I’m a strident feminist. I like the term ‘strident feminist’ for the same reasons the fabulous Caitlin Moran does – being a feminist is something to declare proudly, rather than something to be apologetic over or to minimise. However, I have a problem. A problem I feel guilty over, as a strident feminist. And it’s about music: Music is something that’s very important in my life – I studied it for my undergraduate degree, I listen to it as much as I can. My passions are rock – the Arctic Monkeys, Greenday, Imagine Dragons – and classical piano – Yundi Li, Claudio Arrau, Egeveny Kissen. And all you fellow strident feminists out there are already ahead of me – my problem is that all of those people I’ve just mentioned are male.

I suppose it’s easier to justify my tastes in the classical piano context. After all, a iron-framed, steel-strung, modern piano is a large and weighty object; a piano key typically takes 50 grams of pressure to push down to make a decent volume, and this is a pressure that a pianist has to apply multiple times a second, often literally with their little finger. A certain amount of physical strength is needed to produce a fully-toned, resonant sound, and men tend to have more physical strength.

But rock – well, for me, rock, metal, punk and so on express the only thing that classical music can’t: it’s anarchic, deliberately unfinished, deliberately uncontrolled, deliberately offensive. For rock, I want voices with minimal training, electric guitars, a drumbeat that goes through your whole body. And women who get into the charts don’t seem to make this kind of music: Taylor Swift, Adele, Rhianna, Beyonce, Katy Perry. (Lady Gaga is, as she is in all things, an exception.) And this isn’t recent: looking at a random sample list from the internet of the top rock singers of all time, only 3 of 20 were female, and the only one of those who tickled my earbuds was Ann Wilson. While Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Steven Tyler, oh my.

(And yes, I know the sniggering folks in the corner have noticed that I, a straight woman, just namechecked three men famous for their screaming vocals. To that I say… shhh. That’s not my point.)

My point – yes, I do have a point – is I suspect that my ears like male sounds not because they’re intrinsically better, but because patriarchy. (This blog is still new, but I suspect ‘because patriarchy’ is going to be a key part of many of my feminism posts.) If you think about it, what does ‘better’ mean for music anyway? More musically complex? Yes, but that’s only a limited part of why non-musicians are drawn to particular bands. There’s some evidence that people like the music they were exposed to as teenagers and early-20-somethings and remain drawn to this music throughout their lives, regardless of this music’s quality. If you want to get analytical, here’s a fascinating research paper on what makes a hit, with a nice, more accessible take here.

So, we like the music we are exposed to at a younger age – now let’s bring the feminism lens:

  • The patriarchy, as a structure of society, shapes the things created in that society (e.g. pieces of music). A patriarchal society values things that men value – and all people have a tendency to like things portrayed by and created by people like themselves. Therefore, music that is most likely to succeed may well have been written by men.
  • Another aspect, often discussed in film, is where the male experience as seen on film is considered to be universal, while the female experience on film is dismissed a ‘chick flick’. Mutatis mutandis white people, straight people, cis-gendered people and so on. Women are expected to identify with the lyrics of songs written by men, while men are teased for liking Taylor Swift.
  • While I don’t have the evidence for this, odds are that until very recently the music industry rewarded behaviours that fit stereotypical gender roles. This has changed very recently – see Lil Nas X’s Montero – as long as it’s men breaking the gender roles (see also makeup on Youtube).
  • I need to do further ponderings on a connection I’ve only just made, which is that my love of uncontrolled, anarchic music, which comes mostly from men, nicely parallels the societal expectation that women aren’t allowed to exhibit lack of control. In an industry where sex sells, female sexuality is portrayed as highly artificial, while for men there is at least the illusion of naturalness.

There’s also a fun new bias in town: it looks like recommendation algorithm engines mostly recommend music by men, mostly likely because AI algorithms pick up on biases within the training data they’re given. And so the self-perpetuating loop continues.

So taking all this into account, it looks as if I have been unintentionally trained to enjoy music by men. Because – skipping right back up to where I started: the classical piano context – the explanation I gave isn’t that simple. Until towards the middle of the 19th century, the piano was an instrument for women and composers. Look at the literature – Jane Austin, for example, has many characters where playing an instrument was part of being an accomplished (and therefore marriable) woman. I’d be very curious to see what analysis has been done of this, but there seems to be a connection between the development of the modern, iron-framed, steel-strung piano and the rise of the (male) virtuosi of the same period i.e., the time that many men in music began to really show off to get girls.

‘But, O Verb Ninja wearing her feminist hat, why should I care about this? I don’t care whether talented artists of all genders, races and backgrounds have a right to learn a living with their talent. I just want to listen to good music!’ First, you, get off my blog - you should care about that. But if you want the hard-nosed/bottom-line reason, it’s this: let’s say that 50% of the world’s population is male (it varies depending on the country, of course). That means you could be exposed to twice as much good music as you currently are if you trained your ear to appreciate all genders equally. Twice as much! Remember how you felt when you last heard an incredible song? That song that you played on repeat every day, that you know every word to, that makes your day every time it comes on your playlist? You could feel that twice as often.

(NB: I’m sure that there are also similar effects for race, sexuality, gender identity and so on. I’ll refer you to others who are much better informed to go into the details of those effects, but if you broaden your ear to include sounds from those musicians, you could be feeling that song-euphoria EVEN MORE THAN TWICE AS OFTEN.)

So now I’m on a quest to listen to more non-male artists. I’ll find artists who produce the sound I like, but also retrain my ear to appreciate other sounds. I’m going to find the non-male artists in lists of anarchic musicians, but also talk to others about who they listen to, and why they’re appealing. Because, in a capitalist society, every decision you make has a broader effect on shaping the world. And I want to actively shape the world into the form I want it to be.