Confessions of a Ranting Lunatic

I was reading a few magazine articles today. I browsed through Paste and Pitchfork, stumbleing to the NY Times, (a far drift from music mags, I know), and I came across an article about how Indie movie producers are doing all of the marketing and distribution out of pocket. NY Times writer Michael Cieply was talking about this as if it was a revolutionary thing for a film maker to do. He proceeded to discuss the problems of starry eyed kids wanting to sell to major studios yadda yadda….but what I could not believe is that NO WHERE in his article did he make the comparison to the music industry. The Music industry has been doing this forever. It’s called a Vanity Label. It’s called Doomtree. Not to mention that every Indie musician AND film maker usually do everything out of pocket anyways. But what ever, that’s completely beside the point, and I truly have no descent segue, (as life normally doesnt), so Boom, new part of the story.

Continuing further into the NY Times, I found an article entitled “Do Women Make Better Bosses?”. I did not read this article, and I almost feel guilty saying that, HOWEVER, there is a very specific reason I did not read the article. Today at school I attended my first Women in Music “social event”, (I’m not even sure what to call it, but to me, it was free tacos), where of course we were encouraged to walk around and talk with each other, meet new girls, etc. I suppose I should explain that I am not exacly sure what the Women in Music club does at my school. Every so often I see a newsletter, and even less often, they will do something a little bigger and bring a guest in. All in all (and I say that really meaning “the only thing I understand about it is that”) it’s about empowering women. Which I am all for, but I am not sure how we accomplish that in a locked room eating tacos. Either way, I starting to think about what “women empowerment” really means, and to be honest, I don’t know. It seems to me that anytime women want to “empower” themselves, they all gather around in a group and either eat or read, or both. I am all for eating and reading, and empowerment, but I’m afraid books and food (although they feel powerful) are not empowering women as a whole. Another thing that truly bothers me is the fact that we always separate ourselves from men when we need empowering. Which, to me, only furthers the thought and image that we cannot FEEL powerful around men.

I asked a couple of women in the group why we could not bring men in to do this with us. Mostly, the response was, “well, they would just eat all the tacos and leave” (which forced me to stay longer than I had intended, as my agenda was to eat a taco and leave).  One girl even said to me “don’t men have enough stuff?” I don’t understand how tacos or boys having enough “stuff” relate to involving men in our club. It’s not going to change from Women in Music, the center of it will always be just that. Plus, it would be a great chance for the men in our school to be educated, and informed about women in the industry. I did a quick tally at school, and there is a significant more amount of girls that have come into my school this quarter than when I started over a year ago. This leads me to believe that in the near future, women will no longer have to “strap on the boots”. Perhaps, men will soon “lace up the boots”, in a sense. What I mean by this is that I believe the industry will become balanced, to a point where women will not have too measure up to a man in order to be taken seriously. (Personally, I don’t really feel like I have to do that now….but I AM A WHOLE DIFFERENT SPECIES.) Shouldn’t our talents, our abilities, our focus or our diligence measure us? Another point is that bringing men in our group would greatly help the communicative abilities between the sexes, especially when it comes to us working together. The more comfortable we become with discussing things like inequality, (when and where it is relevant) the more we have done to diminish its presence.  Lastly, and most important to me, is that boys and men join in our quest for empowerment. It is good for us to collaborate on that level, face to face, about this kind of this. Bring in women speakers, let’s learn about Bessie Smith and Ella Fitzgerald, but lets ALL take an in depth look at how these women effected our society. Otherwise, all we are doing is furthering the very thing we are sitting in rooms, eating tacos talking about.

I am very close with many of the girls that make up the Women in Music club at my school, and I have nothing but respect and admiration for every single one of them. They each are amazingly talented, generous, and courageous women who are a glimmer of light in our industry. One in particular, is arguably THE hardest working person in our entire student body. She continues her dedicated booking positions in another state, and continues to spread into fields of artist management, and PR. I want to make clear that I do not think it is the women that have made the club that make it exclusive, but it is the idea of the “women’s club” itself. I am not talking about the “personal” sort of social women’s club, like a book club or a wine night. That sort of thing is comparable to a cigar club. But any kind of club that is oriented on education, or igniting social change, could not and should not be gender specific.

I would like to reiterate, that I am not against the idea of a Women in Music club. I think too often are revolutionary women in our industry like Florence Price and, I have to say, Mary Ann O’Doherty, forgotten. These women were so influential and important, why would we leave the men out of a gathering dedicated to their history?

Possibly what bothers me most about this social reoccurrence is that I am afraid of posting this on a networking site where the women who are heavily involved in this group would read it. It’s not that I fear I would offend them, (because if I am not offending at least 1 person a day, than I am too sheepish for my own liking), but because I fear they would take this as a hate article. Really, it’s just an opinion article, one that I feel, as a woman, I had to write. What I am most afraid of, (and very afraid to write these next few sentences) is that the organizer of the club could stand to make my final quarters of school very unpleasant if she does not like what I have to say about the Women in Music club. So I ask you, how far have we really come?