The Genital Composer

The Genital Composer

The music scene, particularly its more alternative elements, often claims to be a progressive force that tramples sex and gender underfoot. Despite this, female musicians still struggle with discrimination on a daily basis. Loulou Callister-Baker asked Dunedin musicians about their experiences with sexism.

The musician stands on stage with a guitar between her hands and a microphone in front of her. She raises her eyes and stares the crowd down. The performance begins. A droning sound crescendos from her guitar and envelops the audience. She then starts to sing and scream intermittently. Her hair hangs down to her waist, wrapping both her and her guitar in an orb of music. She is terrifying. Her music is incredible.

But she is also fighting for something other than her music. Every time she steps off the stage she is complimented not as a musician but as a female who makes and performs music. And if she continues her career she will be constantly reminded, in every review and every interview, that she is a female first and a musician second, as though what she does isn’t quite real.

Sexism in the music industry exists. Although it takes a variety of forms – many of which are subtle and subconsciously ingrained in the minds of both men and women – more and more stories of sexism are rising to the surface. The opaque world of the music industry is becoming more transparent. On the mainstream international level, several stories in recent years – including of multi-layered victimisation – have created ripples throughout the online world and have revealed the darker side of what it means to be an internationally renowned female musician.

In a short video featuring Nicki Minaj talking to a friend, the pop musician expresses her frustration with the industry. “When I am assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss. He bossed up! [There are] no negative connotations behind ‘bossed up,’ but lots of negative connotations behind being a bitch,” Minaj claims while she fixes her makeup. She then explains that “when you’re a girl, you have to be, like, everything. You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice and you have to … It’s like, I can’t be all those things at once! I’m a human being.”

Before the video ends, however, Minaj becomes noticeably more reluctant to be filmed, and asks that the footage not be used because, she states, “it’s just gonna make me look stupid.” While Nicki Minaj’s branding can appear to oscillate spasmodically between objectification and feminist activism, her identification of sexism in the industry is inspiring.

Another protest occurred earlier this year, when electro-pop musician Grimes (otherwise known as Claire Boucher) wrote a post on her Tumblr that was shared and reported on almost every well-known music website and blog. The post, entitled “I don’t want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living,” unequivocally questioned the male-dominated music industry on every level, from behind-the-scenes production to branding and marketing issues.

Some of Grimes’ more powerful statements include “I don’t want to be infantilised because I refuse to be sexualised,” “I don’t want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction,” and “I’m tired of people assuming that just because something happens regularly it’s okay.” She also expresses sadness at the fact that her “desire to be treated as an equal and as a human being is interpreted as hatred of men, rather than a request to be included and respected.” Grimes concludes the now-famous post by stating that while she loves what she does, she’s “done with being passive about any kind of status quo that allows anyone to suffer or to be disrespected.” This is a powerful message, made even more striking by how rarely this global industry is demystified.

What often angers such musicians is the manufactured image of “pop stars” (whose careers frequently rely on these projected images rather than their music) that still dominates the industry, and that places immense pressure on serious musicians to conform to the money-making formula. The “Britney Spears model” is certainly toxic, and it’s hard for female musicians in particular not to be consumed by it. The perpetually introspective and observant musician Richard Ley-Hamilton views this element of the music industry as patriarchal and male-dominated, arguing that “sexism likely survives because sex, as a commodity, has a high value. In respect to female artists, there’s a lot more cultural currency in selling an artist as sexual than as authentic.”

Millie Lovelock, a local Dunedin musician, also fervently believes that there is still an issue with sexism endemic to female musicianship: “the mainstream music media dictates that rock bands are for male musicians and folk bands are for female musicians – or female musicians can be sexy pop singers. I think it’s harder to break into the scene if you don’t think you can be a part of either of those categories.”

Millie’s status as an increasingly well-known and respected musician in Dunedin led me to wonder whether, when she performed, she tried to make an element of female activism shine through. She wasn’t sure. As she told me, “I’m definitely trying to be feminine. I’m not trying to not be a woman, but I’m also trying to be kind of terrifying, which is something I do to kind of prove myself. Okay, I am small and I am female, but I’m fierce so don’t mess with me. I once had someone come up to me in Christchurch and tell me that, ‘oh, I saw you play and you were the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.’ In a male-dominated music scene I am definitely advocating the idea that I can be just as tough as male musicians can be, just as loud and aggressive, and I don’t have to be a folk singer.”

It took (and still takes), however, a lot of small battles for Millie to feel motivated to stay on stage performing. When she first started playing guitar in high school, she tells me, “males, who were usually younger than me, would always ask me if I needed help plugging in my guitar but would never say the same thing to other males. It was like they thought because I am a girl I wouldn’t be able to do it.” Grimes also experienced this problem, writing in her blog that “I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if I did this by accident and I’m gonna flounder without them. Or as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology. I have never seen this kind of thing happen to any of my male peers.”

It was when Millie started performing gigs while at university that sexism and music became a duo whose company she was forced to endure. Her worst encounter with “openly repugnant misogyny” was at a house party where Astro Children were performing for someone’s birthday. She described the scene to me: “it was a pretty basic setup – we didn’t have a microphone or anything, we’d been improvising for a while and people were enjoying it I assume, and then this guy just yells out, ‘show us your pink bits.’ The whole room booed him, which was really nice, and I yelled at him to stop being a misogynist piece of shit. I think he left after that. This guy thought ‘oh, because you’re a girl and people are enjoying the music I better say something obnoxious now.’”

In a blog post about the gig, Millie stated that “it made me really angry to be reminded that some people think a woman playing music is only worth watching if she gets her vagina out. I can almost tolerate being patronised and belittled, but being openly objectified is disgusting, frightening and deeply upsetting. In some ways this was a positive experience. I felt brave enough to tell that piece of shit to fuck off and a lot of people backed me up on that … But I shouldn’t have to get aggressive just to stop from being sexually harassed while I am playing, and my band shouldn’t be in a position where we feel uncomfortable performing. I hope it never happens again, but unfortunately I am not confident that it won’t because I am female and music is sexist.”

What became clear talking to Millie is the existence of a “boys’ club” within the music industry. What’s worse is that this mentality is so deeply ingrained it gets passed down through generations by way of the dangerous ritual that is “male bonding.” Millie tells me that this is “inherent in the small things, like when you get introduced to someone. It’s not so much with Astro Children, because there [are] only two of us, but when I’m with Trick Mammoth and we get introduced to (usually) an older male he’ll shake the male band members’ hands but he won’t shake my hand. They don’t register that it’s weird not to shake my hand, and look weirded out when I put out my hand. They’re not doing it on purpose; it’s just ingrained in their minds that either I’m not in the band or I’m someone’s girlfriend or you just don’t shake a girl’s hand or whatever.”

While the predominant issue around sexism in the music industry is undoubtedly the victimisation of female musicians, problems with closed-minded gender division and stereotyping affect all types of musicians and their audiences. “The masculine image is not necessarily just a New Zealand-specific thing,” Ley-Hamilton suggests. “But the Kiwi bloke stereotype or the idea of masculinity in New Zealand is a strong, recurring trope, particularly in [those] we idolise – people like Richie McCaw or Sir Edmund Hillary. I see that in University culture. In the Scarfie culture, a large percentage of the guys I see walking around exude that macho ethos. They’re relying on an outdated stereotype to give them authenticity. They also represent a lack of emotional connection with themselves, which is something that I think is important to externally express. They’re happy to take on the image of a generic masculine icon.”

In respect to this image and the music industry Richard believes that “a lot of the bullshit that surrounds sexuality stems from the ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’ idea. I think it’s a consumerist and a capitalist issue as well, because by splitting humankind into two completely different demographics you double the amount of money you can make – you don’t have to market music to one generic pool of emotions. Instead, the music industry extract emotions and ideas and uses those to tell women and men who they are and then sell them things like music to satisfy that. Sexism is the social reality of that economic policy in a sense. When you look at the state of the world you have to look at all political and economic agendas behind pretty much any social ideologies.”

Discrimination of a person on the basis of sex is like the common cold. Every year you can forget, for a time, that sexism exists, but then “winter” comes around again and you realise that sexism has, and may always, come back. As I reached the end of my interview with Millie I confessed that I felt guilty about talking to her primarily because she was a female making music. Millie, while understanding the cause, agreed with me: “no matter who is talking about you, if you’re a female and making music they will never just describe the … music alone. Instead, they’ll always say ‘this person who is a girl is making this music.’”

Millie continued to express concern about the issue of sexism generally. “I think what’s so dangerous about sexism is that women have had it ingrained in them just as much as men have. This makes it that much harder to get out of that situation. If you’re a woman and you can’t take yourself seriously because you can’t take women seriously, then it’s a never-ending cycle of oppression.”

While in 2013 female artists have created places for themselves in an extensive range of musical genres, they still face great problems due to inherent and ingrained sexism in both the music industry and society in general. Millie ended our interview with a sentiment shared by musicians from Grimes to Nicki Minaj. “Sexism feels insurmountable. As a female you can’t even walk down the street without being yelled at. If you can’t be taken seriously in your day-to-day life then you’re not going to be taken seriously when you’re doing something else like music.”
This article first appeared in Issue 25, 2013.
Posted 2:29pm Sunday 29th September 2013 by Loulou Callister-Baker.