What does it mean to be an all girl rock band in a gendered genre?
Bands: Sleater Kinney, Bikini Kill, Warpaint
Who doesn’t want to watch a ‘kick-ass’ all girl rock band, right? At least, that was the thought that lead me to wonder, what does it mean to be someone who identifies as a ‘girl’ in an often overwhelming world of male representation? First I want to acknowledge my own bias and experience with this scene as a musician, vocalist and avid listener of rock, punk, metal and grunge. I see the viscerality of rock music as an outlet to express frustration, anger, grief, sorrow and by writing music as a way to deal with my own personal stress and create art as a method for social change. Often rock and metal deal with subject content relating to real issues such as climate change, intimate partner violence and rape, suicide, homophobia and white privilege; I have been exposed to questioning discourse in intellectually appropriate ways because of my exposure to rock music and yes I am inspired by the likes of women in rock and groups in the riot grrrl movement then and now; such as Carrie Brownstein(Of Sleater-Kinney) and Warpaint. Thus, I decided to investigate further how exactly rock is gendered and what it means to be a feminist movement using a genre generally outnumbered with men musicians and listeners.
It is easy to see the disparities exist in the rock world between the ways in which female musicians are represented. In 2001, the UK magazine Q, took it upon themselves to write an article called “Sirens”, distinguishing 100 different female artists; however, in this same issue was a critiques guide to the best album of the year and of the 50 featured groups, only 8 had at least one female member. In fact, compiling a series of publications between 1997 and 2001 shows that between only 9-22% of the articles featured female musicians that means that over 78% of these complied articles are all male musicians. That is a staggeringly low number of representation of females which brings me to now address the question, how is it that rock is male gendered genre?
It isn’t because the genre is inherently male, it is highly influenced by the music industry and how they produce their “canons,” their rock canon has been decidedly male and they create a world where women are outsiders. A music canon is the way in which something is portrayed and sold through the media and through consumerism. Rock being a male practice is in turn perpetuated by the hegemonic socialization of the genre through the music industry. Rock is then portrayed ‘as a man’s world,’ it is too brutal, too angry for women; the discourse is dominant and aggressive, and women only succeed, in this view, only through proving their “worth” through utilizing these masculine values. It is easier for the industry to let women rock if they pass as, “one of the boys’ or are sexualized enough that they become objects and are seen only as popular because of their looks and not their talents. To be a women in rock is to encounter a sort of marginalization, where one is seen as less competent or a faddish commodity.
Yet with the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 90’s in the Pacific Northwest and the UK women bring feminist discourse into the scene, creating a wholly different idea of what it means. Bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater Kinney are creating a world in which they combat hegemonic masculinity through a means in which hegemonic masculinity is enforced. When asking a female female drummer of the band 7 Year Bitch whether or not they are a feminist group (outside of the established feminist movement of the Riot Grrrl) she said that they didn’t come together to be a feminist band, they’re just making music but she recognizes that their practice of writing and producing their own music is a feminist critique, although their group doesn’t have very many explicitly feminist lyrics. Reminding us that feminism are the actions you take and through reclaiming your own power in a scene that brings your value down is a feminist action. The gaining popularity and critical success of the Riot Grrrl! movement implies that rock is not as ‘manly’ as it seems.Showing that the genre does not have to be gendered, it only is because our societal values and the music’s industries place representing music media made it that way.
Here are some links to fuller books about these concepts:
https://books.google.com/books?id=D8hKTzRbepEC&pg=PA192&lpg=PA192&dq=women+in+rock+sociology&source=bl&ots=fzAhWL-bjj&sig=ybAEsf0spc5TrBCf0ecZ9T1soJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin-IWCm87JAhUT0WMKHeNrBYcQ6AEILDAD#v=onepage&q=women%20in%20rock%20sociology&f=false
The gendered nature of the rock world is definitely an interesting subject. In some ways the rock world is much more subversive and open to alternate forms of sexuality than society at large. Many alternative rock bands even seek to actively challenge the hegemonic view of sexuality in very direct ways. Yet at the same time there exists almost the antithesis of that openness with all the machismo and worship of male sexuality that is apparent in many bands, and is in fact used to sell their image. I definitely think that the dominance of masculinity gets stronger the deeper into the record industry you go. This is probably because the industry is dominated by male driven companies seeking a profit rather than creative freedom. The industry pushes band to appeal more to societal views rather than challenge them, thus causing bands to adopt the same hegemonic masculinity views as society.
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