The Gender Gap in Music

have to find another word than gap to explain this

its more gaps we need

That is true as it is.

But like, don’t you think that if a generally normal chick were to really express herself or get lost in music like on her own on a weekday - would commonly have to ‘lose’ herself in the singing instead of in the music

Which to me says that most music is little closed off in that sense

they got to play wind instruments in an orchestra or they got to sing in the choir for a long time

1 BigUp

im getting this girl that likes vocaloid into dubstep and drum and bass

1 BigUp

Men and women are veeeery different with regards to music, I think most of it comes down to brain wiring tbh.

There are some girls really into music but guys are the ones who mostly want to build beats, buy records, have ACS (anal completist syndrome) etc, basically more guys are nerds about it

The girls I know who are deep into their music pretty much listen for lyrics, or because they like to dance to it, they mostly don’t tend to care how it was made or how well the tunes are mixed together.

Then we have genres. The girls I know who are music-heads mostly like indie-folk and shit like that, I understand why girls don’t like minimal bass music with no melody and no vocals lol, it doesn’t have much feminine appeal tbh.

Bottom line I think there would be more girls into this kind of music and DJing and producing if it’s what they actually wanted to do. I don’t think societal or cultural factors really play much of a part, no-one is stopping them from having a go. I think they are interested more in other types of music, and creating / collecting etc doesn’t hold as much appeal for them. Which is neither good nor bad, they are just different.

I do agree somewhat that there is an expectation for girl DJs to look half-decent, whereas guy DJs can be a fat ugly sack of shit and no-one cares, which is unfair. I don’t know how many girls this puts off though, I would guess not many but who knows

You big lunkheads.

A lot of this ties back to a) the function of [particularly socially but not always] the music - compare square dances to ambient music to sacred choirs - and b), the fact that the music is AN EXPRESSION OF THE PEOPLE MAKING IT.

That women don’t often feel the need to display power and finesse simultaneously is not necessarily dubstep’s fault… but there’s definitely some culture up in the mix.

1 BigUp

Oh absolutely everyone is stopping them.

When a guy sees a Lady drumming he thinks… wait she must be …,huh…strong to be able to do that. But then really drumming isnt that physically demanding … it’s just something we associate with pounding stuff with sticks and so on. So it’s not necessarily I’m deliberately going to hold these ladies back - … except I just did in my mind.

:eyeroll:

either that or you know there’s this pesky fact that women are actually physically different from men in quite a few ways, and bear with me because, wow crazy theory here, but could it be their brains are also wired slightly differently?

I don’t think there’s much of a scientific understanding of what “feminine appeal” as you use it here actually means.

Can’t it be argued that music fundamentally is kind of “feminine”? The musician’s usefulness comes from what they can do for our internal state, as a kind of therapy. Not conquering, or providing, or fighting. If we’re using traditional understandings of masculine and feminine as inherent sensibilities in people, is music ever really masculine at all? Wouldn’t that be something more comparable to the cave woman providing consolement/comfort for the tribe? Providing music definitely seems to be closer to breastfeeding than it is to killing mammoths lol, if we’re going to derive “masculine” and “feminine” from some state of nature.

I’m not sure there is some hard biological basis to raw kick drums and spooky textures having “male appeal” while sing-songy or melodic stuff has more feminine appeal. Most men actually don’t like raw kick drums either, sadly.

But I can’t say I’m arguing from a neutral standpoint here because I find the idea of women fundamentally being predisposed away from liking cool shit like techno kind of personally depressing. Those feelings that you get from dark, raw “”“masculine”“” shit is some the most mysterious and crazy stuff out there to me, how incredibly sad would it be if half the world’s population is restricted to liking basic ass songs about love where some easily relatable “human” element has to be front and center. That’s a restriction, not just a characteristic.

You say the disparity is not good or bad, it’s just preferences, but really? I find that pretty dishonest tbh. Frankly, housekeeping, being nice to people, looking pretty and other shit that “femininity” basically boils down to is just not as valuable or impressive as building robots, leading nations, having self-control, learning to knock someone out in one punch, or making futuristic music; the stuff that goes in the “masculine” category. Radical oldskool feminists like to say that femininity is a submissive performance and I think that’s the most honest way to say it tbh. It’s very cruel of society to encourage one caste of people to act submissively to the other.

When people pitch this “masculinity and femininity, ying and yang, separate but equal” type of view they seem to leave out how 90% of the achievements humanity is proud of have a very “masculine” character according to that paradigm. That view necessarily is incompatible with truly valuing the sexes equally I think.

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then again we wouldnt have blues, jazz or reggae if it wasn’t for this so there’s that :badteeth:

no my opinion is what i said

and fuck you

I think you’ve got the right angle harkat but i look at it the complete opposite way

like its male mostly. Building, producing, compartementalising, making would be male

wheres creating (associating differences), birthing, comforting etc would be higher standards for the same thing - but capitalism and male dominance and the tempo of production means the creative dimension we try to have in common cant really hold it to that standard (imo music IS a huge compromise - much like film, where films costs a lot, music has to be a certain way . . ie to be sold or to be referenced or ‘met’ at face level)

like something autotune is certainly male

distortion

the integration of math standards via science

over say emotive response or psychology

is certainly male too

a conductor in classical music is a male approach to society

but most important is what the tradition is, and traditionally women are allowed the non soloist instruments and to sing lyrics written by men and look nice …

well put and agree completely

This happens on such a deep level but from the pov of those who laid claim to the definition. To be able to deal with how inhumane and devestating it is - that everything ever has been decided by men - like literallysay we look at nature and decide which parts are worthy to look at and write down about it, has been done with male optics.
Big structures even if just kick drums has that pride related to the build size. Ascertiveness even in art terms is more male.

It’s very hard for people to take on the responsibility to take this into account everywhere, every second.

I’ll try to make an analogy to how severe it imo must be and must’ve been done.

Like what is most manifest for us - out of a mountain and a valley comparitively. Size, obstruction of the surroundings, the way the manifestation takes place (in this case a mountain suggests itself more, by popping out of the surroundings - than a valley that is a void and in that sense less substantual).

As you can see, even the way I try to define these two opposites - it seems one is closer to the way I’m balancing things or reading into it, necessarily my male ‘physicallity’ of it, just to comprehend it.

Bu that in construction itself, a phallic thing will represent itself more traditionally than a void or a more complex structure. Also if something is traditional here it means women have had less input. Straight up. Even the way women were taught to sing in church is about where the male diaphragm sits and how that works. But thats very technical. But like you can hear aretha franklin has become very rapsy down the line. It has not built up her muscles to be able to be more flexible but rather the opposite - and she could be the standard for female singing in most other aspects still. That is initself entirely proof tbh. But theres more.

It’s almost like we judge from an instinctual level and have to ‘worry’ more or ‘respect’ more, that a structure that stands out could lend itslef psychologically to seem to ‘come at us’ or seperate it self and become a boulder and fall down on us. And again that is that compartementalising going on, that is more naturally male way of dealing with info.
Like all of us by fear of nature has a fight and flight response to a non moving structure. That really says it all.

Men worry about singulars when out huning and collecting

and then women deal with context more
say being pregnant is a context they have to represent and so on

and ridiculously :
we just put our bits into them and they have to worry about the context of v and p
when we just stab away for contact etc

1 BigUp

I’m gonna think about this for a bit and get back to ya homie :gunfinger: appreciate the paragraphs

1 BigUp

Not necessarily. Music can be expressions of many things, even war. Think of for example, war drummers and military marching bands.

I don’t know if I’d totally agree, but it depends. For example, look at pretty boy top dj’s like tiesto, martin garrix, avici, etc… whereas think of dj storm and kemistry, while hot in their own way, not exactly expected to be.

check out the dj mag 2016 top dj’s. only one overweight on there is carl cox but dude is a legend.

Simetra needs to be utilized more imo

bought this a while back
and had several listens lately
the lyrics are occasionally RNB cheese
but there’s some weight and tunefulness to her production

mary anne hobbs is one of my favourite djs

1 BigUp

i like mary jane hubb’s personally

but he doesnt spin - it’s just the world around him that does

gay^