Category: Sexism

Under My Thumb

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“Discussions and analyses of music—whether on TV, in books or in the music press—have always been full of the stories of men. When female fans appear in these stories it is often through the eyes and from the perspectives of men – as muses, groupies or fangirls—meaning that women’s own experiences, ideas and arguments about the music they love are marginalized or glossed over. Women in music are frequently fetishised and objectified both in song lyrics and in real life, viewed purely in relation to men and through their impact on the male ego. But this hasn’t stopped generations of women from loving, being moved by and critically appreciating music—however that music may feel about them…”

Edited by Rhian E. Jones and Eli Davies, Under My Thumb: Songs That Hate Women and The Women Who Love Them is available now. See some early reader reviews at Goodreads.

The World Needs Female Rock Critics

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When I was about fourteen, I stood outside science class holding a folder that was decorated with an array of faces which I had carefully cut out from the pages of music magazines. Pointing to a photo of Björk on my folder, a passing boy sneered at me, “I bet you don’t even know who she is.” (This would have been around 1995, when the music press was having one of its periodic crushes on Women in Rock.) I did know who Björk was, because my mother, who was young and groovy, had raised me on the Sugarcubes, the Icelandic band that Björk was a member of before she launched her solo career. I don’t remember raising this point with my accuser, but if I had I doubt he would have believed me. The record store, the guitar shop, and now social media: when it comes to popular music, these places become stages for the display of male prowess. Female expertise, when it appears, is repeatedly dismissed as fraudulent. Every woman who has ever ventured an opinion on popular music could give you some variation (or a hundred) on my school corridor run-in, and becoming a recognized “expert” (a musician, a critic) will not save you from accusations of fakery.

– Anwen Crawford, “The World Needs Female Rock Critics,” The New Yorker

“On Women Writing About Music”

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“Allow me to set a spell in my rocking chair and reminisce about the days when I was coming up in the music writing world. This was the late 1970s, early 1980s. At the time, music writing was truly a boys’ club, with few women I could look to as rock critic role models. Ellen Willis, Ariel Swartley, Janet Maslin. Lisa Robinson and Sylvie Simmons. That’s about it. My mentors and editors in the music writing field were all male. And somehow, even in those prehistoric days, I was never made to feel lesser, stupid, objectified or that my opinions were undervalued. If it were not for Kit Rachlis, Milo Miles, Dave Marsh and Mark Moses, I would not have had a career. They were my champions and they treated me as an equal. Was I just extraordinarily lucky?  Maybe so. It’s depressing that some young women writing about music today feel so unwelcome in the job and the scene that they love, are subjected to more open sexism and flat-out workplace harassment now than I was then. We’ve gone backwards and I don’t know the answer to this problem, except to keep fighting for equality.”

– Joyce Millman at her invaluable blog, The Mix Tape

Regarding Her Husband’s Stupid Record Collection

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“Because it was endearing when I wanted to consume my boyfriend’s record collection at 15 and liked being quizzed on singles and trivia — but when I later covered music for years for the alt-weekly in Nashville at 28 as the local rock scene there simmered up, I got an unending stream of shit for daring to write like I thought I had something to say that mattered in the slightest. (Yes, this is true in many ways for any woman who writes anything on the Internet, but especially in male dominated fields.)”

– Tracy Moore, Oh, the Unbelievable Shit You Get Writing About Music as a Woman (Jezebel)
– A lot of good stuff in this firecracker of an essay, which summarizes and spits out an online fracas last week regarding the blog, My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection.