when dates go wrong

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Some of you probably know that my last date - my first since breaking up with my last girlfriend four months back - ended in an argument over pop music. She thought that liking Girls Aloud made me a misogynist, since they were obviously selected by a gang of perverted old men just to look good, and who cared about the music? My arguments, when she would listen to any, which was basically never, were that a) no they weren't, they were selected by Pop Idol voters, overwhelmingly young women, and b) that didn't stop the records being great. She then cited an even worse example: Tatu. "Their new album is fantastic," I said, by this point very much wanting the date to be over. This made me a rabid homophobe, since they are clearly not real lesbians. I was rather losing what thread there was to these arguments by this point - and the one thing that kept being repeated, as if it was self-evidently linked to my misogyny and homophobia, was that they were manufactured disposable pop. I realised I've been living in a sheltered world the last few years, and forgot that such thinking was still out there. (The woman expressed a fondness for Jeff Buckley and k.d. lang, who is clearly a proper lesbian.) ((Also, hello, I just joined.))

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Don't even get me started on this. My last "date" ended up in similar sorts of arguments.

The bloke was trying to wrangle my words when I was saying "I genuinely love X because it is SO MUCH what it is!" into my love of X being ironic.

I mean both 1 and 2 above seem to be more indicative of the "indie" frame of listening to music - that you like it because of what it represents, an aesthetic or a philosophical idea, rather than how it sounds, how it *feels* when you listen to it.

I mean, for me, "I don't like it because it's overproduced" is a valid excuse, when "I don't like it because it's a manufactured band" is just not.

But anyway, to go back to Martin's original point, when I was having said conversation, I realised that I could never have a relationship with the person. If he could be that purist and dogmatic about music, what would he be like about ethics and philosophical things that actually affected your life/relationship?

My reaction in the end was to send him a link, going "there's this little webboard you might be interested in" and hoping that a few years on ILX might have the same effect on him that it had on me. (though I suspect ILM has changed too much since the early days to serve this function any more.) He has been posting, but who knows how far it will go.

-Kate (not logged in because I don't believe in LJ)