I have had some experience with sexism in the metal scene. It is by far not the worst kind, but nevertheless very annoying and completely unnecessary. Interestingly enough, sexist reactions have increased somewhat in relation with a recent release by my band, I guess it has to do with the band becoming more visible due to a PR campaign, and that seems to attract all kinds of people. One of my earliest experiences was when we played our third concert, several years ago. At get-in time, we (guitarist/singer, drummer (both of them white, straight, male) and me) started loading in the gear to the venue. To coordinate rigging, I asked the guitarist/singer where we should start. A guy employed at the venue overheard my question and told me "well, you can clean a bit around the stage, and after that maybe you wanna make it look nice around here, put up some flowers or something like that". I was completely taken aback and didn't manage to say anything, I just gave the guy a weird look, half surprised, quite annoyed and a bit resigned. The guitarist/singer looked the guy dead in the eye and told him: "yeah, right; she is one of the artists". After that, he didn't bother me anymore. I knew however one of the ladies working at the bar, and she told me that he always was unpleasant towards female employees. So as expected, such behaviour is seldomly a one-off act. This episode makes me wonder how we would have been treated had it been an all-female band. Would we even have gotten a gig?
Another, more recent episode related to the band-context, happened during the PR campaign for our recently released album. We had made a music video, in which the different members of the band were shown playing the song in question with an old abandoned power plant in the background; in some scenes, we green-screened in space background. Nothing unusual in other words. Both me and the guitarist/singer wore our respective patch vests in the video (we both take great pride in them, as I think everyone owning a patch vest does =) We used part of the video as a Facebook ad. People from all around the world commented on the video, there were many positive comments, some weird ones, but then there was the following one: someone commented "well, rockers these days surely look different". Our guitarist/singer commented through the band account that well, rock changes with time as all music genres do. To that, the person replied: "well I was referring to the fat keyboard player wearing glasses".
What does one say to that? I mean, I can't be surprised exactly, this is just a tiny bit of a decade-long history of reviewers and commenters commenting on the musical skills of male musicians and the looks of female musicians (check out some of the Girlschool reviews from the early days for example, they are absolutely appalling in style, along the lines of "here we have some average-looking women who play their instruments surprisingly well"). Here I should add for context that I do not consider myself overweight. I am not slim, it does show that I like a good meal, and I am completely happy with that - I love good food =) But most importantly, I consider this issue *utterly* irrelevant to the music my band makes. Secondly, my bandmates weigh more than me (this is taking into account height differences). I can't get the thought out of my head that it was no coincidence that the commenter made an issue out of my looks, and didn't comment on the looks of my bandmates. Now that I am writing this episode down, it strikes me even more strongly how utterly inane this whole discussion is. I mean seriously, aren't there more important aspects to consider, like for example - I don't know - musical execution, composition, sound, genre, performance?!
That comment however did make me reflect a bit around women in metalbands more generally. And it does strike me: The female metal musicians I know are all conventionally beautiful, slim, white people wearing flamboyant hair styles, make-up and fancy clothes, sometimes rather revealing/sexually attractive. And yes, no one, absolutely no one wears glasses (that goes for male metal musicians as well). The glasses issue I had never even remotely thought about (not the weight/body form issue either, for that matter, for me it is really just music that matters. Comparing myself to the likes of Alyssa White-Gluz, Simone Simons, Floor Jansen, Madeleine Liljestam or Elin Larsson I see that physically, I am no match. I don't try to be either. I wear no make-up, I never have. I play live in trousers, a t-shirt and patch vest and in socks (I play bass pedals, and haven't come around to buy proper organ shoes, so anti-slip socks do the trick, they let me feel my way around the pedals just fine). Music-wise I give my everything, I pour my heart and soul into every note I play. In my opinion this is the only thing that should matter. If it at least were the case that both men and women had to endure inane comments on their looks, than one could brush it off as common human vanity. But knowing that there are so many male metal musicians out there who are no head-turners, but they have wonderful stage-presence, and that is all that matters for the show, so no one bats an eye, and then imagining the shitstorm female musicians in the same position would have coming their way...that hurts to think about.
Another, more indirect way I have experienced sexism in the music business in, is by playing shows in pubs or biker clubs. At get-in I walk into the club, and what greets me at the doors, is tons of pictures of naked women in clearly objectifying poses. Ok, so that's the status of women around here, I cannot help but think. And then of course the bar owner shares the same kind of stuff on Facebook. That particular guy treated me well the night we played there. But again, I was thinking, how would things have been if I played there with an all-female band? How would we have been treated? Did it make a difference that I at all times had my male bandmates close by? I think this is one of the adverse aspects of sexism. It is not necessarily only the bad things one experiences, it is the constant state of alert, some sort of uneasiness: something could happen...but one never knows where and when. This is really tiring. The amount and degree of sexism I have experienced, is mild, considering what I know others have experienced - I imagine for others who experience worse amounts and degrees of sexism, it must be utterly exhausting.
The constant state of alert has an influence of what spaces one perceives as safe. When I hear about my bandmates casually joining other bands or dropping in as session musician, I at one point realised: I would never feel safe doing that. In my case it's not even about physical safety, it's about my self-worth, about being seen and treated as a person. In the band I am, I feel completely safe, me and my two bandmates are very close, and I am completely confident that they see me as who I am, nothing more, nothing less. That gives me the space so many men can take for granted, to just be, and use all my energy for creating music, playing great solos, pull my weight in a rehearsal room jam. But I know very well that with any other musician, I wouldn't have that safety, I would have to check the territory, be alert, and think twice about everything I say and do. Again, it is not about who the other (unknown) musicians are, it is about what could be, and all too often is: and a painful and long history of victim blaming, rape myths and the like are very clear that whatever happens, it is always the woman's fault. The metoo-campaign feels like just a drop in the ocean, when I at the same time read about rape perpetrators in Norwegian courts walking free because holding the victim down is seen as "not using enough force" to count as rape, 50-year olds in Sweden walk free because the 16-year old they raped was at fault for hanging out with them. And these are the countries that are seen as most advanced when it comes to women's rights. We have yet such a far way to go.
Returning to the metal scene more specifically, I think both as a musician, and concert-goer/fan, sexism or the lurking threat of sexism is omnipresent. It happens more often than not that when me and my boyfriend, who is a metalhead, go to a concert and see acquaintances from the local music scene, they talk over my head and only to him. They barely acknowledge me, barely react when I chime in on the on-going conversation. If I cross paths with someone from the local scene, many of them will barely greet me. It its tiresome to try being super pro-active all the time, sometimes even reading extra on some topics to be sure to get it right when I say something about it, only to have people barely acknowledging my presence. Whatever I do will never be enough because I am a woman and don't dress like someone one could easily view as a sex object. And there again, I will never know whether people's behaviour is sexism or whether they just don't like me. This uncertainty is demotivating and can be tiresome.
There have been similar instances during and after concerts. During a cool concert at a small venue, I stand in the front row and participate very actively, headbanging, horns up, yelling, all of it. At some point, the singer starts communicating directly with me, turning the mic towards me; I start clapping with the beat and everyone joins it. The whole atmosphere is really great. And then suddenly the singer looks and me and shakes his chest. Like what the hell does he think, that somehow me participating wildly means that I am suddenly in the mood of shaking my boobs around? Suddenly, the atmosphere wasn't so great anymore. In those moments, one always just shrugs it off, but thinking what those situations actually mean, what the people in the situation are communicating, makes me just sad. It's small, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, signs and nudges: as a woman, you don't belong here, unless you agree to be a sexual object.
It's also really annoying when wanting to get laid seems to be the only reason to talk to women after a concert. One day, me and a friend went to a concert and stayed after the show. The guitarist joins our table, which I thought was really cool, of course I like the band, I like his style of playing and would have loved to have a conversation about soloing, composing etc. Quite soon I notice that he only talks to my friend, basically ignoring me. He got closer and closer to her, and my friend got more and more uncomfortable. After that evening, he, a married guy around double her age, who knew very well that she was in a relationship, kept harassing her through messages for weeks, inviting her at night to his hotel room when he was in town and stuff like that.
The not-belonging-unless-as-a-sexual-object logic I experience sometimes at metal festivals too. One year I went to a big festival; there were so many great concerts, one of my favourite bands played, the music was all that counted, I felt completely in my element as a festival-goer and was completely happy. That band interacts a lot with the crowd, but always with the crowd as people, there is never anything gender-oriented. Some hours later while waiting for another great band, I could see another band playing on the neighbouring stage. Suddenly, in the middle of the show, they asked all the women in the crowd to show their tits. I was shocked - after the concert of my favourite band I had let my guard down, for a moment I took the feeling of being just another person in the crowd, for granted. It was a beautiful moment, and it didn't last long. A similar situation occurred when I after dancing like crazy during the concert of another band I am very fond of, walked across the sign showing the entrance to a strip club. At a metal festival, seriously? And as the sign indicated, it was a heteronormative strip show, a woman objectified for men to look at. Some might argue that the sexy part of metal is part of kicking back at societal and bourgeois norms. To that I want to say, what good is a revolution that kicks downwards instead of upwards? The sexism is just the same in the upper class and in the so-called rebelling underground, so why pretend it's something different and thereby alienate half of the world's population?
To summarise the sexism part, what is most tiresome and detrimental about sexism in my experience, is constantly having to be on my guard, you never know when sexism hits, and when it hits, it will nearly never be a situation where it is beyond doubt for everyone involved that it was sexism - sometimes myself included; the question 'is it sexism or does he just dislike me?' is all too easily internalised. But as with all kinds of discrimination, if the person experiencing discrimination gets this nagging feeling, that this might be about discrimination, then there's usually a good reason for getting that nagging feeling, because the small situations are all connected to a societal pattern.
I have some thoughts about race as well. Unfortunately, the world is divided into different regions based on racist principles, and with this racist division, there follows racist migration regimes. Just a look at what countries' citizens get to travel to what other countries without a visa and what are the requirements for getting a visa (the 'what's your passport worth'-question), paints a deeply problematic picture. This affects metal bands. For a metal band from let's say Senegal or Burkina Faso to get to a European country to play a festival or a concert tour, they would have to be rising stars, signed to a label and still there might be visa difficulties. For a European band however, they might be mediocre, but as long as they can afford to rent a van or pay for petrol of a borrowed one, they can go and play small venues in mostly any country in Europe. It might not be very lucrative, but still, they can do that. In other words, if you are from a visa-wise disadvantaged country, you have to be exceptional to maybe get a chance at playing in visa-wise advantaged countries - or even in other countries of the same region; whereas, if you are from a visa-wise advantaged country, you can be mediocre or just kind of good enough and still get to play wherever you get a deal - travelling is not the problem. This is white privilege in the metal world.
Also, if one looks for that information, or listens to bands who are in that scene, one understands at one point, that there are so many festivals that we just never hear about, because they are on other continents than Europe. Why don't we get to hear about those festivals? Turns out e.g. that Togo and Burkina Faso have a great metal scene, the same is true for Botswana and Mozambique. I think we don't get to hear about those festivals and scenes through our mainstream channels because of stereotypes about what the African continent is all about. This bias in access to information perpetuates in its turn the stereotypes and the whole situation is just very generally bloody unfair and fucked up.
Also, and here I speak mostly from a European perspective, metal is mostly white people. My experience and intuition tells me that usually when a scene is mostly white, there is a reason for that. And it's not that non-white people just are into different stuff. It's about visible or invisible, intentional or non-intentional barriers (the fact that quite many white metal people wear 'locs is but one of many symptoms that can point towards a scene that is toxic for people of colour; another example is the appropriation of specific kinds of folk music into metal by people who have no connection to that tradition, yet get more press and more popularity than their peers who make similar music, but who have their roots in that tradition; I don't think I have to say anything other than point and shake my head at NSBM or their less direct, shitty little brother, "we are politically neutral" (and, surprise, we like to share Nazi insignia and we like to say that we really hate Islam, but no, we are not racist)).
That comment however did make me reflect a bit around women in metalbands more generally. And it does strike me: The female metal musicians I know are all conventionally beautiful, slim, white people wearing flamboyant hair styles, make-up and fancy clothes, sometimes rather revealing/sexually attractive. And yes, no one, absolutely no one wears glasses (that goes for male metal musicians as well). The glasses issue I had never even remotely thought about (not the weight/body form issue either, for that matter, for me it is really just music that matters. Comparing myself to the likes of Alyssa White-Gluz, Simone Simons, Floor Jansen, Madeleine Liljestam or Elin Larsson I see that physically, I am no match. I don't try to be either. I wear no make-up, I never have. I play live in trousers, a t-shirt and patch vest and in socks (I play bass pedals, and haven't come around to buy proper organ shoes, so anti-slip socks do the trick, they let me feel my way around the pedals just fine). Music-wise I give my everything, I pour my heart and soul into every note I play. In my opinion this is the only thing that should matter. If it at least were the case that both men and women had to endure inane comments on their looks, than one could brush it off as common human vanity. But knowing that there are so many male metal musicians out there who are no head-turners, but they have wonderful stage-presence, and that is all that matters for the show, so no one bats an eye, and then imagining the shitstorm female musicians in the same position would have coming their way...that hurts to think about.
Another, more indirect way I have experienced sexism in the music business in, is by playing shows in pubs or biker clubs. At get-in I walk into the club, and what greets me at the doors, is tons of pictures of naked women in clearly objectifying poses. Ok, so that's the status of women around here, I cannot help but think. And then of course the bar owner shares the same kind of stuff on Facebook. That particular guy treated me well the night we played there. But again, I was thinking, how would things have been if I played there with an all-female band? How would we have been treated? Did it make a difference that I at all times had my male bandmates close by? I think this is one of the adverse aspects of sexism. It is not necessarily only the bad things one experiences, it is the constant state of alert, some sort of uneasiness: something could happen...but one never knows where and when. This is really tiring. The amount and degree of sexism I have experienced, is mild, considering what I know others have experienced - I imagine for others who experience worse amounts and degrees of sexism, it must be utterly exhausting.
The constant state of alert has an influence of what spaces one perceives as safe. When I hear about my bandmates casually joining other bands or dropping in as session musician, I at one point realised: I would never feel safe doing that. In my case it's not even about physical safety, it's about my self-worth, about being seen and treated as a person. In the band I am, I feel completely safe, me and my two bandmates are very close, and I am completely confident that they see me as who I am, nothing more, nothing less. That gives me the space so many men can take for granted, to just be, and use all my energy for creating music, playing great solos, pull my weight in a rehearsal room jam. But I know very well that with any other musician, I wouldn't have that safety, I would have to check the territory, be alert, and think twice about everything I say and do. Again, it is not about who the other (unknown) musicians are, it is about what could be, and all too often is: and a painful and long history of victim blaming, rape myths and the like are very clear that whatever happens, it is always the woman's fault. The metoo-campaign feels like just a drop in the ocean, when I at the same time read about rape perpetrators in Norwegian courts walking free because holding the victim down is seen as "not using enough force" to count as rape, 50-year olds in Sweden walk free because the 16-year old they raped was at fault for hanging out with them. And these are the countries that are seen as most advanced when it comes to women's rights. We have yet such a far way to go.
Returning to the metal scene more specifically, I think both as a musician, and concert-goer/fan, sexism or the lurking threat of sexism is omnipresent. It happens more often than not that when me and my boyfriend, who is a metalhead, go to a concert and see acquaintances from the local music scene, they talk over my head and only to him. They barely acknowledge me, barely react when I chime in on the on-going conversation. If I cross paths with someone from the local scene, many of them will barely greet me. It its tiresome to try being super pro-active all the time, sometimes even reading extra on some topics to be sure to get it right when I say something about it, only to have people barely acknowledging my presence. Whatever I do will never be enough because I am a woman and don't dress like someone one could easily view as a sex object. And there again, I will never know whether people's behaviour is sexism or whether they just don't like me. This uncertainty is demotivating and can be tiresome.
There have been similar instances during and after concerts. During a cool concert at a small venue, I stand in the front row and participate very actively, headbanging, horns up, yelling, all of it. At some point, the singer starts communicating directly with me, turning the mic towards me; I start clapping with the beat and everyone joins it. The whole atmosphere is really great. And then suddenly the singer looks and me and shakes his chest. Like what the hell does he think, that somehow me participating wildly means that I am suddenly in the mood of shaking my boobs around? Suddenly, the atmosphere wasn't so great anymore. In those moments, one always just shrugs it off, but thinking what those situations actually mean, what the people in the situation are communicating, makes me just sad. It's small, sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, signs and nudges: as a woman, you don't belong here, unless you agree to be a sexual object.
It's also really annoying when wanting to get laid seems to be the only reason to talk to women after a concert. One day, me and a friend went to a concert and stayed after the show. The guitarist joins our table, which I thought was really cool, of course I like the band, I like his style of playing and would have loved to have a conversation about soloing, composing etc. Quite soon I notice that he only talks to my friend, basically ignoring me. He got closer and closer to her, and my friend got more and more uncomfortable. After that evening, he, a married guy around double her age, who knew very well that she was in a relationship, kept harassing her through messages for weeks, inviting her at night to his hotel room when he was in town and stuff like that.
The not-belonging-unless-as-a-sexual-object logic I experience sometimes at metal festivals too. One year I went to a big festival; there were so many great concerts, one of my favourite bands played, the music was all that counted, I felt completely in my element as a festival-goer and was completely happy. That band interacts a lot with the crowd, but always with the crowd as people, there is never anything gender-oriented. Some hours later while waiting for another great band, I could see another band playing on the neighbouring stage. Suddenly, in the middle of the show, they asked all the women in the crowd to show their tits. I was shocked - after the concert of my favourite band I had let my guard down, for a moment I took the feeling of being just another person in the crowd, for granted. It was a beautiful moment, and it didn't last long. A similar situation occurred when I after dancing like crazy during the concert of another band I am very fond of, walked across the sign showing the entrance to a strip club. At a metal festival, seriously? And as the sign indicated, it was a heteronormative strip show, a woman objectified for men to look at. Some might argue that the sexy part of metal is part of kicking back at societal and bourgeois norms. To that I want to say, what good is a revolution that kicks downwards instead of upwards? The sexism is just the same in the upper class and in the so-called rebelling underground, so why pretend it's something different and thereby alienate half of the world's population?
To summarise the sexism part, what is most tiresome and detrimental about sexism in my experience, is constantly having to be on my guard, you never know when sexism hits, and when it hits, it will nearly never be a situation where it is beyond doubt for everyone involved that it was sexism - sometimes myself included; the question 'is it sexism or does he just dislike me?' is all too easily internalised. But as with all kinds of discrimination, if the person experiencing discrimination gets this nagging feeling, that this might be about discrimination, then there's usually a good reason for getting that nagging feeling, because the small situations are all connected to a societal pattern.
I have some thoughts about race as well. Unfortunately, the world is divided into different regions based on racist principles, and with this racist division, there follows racist migration regimes. Just a look at what countries' citizens get to travel to what other countries without a visa and what are the requirements for getting a visa (the 'what's your passport worth'-question), paints a deeply problematic picture. This affects metal bands. For a metal band from let's say Senegal or Burkina Faso to get to a European country to play a festival or a concert tour, they would have to be rising stars, signed to a label and still there might be visa difficulties. For a European band however, they might be mediocre, but as long as they can afford to rent a van or pay for petrol of a borrowed one, they can go and play small venues in mostly any country in Europe. It might not be very lucrative, but still, they can do that. In other words, if you are from a visa-wise disadvantaged country, you have to be exceptional to maybe get a chance at playing in visa-wise advantaged countries - or even in other countries of the same region; whereas, if you are from a visa-wise advantaged country, you can be mediocre or just kind of good enough and still get to play wherever you get a deal - travelling is not the problem. This is white privilege in the metal world.
Also, if one looks for that information, or listens to bands who are in that scene, one understands at one point, that there are so many festivals that we just never hear about, because they are on other continents than Europe. Why don't we get to hear about those festivals? Turns out e.g. that Togo and Burkina Faso have a great metal scene, the same is true for Botswana and Mozambique. I think we don't get to hear about those festivals and scenes through our mainstream channels because of stereotypes about what the African continent is all about. This bias in access to information perpetuates in its turn the stereotypes and the whole situation is just very generally bloody unfair and fucked up.
Also, and here I speak mostly from a European perspective, metal is mostly white people. My experience and intuition tells me that usually when a scene is mostly white, there is a reason for that. And it's not that non-white people just are into different stuff. It's about visible or invisible, intentional or non-intentional barriers (the fact that quite many white metal people wear 'locs is but one of many symptoms that can point towards a scene that is toxic for people of colour; another example is the appropriation of specific kinds of folk music into metal by people who have no connection to that tradition, yet get more press and more popularity than their peers who make similar music, but who have their roots in that tradition; I don't think I have to say anything other than point and shake my head at NSBM or their less direct, shitty little brother, "we are politically neutral" (and, surprise, we like to share Nazi insignia and we like to say that we really hate Islam, but no, we are not racist)).
No matter what kind of barriers, the effect is still that people are excluded from a scene and no scene should accept that loss. So here we as white metalheads have to think, how can the metal scene become more inclusive? I think one big step we as a community ought to take, is to refrain from excusing unacceptable and exclusive behaviour by stating "but I like them as artists". That's whiteness in the working. I as a white person, can technically like an artist who also happens to have Nazi sympathies, support that artist, and no harm will ever come to me. People of colour don't have that luxury, what I can make pass as "just an ideology"/"we have to agree on disagreeing", can mean the difference between life and death, the difference between being acknowledged as persons and having to endure racial aggression. A position of true solidarity is acknowledging that and use our privilege to state clearly that unless a band welcomes everyone, they are not welcome.
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