splendid goth post by beyond the implode r.i.p.. Bits stolen from it:

But deep down, I used to think ; why am I only attracted to goth girls?....the idea of bagging off with a 'normal' girl seemed so dull.

Jeans, trainers and pink t-shirts just don't cut it, desire-wise... (the less said about velour tracksuits the better). The thing is - every girl looks better as a goth, cos you can turn every 'freakish', 'shameful' thing into a defining characteristic: unnaturally tall? Stick on some buckled boots with soles like bricks and strut about like a Brobdingnagian goddess. A bit porky? Wear the most tight-fitting laced-up leather top you can find and exploit the stunned and desirous gazes of your audience. Extremely top-heavy? Bin the sports bra and tip your breasts like over-flowing champagne glasses into a lush pvc number. It's probably only in goth/fetish clubs you'd simultaneously get writhing goth girls giving lap-dances to blokes in wheelchairs, cute girl-on-girl action in the gender undifferentiated toilets and men in bodices called 'psychic wizard'. And what more could you want, eh?!

Despite the prohibitive imperative 'you can't get in unless you're dressed up', goth clubs are way more inclusive (sartorially and socially) than your usual dressed-down but in reality exclusivist outings ('look at his trainers, how sad is that?'): goth is indeed 'a paradoxically egalitarian aristocracy in which membership [is] not guaranteed by birth or beauty but by self-decoration' (k-punk).

I've come to realise that there's few friendlier and less judgemental youth subcultures.

There's a real sense of this. All the mannerisms and abstract codes make for an eminently decorous scenario, where poor/drunkenly flailing behaviour is a mark of your inability to comprehend the 'rules' - which, far from being restrictive (unlike the bodices), allow everyone to get on without fear of being hassled and made weary by out-of-control ejits.

You gotta love goths, especially the girls. It's a strange thing: tons of them would be beautiful in 'real life', and yet they choose to be goths. That would be an honour for any subkultur, but for one so absolutely dogged with criticism and ridicule, it's really a total validation.

Was there any hassle? Did anyone try to sell you a copy of 'Socialist Worker'? Did you get girls in PVC having to fend off rogue hands with bleary blokes going 'Alright darlin'? Did security ever bundle people outside, head-first onto the pavement, as they did in The Venue in New Cross? Did I have to suffer one fucking Blur record all night? NO!

This is exactly right. Goth clubs seem uniquely attractive to women - I wouldn't be surprised if there were more of them than men at places like Slimelight. This totally reverses the atmosphere in other urban haunts and dives. The most sickening and relentlessly aggravating thing about clubs and gigs has always been the aggressive, leery imbalance where, no matter how imperious you attempt to appear, some beered-up twat always touches your arse to make his mates laugh and maintain his position in the 'promise I'm 100% straight at all times, honest guv' league. It's one thing getting dressed up and the exhibitionist drive to be seen and all that, but if you can't actually do it without random blokes pawing at you, it's not much fun. This behaviour, I have deduced, heh heh, takes the form 'fuck you! (aggression...urgh, girls)..fuck you? (but I quite fancy you)'

Partly this is a question of numbers. If men outnumber women 20 or 10 to one, say (like most philosophy departments, gigs, comic shops, men's toilets, erm, etc.), then the relatively solitary f is going to get the kind of attention that makes her simultaneously intriguing but frequently hated ('she's a trouble maker!', 'who does she think she is!'). All the pataphysics of male padding-about and female complicity - instead of realising the structural logic of the situation, how easy is it to fall into the trap of actively wanting to be the only woman, the exception...instead of 'competing' for male attention, goth girls level the ground by a. all looking unbelievably stunning, and b. not being bothered about inviting attention because what could be more boring, in the end, than all those 'natural' expressions of desire? Sex is for animals!

UPDATE: all the goths you could ever want