Female musicians and artists

It has come to my attention recently that I and many of my friends tend to like more musicians/musical groups dominated by men than women. While this tends to be somewhat true regardless of gender identity, it is more extreme for my male friends. For many of them, liking a female musical group is the exception, and many of the female musicians my female-identified friends and I enjoy are seen as "female" musicians--that is, music by women for women only. This bothers me even though I know that I am guilty of it too, and I have come up with some ideas for why this is. Fortuitously, several weeks after I had been thinking of this, I came across a blog post at Tiger Beatdown discussing this idea.

In this post, K. discusses the exact same issues and makes many good points. Like how when men write about "personal" things like sex, it's seen as "universal" and applies to all MANkind (meaning all humans, of course). When women do the same thing, it's seen as "personal." She discusses this by comparing Liz Phair's work and the critical/popular response to it with Weezer's work (fronted by Rivers Cuomo) and the critical/popular response to it. I must admit I'm not very familiar with Phair's work, but that is going to change as of now. K makes a lot of great points about how Cuomo's lyrics are far more based on intimate, personal experiences of his, yet they are often seen to transcend him, whereas Phair's work is much more varied and even includes songs that are explicitly *not* about her or her experiences, yet her work is typically characterized as being much more intimate and personal.

I think we see this everywhere in music. A lot of people say that they don't like a lot of the female artists out there. Well, many of the female artists who achieve critical and/or commercial success do it by conforming to certain guidelines, which is probably one reason why we have so many female pop artists singing mediocre songs about love and boys, yet so few female artists represented in other genres. Additionally, even when male artists sing songs about love and girls, their work is generally perceived differently (and is frequently seen as better). Many female artists who write songs about other topics are seen sacrificing art for political means. Etc etc.

Moreover, I think this happens in just about every genre. Fiction, short story, poetry, visual art, theater, performance art... Male-centered experiences, perspectives, and stories are seen as universal and apply to all, but female- or trans-centered experiences are seen as "special interest," "personal," and so on. Which is probably why women tend to be more interested in and willing to read stories with male protagonists than men are interested in and willing to read stories with female protagonists--at least in my experience (of course, trans and genderqueer folk don't have much opportunity to read and listen to anything that centers their experiences, and much of the little that has been published has been written by cis-gendered folk). All of this is confirmed by a reading of the classics, most literature classes, thinking about the "great" American rock bands and artists, past and present, etc. This also goes for race, class, and a variety of other categories: the dominant classes' experiences are universalized, and everyone else's are trivialized. I will write more about this in relation to "political" poetry and art in my next post, but there is so much more to say. For now, check out the blog post at Tiger Beatdown below.

http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/15/ladypalooza-presents-why-cant-i-be-making-love-cause-im-in-it-or-the-phaircuomo-conundrum/#more-1085