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

Where the girls aren't.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

'In those bands [Jawbox, Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate], there were songs about women, girls who weren't exclusively defined by their absence or lensed through romantic-spectre [sic.]. [...] In Jawbreaker songs women had leverage, had life, had animus and agency to them. Sometimes they were friends, or a siste, not always girl to be bedded or pursued or dumped by. They were accurate, and touched by reality. [...]'

ok: Hopper sees this as a change within emo culture rather than a defining attribute of it (when she started going to punk rock shows she could see Bikini Kill, or Babes in Toyland). She doesn't do much to try and explain it, except to say that this is music by adolescent boys for adolescent boys and none of them KNOW very much about 'real' women. She worries about all the young girls crowding down to the front of emo shows ("won't somebody think of the children!") who don't have the reference points she does which allow her to call out the emo boys. (Of course the two trends may be directly related, but she doesn't consider this, or the contempt that rock has always had for its audience (c.f. koganbot, on this).)

'I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, because there are no girls, there is no them up there. I wonder if they are being thwarted by the fact that there is no presentation of girls as participants, but rather only as consumers--or if we reference the songs directly--the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this.'

She recognises that much of what punk rock promises (i.e. difference, being outside the norm, something different from the mainstream) is largely a hollow sham, but that this is still what attracts young people seeking to express their anger / alienation. She thinks there's still a space for some kind of connection through this, but not for women if there are no 'real' women onstage or in the songs.

So she doesn't say much, really. I don't know if she thinks that punk rock is the only place where this good stuff can happen.