Amanda at Pandagon has a
post up about the Bitch Magazine article on masculinity and rock. Read hers, and then come back for more:
Back already?
Okay. In the comment sections of
my post the other day about women and rock music, Joan Jett made an appearance.
Momentary Academic started if off by saying that she was inspired by Joan Jett to pick up a guitar and learn to play. Well, apparently not everyone was inspired by Jett to create music; some people were inspired to be reactionary assholes.
The
Bitch article, written by Juliana Tringali and titled ""Love, Guns, Tight Patns, and Big Sticks: Who Put the Cock in Rock?", discusses the reaction to Ms. Jett's band The Runaways. Tringali writes that male critics treated The Runaways with contempt, with one review beginning, "These bitches suck". A quote from Jett:
"First, people just tried to get around it by saying, 'Oh wow, isn't that cute? Girls playing rock and roll!' and when we said, 'Yeah, right, this isn't a phase; it's what we want to do with our lives', it became 'Oh! You must be a bunch of sluts! You dykes, you whores.'"
There is nothing new about women being called sluts and whores and bitches when they venture into male dominated territory. What are those words and concepts - bitch, whore, slut, etc- but ways of regulating women's behavior, disciplining us into staying in our narrow little spheres? Suffragettes demanding the right to vote were spat upon and called similar disparaging names. As Susan Faludi documented in her book
Backlash, women venturing into male dominated workforces, to do traditionally "masculine" work, are often greated with extreme forms of sexual harassment. Perhaps one day you'll find a photo from a skin mag taped on your locker; perhaps the next day it'll be the word "whore" in big black letters for all to see. In this woman hating, sex fearing culture, a "slut", or "whore" is the worst thing a woman can be. It says a lot that these sexually loaded terms are used against women when they venture out of the "feminine" sphere in ways that have nothing to do with sexual behavior.
The Riot Grrrls knew the power of these words, knew what they were for, and responded by writing them on their bellies in big black letters and walking around in half shirts with their bellies, and these powerful words, for all to see. They refused to be disciplined, and they refused to let the boys at punk shows tell them to "show us your tits" and get away with it. The Riot Grrrls claimed those labels - "slut", "whore", "bitch" and turned them upside down. If I'm a slut or a whore or a bitch because I'm doing what you've always felt privileged to do - whether that be fucking or rocking or speaking my mind- well than I'm damn proud to be a slut whore bitch. And by the way, fuck you and that medieval horse you rode in on.
The fact is, rocking women are threatening to some people, just like women making inroads into areas once dominated by men are always threatning to some people. It's not just men who are threatened, either. If you've got a narrow and rigid idea of gender, and your identity and sense of self is strongly associated with that concept, then you're going to feel threatened by people who cross those boundaries. And especially, perhaps, if you're male and enjoy male privilege and have a stake in masculine supremacy. How threatening must it be to have a bunch of chicks suddenly challenging your right to your privilege? How special is masculinity, anyway, if just anyone can do it, even a bunch of
girls?
So the sad reality of it all is that our deeply ingrained notions of gender shape how we understand rock music just as they shape how we understand everything else. If we value masculinity in men, a male rocker is going to seem like the ultimate studly man. If we value femininty in women, a female rocker is going to seem to like a freak, a trangressor, a poser, a dyke whore slut. And when we have this scaredy cat music industry run by a bunch of money grubbing CEOs who want to play it safe and sign "marketable" acts and understand women's appeal almost entirely in terms of tits and ass, a gender transgressor is not going to get a lot of support.
Rock stars are not born, they are made. They are made by the rock star machine. The rock star machine is the music industry, which is made up of A & R people who are probably more concerned about their careers than whether or not we all get to hear innovative, excellent music. It is made up of CEOs who are concerned about generating a profit and keeping the shareholders happy. It's made up of PR people, marketing people, radio station music directors and program managers (who can add a song to a playlist, or not, and thereby break an artist, or not) music writers and critics, and people who order product for record stores. And a bunch of other people. And each one of these people has attitudes and tastes shaped by the gender ideology of their culture.
The production of a rock star usually invovles the commitment of a craploads of money for promotion. It takes a village to raise a rock star, and it takes a lot of money and a lot of time. People are making phone calls, people are crafting an image, people are coming up with promotions and cross promotions and making sexy videos and doing the behind the scenes work to get the songs on the radio and the videos on MTV and to get you into
Rolling Stone and on and on and on. And when it pays off, the record company makes a ton of money, and when it fails, they lose a ton of money. And so if the record company doesn't think you have a shot at being a rock star, they don't pour the money and the time into promoting you, and you go nowhere.
And they're not going to make this investment in you if they don't really believe you have a shot.
And if you are a gender transgressor - a bitch, slut, whore, dyke, or someone who comes off that way to narrow minded audiences- they aren't likely to do it. And so, whatever your ambitions, if you're not ready and willing to tart it up - to lose a few pounds and start doing pilates three hours a day, to wear a sexy outfit and purr and pout, or write and sing songs that make you seem more victim-like and less threatening (Alannis Morissette anyone?) you're likely to end up at a small, independent label, or maybe nowhere. And there's nothing wrong with the small, independent labels - those are my favorite labels, and many of them are very supportive of women artists of all kinds - but it's funamentally unfair that many women artists don't have options beyond the small labels.
And it means that we will continue to have far fewer girls being inspired to pick up a guitar at age 12, like Momentary Academic did, and far more boys being inspired to pick up a guitar at age 12. And that means that we all lose out, because there is talent being wasted, and there are possibilities not even being dreamed of. And that is just a damn shame.
