Let’s get this out of the way: the skinhead look scares the shit out of a lot of people. And honestly? Fair. Buzzed heads, bomber jackets, steel-toe boots you could kick in a storefront window with. It’s not exactly the uniform of your neighborhood brunch twink in a Shein tank top. You see a guy in combat boots with white laces, and most folks don’t think queer liberation. They think trouble.
But zoom in a little. Look past the surface. Past the boot polish, the aggro energy, the sneer. Underneath all that is something raw, real, and often queer as fuck.
Yeah. Gay skinheads exist. Have existed. And they’re not new, they’re not lost, and they’re definitely not here to explain themselves.
Not All Skinheads Are Racists — Sit With That
Most people hear “skinhead” and immediately think racist. That’s by design. The media sold you that image in the ‘80s, and the Nazi punks were more than happy to play along. But the original skinhead scene? It wasn’t white nationalist. It wasn’t even white. It was Black. Brown. Jamaican. British. Working class.
Born out of the collision between rude boy culture and pissed-off British youth, the skinhead was never supposed to be about hate. It was about survival. It was about class pride and wearing your armor. It was ska and reggae and beer and boots and saying “fuck you” to the world that kept you broke and pissed on.
But then the boneheads came — and tried to co-opt it all. Like locusts. They took the aesthetic, stripped out the soul, and painted swastikas on something that wasn’t ever theirs.
The Laces Code: Myth, Meaning, and the Middle Finger
So here we are: white laces.
Yeah, they’ve been associated with white power. That’s the code on the street — or at least the one passed down through crusty zines and gangland whisper networks. White laces mean you’ve “earned your boots” by doing violence. Some say it’s a nod to supremacist ideology. It’s murky, it’s regional, and a lot of it is performative bullshit.
But in queer hands? Those white laces become something else entirely.
They’re a challenge. A provocation. A mirror held up to a world that loves to simplify the uncomfortable. Imagine a gay skin in a harness and jackboots, white laces blazing, grinding up on someone at a fetish night, knowing full well what people might think — and not giving a single fuck.
This isn’t ignorance. It’s reclamation. It’s saying: “We know what this used to mean, and we’re taking it back. Or better yet — we’re breaking it apart and making it filthy, sexy, dangerous, and ours.”
White Laces as Gay Liberation
Wearing white laces, for these queers, isn’t a mistake. It’s a fucking revolution.
It’s about standing in the middle of a culture that tried to erase you—both queer and skinhead—and daring to take up space anyway. It’s about subverting the symbols of hate and injecting them with so much queer sex, love, defiance, and joy that they lose all their venom.
It’s the same logic behind voguing in the face of violence, or leather daddies marching at Pride. You show up in the costume they fear — and then you kiss your boyfriend in it. You lock eyes with every homophobe who ever told you you didn’t belong, and you lace those boots tighter.
White laces aren’t about white power anymore. Not here. Not in these circles. They’re about gay power. About visibility. About rewriting the script.
They say: I know the history. I’m not here to forget it — I’m here to burn it down and build something queer in the rubble.
Being a Queer Skinhead Isn’t a Costume. It’s a Fucking Statement.
These guys — and not just guys, by the way — aren’t playing dress-up. They aren’t trying to shock your brunch table for kicks. This is identity forged in fire. This is queerness with sharp edges. It’s kink. It’s brotherhood. It’s trauma. It’s choosing to walk through the world armored, because sometimes fishnets just don’t cut it.
You’ll find them in Berlin basements, in New York warehouses, at fetish nights and backyard beer bashes. You’ll find them blending Oi! with house music, spitting on genre, breaking the mold. Their politics? Anti-fascist. Their love? Deep. Their community? Fierce, freaky, and loyal as hell.
And yeah, some of them wear white laces.
Final Word: Don’t Look Away
If this makes you uncomfortable, good. Sit in it. Learn from it. Question your assumptions about what queerness looks like — and what symbols can mean when queers get their hands on them.
Because queer liberation was never meant to be clean. It was never meant to be soft or safe or sweet-smelling. It was always going to wear steel-toes.
White laces and all.
