April 25, 2013

To fight sexism, Coachella should have Celine Dion headline

From Slate:
The Real Reason Summer Festivals Have So Few Women 
By Forrest Wickman | Posted Wednesday, April 24, 2013, at 3:19 PM 
Last week, an article on BuzzFeed asked, “Where Are All the Women at Coachella?”

Coachella is a big outdoor rock music festival every April in the Greater Palm Springs area that appeals to white kids with 3 digit IQs who like electric guitars and new wavier synthesizers. Heck, I even know who some of the bands playing there this year were (e.g., New Order, Social Distortion, Violent Femmes, Dropkick Murphys, Jello Biafra, Sparks, The Selecter, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Vampire Weekend, and OMD).
The conclusion the authors reached was unsurprising. As they had expected, a breakdown of the festival’s lineups by gender showed that, year after year, the bills have been dominated by men. In fact, it wasn’t even close. In this year’s lineup, female-fronted acts represented only a little more than 10 percent of the more than 500 artists who played. The festival hasn’t fared much better in the past: On average, just over 15 percent of the festival’s acts have been fronted by women.  
... Perhaps they didn’t want to lob accusations of sexism, which can be uncomfortable, or to face the commenters, who have been mostly vicious and defensive. “There is legitimate gender inequality in the music industry,” says one unusually civil commenter, “but the problem does not lie in Coachella.” “Stupid article,” says another. “This suggests that the actual pool of marketable music acts is 50% male and female-fronted, but festivals are the ones f------ it up. Please.” 

I've noticed that professional journalists who are paid to wield Occam's Butterknife are getting angrier and angrier over how they get repeatedly cut to pieces by anonymous commenters wielding Occam's Razor.
The idea behind both comments is that festivals simply reflect disparities within the music industry, which is supposedly dominated by male acts generally. The problem with this line of argument is that it relies on assumptions that simply aren’t true, and have long been outdated. In fact, the festivals are the ones f***** it up, while women practically dominate the music Americans listen to and enjoy. 
If that sounds unlikely or surprising, just look at the Billboard charts, about as cold and dispassionate a measure as we have. ... In 2009, women held not just the top spot, but the top five spots, with Taylor Swift leading the way. In 2010, Swift came in at No. 2, while another multitalented singer and songwriter, Lady Gaga, came in at No. 1. In 2011, both these artists were crushed by Artist of the Year Adele, who had both the biggest album and the biggest single of the year, with three other women filling out the top four spots. I 
... Still, this doesn’t excuse Coachella. Each of these measures, chosen not by planners but by unplanned democratic consensus, celebrates many more female voices than that festival does.
So am I saying that the organizers in Indio, or the fans they’re trying to please, hate women? No. The problem is larger than that and not nearly so simple. Indeed, most of the big music festivals have the same problem. For this year’s Lollapalooza, the top 13 acts are all fronted by men. At Bonnaroo, Björk is the only woman among the top 10 headliners. Festivals like Outside Lands, Sasquatch, and the electronic music festival Ultra are similarly male-dominated, though Pitchfork—four of whose top six acts this year are great solo female artists—shows that each of these festivals could do better. 
Instead, the real problem at most of these festivals lies in the alternative subcultures they celebrate. Formed out of the male-dominated music scenes of jam music (in the case of Bonnaroo), late-’90s indie rock (Coachella), and early ’90s alternative and grunge (Lollapalooza), these festivals tend to celebrate diversity while dismissing the most popular pop acts—the ones who tend to dominate the charts and who tend so often to be female—as frivolous or corporate. 
As the festivals expand beyond their narrow roots, maybe fans and organizers should start to take the commercially and critically successful female acts they currently deride more seriously. 

The basic issue is that rock music traditionally celebrates artistic diversity and innovation, which comes overwhelmingly from men. Women are more conformist and less driven, so they are less likely to push the envelope.

This is a general conundrum in culture in the 21st Century: We are supposed to celebrate diversity and we are supposed to admire the épater le bourgeois spirit that motivated Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and so forth. No problem, right? Except that the épater urge and achievement was -- and remains -- strongest in white males.

27 comments:

Anononymous said...

Cloaca?
Appropriate name for a rock concert.

wren said...

Wow, what a lineup.

I've noticed that professional journalists who are paid to wield Occam's Butterknife are getting angrier and angrier over how they get repeatedly cut to pieces by anonymous commenters wielding Occam's Razor.

Nicely worded. This seems to be more and more common at the sites I often look at. Someone who is smarter than I will capitalize on it I hope.

hbd chick said...

"...OMD..."

omd's still around?!

Orthodox said...

I saw OMD and though maybe Steve was remembering a concert from the 1980s.

Seriously though, these women are slowly rebuilding the case for the patriarchy. I wouldn't listen to this woman at a dinner party, let alone let her write things in a newspaper. If she can't make a good sandwich, send her to the nunnery or isle of Lesbos.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer said: This is a general conundrum in culture in the 21st Century: We are supposed to celebrate diversity and we are supposed to admire the épater le bourgeois spirit that motivated Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and so forth. No problem, right? Except that the épater urge and achievement was -- and remains -- strongest in white males.

Intellectual curiosity is also a trait that is rare outside of the the dreaded White male demographic. Perhaps more than anything else, it is a sense of curiosity that makes the west unique.

-The Judean People's Front


Dennis Dale said...

you know, they could have an annual festival that just featured the Billboard Top Ten. My goodness, why hasn't anybody thought of that? Oh, yeah, because people who listen to those acts don't turn out for music festivals.

Anonymous said...

***In 2009, women held not just the top spot, but the top five spots, with Taylor Swift leading the way. In 2010, Swift came in at No. 2, while another multitalented singer and songwriter, Lady Gaga, came in at No. 1. In 2011, both these artists were crushed by Artist of the Year Adele, who had both the biggest album and the biggest single of the year, with three other women filling out the top four spots.***

The writer is not very bright, grasping at straws like this. Music festivals were set up precisely to get away from this kind of top-of-the-charts cr@p. If you want to see sh!t like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, you go see them in concert. You don't go to a music festival to see top of the charts pablum like Adele. White knight manginas named "Forrest" really don't seem to get it. He is simply looking for a reason to whine about the female quota not being filled.

Anonymous said...

So festivals organized to celebrate particular genres of indie rock music should instead showcase the same commercial dreck heard everywhere else for the sake of bringing more female "artists" into the festivals. Amazing.

Anonymous said...

The guy's anti-logic is impeccable: Taylor Swift or Rihanna or Chesty Perry are the top commercial acts because they appeal to the LCD but are also founded upon the all-important bread n' butter consumer core of tween girls (whether here or in Pakistan), who are by some wondrous economic miracle all simultaneously at the fine age of finding themselves and buying make-up and that crap. Taylor Swift doesn't need Coachella--she can headline Swiftella instead. The performers who fill in at these stupid Lollapalooza knock-offs, often for very little compensation--or occasionally they even have to buy in!--are the 19th Century Irish subsistence farmers of pop music who can't sit back and count their royalty haul off the tween revenue stream.

Auntie Analogue said...


Two words: WHO CARES!

Anonymous said...

His throwaway comment at the end about the laughably overrated Stone Roses not drawing Record Store Dweeb's forecasted audience level was the cherry on the tripe sundae.

double keytars said...

Dunno if you noticed but there's a dude in the Slate comments with the hilarious better-than-fiction handle "Bugboy" who makes the iStevey (Campanis-y?) suggestion that the ladies suffer from hand size disadvantage.

Anonymous said...

Slate totally sucks now, I think it may be even worse than Salon. In the post-Gawker era who needs a centrally located website for smug liberal arts majors to practice megaphone social-grooming techniques. Only good thing left is the crime-themed blog.

BrokenSymmetry said...

"In 2009, women held not just the top spot, but the top five spots, with Taylor Swift leading the way. In 2010, Swift came in at No. 2, while another multitalented singer and songwriter, Lady Gaga, came in at No. 1. In 2011, both these artists were crushed by Artist of the Year Adele, who had both the biggest album and the biggest single of the year, with three other women filling out the top four spots."

Official figures. Most women just don't know how to download illegally.

Anonymous said...

"***In 2009, women held not just the top spot, but the top five spots, with Taylor Swift leading the way. In 2010, Swift came in at No. 2, while another multitalented singer and songwriter, Lady Gaga, came in at No. 1. In 2011, both these artists were crushed by Artist of the Year Adele, who had both the biggest album and the biggest single of the year, with three other women filling out the top four spots.***

The writer is not very bright, grasping at straws like this. Music festivals were set up precisely to get away from this kind of top-of-the-charts cr@p. If you want to see sh!t like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, you go see them in concert. You don't go to a music festival to see top of the charts pablum like Adele. White knight manginas named "Forrest" really don't seem to get it. He is simply looking for a reason to whine about the female quota not being filled."

Exactly, guys like this don't get it, they don't understand that

1. People who go to Coachella are trying to get away from mass-market crap

2. Whereas mass-market crap has attractive front-men/women (not that they aren't entirely the creative force behind their songs, oh no, I'm sure the fact that Gaga somehow contributed enough to her song to get songwriting credits [an important part of her marketing scheme btw., tell a girl she's just a random, shallow, Britney-Spears-type wh*** and she'll counter with, "but she writes her own songs" and blah blah about how deep Lady Gaga is] means that there's something authentic about this synthesizer-vomited garbage) places like Coachella are at least *supposed* to have bands representative of, you know, ordinary people that start a band, who just happen to be better than most people that start a band.

The fact that a huge majority of such people are male has nothing whatever to do with the fact that the marketing departments for the record labels think that a female-skewed mix of "top artists" is optimal for sales.

Anonymous said...

But Steve, who needs abstract poetical self-annihilatory fancy? We have imported real suicide bombers. Decadent poets now out of work.

JeremiahJohnbalaya said...

First of all, the entire modern music industry is so screwed up that I would be hesitant to engage in any conversation on the subject. But, Coachella is basically a party and a social event. It's just the cool thing for a certain segment of kids to do (and talk about the rest of the year). I'm embarrassed for my adult friends who go for the entire weekend. At least something like Burning Man is a unique experience (or once was).

Wait, is Coachella swipple? I haven't had enough coffee this morning to decide.

I did spend an hour or so earlier this week trying to find something interesting by the bands I didn't know there. Nothing. Luckily, youtube knows my taste (or habits) and offers relief in the sidebar. Although, now I'll probably have Postal Service in there for a few weeks.

jody said...

what do commercial pop artists taylor swift, lady gaga, or adele have to do with a rock festival? nothing, that's what.

next up, why phil collins wasn't on the monsters of rock tour, and why backstreet boys never played at ozzfest.

soon electronic dance music will be big enough that disgruntled columnists will be writing articles about why are there no women DJs at electric daisy carnival.

ben tillman said...

This is another fine example of media bias.

Objectively, there is no reason the writer should assume the "discrimination" problem is on the demand end (or that there is any invidious discrimination at all). But if there must be discrimination, why aren't the suppliers (or non-suppliers) the bad guys?

You could just as easily frame this as women musicians discriminating against the type of people who go to Coachella by not making the kind of music they like.

Anonymous said...

http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/26/anti-immigration-group-immigration-bill-to-bring-in-at-least-33-million-people/

Anonymous said...

Ironic that the search for perpetual affirmative action leads white male leftists to defend mass market consumer garbage like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, and ask why an indie music festival doesn't feature them. You have to appreciate the intellectual cul-de-sac the author just drove himself into, now only if it was this obvious to the readers in other contexts.

Anonymous said...

"I've noticed that professional journalists who are paid to wield Occam's Butterknife are getting angrier and angrier over how they get repeatedly cut to pieces by anonymous commenters wielding Occam's Razor."

I'm not sure if you've made this point much before as the point of a post, but this is something I've noticed a great deal as comments have become an entrenched part of online media and is well worth commenting on.

Most journalists, for as long as I can remember, have been innumerate, brainless ninnies. Previously, they held the metaphorical bullhorn. The editors of newspapers were free to select who they wanted to employ as journalists, and blackball opinions they didn't like. They could promote false dichotomy arguments between journalists in order to suggest that there was democratic disagreement, but every other viewpoint was beyond the pale. Do you remember when there were debates about whether the MSM was even objective and had a bias or not? Things have come a long way since the late 1990s/ early 2000 period.

I am not sure exactly why newspapers can't ban comments or why online news felt compelled to implement them in the first place. I suspect that comments:
a) provide free and compelling content, driving up readership
b) often provide better content than the actual article itself
c) are addictive due to the holy war aspect of a good argument
d) are easier to have as not have them because it is much easier for readers to "shop elsewhere".

The difference between letters to the editor and comments are that printed pages cost money and extra comments don't (in practical terms). More comments are viewed as better, so it becomes more a problem of "is this comment acceptable" for comments versus "is this good enough to print" for letters to the editor. This means a true diversity of opinion has more potential to be allowed. Also, the fact that comments can start appearing immediately means that the public can instantly see intelligent opposing views without having to turn to the Letters to the Editor section of a newspaper or magazine.

There was a "thin edge of the wedge" factor as moderators slowly started to become familiar with the opposing views that are not usually aired in newspapers, and are even converted a little as well argued and researched comments are submitted. This has a similar effect on the readership.

With news sites such as the daily mail that allow users to uprate comments, this has an even more powerful effect. Not only are politically incorrect views shown, but when they are popular, everyone can see it. The PC views that might be as argued literately but mendaciously would normally hold equal rank in a discussion are shown to be as unpopular as they really ought to be. If you choose to sort the comments by "best rated", you start not to even see such opinion.

Over the last ten years as comments have become an accepted and popular part of the online MSM, I have noticed a gradual flowering of politically incorrect and generally contrary opinion. The linked article is a great example, whereby Occam's butterknife opinions that have survived in the hothouse environment of academia, carefully cultivated by academics, are now able to be ripped to shreds by intelligent people in the wider world.

Ideas that weren't even on the radar of most people are now out there, discussed, and widely popular. At some point there will come a tipping point where the situation will change and the mass delusion will end. Eventually the politics have to change to represent what the public actually wants. If it can happen in the oppressive atmosphere of East Germany and Poland it can happen here.

Anonymous said...

The other thing I was going to mention in relation to comments on online MSM publications - it seems primarily the left that engages in measures to shut down commentary, such as no ability to comment in the first place, registration requirements and heavy handed moderation. The right is much less scared that its ideas might be effectively challenged.

Anonymous said...

Re: comments.

b) often provide better content than the actual article itself

Often I dont read MSM articles at all, I just go straight to the comments.

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of a recent piece in the Atlantic lamenting the sexism driving our inability to recognize Beyonce as a genius. I'm not exaggerating, the author literally used the word genius without a hint of irony. Sadly, he had to be of my tribe:-(

-The Judean People's Front

Anonymous said...

With news sites such as the daily mail that allow users to uprate comments, this has an even more powerful effect.

The Daily Mail is heavily moderated though, anything straying too far from the PC fold never makes onto the site (I've tried!) Also their clunky system allows no real debate amongst the commenters themselves.

I prefer sites that use systems like Disqus where you can really get stuck in.

Steve uses Disqus sometimes, I vote for his comments whenever possible:

disqus.com/stevesailer

Anonymous said...

The Daily Mail is heavily moderated though, anything straying too far from the PC fold never makes onto the site

Which is the whole point of keeping moderation in site rather than rely on a third party,