Cutest boys in metal

[stevexc]

I love how this article lampooning metal journalism's treatment of women in metal has turned into a ridiculous "debate" (if you can all it that, seeing as there's only one side with any valid points) about the reasons why female guitarists are few and far between.

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Because we're guitarists before being metalheads (and many of us don't give a crap about metal)
Post this piece on metal-archives and see what happens LOL

 

[Grief]

I love how this article lampooning metal journalism's treatment of women in metal has turned into a ridiculous "debate" (if you can all it that, seeing as there's only one side with any valid points) about the reasons why female guitarists are few and far between.

Are there any school guitar teachers on here?

I had some experience as peri teacher in 90s UK and there weren't many girls taking up guitar to start with. Could it be that they are choosing dance or netball or violin or clarinet or something else? When you're a kid there's only so many hobbies...

I think the sexism debate here has 3 sides: (potentially)anti-feminist, feminist and post-feminist. But that hasn't largely been about guitar specifically. And I'm not sure there's any objective validity to any of it: no ones seems to know if the metal music press objectifies women in order to gain a male audience or if it is because of the male audience that is already there. And no-one knows if women are dissuaded or disinterested in participation. For me the argument of objectification of women being wrong is about 30yrs out of date, which is curious as the majority of those best-selling metal albums were also about 30yrs old.

 

[Aion]

What percentage of hot women are in "famous" metal bands compared to hot women who are in "not famous" metal bands?

What percentage of the rest of the population are in "famous" metal bands compared to "not famous" metal bands?

Do you honestly believe that there are tons of hot women out there in bands that no one has ever heard of? Put a hot chick in front of any metal band and there will be threads about them up on EVERY metal forum in a matter of days. Arch Enemy put a hot chick out front of them and they BLEW UP. That's just how it is in this world.

Facts are not sexist.

I know of a few metal bands with female members. They write good music, put on really solid shows, but none of them are blowing up. You are talking about the exception, not the rule.

I can tell you that I see and hear more misogyny from metalheads than almost any other group I associate with. There are a variety of logical reasons for this, none of which excuse this fact but they help to show the root cause of the problem.

Metal's values are traditionally masculine. This means that metal has mostly appealed to men more than women. Marketing in metal focuses on men. Women consumers are not be courted (or at least, not as much) by the industry, leading to a certain degree of alienation from it. Metal has become something of a boy's club because of this. Limited exposure to a group leads to the echo chamber effect and unfair stereotypes and prejudices. When men with already sexist tendencies (this is the part where any fedoras playing at home yell, "not all men," while the point whizzes over their heads) find their (not always so latent) sexism being mirrored, these qualities get worse. Metal marketing sees metal is listened to by more men than women, marketing caters to them. All of this helps to alienate women and contributes to a cycle of sexism in metal music.

Metal music is not sexist, metal does not make anyone sexist, but there is a reason why many people who are already sexist like metal. It's the same reason why many neo-nazis like certain types of metal. Neither caused the other (though Hitler's riffage in "I Want to Reich and Roll All Night," had a clear effect on the 1930's German metal scene), but there's a connection there that begs understanding.

As a sidenote, guys, don't you see how the objectification of women degrades men as well? I would argue that men profit off of it more than women, but it does not just harm women. The assumption that I won't buy or like something a women does if she doesn't show some T&A is based on the idea that I can only think with one of my heads. Ummm no, to borrow a phrase, my brain is up here. Sexism and misogyny isn't a women's issue, it's a people issue. And frankly I want to be on the side fixing it rather than supporting it.

 

[coreysMonster]

We haven't got anywhere near exploring why there are less female participants in metal subculture. But answer certainly doesn't have to be sexism - maybe there just aren't that many successful female metal musicians in the same way there aren't that many fans.

My guess is a lot of it has to do with women not being allowed to be ugly, vulgar and disgusting.

When I was a kid I had Slipknot, a bunch of ugly ............s wearing Halloween masks and being generally pretty gross, writhing around in fake blood and real vomit. And I and millions of other teenagers loved it, girls included, so nobody can say it's because girls just don't like it. It's the whole "That's not very ladylike" thing.
Vulvatron, the new frontalien of GWAR, is a step in the right direction, in my opinion. She gets to be mean and gross like everyone else in the band and squirts blood from her huge prosthetic boobs, though why they didn't let her also have the huge prosthetic dick, I don't understand.

Like a lot of societal problems I think it's a complicated mixture of a bunch of things, and I personally think it's not only the number of female metal musicians, but also the type - if metal were nothing but pretty-boy model types I know I sure as hell would never have been as attracted to it (but then that's just me).


EDIT: the medical term for the male genitalia is censored but dick isn't??

 

[OmegaSlayer]

Let's also say that is not really easy to find a girl that generally enjoys violence, morbid themes and so on.
And most of all, so anti-social to not mind being treated as an outcast.

 

[TedEH]

I think the sexism debate here has 3 sides: (potentially)anti-feminist, feminist and post-feminist.

There's no reason to call everyone who isn't in support of feminism an "anti-feminist". It's very possible to be in support of some of the same core principals, but to disagree with some of the more specific details/approaches/viewpoints that are currently associated with it. Maybe it's not what you were trying to imply, but that statement reads the same way as "if you're not a feminist, you must be sexist."

 

[redstone]

Creativity is culture-proof. It's not a path one can learn from others. I'm sick of people asking others to treat them like someone they could never be in any other circumstances.

It's too bad our culture princessizes women but I don't expect a woman standing against such oppression to play metal like a diva. To hell with special treatments.

 

[Grief]

There's no reason to call everyone who isn't in support of feminism an "anti-feminist". It's very possible to be in support of some of the same core principals, but to disagree with some of the more specific details/approaches/viewpoints that are currently associated with it. Maybe it's not what you were trying to imply, but that statement reads the same way as "if you're not a feminist, you must be sexist."

You're absolutely right, it is of course more nuanced than that. And there's like a billion different parts of differing debates going on here. I was clumsily try to distinguish between those who think that feminism isn't an issue here because it perhaps has never been and those that think it isn't an issue because as a society we have passed that point and evolved into something else.

 

[TedEH]

I know of a few metal bands with female members. They write good music, put on really solid shows, but none of them are blowing up. You are talking about the exception, not the rule.

I wouldn't go that far. Every band I've seen with female members has gained at least some small amount of popularity for being "that band with the chick singer" or something like that. Being a woman in a band doesn't immediately make you a celebrity, but there's no denying the marketing power behind it. Even in the cases where said woman musician was actively trying to play down the effect, it happens anyway.

And then you have those bands that do it on purpose. I had a friend who I taught some bass to, and she went off to join one of those all-girl bands that plays up the all-girl-ness. Musically, they're terrible, but they draw a crowd. They were more popular than any band I've been in when they were around, and I could play circles around any of them on their respective instruments. They'd have none of that if the band wasn't made up of attractive women.

 

[Aion]

Musically, they're terrible, but they draw a crowd. They were more popular than any band I've been in when they were around, and I could play circles around any of them on their respective instruments. They'd have none of that if the band wasn't made up of attractive women.

What that tells me is that your local market is over-saturated with all male metal band with nothing extraordinary about them, nothing that really separates them from one another. Meanwhile there is in fact a market demand for more women performers. I know some bands who've gotten a boost in their fanbase because they had some kind of "weird," instrument (which in metal can be something like a violin). Assuming they're not exploiting themselves any further than happening to have boobs (and having boobs really isn't their fault), there's really no difference.

 

[TedEH]

I was clumsily try to distinguish between those who think that feminism isn't an issue here because it perhaps has never been and those that think it isn't an issue because as a society we have passed that point and evolved into something else.

I see what you were getting at now.

My unsolicited opinion in that matter is that we're not really in either of those situations. I think it's important to make the distinction that womens issues and feminism now are not the same as they were a while back. I mean that in the sense that there's a huge difference between something like women not being allowed to vote compared to women being mildly offended that they're objectified pretty often.

I think that we've made a lot of progress in terms of some of the original, basic, or traditional forms of feminism. There are more women in power, etc. Lots of people claim there's no wage gap, but I'm not knowledgeable about that. Women get a lot more rights and respect now than they used to. It's not perfect, there are still issues there, including some countries that are pretty far behind by that standard, but progress is being made in this area in general and I'm all for that trend continuing.

But what we have now is an entirely different thing. Many modern forms of feminism (not all of course) don't concern themselves with politics or with other countries or cultures. A lot of this modern wave of feminism spends its time going after things like gaming or metal- and don't get me wrong, there's some legitimacy in trying to make sure that as many things as possible are inclusive to as many people as possible, I'm not arguing that, but I just can't think of these issues with the same weight as the things that feminism used to be up against. Nor do I think that feminisms chosen targets are really the source of the problem, so much as symptoms of deeper misunderstanding between the sexes that have nothing to do with the given male-dominated-target-of-the-day. And it's my opinion that some of it goes too far, in that it stops being about equality and starts stifling otherwise healthy male sexuality or non-sexual behavior. Again, it's not always the case because everyone's flavor of what feminism is will vary so much- but I can't get behind modern feminism simply on the basis that I feel some of the ways the term is wielded are misguided or misdirected.

I think it would be wrong to say that feminism is a non-issue for either of those reasons, but more fair to say that sometimes it gets off track.

 

[TedEH]

What that tells me is that your local market is over-saturated with all male metal band with nothing extraordinary about them, nothing that really separates them from one another. Meanwhile there is in fact a market demand for more women performers.

I'm not talking about metal in this case. And when I say they were terrible, I mean it. Like every song was the same three chords in the same key because I don't think they could play anything else kind of terrible. I'm talking at least one obvious trainwreck per show, despite how simple the songs were. But they filled most venues they played at.

While I wouldn't say there's a not a lack of women performers in our metal scene (or in non-metal) here, there's quite a few music women around here. Realistically, the women in metal in this area are pretty well respected for their musical value, even if they do experience a lot of what's been described here at the same time.

 

[OmegaSlayer]

This sums up what sexism or talk about different sexuality is on the internet



I feel like people enjoys more to talk about it than apply in real life what they talk about.

 

[asher]

I love that scene, but wut?

 

[Louis Cypher]

I love that scene, but wut?

I guess he is saying most people talk a good game bout not being sexist etc etc but when it comes to real life they are just as sexist as those they criticise online

 

[JohnIce]

I feel like people enjoys more to talk about it than apply in real life what they talk about.

Do you know anyone in this thread in real life?

 

[SD83]

2 days and the thread exploded... now where is the official SSO hottest guys in metal list?
As Lemmy said, "There's nothing wrong with good manners. They're free, everybody should have them", but as long as you stick to that, am I at fault when I like looking at women (or human beings in general) I find attractive while listening to the music I love? If all of that is sexism, Boybands are probably its purest form. Is it already objectiving if I say "I know nothing about that person, except she can play the guitar and I think she looks good"? In fact, I hardly ever hear things like that from my male friends. The female ones, however... "Oh, the singer is sooooo cute!" "I don't really care about the band, but he is so damn hot." etc. Maybe I'm just lucky and live in my own little world and everything outside of it is just ....ed up...
(I do realise there are problems with sexism in the metal scene. A few friends of mine stopped going to concerts and parties as they always had pretty much a circle of drooling drunk guys around them, but from what I heard, at least where I live, the situation is far worse in the reggae or goa scene. And I kind of lost my thread and am getting nowhere... sorry )

 

[JohnIce]

2 days and the thread exploded... now where is the official SSO hottest guys in metal list?
As Lemmy said, "There's nothing wrong with good manners. They're free, everybody should have them", but as long as you stick to that, am I at fault when I like looking at women (or human beings in general) I find attractive while listening to the music I love? If all of that is sexism, Boybands are probably its purest form. Is it already objectiving if I say "I know nothing about that person, except she can play the guitar and I think she looks good"? In fact, I hardly ever hear things like that from my male friends. The female ones, however... "Oh, the singer is sooooo cute!" "I don't really care about the band, but he is so damn hot." etc. Maybe I'm just lucky and live in my own little world and everything outside of it is just ....ed up...
(I do realise there are problems with sexism in the metal scene. A few friends of mine stopped going to concerts and parties as they always had pretty much a circle of drooling drunk guys around them, but from what I heard, at least where I live, the situation is far worse in the reggae or goa scene. And I kind of lost my thread and am getting nowhere... sorry )

Objectification itself isn't the problem, it's the context that matters. Much like a bullet isn't dangerous and neither is an empty gun, but put them together and you have something dangerous. Objectification can be harmless, but it can also be used to fuel an established global system of oppression. So if you don't know what you're doing, you may think you're being harmless when in fact you're not.

But no, saying someone looks good is not objectification

 

[Dayn]

Yeah, run out of arguments so you might as well call someone autistic to discredit them. That always works.

I think this sums up the amount of delusion shown by some in this thread. Not only a textbook MRA, but also brings up autism out of the blue when it was never mentioned before.

Is it any wonder people, women in particular, don't want to be near people like this? The people I've met who do, end up becoming a client to get them a protection order...