke at Furnace Fest Performance
Fans who attended Furnace Fest this past weekend seem to have mostly positive things to say about the last-ish year of the popular festival. However, one of the performances seems to be making waves for all the wrong reasons. Zach Jordan, known for being the guitarist of Bane, apparently made a transphobic joke from the stage while performing with his other project Silent Drive where he is the vocalist, and used a hateful slur for transgender people.
Following the band’s set, a number of people on social media have been talking about Jordan’s bigoted comments. Twitter user @paul_manley posted:
“I was enjoying silent drives set at furnace fest until the vocalist cracked a ‘tranny joke’ and that he can’t be canceled for it. I fully support the lgbtq community and walked away from their stage immediately.”
Further discussion went down in the r/FurnaceFest subreddit when user _GuitaristZag_ explained what happened, saying:
“He said something to the extent of ‘I hooked up with this tr*nny. I didn’t know she was a guy.’
“Dead silence from the crowd. He had just been bitching about how Lambgoat would cancel him for making a handful of jokes about sperm that also fell fairly flat.”
The term “tranny,” according to trans activist and author Julia Serano, started out as a term that was primarily used by transgender people to describe themselves but, over time, has largely become a slur that is used to disparage the transgender community. Some transgender people use the word to describe themselves as a sort of “reclaimed” term, such as transgender punk artist Laura Jane Grace who named her autobiography Tranny, but it’s still used too often in a hateful way towards trans people.
Regardless of how offensive you think the term actually is, the joke as a whole was wildly inappropriate, especially in the current climate, and especially considering that Bane has always stood for inclusivity in the hardcore scene, including an incident last year where a fan got mad at Bane vocalist Aaron Bedard for “praising” trans people. Furthermore, the perception that trans people are “tricking” straight men into sex is a common stereotype that puts trans people’s lives in danger. It’s the root of what is known as the gay/trans panic defense in which violence against queer people is justified because, supposedly, straight people can’t be held responsible for their actions when they perceive a queer person is coming onto them, whether or not that perception is based in reality.
Silent Drive has yet to make any public statement about the incident.
