Call Of the WinterChef

(Full disclosure: I’m not a “foodie”. I’ve grown up watching the women in my life seriously struggle with what and how much they ate. I resent the culture in which women are taught to police other womens’ eating, as well as their own. The only discussion I’ve allowed others to have with me concerning food lately is: “Does what I’m eating taste good?” Anything beyond that will be met with an eyeroll.)

I’ll never understand the obsession with food. You procure it, you consume it, you expel it as waste products. Repeat ad nauseum. Yet, everyone has an opinion about it. We all have to eat, the saying goes – and we all have complicated relationships with that which we need to nourish us.

Just as the United States has seen a huge increase in cooking and food themed shows in the past 5 years, so has the metal world. There are two metal themed recipe books published, various online metal cooking shows, and metal themed restaurants popping up in major cities. What the hell is going on here?

I had a laugh at the theatrics of the Black Metal Cookies troupe and Metal Chef with Kragoth the Barbarian. Their take on the subject was pretty transparent – a winking acknowledgement that cooking is made much more entertaining when you slap on some corpsepaint, exaggerate your movements, and crack some jokes that border between corny and clever. It’s also worth noting that the food is not the focus of these shows. It’s a vehicle for humorous parody – merely by virtue of juxtaposing metal’s brutality and theatrics with what can be considered inane domesticity.

The other shows don’t resonate with me. I spend all my time trying to avoid thinking about preparing food (there are very few dishes I actually enjoy making), and here they are, agonizing over whether the bacon is done, or whether a recipe is feasible. Why, oh why are you making this a serious attempt to teach me to create an entree? Fuck it, I’ll just make some Ramen and be done with it!

Food is inherently gendered and political. There’s no getting around the fact that women are encouraged by modern socialization to consume less food, or if you MUST consume food, to feel guilty for doing so. Women are held responsible for and judged on their ability to maintain a household – which involves a certain amount of food prep. In this context, food production is devalued work that women are just expected to perform. Men dominate the food-as-swanky-occupation realm. When they cook or serve food, the work takes on a new sophistication.

So, if women are unpaid drudge cooks and men get celebrity and status for food prep, would metal cooking culture look the same if it were female metalheads at work to create the most brutal dishes? Would it be seen as parody, or as too close to our own household arrangements? I still have yet to hear, “Get back in the kitchen, ya feminist metalhead!” but that could be because I’m a formidable force with weapons found outside the hearth-room.

I can say one good thing about food, though – it gives people a reason to stay in the same room. Food is very social, and can be the building block on which we create community. Is that why metalheads have a renewed passion for consumables? Our traditional place to hang out together is metal shows, and those can be loud chaotic affairs where we only get to know each other if we can shout loudly enough between sets.

I have hosted and attended a few parties where my friends and I listened to some good music and ate some edible food and had a good time. The good times might have been aided by the booze… I digress.

Why do people make these shows, books, and restaurants? Weigh in, because I’m kind of baffled here. And hungry. I think the Ramen is done.

\m/ – Ms. Anthropia

Feminist WTF Moments

Cosmo Lee said you need to know what a song is about to have a deeper understanding of the music. At first, my thoughts were just a Big Lebowski quote: “That’s just like, your opinion, man.” Lyrics? Pshaw! Johan Hegg said it himself during Amon Amarth’s set this week. “It’s death metal. If you don’t know the words, no one will know.”

So, I windmill and headbang to my heart’s content without looking up any lyrics. After all, I’m mostly disappointed by esoteric wankery or bad teen poems whenever I look up words to songs. Why would I go out of my way to find something that would detract from my enjoyment of the music? I don’t need to know the “deeper meaning” of a song when I’m rocking out in my room and my neighbors are doubled over in silent laughter.

Something always throws a wrench in that arrangement.

A while back, I had a Feminist WTF Moment when I was blasting the album “Burial Ground” by Grave.  The lyrics “DIE YOU FUCKING WHORE!!” interrupted my trance during the song “Sexual Mutilation”. I did a double take, stopped what I was doing, and backed up the song.

My thoughts were, “Damnit! Why were these lyrics the ones that I could understand out of the entire album?” I know, it seems kind of silly to be bothered by one that – after all, the band is called GRAVE, they’re a death metal band. It like, comes with the territory, ya know? It could be compared to Walmart selling CDs with the curses taken out. All the sex and violence is fine, just don’t curse!

My discomfort runs deeper than simple cherry picking. Prostitutes and sex workers live in state of uncertainty, not knowing if they’re going to survive this day, not knowing if this John is going to get his rocks off on spilling blood. Because such work is criminalized in the United States, prostitutes bear the brunt of others sadistic desires – both from pimps and Johns, and they can expect no justice for crimes committed against them. They exist perpetually between a rock and a hard place.

It’s this climate that allows us to scapegoat prostitutes: to laugh with glee at murdering them in Grand Theft Auto, to give oscars to songs called “Hard Out Here For a Pimp”, to call it “theft of services” when men rape them at gunpoint, to prosecute 15 year old prostitutes trafficked into the trade when they cannot legally consent to sex,  to blame them for their own murders…

And yes, to scream “Die you fucking whore!” and not bat an eyelash at the implications.

When it comes out that dead bodies were people who once engaged in sex work, all bets are off. It’s no biggie, they’re JUST prostitutes, their lives are worth nothing. Someone else already sentenced them to death, and we approve of such judgements. They deserved to die for what they were doing, amirite?

As a culture we only acknowledge that some deaths are tragedies. Others are not even blips on the radar. The result is still the same. Someone died. Their voice will never be heard again, their families will be without a mother, daughter, sister… someone will miss them dearly.

So what’s on the other end of this story? We scapegoat prostitutes because we project everything we feel is wrong with ourselves onto them. It’s not a problem that some dude will seek sex and going as far as paying a stranger for it. His needs, motives, vulnerabilites… those are not what’s wrong with the picture! It’s some woman who “chose” to sell sex. (It’s not a free choice across the board.)

Thus, we call for their deaths. An outpouring of emotion as cleansing as a public stoning.

“Die you fucking whore!”

Yeah, this is all from one line of one song. I can’t find the lyrics to that song anywhere. I’d like to know the context. However, my view towards lyrics has changed considerably. Try as I might, I can’t completely erase the anti-feminist sentiments and “deeper meaning” from my consciousness on this one.

Touche, Cosmo. I’m not willing to bang my head to my heart’s content to something like this. Well played, sir.

\m/ Ms. Anthropia

//

Ov Gender and the Narrative

There’s quite a lot going on in Behemoth’s video for “Ov Fire and the Void“.

First, it’s quite the production. The band invested a lot of time, energy, and thought into this video. I’m still not clear on the funding source.

Second, it’s intended to be religiously charged and/or “offensive”. The presence of all these religious themes was not lost on me. We’ll get back to that. Religion is not my focus presently.

Before I describe the narrative, I’m going to point out a few easily recognizable tropes:
1. Women as sexually desirable
2. Women as reproductive vessels
3. Women as food

The “story” of the video goes like this:

There’s this lady in a white gown on some building. Yes, there’s the standard camera shot of her cleavage as the frame slowly pans her body. Woman as sexually desirable, check.

Ill spare you the boob close up.

Next, she jumps off her perch and has a comfy landing on the concrete. Alas, her eyes have gone all black! DEMON WOMAN! YARGH!

Then, Nergal lays out some tarot cards and our sexy demon lady staggers into a room. A ROOM WITH FREAKY DEEKY CAGED THINGS!! Notice how these beings that go against accepted beauty standards are in circus-cage like displays? Hmmmm. We have the fat woman and the emaciated dude. I have my theories about why they’re caged (not meant to be seen as fully human). These folks have bodies we don’t like.

This creature is not gender conforming! EWWW! Cage it!

So now Nergal appears with his band-mates, all decked out in paint and theatrical costumes ala The Matrix meets Gladiator. What’s he carrying? Is it… a nekkid angel? I think so!

Meanwhile, sexy demon lady is having some issues. She’s clutching at her stomach… was it something to do with those burritos she had off-set? Ahh, no. It’s another one of those quickly progressing immaculate demon conceptions! Woman as reproductive vessel, check!

"Next time I dine with the devil, Im packing some Pepto!"

She’s getting through it ok… I mean, she’s climbing over those catatonic dust-zombie-people. Who are they? Why are they there? Oy… so many questions!

Then, Nergal and Co start groping their nekkid angel woman for whatever reason. I mean, she is just kind of chilling out there on a table. Why else would she be there than to have a Polish metal dude put his hands on her naughty bits? Woman as sexy play thing? Double check.

I hope that paint is water based!

And then, THE NOMING!!

"Om nom nom nom! *cough* Maybe these wings are a bit raw... too many feathers?"

I honestly thing Behemoth are trying to sell me some sort sacrilegious fast food buffet. Maybe they should pursue a deal with KFC? (It has been done. Seriously.) Woman as food. Check.

I think they’re going for the offensive-as-possible-to-Christians route. Yeah, we get it, you are Behemoth, NOMer of Angels! Spookiness!

As if the angel consumption wasn’t enough for our tender eyes, sexy demon lady hands over a demon baby! She just walks up to Nergal and offers it up.

"I made this for you! You like?"

So, spontaneous demon pregnancy ends in a strangely sanitized, bloodless birth. You know who else got spontaneously pregnant and gave birth in a story that omitted all the gore? The Virgin Mary. I guess that’s their commentary on religion. However, women occupy the same space here as in the Bible: empty vessels for reproductive labor.These women are devoid of all meaning or agency.

This scene kept reminding me of another familiar one:

Its the Circle of Life! And it moves us all!

Ok, enough bad jokes.

Other bands have turned reproduction and birth into something disgusting, scary, and repulsive (Cannibal Corpse album cover, anyone?) It’s funny that Behemoth chose another interpretation. If you’re trying to offend, why not go all the way and appeal to peoples’ base aversion to blood and gore?

I have another reading of this video.

The Good Girl (Angel) is passive, not resisting Nergal’s advances. She appeals sexually but is not doing anything overtly sexual (besides appearing naked). Yet, she’s still literally consumed by forces more powerful than herself.

The Bad Girl (Demon Lady) does nothing overtly sexual, and certainly does not engage in sex that we can see. Yet, she becomes pregnant and does the labor of reproduction – apparently for someone else.

Strange. I’m pretty sure Behemoth were not attempting to make any statements on abortion rights or female sexuality, yet that’s what they’re channeling. You can’t watch this video without wondering: If you should become spontaneously pregnant with Demon-child, which clinic should you visit for that kind of thing? Would the 3 day waiting period in South Dakota apply if your pregnancy is over in under an hour and you’re already offering up your newborn to a hungry Polish death metal singer? That’s a raw deal. How would the anti-abortion picketers spin that one?

Bystander Racism

[This post is a clumsy reaction to another at Writing Is Fighting. While I try and stay informed and educated about race issues, I had rarely engaged issues of race in metal beyond representations of POC metal musicians.]

I’m white.

I bet you already assumed I was white. I didn’t even have to point it out, but I just figured I’d clarify.

Of course, as a white woman, I get all kinds of privileges I didn’t earn. People don’t harass me for no reason. They don’t assume I’m a criminal. They don’t clutch their bags closer when I walk by. People don’t regard me with a suspicion they reserve for People of Color (POCs). There are a whole myriad of privileges I’m not even mentioning here. They would take too long to list.

However, one of the most important bits of privilege whiteness has conferred is not having to think about race. I don’t have to think about it because, as a white person, I don’t have a race – at least not in terms of what US terms as race or anything racialized. Those non-white POCs? THEY have a race. Not me.

Except, I do. Some people crossed on a boat from Europe for whatever reason and plunked themselves down in the US.

At metal shows, rarely do we think about race. A lot of the time, we’re just a bunch of white people hanging out and listening to angry loud music without having to think about people who are different in some way. And then, we see some POCs in the crowd. Well, sometimes we’re stunned.

“Holy crap, black people listen to metal, too? I thought all of them liked rap!”

Yeah, we all harbor ignorant assumptions sometimes. Whenever there’s a discussion about race, it’s never about us. We don’t have a race! We’ll just stay quiet and hope above hope nobody calls us racist. Ugh, that would just be the WORST! (But I’m not racist! I have lots of black friends!) [epic eyeroll]

Anyway, I don’t think about race as much as some POCs because I’m considered the norm. They’re considered the other. When people talk about blacks, or hispanics, or asians, my senses don’t heighten because I don’t think, “Oh shit, they’re talking about me again. What are they saying this time?”

Race doesn’t concern us white metal fans. So we continue to support Varg and NSBM, along with other bands who spout hateful messages.

As an ally, I don’t think I can really support those kinds of bands.

“It’s not about their politics, it’s about their music! Metal is not supposed to be political!”

Well, here’s the thing: Metal should be for anybody who wants to listen. If they like the music, why should anybody be hostile towards them?

“Yeah, but metal is made primarily by white people! If they want to listen to it, they’re going to have to deal!”

No. While it’s true that everyone is allowed to have their thoughts on the subject, and yes, white people have a lot of different views on race, it shouldn’t be ok for people to be hateful and racist. And it’s not ok for me to stand by and say nothing while others are making life uncomfortable for POCs who are just minding their own business at shows (and everywhere else).

Yeah, you can be fascinated by Varg and his ilk. You can like his music. But can we really stand around and not call people out on their shit? Can we feature him in magazines without denouncing his views? Should white metalheads just pass the buck on this one? Should we just hope someone else will say it?

For a group of people that sometimes delights in making those who don’t like metal squirm, we’re being really quiet about race (because, you know, it’s so touchy! And, like, SO not OUR problem!)

At shows, we get white-people-diversity: less than 20% POCs. The majority of white metal fans can just ignore the stuff that doesn’t affect them and move on.

Metal shows are some of the places I’ve felt most safe. There have been a few incidents where I’ve felt seriously threatened, but those are the exception. Imagine if that were the rule? Metalheads can be a community of tightly knit friends. When one undergoes hardship, I’ve seen metalheads rally support and organize all kinds of cool stuff that might not be possible in other groups. My motto has become “Metalheads look after our own”.

This might not be true for everyone, but I feel a heightened connection to a lot of people who like metal. The rest of the world tolerates this racist crap. We need to talk about it if we want metal shows to be welcoming places for folks who like metal, and not just the white ones.

\m/

Ms. Anthropia

Gazing Fans

The following is going to have a somewhat shocking premise: fans of pop and fans of metal might have more in common than we think. Yeah, I know. Just bear with me for a moment.

When the “stereotypical” pop music fan is conjured in our collective imagination, it’s usually a young teen girl with poster of boy bands gracing her bedroom walls. Imagine a “typical” metal fan from an outsider’s perspective. These outsiders might have picked up on nu-metal somewhere, or heard about the “Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest”. They might have passed a Hot Topic once at the mall and associated that loud, unappealing music with angry teenage rebel wear.

Many people who don’t identify as either pop or metal fans will laugh at both groups’ choices in music and reasons for liking such music. Popular culture has cast both stereotypes as people you cannot take seriously, mostly due to their fanaticism for such “low” forms of entertainment.

Here’s where it gets funny.

Female “teenyboppers” are derided for liking music for suspect reasons. It simply cannot be possible that teenage girls have tried out different types of music only to decide they find pop music the most aesthetically pleasing. No, it must be because they like the way those crooners look! All taste be damned, it’s merely a male beauty contest with these sheep!

Kristen Kidder, author of the 2006 article “She-Bop: Passing Out and Acting Up With Young Female Music Fans“, sums up the disdain for the teenybopper:

More than one [definition of teenybopper] attacks the quality of the music these girls purportedly favor: “someone who likes a band purely for their looks as opposed to the music” is followed by “idiots who don’t know what music is.”

The teenybopper is sometimes confused with another unsavory stereotype in the music scene: the groupie. Many folks accept as fact that some women go to concerts and shows for the sole purpose of sleeping with musicians. I wouldn’t venture to guess how many women actually do engage in such behavior – thus, I cannot come up with a percentage of groupies among female concert attendees. (Anyone want to conduct a survey?) The female gaze is largely viewed as a precursor to culturally stigmatized sexual behaviors among women.

The male gaze does not invoke such collective anxiety. As a matter of fact, it’s more or less encouraged. Female musicians are often accused of being “less serious musicians” than their male counterparts. They also face pressures to sex up their image, because sex sells (to male fans)!

Apparently, the rock magazines and tour promoters have caught on to this really cynical worldview. Men won’t go to see a bunch of chicks performing unless they’re billed as sexy! They imply the male gaze by commenting on the musicians desirability RIGHT IN THE TOUR NAME!

Thus, I give you: The Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock Tour

So, WHY are these bands on tour together? Because they have hot chicks, uh, I mean… female singers! Female singers who are HOT!

I don’t know anyone who has been to any iteration of this particular tour. I don’t like any of those bands, so I don’t think I’d go. Cynical metal fans have mocked In This Moment for having mediocre music and a singer who is there purely for eye candy appeal. They claim they will not be roped in by such a transparent marketing scheme. However, this tour has been around since 2007, if not earlier. If the tour proved to be a financial bust, the marketers wouldn’t try it again. I don’t know the gender breakdown on attendees of this tour as compared to other metal tours (again, survey?), but I’m sure there were dudes in attendance. So, either a) some dudes like the music, b) some dudes wanted to pay to look at hot chicks, or perhaps a little of a and b.

Clearly, enough of you dudes can be duped and bought to fill concert ticket sale quotas!

In Feminism and Pop Culture, Andi Zeisler discusses the commodification of female desire, and the disdain it inspires:

The hysteria of Beatlemania was perhaps the first instance of a mass female gaze — women looking for their own pleasure, men only too conscious of being looked at. [...]

Music such as the Beatles’ — and later, that of equally squeal inducing outfits such as the Bay City Rollers, Menudo, and *N’SYNC — was marketed almost exclusively to teen girls, and though those teen girls went reliably crazy for it, they were still derided for doing so by bands and critics and promoters. The subtext– filled in by music critics through the years– was that making music for girls was a profitable, but not artistic, pursuit.

I still wonder, will the male attendees of the “Hottest Chicks in Hard Rock Tour” be mocked for their desires? Will people clutch their pearls over whether or not these lust-driven men will go back stage, starry eyed, hoping the object of their affections will give them an autograph, or even invite them onto a tour bus? No. We don’t question their motives because we already know these men are there (at least partially) to ogle ladies on stage (that’s what the marquee says, after all). Nobody bats an eyelash at this, even though they could just as easily see women as sexually desirable entertainment in any strip club. Why the pretense of going to a concert?

If you want to see a breakdown of this dynamic at play, look no further than two similar MetalSucks posts, both detailing who the narrator finds sexually desirable or fuckable.

Porn star Bobbi Starr talks about which musicians she’d like to gangbang. The reaction in the comments? “Ewwww! Female gazing groupie! We do not approve!”

Musician Kirk Windstein talks about which porn stars he beats off to. The reaction? “Oh, these be some hot babes!”

As long as it’s not a woman doing the lusting, we can all all rest assured that the status quo is maintained and the dichotomy restored. Men = the watchers, women = the watched.

-Ms. Anthropia

Quick Update: Dreaming Dead

What makes metal feminist? What makes anything feminist? This question will continue to challenge me. There are many feminisms, as many as there are metal sub-sub-sub genres,  and no definitive ways to answer such queries. Does the presence of women in a predominantly male field make something feminist? Not necessarily.

For my purposes I’d argue that it’s a nod to feminism when nuance is added to any picture. We’ve all heard of Tarja and Madame Gossow. Awesome. However, they’re just the tip of the iceberg and hardly all that exists.

A friend randomly recommended Dreaming Dead (which I promptly forgot about along with 90% of music recommendations I receive). I just checked them out and really enjoyed what I heard. I can’t tell you whether you’ll like it or not, so I’ll spare you a (badly written) review. I can tell you that they know how to bring it!

“But what about their gender performances? What about the vocalist’s choice of clothing?! SURELY you’re going to comment on that!”

I don’t have anything to say about them appearance-wise, except they make some REALLY doofy faces during promo shoots! Consider yourself appeased!

\m/

-Ms. Anthropia

Forced To Rock! (And Make A Blog Post)

I like Arsis. I’ve listened to “Celebration of Guilt” way too many times. When I saw them around this time last year, I had a great time.

Their Forced To Rock video wasn’t really notable except for the fact that the song is kind of silly and there’s a pink guitar. However, there were some things I did note: The gender breakdown seemed a little retrograde.

I do acknowledge that this video is meant as a promotional vehicle for the band Arsis, which has no female members. Thus, it’s somewhat logical to have the menfolk playing instruments. They’re in a band. They’re playing instruments (or at least miming the act). That’s par for the course as far as metal videos go.

The woman in the video is not a member of the band, and thus she’s not playing an instrument. I get it. However, I feel like they ripped the ideas straight from a catalog hawking tired cultural scripts.

While the boys are playing their instruments, whipping their hair around and scowling for the camera, the lone girl is doing the following:

-Observing the band members play with interest

-Writing trite sayings on a chalkboard in the background

-Clutching onto the lead singer in some sort of sexually charged hug, rubbing her hands over his body

-Brandishing a yardstick in a non-threatening manner

-”Headbanging” in front of Jame’s Malones crotch

I can jump to the conclusion that her role is mainly decorative.

The stills tell it the way our culture is comfortable seeing it. What fun would a tale be without the pictures?

"Whoa, who farted? I'll keep playing, but I'll show my displeasure through the poopy face!"

 

She’s SO very interested in his playing. Or maybe trying to check out his general nipple area? Any ideas? What’s she doing?

 

"You do the sexy pout, I'll give my best metal face! RAAAH!!!"

"That's not how you keep a beat! Pay attention to my yardstick!"

She looks less interested now, and just kind of irritated. Maybe she doesn’t like the face he’s making. It still feels like she’s just sort of there, and I can’t tell why.

 

"Ok, fine. Play your guitars and stuff. I'll just go back to my writing in the background! Hmmf!"

Does this seem familiar at all? I’m not talking about the specifics here, just the general tone and implications. Men/boys are doing interesting, engaging, creative, and exploratory stuff. The girls/women are just sort of there. They are there so you can gawk at them in the act of being on display. It’s the whole subject/object dichotomy in a cultural text. (I’m calling this video a cultural text. Believe it.)

It reminds me very much of toy catalogs. You don’t really notice the differences in what boys and girls are shown doing unless it’s made explicit through a critique such as this one over at Sociological Images. Here’s another example of gendered body language in advertising (which is another form of cultural text).

Yes, I know. It’s just an Arsis video. It’s fun, frivolous, and entertaining. Yet it’s another example of an accepted paradigm. Guys do stuff. Girls pose for the camera and try to be as enticing as possible. Do what your culture tells you to do as a man or a woman and you’ll get some warm, fuzzy validation. People will “ooooh!” and “aaaah!” and pay attention to you and listen to your music.

Go against the norms and you’ll be ignored (most of the time). Not only does the accepted script appeal to what people have been taught, but it reinforces their beliefs about The Way the World Is.

Women do lots of cool stuff in metal and other kinds of music. They don’t just pose for pictures and provide sexual favors (real or implied). It would be nice to see that reality reflected a little more often. Sex appeal might sell, but (for me at least), it’s a really boring story. Let’s write our own.

\m/

-Ms. Anthropia

Steven Wilson: A Gender Transcender*?!

While reading an interview with Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, Blackfield) about his project Insurgentes I found something peculiar:

[T]he way I’ve chosen to make music is what you might call quite unconventional or unusual — it’s certainly not the way that you (sic) supposed to conduct your career as a musician if you want to be successful. So, in that respect, I have been quite rebellious in my own natural way – even the fact of moving from style to style, from GENDER TO GENDER you know, it’s quite unusual for musicians to do. It’s not something that people understand very easily — that one many it wants to do (sic, sic, sic?) a death metal album and the next many (sic) it want to do a pop album or the next many he wants (sic!) to do an R ‘n’ B record. (emphasis mine)

The words “gender to gender” practically punched me in the face! Where did that come from!? I read the entire interview over and over to see if there was anything else mentioned about Wilson’s gender, or any supposed gender transcending. Nothing. Just that phrase. Could it have been a mistake? The sentence enveloping this ominous statement seems to be talking about musical styles. And the rest of his response talks about switching musical genres. The interviewer/transcriber doesn’t wield English all so well. Perhaps Wilson wasn’t coming out on the sly, and the interviewer/transcriber clumsily got the two words gender and genre mixed up.

Oh, darn. I got excited for a second there. I thought I found a new connection with one of my favorites artists, and a new understanding of his lyrical themes about troubled youth. How could I be teased so?! Gender and genre are OBVIOUSLY very different words. How can someone mix them up? Look:

GENRE: category of art – music, literature, etc. – based on a loose set of criteria – style, structure, era, etc. – which can be subject to change as the “avant garde” borrows, recreates, and pushes the boundaries of a previous categorization.**

GENDER: category of identity based on a loose set of criteria – biological sex, social role, mannerisms, etc. – which can be subject to change; category of nouns – feminine, masculine – based on a loose set of criteria which can be subject to change.**

See? Genre is art and gender is identity. While identity is about things like style, art is about its social role. Wait, no. Identity is about social role and art is about style. Wait. It makes sense both ways. I have a gender but I don’t have a genre, right? That’s ridiculous! I can’t be categorized into a form of art! Right? But I’m not my gender; it’s just a way I express myself. I guess my performance of gender could be considered a genre in a way. After all, it is an art.

Looking back at the history of both words, it appears genre is a French word meaning type, kind, and “genre sexual.” It comes from a Middle English word “gendre”, which is also the root of the word gender. Coincidentally, gender and genre are the same word in French (and Italian). And, our interviewer/transcriber is French. Unless we get the original recording, I’m not sure we will ever know if Wilson actually said “gender” himself, or if the transcriber subconsciously imposed a French understanding of the conversation. Sigh.

Perhaps Steven Wilson doesn’t express the insurgente inside him by changing genders. Perhaps he does – I can still dream! I think it’s safe to say that from the quote above, Wilson meant that he likes to switch musical styles. However, the history and similarity of both words offers us a delicious idea for dissection and further examination about our obsession with classification in the metal community.

Gender and genre share roots because of their emphasis on organizing difference, particularly in performance – of art and identity. How the two words divorced when they quested toward the English language is uncertain. Perhaps the English were a bit more meticulous in their categorization. However, our attempts to maintain borders seem futile. For example, while we apply genres to music we also apply genders. Like goth metal. It’s pretty much fact that the presence of a woman vocalist is a characteristic of a goth metal band. Gender reinforces genre. In this musical style, women sing beautifully and delicately, expressing what we often call “femininity.” They sing about relationships and love – subjects also categorized as “feminine.” The vocal instrument – which encompasses lyrics and notes – is the focus of the music, which reiterates my point: Femininity is the main musical style of goth metal. If a man vocalist is present, like in Lacuna Coil, he screams or sings with some level of distortion. His masculinity is made apparent in his distorted vocal technique, which is associated with power, anger, and fear.

While the way I just analyzed goth metal seems cut and dry, the way gender and genre express themselves isn’t always. To an outsider, men donning long hair and makeup can be perceived feminine or queer. However, to metalheads, how well a man can wear his long hair and makeup is associated with his power, even his sexual prowess. Being a metalhead can affect one’s performance of gender. Gender and genre may be divorced in the English language as words, but their performances and definitions still overlap significantly, almost defiantly…

All this said though, my questions about the obsession with categorization remain unsolved: What does it mean to distinguish men from women, brutal technical death metal from plain old death metal, or goth metal from power metal? Why do we even have genres or genders? What purpose does their classification serve?

And most importantly, when is Steven Wilson going to show us his ultimate femme drag collection?!

*Inspired by the term “Gender Transcender”  from Kate Bornstein’s book, Gender Outlaw.

**While I took inspiration, and factual information, from the Wikipedia page, I wrote the definitions myself with the intention of emphasizing the similarities between the two. The fact that I can do this also proves a point: language is easily malleable, just like gender and genre.

-AngeliKlaw

Just Don’t Call Them Banshees

As a fledgling adult, metal let me feel the kind of rage I’d been conditioned not to express since I first started having emotions. Sit up straight. Cross your legs. Don’t sass. Part of this likely comes from my own upbringing, yes, but many cultures also have a deep-seated revulsion for – and fear of – women’s anger. Men are allowed to get angry, and express that anger, in far-reaching ways all the time. They can bomb things and break stuff (and the old standbys of rape and pillage), but if we do that, we’re cold-hearted bitches. They can rant on cable TV, but if we do that, we’re irrational. Women aren’t supposed to get mad – we’re supposed to not take things so seriously. We’re not supposed to express frustration or rage. And when we do, it’s probably because we’re on the rag, so no one is supposed to take us seriously. There, there honey. Don’t overreact. Do you need a Valium?

So, maybe metal is therapy for all those former good girls out there who just need to sit comfortably for a change. Whether as fans or musicians, through metal women are permitted to express anger (rage, hate, vengeance, agony, lust and other “extreme” emotions, too), and join others in chorus. And this anger isn’t tied to culturally prescribed norms – women in metal bands aren’t limited to yelling about their periods or screaming at exes. The genre frees female performers to express anger and aggression for things beyond our bodies and our experiences, but also doesn’t limit us from doing that, too, if we want.

But the next time I hear a female metal vocalist described as a banshee I’m probably going to lose it. Women expressing anger does not herald that you’re about to die. You’ll be okay if we’re mad, I promise. We promise we won’t attack or lead you to your doom. Unless truly provoked. Maybe that “hell hath no fury” adage holds some truth, and that’s why everyone’s so afraid.

- Morla, the ancient one

On Halloween

Ah yes, Halloween. The one time of the year you can be something you’re not. Or, in this day and age, if you’re a woman, you can unleash the inner sluttiness. That is, of course, as long as you conform to mainstream beauty standards and buy your unoriginal, premade costume.

4 years ago, the Greek chorus started to bemoan the “skanky” costumes with their platitudes. It was fodder for a new moral panic, and cash in the pockets of all those pop-up Halloween shops that appear mid-September. There’s so much sturm und drang about showing some skin. Seriously, people claim those female mountains of flesh move mountains! (The boobquake, anyone?)

“BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH METAL!?!” I bet you’re asking. Well, here’s a start: Take a page from this girl’s book!

You can be a Hawt Metal Chick for Halloween! I mean, c’mon! This girl shows you how to make a very convincing costume. When you strip a few things out about the band shirt, all she’s really teaching is “How To Look Hot”. (For a more general take-down, check here and here.)

As most women know, Looking Hot takes a lot of time, effort, and money. You have to buy the right clothes (and diet/exercise/surgery to fit into those clothes) and buy the right makeup (and get schooled on how to apply it). You also have to buy those accessories (leather cuff) and the hair extensions for that teen rebellion look. This is how you can tell it’s a costume. Hair extensions at a metal show? Do those negate the ability to headbang without sending the colorful adornments flying? (I don’t know, I’ve never worn them. Maybe Willow Smith would know. She WHIPS HER HAIR BACK AND FORTH and colors appear places!)

Mind you, Looking Hot also involves painful eyebrow treatments, use of tweezers, hot wax, razors… maybe some self tanner (if you’re into that). And all this work must be absolutely invisible. (Check out BeautySchooled for more discussion on this.)

In all seriousness, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity is useful to understanding this phenomenon.

Quoth the wikipedia:

Gender Performativity is a term created by post-structuralist feminist philosopher Judith Butler in her 1990 book Gender Trouble. In it, Butler characterizes gender as the effect of reiterated acting, one that produces the effect of a static or normal gender while obscuring the contradiction and instability of any single person’s gender act. This effect produces what we can consider to be ‘true gender’, a narrative that is sustained by “the tacit collective agreement to perform, produce, and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions is obscured by the credibility of those productions – and the punishments that attend not agreeing to believe in them.”

Confusing? I don’t blame you. In layman’s terms, the theory is critiquing social constructions in which the views of the dominant class are cast as “common sense”. Women are just naturally drawn to makeup, ya know? (If that were true, the cosmetics industry wouldn’t spend those millions on advertising.)

Just know that if a guy took this video’s advice, he’d be placed in the category of “Pathetic Tranny”, and would most likely be the victim of a hate crime.

When women are attacked for daring to walk down the streets minding their own business, one of the first questions the media mob asks is: “Well, what was she wearing?!”  (Though they only care if she’s young, white, pretty, and thin.) Donning certain feminine forms of identity expression is a call to war. It’s an incitement to violence, to inhuman practices (according to those who would aid and abet the criminals). Bring on the boobquakes, because dressing a certain way also “causes” rape (remember, men can’t control their peepees! It’s not their fault.)

It’s like my favorite professor once said after his father objected to him visiting his aunt while wearing his usual drag: “You have no idea what it takes to walk out the door wearing this.” (Similar to the “guts to be Glam” quote from Headbanger’s Journey.)

Many cis-gendered, heterosexual men can only see it one way, and only in terms that cater to their life experiences, wants, and desires. However, people wear the costume for all kinds of reasons. Either way, it takes some serious chutzpah.

Courage. Strength. All that jazz. It’s all pretty fucking metal.

\m/

Ms. Anthropia