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

[cis.livejournal.com]

It's theater-kid music, I think? in the imaginary american high school we can all recognise, boys who are excluded from the male mainstream due to being geeky and effeminate.

There is something very satisfying in someone else being unhappy and unreasonable for you. For good or ill, it's generally assumed that women are more emotionally vulnerable than men, so the sound of a men being irrationally emotional can have more impact if you assume it's had to break through more layers of socially-expecetd repression.

[cis.livejournal.com]

And the artifice - this is the theater-kid thing, it's very consciously histrionic, literally "acting up". Pantomime, melodrama, tragicomedy (P!ATD sometimes do this kind of semi-brechtian thing they totally learnt in drama class). Taking what you're given to the extreme: if I'm supposed to be effeminate i'll go androgyne and wear eyeliner, if I'm suposed to be angry i'll be incoherently spitting rage, if I'm supposed to be sad i'll be the saddest person in the world.