(no subject)

[jfb]

Today at Borders I bought the latest issue of Bitch. Some of you know me well enough to be amused by the image of me walking up to the counter with that title in my hand. The sales clerk said, "... new bitch!" I nodded and smiled.

Motivated, in case you're wondering, by Amanda Marcotte's post about Juliana Tringali's article about "how rock music came to be dominated by men, and female musicians who subvert that". Looks good, haven't read it yet.

Comments

[helloreplace.livejournal.com]

Rock shows are chick hostile - if not physically then psychically. It's like a women's little secret, very unspoken amongst women who work in or regularly consume rock. You'd no more talk about it, even today than you would talk about tampons in 1950. (I hope i worded that so it implies the tabu on hygiene product talk was in the 50s very hush hush)

Anyway, it's addressed beautifully at girlsrockcamp.org - my favorite charity, where they teach four core disciplines to wanna be pint sized girl rockers - musical instruments, performance, publishing and self defense. publishing to help them give a voice and context to their experiences (done in zine like ways) performance and musicianship for obvious reasons, and then self defense so the girls feel comfortable in rock clubs, so they feel safe unto themselves.

Seeing girls before and after GRC is like watching time lapse photography on a tree from sapling to mighty oak. It's the most moving thing in the world to see how rock changes and empowers these girls - they may never be in bands, they may never be rock stars, but they feel so powerful and develop such huge respect for themselves it becomes almost unbelievable in the retelling. But I digress - the real point is, the threat is definitely there. I'm very very tall, so I rarely felt directly threatened (I used to go to shows 5x/week and I was on the road with a few bands throughout the early 90s) but there were times when I felt the zeitgeist of the crowd put me in physical danger. (and in fact I've sustained many rock related bystander injuries, and not just from GG Alin) But a lot of the threat comes from being on the business end of a whole lot of men in that heightened totally rocked out state, the music stops they're all wound up and not all of them know how to appropriately wind back down. That doesn't even begin to take into account how many times I've been groped, pinched, patted, verbally - well commented on construction site style by guys who normally have good manners. And I got it light compared to a lot of other girls who had less self possession.

Now I've rambled so much I think I've wholly abandoned addressing the topic at hand so now I will stop typing the end.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insight. I've never really thought about this, which strikes me as odd given my background with both feminism and music. It may be partly because the shows I go to tend away from the rock (that heightened totally rocked out state isn't really my thing), but I'm sure a lot of it is just the usual obliviousness to problems that aren't one's own.

I've looked into GRC now and then, and it makes me happy to know about, but I hadn't realized how many things it's about besides the music. (Actually, this is what makes me an alien at shows, too.) It's in Oregon, right? Last year (I think) Ida and others were working on getting a GRC for NYC.