Thumberlina
Content Warning: This article contains accounts of recreational drug use, violence, misogyny/sexism, gender inequality, nudity, sexual references, and allusions to animal cruelty.
Once upon a time in a world much like our own, there stood a dingy dive bar,
much like one we all know.
And in this familiar venue, lived a peculiar sound engineer. One that men from
across the scene ridiculed and feared.
With invisible skin and transparent hair, stories of the sound tech seemed brisk
and rare.
They had a loud voice, yet no man could hear. Maybe somebody cut off their
ears.
Or perhaps these men only listen to their dick. And won’t open their eyes to the
sound engineer with tits.
Men are cocks. And the Music scene is currently filled with cock-sucking, male
ego, and toxic masculinity. We see this behaviour most similarly in
chicken-pens; one riled up Cockerel who won’t allow anyone else to speak.
Women make up only 12% of the sound engineer population, and only 19% of
the highest earning musicians are female. We know from history: the Sabine
Women, the Angel of the House, the Myth of Syrinx, that the women with talent
would be captured first and made to be subservient to the masses of men –
turned into trophies and left gathering dust above a piano; our Rooster-like
fathers forever ruining any chance of equal gender dynamics in this cock-fight.
No wonder women become invisible, hidden under piles of feathers from
Rooster men clucking at each other, beaks erect and piercing, talons like
punches from another coked-up hardstyle bedroom DJ. We turn to Bristol as one
of the most diverse, multicultural and vibrant cities. A city that would allow
chickens on the 41 bus if another Wook claimed that ‘farm animals should have
transport rights too”; God, it is so wonderfully inclusive. So inclusive until we
visit another EDM venue with the same types of Roosters behind the decks. Big
Cocks… I’d like to call them; (in relation to violent male ego and unreflective
of their phallic magnitude). Big Cocks refers to any scenario where a woman has been made to feel unsafe, unincluded, or belittled by a bachelor flock of
cock-orientated arrogance within the music industry.
If that unbalanced populus was seen as a concentrated colony, on in this entry as
a Chicken coop, we know from history that. What people don’t realise is that
women in the industry are forced to create these “women-only spaces” because
pre-existing systems have always been dominated by male voices, intimidating
personalities and undeniable accounts of swinging peni. Since the negligence of
the Muses, the monstration of the Sirens and the demonisation of the Witch
Song, the Woman has become estranged from music technology under the
poisonous Male Gaze. This idea of gender-separated-spaces inherently becomes
another un-progressive narrative in our social timeline. We watch a woman who
wants to take interest in the music scene; but she must do so first through these
female-only bubbles to avoid expected conflict (seemingly impenetrable and
uninteresting to Rooster beak and brains). It’s devastating, really, to be that
woman or, at least, a woman watching women stand alone at the edge of a
“mixed” musical space and be forced to mourn a death of her creativity as our
unfriendly Roosters must alarm the barn and venue with his own booming
cockerel call.
Gendered spaces are harmful and potentially infectious to the development of
equality within creative networks, and by organising these “retaliation” groups
of non-male permeability, we separate the gender gap further and allow socially
upheaved behaviour to fester within now curated male-only spaces. With the
rise of these gendered spaces, we prove that we are only reacting, not acting. We
appoint motifs like “safety” to non-male communities, and label male or mixed
spaces as points of potential harassment; bludgeoning the already wounded
binary before we have had time to cultivate ideas of social salvation. If we want
women to feel protected within the music industry, we need to infiltrate these
institutions en masse and showcase successful women who have rummaged
through the Roosters’ den, watched them cluck and squabble, and continue to
create life and sustenance through the thick of it all.
In a land of phallocentric forests; unknowing to the womb
Stood a tall and bulbous daffodil
Teetering, unripe, edging its bloom
As the morning star arose, the wax moon bid farewell
The petals of our flower opened, and subsequently fell.
And from the dying blossoms, a small maiden awoke
Our familiar sound tech heroine unfurls
Assessing her surroundings, she finds herself in an anecdote
Her tiny hands and tiny mouth deliver a plot-worthy sense of dread
Shrunken and afraid of the moral journey ahead
She downs from her stalk, standing firmly on the ground
Dressed in drags and terrified
Looking up at the tall world around.
A sudden quaking rattle shakes the Earth beneath
And a giant naked man appears, wandering flesh and meat
Eyeing the tiny girl, he seemed dumbfounded and dazed
He had never met a woman, his body reacting fast
An erection (of his spirits) is being raised
The man sweeps up the girl, who forgets to be afraid
She huffs, and sighs, knowing her wits will keep her safe
A low, groaning drone of sound fills the brim of their ears
Melodic messes of baritone and bass
This Gulliverean cult were in sopranic arrears
Dozens of men crowded, equipped with song and dance
Bewildered at the petite girl, her voice like a Siren’s trance
These men unencumbered by the touch of femininity
They dance with no hips, no swing or feel
Playing instruments by rubbing, blowing and fisting bits of trees
When she awoke, the girl could write novels on this man-culture, language and
society
Yet, she forgot this world, realising how phallic-shaped her guitar seemed to be.
What’s your favourite Wife’s tale ? Mine is the one where they treat us all
equally. The one where another male trance-hop vinyl selector, 3 keys in, gave
me full reign of the mixing desk and definitely did not try to intervene. Standing behind me, slurring ‘darling, yeah, I think the gain on the mic should be increased’, and it’s definitely not because he’s a fragile bloke, he’s just 3 keys in. So we excuse inebriation for their misogyny, and expect sobriety to grant us equality. Yet women have the highest tolerance for inequity, practicing patience our whole lives, rehearsing silence in the face of man-splaining and hypocrisy.
I was handed the task of writing an essay about ‘women in the music industry’,
but every question I ask my peers tumbles back to the role of men. We should
have outgrown these shoes by now, or are we not being nourished by our fathers
enough to mature anymore? Will they tell the same folktales to their sons about
warriors and hunters, forgetting the women and the mothers and their
daughters? Did they leave us enough wood to make more guitars to tell these
stories? Or are they plastered and painted, marketed to young girls for double
the price to cover the ‘pink tax’ and to create false ideas of feminine
profitability. Now, of course, it is not all men, but it is every woman who has
faced discrimination in the industry of some kind. We learn about second hand
bullying, social exclusion, and bystanding by the time we’ve left infancy… but
now we are adults, I don’t think casual harassment means these boys have a
crush on me.
On a final closing note, a positive one at that, a message to all the women I have
the pleasure of supporting; I urge you to be louder, take up more space. Give
these misogynistic voices no room to breathe, imitate our mythical Banshee, if
they tell you to step aside, then scream and scream and scream. Learn from our
structured sisters: riot grrls and Destiny’s Children. And steal the industry back
for our modern Muses, the eternal mothers of Music and equality.