The ladies of Tiger Beatdown on Women, Rock and the same juvenile sexism everyplace.
AMANDA: So on the one hand, you’d think the [rock fan/musician] subculture would be totally interested in accepting women – how rejecting of mainstream values is that! – but on the other hand, the subculture is also about building a culture around the primacy of the sensitive rocking Kurt Cobain haircut boy’s particular flavor of marginalization, and when women come in with some other shit to talk about it tends to threaten that dynamic.
SADY: Right. I mean, not to re-iterate an old cliche, but: The guitar is a tried-and-true way, not only for Wussy Guy to become Charismatically Sensitive Guy, but for men to sort of build hierarchies outside of the gym class where they are all getting wedgies. And I think women are drawn to rock or indie rock or whatever the kids with the cool haircuts are doing these days – … – because, they think, “a-ha! Outsiders! As a lady, I am kind of BY DEFAULT an outsider, in that I am not a dude!” But the dudes are like, “you don’t get it. We WERE outsiders. But we built a WHOLE NEW INSIDE, for us specifically, so that we wouldn’t have to be outsiders any more. And now you are not invited.”
Excerpted from Tiger Beatdown. Tiger Beatdown has been on a roll lately.
