Why aren't there more women involved in this music ?

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Viz. physical, brute strenght


It would be interesting if someone who knows about lions could explain here to some extent how come the female lions do most of the hunting for the group and also do the bulk of educating the young - if I'm informed correctly that is.

Surely it is not because the male lions force them too?

[skrobek]

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known

But something is happening here
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?


oops, wrong thread (I guess)! Can this be moved to "Lyrics in my head right now", please ?

[mudd]

wtf questionable biology.

seriously we don't do sexist posturing here, right? please tell me i'm right.

m

[yonhosago]

men being to women what the bourgeois is to the worker ?

Is that a little old or outmoded?

Is that a male argument?

[Gaendaal]

Viz. physical, brute strenght

It would be interesting if someone who knows about lions could explain here to some extent how come the female lions do most of the hunting for the group and also do the bulk of educating the young - if I'm informed correctly that is.

Surely it is not because the male lions force them too?

I hate to resort to a wiki quote, but it's pretty succinct..."Lionesses do the majority of the hunting for their pride, being smaller, swifter and more agile than the males, and unencumbered by the heavy and conspicuous mane, which causes overheating during exertion."

Lionesses are better adapted to hunting and killing, lions are better adapted to display and domineering...

[P. Wretch]

This thread seems to have snow-balled into Darwinian territory since I last visited, but to answer Mudd's query from a few pages back:

i wouldn't argue with the theory, but i'm not sure what 'dominated fraction' means in that definition.

This jargon is borrowed, I think, from Bourdieu, who wanted to develop a more complex idea of class than the standard Marxist one. The 'dominated fraction' of the dominant (a.k.a. ruling) class would be those with 'elite' or higher educations, from comparatively wealthy or educated families, who nevertheless choose not to devote their lives to the acquisition of money or power, and end up in economically precarious fields such as the arts, teaching, part-time jobs, etc. (i.e. much of the IHM-type demographic). A more jargon-heavy definition would be those with high 'cultural capital' but low economic capital.

[mudd]

yes, thanks, and yes again. in some order.

m

[jkudler]

This thread seems to have snow-balled into Darwinian territory since I last visited, but to answer Mudd's query from a few pages back:

i wouldn't argue with the theory, but i'm not sure what 'dominated fraction' means in that definition.

This jargon is borrowed, I think, from Bourdieu, who wanted to develop a more complex idea of class than the standard Marxist one. The 'dominated fraction' of the dominant (a.k.a. ruling) class would be those with 'elite' or higher educations, from comparatively wealthy or educated families, who nevertheless choose not to devote their lives to the acquisition of money or power, and end up in economically precarious fields such as the arts, teaching, part-time jobs, etc. (i.e. much of the IHM-type demographic). A more jargon-heavy definition would be those with high 'cultural capital' but low economic capital.

hi mom and dad!

[skrobek]

yes.

but "questionable biology" ? To say the least. 'Tis what it is, I'm afraid.

Honestly thought it would get beyond that.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

The level of denial is of course very understandable. Most people's minds don't like to be confronted with own their inherent physical and material nature, amongst other things because it reminds them of their partial contingency and their mortality, and of problems that notions as 'moral freedom' have.

Can someone please explain why it insulting or dumb or wrong or whatever that if you ask a question in which the only true, stable difference, is a biological one, one of the fundamental parts of the answer is biological.
Moreover, if you ask a 'why' question, one has to look at the history, so surely bio-cultural evolution has to be taken into account, since I hope no one is denying evolution here.

[letchhausen]

Yes. Because I think we are living with the heritage of a long gone situation where this little difference in muscular mass was all the difference, while he is applying his idea of a "different brain" today.

If cavewomen had had an uterus AND physical strength, things would be different today, imo. Yes, I think comparing us to animals and advocating the creation of a group tackling gender issues of elephants or tigers is a caveman argument, otherwise I wouldn't have said so.

If you want to generalize, there are also behavioral differences between males from different countries, African males and European males for instance, do you draw conclusions as to the difference of their brains too ? NO. You deem evident that all those differences are cultural, sociological, economical, political. Today, because as we all know that was not always the case. Things change.

From the Heroine Sheiks new record, Journey to the End of a Knife:

BE A MAN

Back in the caveman days giant creatures
roamed through the land
But he was a peace-loving ape—killing mammoths,
it weren’t in his plans
Cavewoman rolled her eyes and smirked and put a spear in his hand
Said “Get your hairy ass out there right now, and be a man!”

Be a man, be a man, be a man!

Well Jesus and Mary Magdalene were in the old Holy Land
He said “My dad’s gonna have them sacrifice me like a lamb
And that I gotta let ‘em nail me up, baby, don’t know if I can!”
She said “I got one thing to say to you—Goddammit, be a man!”

Adolph and Eva sat in the bunker—it looked like the end
He says “I can still make a comeback, Baby, yeah, I got a plan”
She just bit down on her poison capsule, put a gun in his hand
She says “You know what to do, Gottenhimmel, ya, be a man!”

[J.F.]

"Gottenhimmel"

With this, the lyric includes an auditive misinterpretation for the expression "Gott im Himmel", but it's a very beautiful one. Lovely.

G O T T E N H I M M E L !

[jon abbey]

it always depends on how widely one is defining "this music", but what women lack in numbers in EAI at this moment, I think they probably make up in impact, at least from my perspective. maybe they prefer to stay somewhat behind the scenes more than men on average (thinking of Sachiko with Otomo and Yuko with myself, and I'm sure others I just don't realize)? Otomo's last decade of work would have been quite different if Sachiko didn't exist, she's on virtually all of his great projects in that time (IMO, obviously) and he seems like a different, often less sensitive musician in projects without her.

along those lines, Julien, as far as your "might makes right" thesis as it relates to EAI, it makes me think of some of Sachiko's quartets: with Fennesz, Otomo, Pita in the Cologne 2004 AMPLIFY (released as ErstLive 004), the just released Balloon and Needle with Otomo, Choi Joonyong, Hong Chulki and of course the ErstLive 005 show with Keith, Toshi and Otomo, each time with three men who are usually happy to explore the noisiest, most stereotypical "male" areas of improv. in each case, without any discussion beforehand (well, in the German two at least, dunno about the other), Sachiko's was pretty obviously the primary guiding aesthetic. after the Cologne set, I told Pita I was shocked he could play that subdued, I really expected that set to be a blowout, but that's how powerful her aesthetic can be.

FWIW, in the closest Japanese equivalent to IHM, which I guess is a subcommunity on mixi (their equivalent to Facebook), Yuko says there's probably about 20 percent female participation.

[ryan]

Women are, generally, more interested in producing biological offspring than in cultural offspring.

I'm not dichotomizing anything. I don't have to deny evolution or any biological distinction between the sexes to find that statement reductive, simplistic, and fallacious. No matter what hormonal generalities you can make, you can't leap to the assumption that biology favors reproduction over creativity as if they were mutually exclusive. Men have just as much of a primal urge to procreate, they just have more of an ability to evade the consequent responsibilities. Surely biology is a factor, but not in the way you suggest above. Quit pretending that you are defending scientific objectivity as if you're an expert on the subject. Your hypothetical survey is just as meaningless as my example, if not more so, and says nothing about biology.

[ryan]

the manner in which many women are creative is not one tied into the same mastering of technology and creating of organized disorder that has led so many more men to this form of music.

dude, that's just indefensible chauvinism. surprising.

edit: sorry to be policing you guys on this subject, but some of the things said in this thread strike me as egregious in the extreme. i've said my piece, and the truly relevant issue with EAI, is the important role women have played in influencing its development. i'm taking myself out of this one.

[RFKorp]

the manner in which many women are creative is not one tied into the same mastering of technology and creating of organized disorder that has led so many more men to this form of music.

dude, that's just indefensible chauvinism. surprising.

edit: sorry to be policing you guys on this subject, but some of the things said in this thread strike me as egregious in the extreme. i've said my piece, and the truly relevant issue with EAI, is the important role women have played in influencing its development. i'm taking myself out of this one.

This has nothing to do with chauvanism. Maybe I phrased it badly.

I believe in celebrating differences among humanity. People are built differently. The chemicals in our brains react differently. We are raised under different social expectations. This generally produces identifiably "types" of people each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Many (not all, not even most) women and men think differently and create art differently. Plain and simple. There are no qualitative judgments in there.

[AlbionMoonlight]

FWIW, in the closest Japanese equivalent to IHM, which I guess is a subcommunity on mixi (their equivalent to Facebook), Yuko says there's probably about 20 percent female participation.

From what I experienced in Kyoto and Osaka, those who both attended, performed and organized experimental music forms was split about half and half sex-wise. It was brilliant to see, and something quite opposite from the "dudes and dudes' girlfriends" configuration at most shows in the US.

[ryan]

the manner in which many women are creative is not one tied into the same mastering of technology and creating of organized disorder that has led so many more men to this form of music.

dude, that's just indefensible chauvinism. surprising.

edit: sorry to be policing you guys on this subject, but some of the things said in this thread strike me as egregious in the extreme. i've said my piece, and the truly relevant issue with EAI, is the important role women have played in influencing its development. i'm taking myself out of this one.

This has nothing to do with chauvanism. Maybe I phrased it badly.

I believe in celebrating differences among humanity. People are built differently. The chemicals in our brains react differently. We are raised under different social expectations. This generally produces identifiably "types" of people each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Many (not all, not even most) women and men think differently and create art differently. Plain and simple. There are no qualitative judgments in there.

Difference should indeed be celebrated, at least when it is asserted by individuals themselves. I don't see any reason to celebrate differences ascribed on groups by others, especially when those presumed differences amount to a denial of agency. I think it's the phrase "mastery of technology" that I find qualitatively judgmental and chauvinistic.

[jon abbey]

FWIW, in the closest Japanese equivalent to IHM, which I guess is a subcommunity on mixi (their equivalent to Facebook), Yuko says there's probably about 20 percent female participation.

From what I experienced in Kyoto and Osaka, those who both attended, performed and organized experimental music forms was split about half and half sex-wise. It was brilliant to see, and something quite opposite from the "dudes and dudes' girlfriends" configuration at most shows in the US.

yeah, Japan seems well ahead of the rest of the world on this front.

[horaflora]

it always depends on how widely one is defining "this music"

Yeah, I was biting my tongue, or rather stepping on my hands, but if you open the discussion to proper/contemporary noise, there's no end to the women in audiences, I've noticed, and the percentage involved in creation is similarly amplified.. Some may just play a really small show or two, but they're there!
Jess Rylan (can't), schurt kwitters, Sharon cheslow, tarpitia fleisch, pak, 16 bitch pile-up (4 or 5 right there!), carly ptak, maja ratkje, liz albee, liz tonne... And a ton of those seem-to-be-constantly-touring-kneel-on-the-floor-over-a-few-fx-units style groups that seemed immensly hip a couple years ago, but now it seems the herd has thinned (thankfully) to a select few... But they all had girls in their bands, I recall noticing... Tan as fuck, gang gang dance, gang wizard, weirdo/begeirdo, etc...

But more it's all the girls around at the shows... It's pronounced. Dunno what else to say!