what is the most masculine genre of music?

This reviewer thinks it's extreme metal.

There is no more masculine genre than extreme metal. Death, drone, black, or doom, it's overwhelmingly about aggression and anger, with monstrous vocals growled out by men for men in a manly male ecstasy of hate and testosterone.

At first listen, the latest album from San Francisco black-metal stalwarts Ludicra doesn't seem to buck the trend. "Stagnant Pond," the lead track on The Tenant, opens with a tolling, trudging guitar that suggests funeral bells and vocals that sound, in true metal fashion, like someone's throat giving birth to a swarm of insects. The liner notes tell me that the lyrics are "Be still, remain still / Do not unveil / The stained and marked / Portrait of your soul," but I'll be damned if I could've made that out unaided. Nor, I think, would I ever have guessed that the evil, gravel-voiced singer was a woman.

In fact, two of Ludicra's five members are women: Laurie Sue Shanaman, the vicious lead singer, and Christy Cather, who plays guitar and sings backup. One female band member in extreme metal is unusual; two and you start to think they did it on purpose. Still, it's not completely unprecedented. And the extreme-metal bands that include women tend to have important features in common: First, they sound just like bands that don't include women. And second, they present themselves just like bands that don't include women.

In pop music, unisex is unusual. Hip-hop, for example, includes a ton of women—but most of them are background singers or R & B vocalists making guest appearances. Female MCs often rap about subjects rooted in femaleness: wearing lip gloss, being ultrahot, screwing or not needing to screw guys. Women in hip-hop also tend to be glammed up like Foxy Brown, so you can't miss the important bits—if they dress like Missy Elliot, they come across as deliberately butch. Even in a genre like grunge, which has roots in metal, gender differences remain important—which is why the awesomely guttural early-90s Sub Pop band Dickless named themselves Dickless and wrote songs with names like "The C-Word" and "Saddle Tramp."

It makes sense that gender would matter in pop music, because pop music is obsessed with sex. There are songs about sex, love, losing love, not getting enough sex, betraying the one you love for sex, bonding with your boys over your mutual disrespect for women, and bonding with your sisters to get over those no-good men. Most pop simply couldn't exist without gender differences and the angst and ecstasy that surround them.

Extreme metal, though, is coming from a different place. You can see it just in song titles: Murkrat's "Plague Gestation," Gallhammer's "Endless Nauseous Days," Astarte's "Twist, Nail, Torture," Acrostichon's "Immolation of the Agnostic." The first three bands are all female; the last has a female vocalist. None sings about being a woman and searching for love, or even about being independent and not needing a man—their lyrics are about pain, hate, torture, and defilement. The members of Astarte, a Greek group, bow to market forces by wearing revealing outfits and sultry expressions in their publicity photos, but their music is uncompromising black metal: noisy, raw, and about as sexy as an enraged wolverine being torn apart by industrial machinery. The members of Japan's Gallhammer wear modified corpsepaint and growl like sexless, sluggish behemoths, dragging themselves ineluctably toward the end of days. And the front woman of Dutch group Acrostichon, Corinne van den Brand, sings in a full-on, Hades-scraping, clotted death-metal rumble.

Ludicra are relatively accessible for black metal—they don't do the fucked-up ambience of Xasthur, the fucked-up folk weirdness of Drudkh, or the straight-up fury of Darkthrone. Like, say, Nachtmystium, they combine blackness with touches of more mainstream rock—giving them a swagger that actually makes them sound fiercer than many of their peers. "In Stable" is a monster of a song, bordering on thrash-metal speed, with jackhammer martial drumming, a thick old-school guitar riff, and Shanaman screaming as if the words were fracturing her jaw. "Clean White Void" is another rocker, with an actually catchy chorus, proggy syncopations, and a complicated song structure—a little like High on Fire, if High on Fire were meaner and grimier and didn't suck. "Truth Won't Set You Free" starts with that metal staple, the quasi-classical acoustic intro, then heads into pure blackness with racing, monotonous drums, repetitive guitars, and desperate shrieking; the conclusion downshifts into lovely, chiming, slow-pan-across-the-fjords doom. "The Tenant" makes effective use of spookily evocative female background vocals that actually sound like female vocals—which sets Ludicra apart from male-only black-metal bands, or at least from the ones that don't use synthesized female vocals in similar ways.

The fact that when the women in Ludicra sound like women they're essentially being used to replace a synthesizer is emblematic of how gender works in extreme metal. Which is to say, it doesn't work at all. Extreme metal doesn't care about men and women. It barely cares about bodies. Johnny Rotten howls "I'm not an animal!" and extreme metal responds with a louder and even more hideous howl of indifference. Misanthropy, to say nothing of misogyny, is for the living. Extreme metal's aggression may sound male on the surface, but a corpse isn't masculine even if it has a penis. Extreme metal seeks a monstrous oblivion; it uses unrelenting noise to destroy not just the dying animal but also the angel fastened to it. "Teach me to mask the spirit . . . The farce of human bonds / Of dignity and respect," Shanaman howls. "Let me be the clean white void / The slate . . . the unwritten." You don't have genitals when you're a mask upon a void.

That's not to say gender is completely inconsequential in the metal scene. I have no doubt that women in extreme metal have to deal with sexism. Satanists aren't much for PC, and though most metalheads aren't satanists, they're still guys. And of course people notice when you've got women in the band; most profiles of Ludicra go out of the way to mention it. Still, I can't think of another genre in which it matters so little. No one thinks of Astarte or Gallhammer or Ludicra as less authentically metal than bands without women in them. They're as technically accomplished as men; they spit bile like men; their lyrics and album covers are for the most part just as bleak and sexless as those created exclusively by men. They sound the same. For all intents and purposes, they are the same. The feminist egalitarian ideal has been achieved not in gynocentric folk or riot-grrrl punk but in the almost entirely male world of extreme metal, where the war of the sexes, like identity and love and hope, disappears in a blank roar of loathing and degradation.

What says ILM?

keep thinking they're talking about Ludacris

Done this before?

oh and that came from Misogyny Is for the Living How extreme metal makes gender irrelevant By Noah Berlatsky

Do you think "extreme metal" is misogynist? Or any other form of music is?

tom i couldnt find a thread. And even if there is one, it wont be about extreme metal & misogyny.

But this isn't just about metal anyhoo.

Just wondered, thought I remembered one

I'm writing about masculinity and death metal a lot these days.

So the review is kinda making a Deleuzian move here- in extreme metal, you sort of die to your gendered self by "becoming animal" and so there's something about embodiment itself in the lyrical subject matter and performance styles of extreme metal that is somehow either pre-gender (you aren't that high up on the chain of being to worry about such things) or post-gender (it no longer matters).

Maybe the question it begs is: what is the relationship of the supposed "sexlessness" of a genre to its obsession with very black-n-white representations of polar oppositions between absolute power and total powerlessness? How is that *not* gendered?

Tom it's quite possible but it could be named anything making it impossible to search.

Mordy is that for a thesis?

Isn't the reviewer saying that "extreme metal" is asexual rather than masculine? By which he means that metal doesn't talk about sex much? If so, then you could say the same about electronic genres (dubstep/minimal/IDM/etc) where the artist doesn't present her/himself and nothing in the music or associated packaging is gendered in any way.

http://simpsonitos.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/91_butchered_at_birth1.jpg
is it true of Death Metal also? arguably, this Cannibal Corpse cover eviscerates gender itself in favor of the sexlessness of the skeleton (er, except usually you can identify the sexes of skeletons by checking out the hips)

Drew I think the guy is really writing about extreme metal being sexless rather than misogynist but i think hes a bit mixed up tbh.
xp

man that article is either total trolling or WILDLY misinformed

heh seandalai said it much better than I did (funnily enough a lot of extreme metal guys love IDM, its amazing the amount of metalheads that love aphex,squarepusher etc)

I mean even the goriest death metal has a ring of sad, insular, misunderstood dude either making sense of an icky world, lashing out at it, or testing out its boundaries to piss off the religious right

the most masculine genre of music is New York hardcore, easy.

power electronics

I saw that band Full Blown Choad at Ozzfest and the lead-singer literally dedicated a song to all the "cunts" that fucked him over

gabber always seemed really masculine to me. And funnily enough, sexless too.

whiney w/the 100% truth-bomb in re: NYHC

so much NYHC is about LITERALLY about chest puffing and chest thumping, getting scary tattoos and being STRONG and I WILL BE HEARD

Isn't the reviewer saying that "extreme metal" is asexual rather than masculine? By which he means that metal doesn't talk about sex much?

If he is, he's an asshat

I saw that band Full Blown Choad at Ozzfest and the lead-singer literally dedicated a song to all the "cunts" that fucked him over

In the UK, 'cunts' is a insult that can be (and is) directed at both sexes. Don't know about the US.

In the UK, 'cunts' is a insult that can be (and is) directed at both sexes. Don't know about the US.

this is a whole different discussion but the fact that a term referring to a woman's sex organ now stands in as a general term of abuse doesn't mean that the use of the term isn't misogynist

imo

Yes, that is a whole different discussion!

I saw that band Full Blown Choad at Ozzfest and the lead-singer literally dedicated a song to all the "cunts" that fucked him over

― batlike darkwing cartoonduck (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 1 April 2010 14:33 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is sort of lol cos if this was a British band most people would assume he was talking about guys

xps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Complexity

and dont start a poll about sharon osbourne not knowing it means something else in the US :(

yeah, Im not sure I've ever heard it directed at girls much. However I have heard plenty of girl neds calling guys a cunt.

but yes, that's another discussion.

in the US it's probably like the worst thing to say next to pulling a KKKramer.

can we not have a 700 post discussion on why some words are wildly offensive in the US but not in the jolly old UK and get to the actual discussion here

agreed

so yeah, the macho posturing of NYHC is so much more offensive and misogynist to me than the EC Comics jokey button-pushing of Cannibal Corpse's "Fucked With A Knife" or whatev

gay fascist muscle disco

dj mencap what was that uk chavcore band that had lyrics about stomping their reeboks in faces? had a really stupid chorus that went like stomp stomp kick or something. I think I posted about it once but I forget where.

wow that review in the original post is all over the place

xp TRC at a guess?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=LBU

have the blackout crew been informed?

loooool tiarnan otm

When I saw Ludicra last year, it seemed to me that their female vocalist's gutwrenching howls came from traumatic memories of sexual abuse. I may be totally wrong, but that's the feeling I got. As much as certain musicians like to think themselves as transcending gender, transcending their humanity, or even as sub-human, in the end they're just fucked up animals wailing about their pain.

????

O_o

um

¿¿¿¿

*sharp intake of breath*

in the end, we are fucked up animals

plenty of chicks at the primordial gig i went to see. thing is extreme metal styles are pretty theatrical on the whole, with bands like cradle of filth attracting a large female following (maybe one of the reasons they're generally shunned by "true" metal fans).

When I saw Ludicra last year, it seemed to me that their female vocalist's gutwrenching howls came from traumatic memories of sexual abuse. I may be totally wrong, but that's the feeling I got.

you sort of need more than "that's the feeling I got" for something like this i.e. lyrics or backstory

Women's intuition

she had a rag of scarlet cloth that assumed the shape of the letter "A"

plenty of chicks at the primordial gig i went to see. thing is extreme metal styles are pretty theatrical on the whole, with bands like cradle of filth attracting a large female following (maybe one of the reasons they're generally shunned by "true" metal fans).

went to an immortal show this week and was surprised at how many women were there. was expecting an all dude affair.

the only two ppl i know went for sure to see immortal in ny were chix.

nyhc is def the most masculine shit ever. i have my radio show every week after a few old nyhc dudes from like the cro mags & murphy's law or w/e. they are super macho, masculine dudebros. they drink corona and slap each other on the back, talk about hahdcaw.

If you're talking about audiences, in my experience, improv tends to be pretty masculine: assuming there's anyone there at all!

hahaha.

with bands like cradle of filth attracting a large female following (maybe one of the reasons they're generally shunned by "true" metal fans).

More likely because they're a joke tbh ;)

in general, the noise and idm shows I've been to have had fewer women attending than metal shows

I remember calling no fun fest "no girls fest" when describing it to people one year

Was at a Peter Brotzmann gig the other week and there were three women there, I thought that was a pretty good turn out by the ladeez

Found it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anz_kVX3KGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7X_BVj3Mfs

btw those ninebar lyrics for "read these boks"

"I'LL KICK YA FUCKING NOSE OFF, STOMP, STOMP, LEFT, STOMP, STOMP, RIGHT, I'LL BOX IN YA FACE TILL THERES NO TEETH LEFT!"

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, 14 July 2009 23:32 (8 months ago)

^ not NYCHC but UKHC

too british. not masculine enough.

Bet you wouldn't say that to their face..

What does Bill Magill have to say on the matter

I look forward to the STOMP, STOMP, LEFT, STOMP, STOMP, RIGHT, I'LL BOX IN YA FACE TILL THERES NO TEETH LEFT! choreography being used by Simon Cowell for his next XFactor winner. Think the dance could take off?

shouldn't have thought so

daf

the amount of girls who show up to something isn't exactly any indication of whether something is "masculine" or not tho

I could see it working on the school playgrounds during a game of British Bulldog

xps

donahue: the most masculine daytime talk show host

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igfoVyTnz0g

"I don't what some dude in a $300 suit can no what haadcaw's about"

STOMP, STOMP, LEFT, STOMP, STOMP, RIGHT, I'LL BOX IN YA FACE TILL THERES NO TEETH LEFT!

isn't that the cheat code for that thing in super mario

the amount of girls who show up to something isn't exactly any indication of whether something is "masculine" or not tho

Of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1pcEtHI_w

What does Bill Magill have to say on the matter

― Collectible Spoons of the 3rd Reich (Tom D.), Thursday, April 1, 2010 11:33 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Im a fan of bands like Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult, who didnt have to be "masculine" to be fucking badass, so anytype of hyper-masculinity is unimpressive to me. That being said, Pantera, COC and some of those southern metal dudes maybe could be candidates for this thread.

Metal, prog and jazz require a some pencil-armed dude who's spent time practicing scales 'n shit, time that could have been better spent playing street hockey and eating Dunkin Munchkins and trimming your fingernails far past the cuticle.

this might be some subgenre of atonal music with an autistic fixation on complexity above all else, maybe idm or death metal or mathrock or something, with more performatively masculine genres often veering into kitsch

lumpen provincial hxc or thrash would win in terms of simple aggressiveness or misoygny though

misogyny, maybe

Orthrelm's OV is pretty masculine by your criteria

so uh by some of your definitions masculine=technical? because that seems weird to me.

yeah you should elaborate on that

something like

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_male_brain

i suppose? the privileging of internal logic over, you know, more obviously meretricious elements of music like tunes or w/e

I realise it's inevitable to an extent but there's def some conflation of 'masculinity' and 'things prominently practised by guys' here

^^^tip of hat to that DN, gotta say

by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy

idk, i think that resigning the idea of technicality to some sort of masculine trait is prob more sexist than most anything else on this thread. its prob something that hits me in the wrong spot in particular tho, because i spend lots of my time at work trying to dispel the whole "girls are only allowed to play strummy acoustic guitar" stereotypes.

not trying to be mr dude feminist here or anything

"by men for men in a manly male ecstasy" sounds v

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516551R1W8L._SS500_.jpg

like i said

ha, I didn't read the thread past that phrase. you otm.

I thought there would have been more comments on this part:

In pop music, unisex is unusual. Hip-hop, for example, includes a ton of women—but most of them are background singers or R & B vocalists making guest appearances. Female MCs often rap about subjects rooted in femaleness: wearing lip gloss, being ultrahot, screwing or not needing to screw guys. Women in hip-hop also tend to be glammed up like Foxy Brown, so you can't miss the important bits—if they dress like Missy Elliot, they come across as deliberately butch. Even in a genre like grunge, which has roots in metal, gender differences remain important—which is why the awesomely guttural early-90s Sub Pop band Dickless named themselves Dickless and wrote songs with names like "The C-Word" and "Saddle Tramp."

i think everybody is comfortable assuming that this guy doesn't understand hip hop and moving on

I assumed everybody did some quick math and decided that a misogyny in hip hop thread isn't gonna be much fun or at all productive

ha

have never thought of missy as butch

being ultrahot is also a difficult requirement for femaleness

i think everybody is comfortable assuming that this guy doesn't understand hip hop and moving on

I think you might be right there

by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy by men for men in a manly male ecstasy

― british is happening (The Reverend), Thursday, April 1, 2010 4:49 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I'm tempted to thrown on 'Male Stripper' right now so I can sing the above over "I was a male stripper in a gogo bar"

Okay I sort of skimmed through this thread and didn't really read it but at what point did we switch from talking about masculinity to talking about misogyny? Like, is it actually impossible to do identify something as "masculine" that isn't also dismissive of/belittling towards women, and isn't that kind of super depressing if it's true?

once again, gay fascist muscle disco

please post a youtube of gay fascist muscle disco
and Dan OTM

I'm glad he realises that I was not looking for examples of misogynist music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAS_wmiYTzE

this is usually the first thing I think of re: "gay fascist muscle disco"

Though I can understand why people think it is about misogyny because of the name of the writers (confused?) review.

Heh, Dan, I never liked Nitzer Ebb.

didnt open the youtube video but that better be pankow or laibach or some other industro thing

xxpost HAHA

"Join In The Chant" to be precise

gay fascist muscle disco

oh dan did you listen to the youtube I posted earlier?

"Read These Books"? Listening now. It's kind of... I mean, it's sort of a caricature, isn't it? At least, that's how most metal comes across to me, which is one reason why I don't listen to a lot of it.

not trying to be mr dude feminist here or anything

really earnestly wish more dudes felt comfortable describing themselves as "feminist" without fear of coming off like marc loi or w/e - nothing whatsoever wrong with being a dude feminist & a dude describing himself as one doesn't automatically make him a dumbass

i thought everyone agreed that the answer was ny hardcore and now we're just bullshitting the afternoon away

part of this is just me being a sad industrogoth but I find a lot more masculine swagger in shit like "Valentine" by Sisters of Mercy, or Birthday Party/Nick Cave stuff or Front Line Assembly shit, things that are either relentless pounding beat-based mechano stomp exercises or moody meandering music with some deep-voiced dude ranting over the top of it

(I actually didn't realize I had any time for Nick Cave until I heard The Birthday Party since a lot of the stuff he did with The Bad Seeds can just fuck right off.)

nah J0hn my thing was more that i dont like coming into a discussion like this as a dude and being all "hey let me tell you my IMPORTANT knowledge about the plight of womenfolk" cuz basically i figure its kinda patronizing to get all academic about it when women actually have to deal with this shit while i sit around and pontificate and smoke my smart guy pipe

xposts

not to mention the fact we have all see the shit Tuomas gets because he calls himself a feminist.

I had a few ideas for genre types when i looked at the thread, but really, NYHC is the answer.

as a fortunate homosexual i dont really worry that saying im a feminist makes me seem like a date-rapist

i thought everyone agreed that the answer was ny hardcore and now we're just bullshitting the afternoon away

lolz. also, just remembered that I used to work with a dude that had a prominent NYHC tattoo. first time I saw it, I was like, "oh, you're into hardcore?" and he was like, "eh, sort of." WHOOPS.

Okay I sort of skimmed through this thread and didn't really read it but at what point did we switch from talking about masculinity to talking about misogyny? Like, is it actually impossible to do identify something as "masculine" that isn't also dismissive of/belittling towards women, and isn't that kind of super depressing if it's true?

and to answer this: masculinity historically has largely constructed itself as the thank-God-we're-not-feminine gender. social constructions of masculinity and misogyny go hand in hand. building a masculinity that doesn't define itself as at least somewhat misogynist is sort of the task ahead, but the present reality of masculinity imo can't be discussed without some reference misogyny/feminine traits being construed as lesser, weaker, undesirable/bein' the gender that gets to call the shots.

xpost actually Dan I would argue that the SoM are trying to do some interesting rethinking of masculinity - A.E. all goth-dancin' w/his hands, the band name, the weirdness of the focal point being this guy who kind of looks like he's immobilized in some way but still making this strong music - there always seemed to be something there

xxp that's not why tuomas gets shit i don't think?

"really earnestly wish more dudes felt comfortable describing themselves as "feminist"

i'm totally not a feminist but i am REALLY feminine. hopefully that makes up for my gross guyness somewhat. i love hyper-masculine music! gay straight or otherwise. it's fun to listen to. the smell of shows where hyper-masculine music is played can kinda get to me after awhile though. pee yoo.

today i am playing all 12 records of the history of the house sound of chicago box that i picked up last night and i feel kinda femme and kinda manly simultaneously.

nah J0hn my thing was more that i dont like coming into a discussion like this as a dude and being all "hey let me tell you my IMPORTANT knowledge about the plight of womenfolk" cuz basically i figure its kinda patronizing to get all academic about it when women actually have to deal with this shit while i sit around and pontificate and smoke my smart guy pipe

I don't think talking about femininity & masculinity & where we're at with it as a culture is really smokin the smart guy pipe - certainly just saying "can't talk about that, it might be patronizing" is less good than taking the risk?

JD sayin' that better than I could've. when someone describes something as "masculine," it almost always comes off like this dockers ad or we:

http://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Dockers-wear-the-pants1-500x333.png

why i think that a homo-uber-mensch version of masculinity works really well for this thread is partly because women dont come into it at all, I think a lot of this misogyny/masculinity male-trouble is because the female is situated as both a source of desire but also the antithesis of masculinity, so the female is kind of there as an absent force that weirdly exerts this anxious repulsion/desire in terms of how the masculine is constructed. But with faggy-shirtless-poppersniffing industrial its all Man-machine-fuck-a-tron-groove-train and women just dont come into it.

JD sayin' that better than I could've. when someone describes something as "masculine," it almost always comes off like this dockers ad or we:

I feel like there is about a metric ton's worth of modern sociological baggage tied up in that opinion which I have not adequately studied enough to properly argue against aside from saying that masculinity and chauvinism appear to me to be two related but separate things and you are essentially ceding any chance of actual gender* equality if you conflate the two, as you are basically saying the defining essence of one is to oppress the other.

* - I really don't want to use this word but I don't have a better one.

jjjusten's concern that gendering anything affects women more than men seems otm

also lold at plax's sly martinism

I just came here to talk about organ solos.

i always found that it was cool to imagine, like, a non-oppressive ideal masculinity, and there are instances where you can see facets of it, but overall it's a v. thorny issue.

yeah i mean, you can say its not really fair to say that masculinity isn't necc misogynistic but i mean, masculinity is just a set of codes within the larger culture of white male patriarchy yall.

this wld be better if it was only a question for women imo

I have a problem with the semantics of defining everything in terms of the larger culture of the white male patriarchy because (WARNING MASSIVE TAUTOLOGY APPROACHING) that means, by definition, that the white male patriarchy is the default and, by extension, everything you discuss is a deviation from that baseline. This is something that I, as a black person who grew up almost exclusively around white people, have been hyper-sensitive of my entire life.

masculinity is just a set of codes within the larger culture of white male patriarchy yall.

boom

I mean...there is no way, at all, of doing much more than surface work here about this, and this is can-o-worms central, but masculinity bears the same relationship to femininity that whiteness does to otherness in American (I want to say "western" but even my own ham-handed broad-speaking way senses the occasional limit) culture. not to say they're really stackable-up next to each other but male privilege & white privilege compare well, and play strongly into each other.

xpost right that is what makes the white male patriarchy so fuckin pernicious HI DERE!

I just find it entirely disappointing, annoying and self-defeating to have a conversation where someone asks "what is the most masculine genre of music" and a bunch of otherwise rational people say "well, this is the one that hates women the most"; like okay, here is a chance to discuss what "masculine" means and what its essential attributes are and the first thing everyone wants to leap to isn't stuff like "violence" or "aggression" (which is where my headspace went) but "most demeaning to women"... it's like, why are you even bothering to pretend that you think there's any hope for equality on ANYTHING if that's the way you think?

x-post to HI DERE:

I guess what I was getting at is when "masculine" or "macho" get rolled out, more of then than not, it is in opposition to the other. often pretty explicitly!

you obv can't write off anything masculine as misogynistic. but the way the term is deployed often is.

haha lose my "x-post" I guess

well if concepts like masculine and feminine are going to be useful to a society then they are about delineating between two classes of people and you know which one has been in charge quite a lot, it makes sense that the definitions between those categories would be useful as tools of subjugation etc.

xp thats why I was hoping that we could jump in with, you know roided up house music, because thats a more interesting way of thinking about masculinity (pleasure of the body, body worship etc) than whichever is most hardcore and violent (what is implicit in violence always is, you know the victims of said violence)

that xp was to HD

well I hear you but I think that is unfair to say that the fault lies in the people who reflexively think "masculinity has a lot to do with misogyny" - an ideal masculinity may not, but masculinity as we know it in the world kinda does imo. it's not being defined by "the way I think about it" - masculinity, for a long time, has largely defined itself (via its social expression & norms) as "the trait that is antithetical to femininity"

but fuck this it is HI DERE's birthday so let us not argue and let us rather think of masculine traits other than the misogynist ones, which we've covered!

really earnestly wish more dudes felt comfortable describing themselves as "feminist" without fear of coming off like marc loi or w/e

yeah I was pretty comfortable doing this until ILX ragged on me ad infinitum - maybe the content, rather than the form, was an issue

Tiarnan's answer is still the best one, although I'd possibly add KMFDM

most "bro" music: sublime

Any ladies chime in yet on this thread?

No, it's a very masculine thread so far.

*chugs a brewdog*

what... what is a "brewdog"

surely it isn't a hot dog in beer form, which is what I am terrified it is

lolz I use it interchangeably w/"brewski" or the like

but literal brew dog description resulted in a literal lol

Didn't there used to be brats with beer in them?

see what happens when there are no women in the discussion

my buddy once poured skittles into heineken or some somethin' and called it "skittlebrau". it was pretty nasty. (but v. masculine)

Dan will now make his fortune selling hotdogs in beer

I have a sneaking suspicion that this will kill on college campuses

Remember when this goes to court when Alan sues you, that we will take his side, unless you give us a percentage of the profit.

Meat which fizzes = NAGL

dpaok

.0000000000000000000001% is still a percentage, just remember this

these guys will want a piece of the cut:

http://www.brewdog.com/slideshow/home2.jpg
http://www.brewdog.com/media/brewdog_logo.jpg

sorry, can't resist:

http://www.brewdog.com/media/punkdog.gif

How is that an achievement? Dogs notoriously easy to punk.

You just pretend like you threw the milkbone but really youre still holding it.

it may not be an achievement, but you can't deny that it makes it more personal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeb8-KBq4b0

The answer to this thread is Outlaw Country.

Hank III must be like the most masculine musician ever then.

Any guy you can compare to his father and grandfather and say is the most masculine of the bunch is probably a pussy.

robert bly is mrs. doubtfire?

my buddy once poured skittles into heineken or some somethin' and called it "skittlebrau". it was pretty nasty. (but v. masculine)

― ¬_¬ (Alan N), Thursday, 1 April 2010 20:50 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

reffing a Simpsons bit here:

Homer: "I'm feelin' low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?"

Apu: "Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it."

Homer: "Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles."

feminism, unless we're getting way extreme, basically amounts to 'anti-sexism' (v. rarely about overcoming the patriarchy and then instituting a matriarchy, yes?), so hey gents, if we're feeling awkward let's just go for that.

If feminism just amounted to anti-sexism we'd probably just call it that.

heh, didn't catch the ref but he's a big simpsons nerd, so that makes sense.

Can I sorta disagree with J0hn for a second? I tend not to like the implication that masculinity is just a matter of not-being-Other for the same reasons I dislike the idea that middle-class white Americans "don't have a culture" -- because it describes how privilege feels, but it doesn't actually describe reality. Just because your way of being is so dominant or valued that you're not super-conscious of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist; just because putting on a baseball cap feels less visible than putting on a turban doesn't mean the baseball cap isn't part of a culture that's just as specific as any other. And I think that goes even more for being male/masculine, a gender system in which there's no big numerical minority -- it's half-and-half, you know? Being male/masculine isn't just about not-being-Other, it's a whole gender construct every bit as bizarre and artificial as being female/feminine. It just happens to be the one we value and make really easy on men, which makes it incredibly easy to adopt it and perform it without much thinking about it, just viewing it as natural and right and simple. That's where the "othering" comes in. But I don't know that the concept of masculinity is any less constructed than femininity -- in fact, it strikes me as problematic to really talk about gender without saying "masculinity" is completely artificial and learned and performed like anything else!

haha sorry HI DERE kinda pointed at this idea already, sorry

it's okay, nerdy black dudes gotta stick together

how dya think feminism doesn't generally amount to anti-sexism? What it's generally doing is trying to find some kind of balanced relationship between sexes, either in the boring standard equal rights way, or as a matter of the real recognition of different identities alongside the (male; also white + western + etc.) norm, no?

haha HI FIVE DERE

no, i don't think feminism is primarily about establishing a "balanced" relationship between sexes... any more than the guy who's running second in the race is primarily about "catching up" with the leader. If women were to surpass men in whatever metrics are used to demonstrate their second-class status now, you think the bulk of self-identifying feminists would mind?

I think alot of middle America would think pop country like Toby Keith and stuff is the most masculine. I mean cos metal people wear makeups. And hardcore/techno people are .... well, you can guess what they say. I think in the last decade hip hop and rap has taken its place amongst the children of those people but yeah if you want a mainstream definition of manly music just watch a pickup truck commercial and listen to what it's playing.

dan is it rilly yer birthday happy birthday! if so.

op w/e is on the stereo when im banging yr sister

kerm, I think we're on a pretty dangerous ground if we're positioning feminism in general as a declaration of sexual warfare.

Kerm that's an incredibly short-term (and ridiculously quantitative) way of looking at it. Seriously, a change in our society that took care of all our various cultural roots of sexism would be part of a process on the scale of like centuries, not metrics, and yes, by the end of it today's self-identifying feminists would be long dead, and the people of this vastly improved future would have gradually stopped worrying a ton about the issue.

ask ten women what feminism means and you'll get ten different answers. the gals never know what they want. am i right or am i right?

hell ya, that's why I'm here to tellem what it is.

no, i don't think feminism is primarily about establishing a "balanced" relationship between sexes... any more than the guy who's running second in the race is primarily about "catching up" with the leader. If women were to surpass men in whatever metrics are used to demonstrate their second-class status now, you think the bulk of self-identifying feminists would mind?

― Kerm, Thursday, April 1, 2010 6:05 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thread delivers

please dont , we avoided thread being derailed and trainwrecked all day, dont spoil it now!

almost as o_____O as that fastnbulbous post earlier tbh

thread needs more NYHC vids from youtube to make us laugh

I just don't get why a movement supposedly aimed at *balancing* power relationships between the sexes would call itself that. If your goal truly is *gender equality* why wouldn't you find it inappropriate to call yourself a feminist?

Any ilxors here that were into NYHC or were in a HC band?

ilm doesn't have the energy for a long dumb political debate anymore. don't worry about it. threads don't get derailed anymore. they just start out dumb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvlE14cM-zk

Any ilxors here that were into NYHC or were in a HC band?

Oh yeah. Saw Sick Of It All, Gorilla Biscuits and Judge at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ in 1988; saw Bold, Killing Time, and tons of other bands at CBGB matinees on Sunday afternoons. Still have Breakdown's 1987 demo in my iPod.

The original Blauner article is here FWIW: http://deeplinking.net/new-york-magazine-hardcore/

I can actually see where some of the kids' criticisms were coming from!

One Comment

1.
Andrés Hoyos
September 7, 2008 at 10:53 pm #

Í’d love to inform everyone about the recent AgnosticFfront activities. They were in Bogotá, Colombia (wich im from) last saturday playing side by side with neo nazi, colombian bands. They seem pretty excited about having nazis as their security.

it strikes me as problematic to really talk about gender without saying "masculinity" is completely artificial and learned and performed like anything else!

i thought that is exactly what i was saying, just with the opposite conclusion. masculinity and patriarchy are equally products of sex, class etc. relations and are as such mutually dependent, that is our construction of masculinity, while obviously not entirely like lets not get hysterical, but i mean it is constructed in such a way as to perpetuate patriarchal and unequal gender relations, in part through the generation and assignment of "masculine qualities" which seem to normalize unequal gender relations. The reason its not such a short jump from masculinity to misogyny is because their histories are so intertwined, one generating and strengthening the other. When we start to talk about masculinity, it is obviously as opposed to femininity because this feels like such an easy binary. You might not think its fair because after all masculinity and misogyny are not the same thing, but one is definitely complicit in the other, so much so that to talk about one means that the other is bound to come up pretty quickly.

(I don't think I disagreed with any of that, and the "you might not think it's fair" bit makes me think you're coming at my point from the wrong direction: it's not about misogyny or what I think is "fair" so much as acknowledging that masculinity is an artificial construct that can be identified and described, and our culture -- people of both sexes -- does a shitload of work policing people into conforming with it, just as it does with women and femininity.)

I think music is a very strange venue where people can dress up like drag queens and be incredibly misogynist, so maybe the opposite can also exist?

^otm

i have a problem with nabz's term "artificial construct". societal constructs aren't unreal. are they? they seem really real to me.

or they become real anyway. just try and not be something after you have been something your whole life. it's hard!

artificial things are real -- put artificial sweetener in your tea, it's still sweet

they're just a little more constructed and less like the natural order of the universe

dint mean you specifically. I mean i feel like masculinity in some pure state is something positive and great and it does feel unfair to practically conflate it with something as ugly as misogyny, so i mean im arguing w. myself more than anyone on that. But I do also think that our conception of what masculinity is, as opposed to femininity, emerges against a background of inequality so the construction of both cant help but depend on the other, meaning that there is no pure state of masculinity, but an accumulation of codes/practices/desires/privileges which have formed as a consequence of inequality as well as aiding to normalise and perpetuate it.

I mean there are probably ways to get around this, and i definitely think that the distinction between libidinal instincts is in some way more conducive to constructing a value system for that kind of distinction because it is harder to break down into a violence>domination>oppression metaphor. I mean I know I've only got like one point and I don't really want to keep banging it into the ground so i mean ill shut up now, but I mean filthy basslines and rooms full of sweaty men tryna get off with each other feels like a much healthier petri dish to grow this out of, largely because the way that women do not enter that particular picture is quite different from for example Prurient's uber-mensch shirtless guy wailing into a feedback loop, where women frequently seem like some absent instigator of violence.

I wonder what that reviewer thinks of those female fronted goth metal bands, of which there is plenty of in Europe (and all sell more records than any death black or doom band does) Nightwish, Epica etc.

thread was doin great til the pubs closed in the UK imo

Metal is a bit sexist to a degree but that original article seems to defeat itself. Wouldn't a bunch of women acting in stereotypical genre roles constitute "sexism" moreso than them being able to hang with the boys?

( ;) )

also it's a lot less sexist now than it was decades ago. agreed on the NYHC

except john im the only 'brit' posting just now and i dont drink nor go out to the pub! ;)

i have a problem with nabz's term "artificial construct". societal constructs aren't unreal. are they? they seem really real to me.

― scott seward, Thursday, April 1, 2010 11:46 PM (Yesterday)

societal construct collect a number of attributes/qualities/attitudes under a large umbrella bracket, the borders of this bracket and what constitutes male and female is a social construct. I mean earlier in the thread didn't you say you were really feminine? But you're a man, so how does that make sense? Unless you were joking at some point and I didn't get it? Maybe?

^ and he's irish

and really needs to go to bed

not the pub?

Wow, my beloved just found this summit of badass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EK5ILmQmCIk

Les Outlauxs!

xposts to the "artificial construct" debate, though I'm mostly just rambling:

why is it that artificial/social constructs have such a negative connotation w/in the context of sociology? lines like "gender is a social construct" and "race is a social construct" get trotted out as evidence that gender and race relations are deeply fucked and deeply out of step with the natural order of things. but if our society ever manages to completely redefine gender and race roles so that they have nothing to do with oppression and privilege, won't these new roles be just as artificial and just as constructed as they once were?

it seems like a lot of feminists and anti-racists (including me, a lot of the time) maintain that if only humanity were freed from those pesky rules of social conduct, it would naturally veer toward egalitarianism ...which is a pretty shaky position to hold, seeing as no one has the slightest idea what a "natural," pre-social human condition would look like. it's far safer, imo, to assume that race and gender relations will always be 99% socially constructed no matter how oppressive or enlightened they may become.

If there is such a thing as 'man' and 'woman,' I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu. PS I am well aware of the legend that Linda Thompson told David Thomas she liked his voice, but sometimes people say generous or even impossible things because they are fond of a person.

http://imgur.com/lOT7Z.gif

I love you

I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu.

This is the first statement on the thread that's 100% baffled me.

I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu.

*Looks underneath her laptop* Nope, still no penis there.

xp Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo:

1.My imagination has limits.
2. If you are in fact some sort of dragon I rest my case.
3. This is fun!

chicks like metal.

totes hardcore

I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu.

Hello. I just registered to tell you that I will never have sex with you.

I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu.

This is the first statement on the thread that's 100% baffled me.

― demonic splendor, demonic majesty (Abbott), Friday, 2 April 2010 03:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I cannot imagine a woman enjoying Pere Ubu.

*Looks underneath her laptop* Nope, still no penis there.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Friday, 2 April 2010 03:31 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://anthemrecordsinc.com/products/B000H4W90I.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V41776020_.jpg

Excellent alb by the way, I think I might listen to it now.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000C0F9H.jpg

while we were on tour in Italy our Italian sound-man taught us a few Italian phrases that are relevant to this thread- a show that is all dudes in the audience with no women is a "foresta di cazzi" (a forest of cocks- like our "sausage party" only more pungent) and, worse, there is an italian phrase which I've only heard, not seen spelled, so forgive the bad transliteration here, but any genre of music which Italians regard as "only of interest to men, repellent to women" is called "scaccia-figa" (loosely translates to "pussy-scraping" music). They seemed to think that technical math-rock and the proggier side of metal and harsh noise was scaccia-figa, but I can say from Baltimore shows at least that I see plenty of women at metal and noise shows. Maybe this is more of an issue in some places than others.

Like running your fingernails along a chalkboard made of pussy. Fuck, that's a harsh image. Thanks, twiceboiled.

yikes

btw I know this is incorrect but someone mentioned Atari Teenage Riot on another thread and I was all YES THEY BELONG HERE

although I guess that isn't really "masculine" music as much as it is "fuck you I am alive" music

while discussing his 90's poll ballot by email, h3lg3son spake of ATR as his own peer group's analogue for The Prodigy, who might themselves be worthy of nomination (quite a few female fans though, SMBU or no)

n.b. neither band was voted for, wd just like to make that clear

http://www.stereokiller.com/images/tsunamifest.jpg

and its at the Polish club so it really will be a sausage fest.

the OG post is really interesting but makes me wonder - why are violence and aggression considered 'masculine' traits

...

isn't jessica harvell from phoenixville? i've actually been there and it is quite the town.

jaymc would know.

the OG post is really interesting but makes me wonder - why are violence and aggression considered 'masculine' traits

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Testosterone.svg/200px-Testosterone.svg.png

why are violence and aggression considered 'masculine' traits

I think being a fuckin' corndog is a more masculine trait.

And it's not like you never see a chick eatin' a corndog.

http://yosoylachamuca.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/corndog.jpg

ya'll are trippin - have you ever considered that your prejudice is just due to the way your conception of gender has been constructed by society

look inside yourself

RELEASE THE KRAKEN

I am absolutely certain that a combination of biological urge and societal artifact are what cause me to view violence and aggression as masculine traits.

Contrary to what has been postulated in outdated studies and by certain sections of the media, aggressive behaviour is not typically seen in hypogonadal men who have their testosterone replaced adequately to the eugonadal/normal range. In fact, aggressive behaviour has been associated with hypogonadism and low testosterone levels and it would seem as though supraphysiological and low levels of testosterone and hypogonadism cause mood disorders and aggressive behaviour, with eugondal/normal testosterone levels being important for mental well-being.

"news-medical.net"

seems like a reliable website!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/spirituality/self-help/Testosterone-leads-to-fairness-not-aggression/articleshow/5318244.cms

xpost

premiere website for advice to pharmacists iirc

A low testosterone level can cause a lot of problems in men, particularly in terms of sexual performance. Essentially, testosterone is the hormone that helps fuel a man's sex drive. Low levels can affect mood, sexual desire, and physical and sexual performance.

http://www.testosteroneformula.com/

http://www.testosteroneformula.com/assets/images/testarol_header.jpg

A low hamburger level can cause a lot of problems in men, particularly in terms of sexual performance. Essentially, hamburger is the hormone that helps fuel a man's sex drive. Low levels can affect mood, sexual desire, and physical and sexual performance.

fairness: a scientifically proven masculine trait

BTW THE ANSWER IS RIOT GRRL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhqaBgGiqrc

http://gentlebear.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/pfs.jpg

Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions.

gender roles be gettin' entrenched

http://www.zible.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/px_milkman_phranc.jpg

http://www.somanyrecordssolittletime.com/wp-content/uploads/phranc-ps.jpg

what this thread needed was a scott seward image bomb

it's ilx's periodic purgative

try scott seward today--available at your local chemist!

http://motorcycleaupairboy.com/gallery/data/media/11/withphranc.jpg

image bombers should be banned

http://ferron.com/ferron.jpg

why is it that artificial/social constructs have such a negative connotation w/in the context of sociology? lines like "gender is a social construct" and "race is a social construct" get trotted out as evidence that gender and race relations are deeply fucked and deeply out of step with the natural order of things. but if our society ever manages to completely redefine gender and race roles so that they have nothing to do with oppression and privilege, won't these new roles be just as artificial and just as constructed as they once were?

it seems like a lot of feminists and anti-racists (including me, a lot of the time) maintain that if only humanity were freed from those pesky rules of social conduct, it would naturally veer toward egalitarianism ...which is a pretty shaky position to hold, seeing as no one has the slightest idea what a "natural," pre-social human condition would look like. it's far safer, imo, to assume that race and gender relations will always be 99% socially constructed no matter how oppressive or enlightened they may become.

― broa super (unregistered), Friday, April 2, 2010 12:32 AM (16 hours ago

i don't really think ppl say any of that. I mean i think its impossible to say what the natural order of things really is because it is impossible to just step outside of society/culture or scientifically remove its influence and see what's left. I think what I mean at least is that the society that we have built out of these constituent parts has consistently engendered inequality, racism, domination, you know a lot of bad shit. Instead of casting off the oppression of gender roles i think whats called for is a recasting of those roles in a way that is more conducive to equality/egalitarianism etc. In this way its helpful to understand gender constructs as being constructs because it does not fall back on nature to give legitimacy to patriarchy/racism/homophobia etc.

in summary:
http://www.testosteroneformula.com/assets/images/testarol_header.jpg

plax, you are killing it here and it is awesome.

seconded, yeah. saying "social construct" isn't a criticism of something being unnatural -- it's more like opening a window. once you recognize that something is constructed, then you have the option of trying to re-construct it in a way that's fairer or less hurtful or offers people more freedom.

(i.e., instead of going "but that's just the way it is and you can't expect us not to do/believe these things!")

whoa how did we get this far in the thread without discussing the idea that some men are afflicted with "hypergonadism"?

oh medicine, your power to amuse will never cease

that was totally my bad, I was going to bring that up but got sidetracked into being serious due to being totally infuriated by unironic embracing of a pretty disgusting and totally mutable status quo

http://i.imgur.com/lOT7Z.gif

totally^^^^^