Submitted for your discussion: Women and Emo

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Someone in The Other Place noted with disapproval the absence of women on the bill at the Reading Festival this year, (compared to women and mixed-gender bands from, say, a decade ago) and discussion quickly devolved into one aobut sexism in music.

I don't follow emo at all, but based simply on my scanning of music mags, the web, etc., it suddenly struck me that one reason for the lack of women is probably the fact that emo bands are so popular now, and every one of the bands that jump to mind are all-male. Is this just my ignorance of the scene? Or am I correct in somehow thinking that emo is a VERY male music?

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think appreciating stuff as "pop" tho involves, or can involve, coming to an understanding of it that includes an imperfect understanding of the scene. One of the things that happens to music - willingly or not - when it becomes "pop" is that the imagined-scene becomes as or even more important than the real scene. This is one of the key reasons why fans and musicians hate pop.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Is this why indie kids hate emo (see FT, obv.)? i.e. they see emo as a 'pop' version of rock.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

My inner indie is on display, no doubt, when I say that emo seems a) conformist (admittedly to a particular subgroup) and b) hypocrtical -- in theory it's all about earnest emotion but somehow seems dishonest.

Now I really am making things up. Because I'm Old.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

You can see this happening a bit in the comments box to the Popular write-up of "San Francisco", which is a really blatant dragging of a scene into a pop context. The pop context plainly one and it's only the dwindling band of hippies who 'were there' that would claim otherwise.

(i.e. "history" bears little or no relation to "memory" shocker)