For most of my life, I knew only one script of masculinity: loud, invulnerable, in control at any cost. Precisely because of that, it was Depeche Mode who taught me that there is another kind of strength — one that lives in trembling, in losing control, in saying out loud: I am not okay yet.
Shake the Disease: More Than a Medical Case
"After all I am only human, what do you expect from me" hit me at a time when I had almost lost myself. Years of radical neurosurgical interventions and an invasive implant had turned me into a case file, a technical problem to be managed. I had unlearned how to feel my own body.
In "Shake the Disease", I heard a man refuse to be more than human. For me, the "shaking" became a metaphor: I was shaking off not my disability, but stigma, the passive role of the patient, the frozen state of trauma. It marked the shift back to being a person who acts rather than someone acted upon.
Lines like "Understand me, I am as gentle as can be, I am as weak as I can be" insist that behind medical technology and scars there is a tender, fragile soul. Weakness is not hidden, but named — and that honesty is disarming in its power.
Walking in My Shoes: Empathy Over Judgment
"Before you come to any conclusion, try walking in my shoes" is a counter‑spell against all forms of outside judgment. I have been assessed by functionality most of my life — fit for work or not, resilient or not, too complex or still manageable. Depeche Mode reverse the gaze: don't judge what you have never had to carry.
This song allows me to stumble. Disability and trauma become part of my path, not a shameful defect. "Now I'm not looking for absolution, forgiveness for the things I do" — I am not asking for pity, but for recognition.
There is gratitude in it as well: for doctors like Prof. Vajkoczy, who helped make my new life possible. But the daily work of "walking in these shoes" remains mine — lonely, exhausting, and in its own way heroic.
Somebody, Clean, Wrong, Stripped: Vulnerability as a Political Script
In "Somebody", a man articulates a longing for a partner who meets him with genuine openness, beyond roles and performance. For someone like me, living with shattered basic trust and a complicated relationship to intimacy, this is radical. Vulnerability here means admitting that I want closeness without giving up my hard‑won autonomy.
"Clean" marked the moment when the noise of my youth stopped. I knew self‑hatred, numbness, and emotional distance dressed up as rationality. While emo music often glorified the fight, "Clean" celebrates the calm after the storm — the quiet dignity of someone who has hit bottom and stands up anyway.
"Wrong" gave me a language for my first‑generation experience. Among perfectly planned CVs and well‑bred careers, I was the outlier, the error. Yet Depeche Mode turn "wrong" into a rallying cry: if I am wrong, maybe the system is too narrow. My mistrust of easy answers and my sensitivity to injustice became analytical tools, not character flaws.
"Stripped" was the starting point for my political science studies. "Let me see you stripped, down to the bone" describes what critical theory does at its best: stripping away layers of ideology. My own vulnerability became a seismograph that feels how power writes itself into bodies.
Androgyny, BDSM, Stage Presence: Undoing the Strong Man Myth
Depeche Mode's masculinity differs sharply from traditional pop‑rock archetypes. Instead of dominating the stage, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore show fragility, ambiguity, and pleasure in blurring gender boundaries.
Gahan's movements are fluid and hip‑driven; his half‑naked, sweating body is not a symbol of control, but of exposure and struggle. He has described his stage presence as a form of exorcism and said that true strength came only when he learned to accept his weakness.
Gore, meanwhile, often stands almost motionless, eyes closed or lowered, dressed in skirts, leather straps, or mesh tops. He has spoken about never feeling at home in a world of "hard men" and about his desire to undermine rigid gender binaries. In a rock culture long marked by machismo, this is a quiet, sustained resistance.
In their videos, they dismantle classic power fantasies: the king in "Enjoy the Silence" is a lonely wanderer with a folding chair, not a ruler of empires. The protagonist in "Walking in My Shoes" is portrayed as tormented and searching, not victorious.
Male Vulnerability as Feminist Resource
Songs like "Master and Servant" or "I Feel You" explore power and submission without falling into misogyny. Women are not reduced or mocked; they appear as equal or even saving forces. Masculinity is not defined by dominance, but by its capacity to feel and to question itself.
This radical emotionality — addiction, fear, self‑doubt — is feminist in its core. It rejects the script that tells men to suppress feelings and keep their pain offstage. For me, as a disabled, traumatised woman, that matters: it means I do not have to fight my vulnerability against an ideal of male invulnerability.
It also opens the possibility of alliance. Instead of seeing men only as holders of power, I can see them as people damaged by the same norms that hurt me — norms that punish vulnerability, softness, and need in all genders.
A Personal Note to Martin Gore
If I could write directly to Martin Gore, I would say: Even though my heart belongs first to U2, your art has been crucial for my own emancipation. At a time when medical interventions made me feel like a technically determined cyborg, your music created a space where my fragility became my deepest truth, not my biggest flaw.
Your refusal to play the invincible hero helped me accept my scars as autonomous strength and step out of the role of the passive object. Your songs taught me that pain and searching are not signs of weakness, but tools of a woman who fiercely insists on her integrity. Thank you for showing me that we are most human when we dare to stay stripped — and therefore truly real.