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Re: GG a Question of Sex?
I don't wanna put this issue to bed
yet. I been thinking about it and wanna post.
But you're right, this List is Very
Balanced by gender, and by Leadership in Vocal Opinion -- in other words, the
women here don't at all seem to hang back from expressing any opinions and
initiating new threads. They don't leave everything to the loudmouthish boys.
There may be someone named Violet on f_minor, but she's not
Shrinking.
How a List gets this healthy is a kind
of mysterious magicke -- a lot of Lists, music and otherwise, aren't at all
gender balanced, as Kate points out. Maybe it's the Spirit of Glenn Gould! And
if so, that certainly deserves some comment.
(Credit certainly goes also to the
Spirit of Mary Jo -- but part of her administrative expertise is the consistent
way she doesn't Lower the Boom or Lay Down the Law. The List seems to order,
structure and define itself without much presence from a gun-totin' Sheriff.)
One very famous question/controversy
is: Where are the Great Classical Women Composers? Was it always strictly a
matter of social gender repression in role opportunity and choice? In the age of
Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, were women still locked into Kinder, Kuche and
Kirche to such a degree that none could break out and overcome it? (As some
famous women novelists managed to -- in the West, since Aphra Benn of the 17th
Century.)
If so, now that so much (by no means
all) of that repression has vanished -- Where are the oft-played works of our
Famous neo-Classical Women Composers? Is there a female Samuel Barber, a female
Leonard Bernstein, a female Henryk Gorecki?
Ditto conductors. Now we know, of
course, of several world-class women giants of symphony and opera conducting.
But are they still, numerically, freaks? Is conducting still essentially an
all-men's game?
Is it corporate culture? Do the fat
donor cats and trustees still cringe at the thought of placing their $$$ in the
baton of a woman? Does part of Great Contemporary Conducting consist of playing
a good buddy-buddy men's foursome of golf with insurance and energy company
executives?
It might be instructive (as well as
profoundly nasty and unpleasant) to go back just a few years -- I think not much
more than seven -- to the All-Male Vienna Symphony, the world's last holdout
that had never hired a single woman instrumentalist. Pickets and protests on
their overseas tours dragged this antediluvian dinosaur into the sunshine and
forced the conductor and senior instrumentalists to explain their
"philosophy." I remember reading their opinions that women were
technically inferior and couldn't play with the required force and volume,
whether they were talking about brass, reeds or strings.
Ridiculous, shameful stereotypes
probably far more reflective of deep conservative gender threads in Austrian
society rather than anything inherent in playing musical
instruments.
But where did these crazy opinions come
from? As women in Europe became "liberated," and tried to expand their
musical horizons from parlour playing to full professional careers, did Our
Musical Fathead Forefathers express or publish similar proto-opinions in the
1920s and 1930s? There must be lots of historical male opinions about the
inferior musical technique and sensibilities of women musicians.
Does anyone know about past gender
quotas and exclusionary rules in the great conservatories of Europe and America?
Were there parallel restrictions and barriers in Japan and China? Do they still
linger?
It's one thing to say that these
historical and contemporary prejudices are baseless. But do they linger today in
seriously impeding the careers of women composers, conductors,
instrumentalists?
Why do audiences seem to warm to women
keyboard and string soloists (and, of course, harpists), but chill, or are
perceived to chill, to women conductors and composers? Where are the famous
women brass soloists, the female Dennis Brain? Do junior-high-school music
teachers (of both genders!) divert girls away from entire classes of
instruments? Or do the girls themselves recoil at being associated with certain
classes of instruments?
In the remarkable film "Playing
for Time," there's a tragic portrait of a brilliant woman conductor,
Mahler's niece, who ended her career and her life as the conductor of the
inmate's orchestra at Auschwitz during World War II. (She's portrayed by the
actress Jane Alexander.)
Bob
Well, we're diverging far from the point of this list,
but I had always
thought that the f_minor list out of all the lists I belong
to (musical,
technical, or otherwise) had the highest percentage of Female
Content
(tm) ever!
Our hard working listowner is female, and I see
frequent posts from Kate
Clunies-Ross, Valeria Massari, Jacqueline London,
Anne Marble, Anne
Smith, Anne Chrystine, etc. In fact, when I first
(re)joined the list a
few months back, I thought everyone one the list was
called Anne! Very
confusing.
So now let us please put this subject to
bed, or at the very least
change the Subject line to: 32 Short Variations on
the Name of Anne.
Regards,
Matthew (not Anne)
-----Original
Message-----
From: Juozas Rimas [mailto:JuozasRimas@TAKAS.LT]
Sent:
August 7, 2002 10:48 AM
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject:
Re: GG a Question of Sex?
>I have not been on F minor for long.
Perhaps I don't have an accurate
>take on
things, but it seems to
me
>that there are not very many women posters.
I presume there
are less active internet users that are women. I wonder
if there is extensive
statistics about the female percentage of these
active users (I emphasize
"active", to distinguish from the occasional
users - women perhaps
constitute a larger part among them).
Anyway, I think it's a consequence
of the notorious stereotype that it
is not women's business to have something
to do with technics, eg cars,
computers.
Juozas Rimas Jr (not the
one playing) http://www.mp3.com/juozasrimas
(oboe,
piano, strings)