I always think that people think that women in music are always angry. I'm not angry. Rock 'n' roll music made by men is so much more over-the-top aggressive than when a women says "you" and they're screaming it, it's like, 'Oh my God!' I'm like, 'Have you heard rock music made by men?'

This archaic idea - that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural - will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

All this fashion stuff - who's cool now - is just a bigger version of the cool kids versus the nerds.

Because I didn't have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn't hand us enough variety to choose from.

Thanks to capitalism, the importance placed on beauty has never been so manipulated. We are the guinea pigs force-fed ads that tell us how pathetic we are: that we will never be loved, happy or valuable unless we have the body, the face, the hair, even the personality that will apparently be ours, if only we buy their products.

We were a small group of weirdos and baby punks and gays and free spirits who had to use our imaginations a lot. We only saw pictures and read zines, so we could only interpret the aesthetic and message of punk scenes around the world. We were basically the duck-billed platypuses of punk.