So glad to see this get more traction in the MSM:
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Lonely…um, gosh, doesn’t he think any of those working women are…GASP…friends with one another? They might even…I dunno…form groups…ooooooo.
Y’know, I don’t often agree with some stuff my brother says, but he told me the other day that Western society is in puberty, if you compare its evolution to that of the growth of a human being. And when he said that, I saw Brett Kavanaugh’s angry face, and I knew my brother was right.
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“Actually…”
It was not.
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I haven’t read this yet. I’m too pissed off about the fact that I didn’t know about it before.
https://pleasekillme.com/womens-music-movement/?fbclid=IwAR3vSk0gNT5yIkGz2c7P27WzfOWcUzMXZxHaRaI9FEoLDlPC5R-qPjkgdoI
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Before you get too enamored, you should know that the jewel in the crown – the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival – was a TERF shitfest, especially by the end. In fact, that’s why it stopped: they took their ball and went home rather than have to allow entry to trans women.
edited to add: also, lots of prejudice against bi and straight women. I know of one lesbian folk artist who stopped performing in Chicago with her friends, because one was a straight woman and one was a straight man, and the heckling and booing was insane.
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Oh, I read the article. It’s appalling to me that that should happen. And the string lines dividing people…I had to read it twice.
Just the idea, though, of women not Stevie Nicks having some sort of voice - literal and metaphorical - in popular music, and treated as artists and musicians…
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There are a mix of events now:
Obviously music is off my list, but if I recover enough to travel, some of the events are explicitely trans-inclusive.
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Hmmm…this is a bit after my time. Don’t you have to be 25-44 to be a part of it, lol?
Remember: There’s still ageism within feminism. I don’t look like I’m gonna be 55 next month, and I mostly don’t act it, whatever the hell someone 55 is s’posed to act like ANYhow; but I just can’t see trying to fit in, even as a sort-of elder-stateswoman.
That doesn’t mean I can’t fit in, just that I can’t see it, LOL!
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Not necessarily. Plenty of older women punks who are boomers embraced and supported the riot grrrl movement and had been a part of the earlier punk scene itself and the riot grrrls most certainly looked up to them. But some of this is also shaped by the idea that youth culture is by its nature confrontational to mainstream values, which can include ageism, too - no doubt. But I think it papers over the actual historically reality of punk scenes from the first wave.
From the beginning, punk had a lot more women actually playing music and starting bands, because the whole point was to challenge norms of the music industry, which included marginalization of women’s voices. The first wave punk scenes were full of women and girls, but that often gets ignored for a focus on hardcore that came later. Bands like the Runaways, X, The Bags, the Plungers, The Raincoats, the Slits, Siouxsie, the Nuns, Talking Heads, Blondie, X-Ray Specs, etc, were all influential on the later Riot Grrrl movement, in part because it HAD become such a white, hetero boys club… They were sort of “taking it back”… and plenty of these women continued to make music right up today.
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I dunno. When I tried to join bands, I wasn’t whatever they wanted and I wasn’t gonna mold myself to be what they wanted. Oh, did I say “bands”? I meant “band”. It was a woman’s blues band, in the 1980s, and it was CLIQUEY. If you didn’t already know someone in the band or knew someone who knew someone who was in the band, forget about it. I don’t think I even got a chance to sing.
Would Debbie Harry have made it had she not fit the standard of pretty?
Addendum: It’s still cliquey. I hate it.
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Yeah, cliquey is a problem in music scenes, as there is often a certain standard and for women that often includes their looks, as much as, or sometimes more so, than their talent.
In the punk scene, that could still play a role, but then again, being “traditional pretty” and rejecting that by not dressing in a flattering way was part of it. But that’s a bit unfair to Debbie Harry, who is quite talented, and is often just imagined to be a pretty face.
The X-Ray Specs are a good example of a band fronted by a woman not “conventionally attractive”:
Or getting into new wave, there was some women who defied conventions of beauty, the lead singer of Romeo Void:
Or Yaz(oo) Allison Moyet’s band with Vince Clark:
I don’t think you’d get new wave artists defying gender norms in quite the same way if punks hadn’t done it first… There was some rejection and upending of beauty norms by women in that scene… Eurythmics for example - conventionally attractive by any standards, but staking out a gender neutral image:
Or Sinead slighly later:
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There still has to be, in order for mainstream (read: $$$$, not just $$$ or $$) acceptance to happen, something the mainstream can relate to.
And I just thought that all the genres have their own “mainstream” and “off-the-track” (I didn’t use “alternative” because isn’t that a genre, or is it a modifier? arghwords!) and it could be endlessly discussed and who has time and energy for that when there’s more urgent things to be endlessly discussed? 
I know, too - not everyone wants to be mainstream eventually, if at all.
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Yet, plenty of artists at this point have made a career out of the mainstream without leaning into mainstream ideas about gender identity. People have carved out spaces for their own production of culture, and at times have even made a living doing so. The industry is rather fragmented at this point, and I think that’s worth remembering. The original article you linked to is an indication of that. Plus some artists have managed to have a “mainstream” career without these things.
so… it’s complicated. But I don’t think you get the diversity of women in the industry today doing all kinds of things without the role the punk women played in the 70s and 80s. They opened the door for women to be more than pretty faces (although you get some of that with the folk era, too, but the folk scene was always kind of different, anyways).
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Honey, I was THERE for some of it, on the fringes - yes, I wasn’t “punk” enough (I had no intention of being kicked out of my house, or taking to the streets, as many my age did. Then, like now, I’m a coward.)
And the folk scene? Janis was trying to be a folkie early on; she wasn’t ethereal, like Joni Mitchell, which is part of why she went to blues and rock and country rock. Also, with folk, she couldn’t really let her all of feelings out with her voice.
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WARNING: Possible triggers re rape.
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And forgive the “Honey”, if you perceived the tone the way I said it in my head, lol. But I felt the question was phrased in a matronizing way (see what I did there?). And I know that’s not you at all, just the way you put it. Which happens.
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My apologies for jumping in here, but I have a question. Can one (or many) of you explain this TERF concept? I read the Wiki entry but I’m still not sure I understand. My wife self-identifies as a third-wave feminist but seems uncomfortable around trans folks, especially MTF trans women, and is uncharacteristically reticent to talk with me about it.
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Getting laid on the regular by someone I’m emotionally connected to is the main reason to have a life partner IMHO. If we could solve that issue of being single then I’d be all about it. Financially marriage has been a bust for me.
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