The Fourth Wave (Techno & Gender) REALLY INTERESTING...

[LavenderMenace]

OK, its REALLY long, but its seriously interesting. I have been searching for an article like this for a long time. . .

The Fourth Wave (Techno & Gender)

Written by: Cyclone Wehner

Despite rave culture's utopian impulse, an astonishing gender imbalance exists in today's electronic music scene, with relatively few female DJs and producers in the big league. But what seems really strange is how this state of affairs is so rarely discussed. It's as if we have come to accept the status quo. It's simply not an issue.

This article examines the gender disparity specifically in relation to techno. The reason for this is that in Melbourne, techno is now arguably the dominant genre of dance. It is also the form of contemporary electronic music that is most preoccupied with theoretical, philosophical and intellectual matters, as much as beats and groove.

Techno's origins in the fertile milieu of 80s Detroit have been widely documented. A group of young African-Americans - Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson - endeavored to transcend socio-cultural boundaries through a machine-driven music that was at once intuitive and cerebral. The early Detroit techno records were anonymous -they were released under aliases and there were no pictures of the composers on the sleeves. To an extent, techno has defied the boundaries of nationality, race and generation. But while the music thematises utopianism, progression and resistance, the music industry that supports it remains the product of a non-egalitarian social paradigm.

Both racism and sexism prevail in today's dance industry. The racial issue consistently arises when the gradual marginalisation of Detroit in the techno movement is debated, but gender has never been addressed. Underground Resistance, formed in 1990 by Mike Banks and Jeff Mills in Detroit, politicized techno, representing the oppressed in terms of race and class, by promoting self-empowerment, but less so gender.

As it happened, the Holy Trinity of Techno were initially inspired by Alvin Toffler's futuristic manifestos, The Third Wave and Future Shock. But, beyond this, there is a thread that links techno and science fiction. Until fairly recently sci-fi was a male domain, but gradually female writers have intervened into these literary discourses, imagining utopias and fantastic existences from their own perspectives. They have used sci-fi to conceive of alternative gender roles, and so transcend sexual difference. Others - like Canada's Margaret Atwood and the African-American Octavia Butler - have written works of speculative fiction that raise consciousness and convey a more direct political message. Female musicians could navigate techno to serve the same kind of purposes.

To this end, Australian techno duo B(if)tek, a.k.a Nicole Skeltys and Kate Crawford, have cultivated a subversive aesthetic, as Skeltys describes it. "Kate and I have been conscious of putting a kind of 'feminine perspective' into B(if)tek's music, which is reflected in our choice of samples, pseudo-sexy breathy vocoderising and our mucking around with feminine stereotypes in terms of our 'look' - for example, we did a stint doing gigs as nurses, including some Beastie Boys concerts - and audiences enjoy the campiness of it all.

"I think a lot of girls respond to B(if)tek because we are trying, in our own small way, to annoy the dominant pop cultural paradigm, which nowadays seems to be as much, if not more, about what you look like if you're a girl, than what kind of message your music is trying to convey".

In fact, women have been at the forefront of dance music since the disco era - as singers. Donna Summer's erotic disco anthem 'I Feel Love', conjured up by the innovative Giorgio Moroder, is considered seminal and still regularly played by DJs from across the spectrum.

Yet these divas have often had limited input into the production and so their contribution is dismissed as merely an embellishment - even if they have a writing credit, the (usually male) producer gets all the props. It sounds like a cliché, but many house divas do hope to return to, or diversify into, R&B, and this has as much to do with their desire for respect as embracing their roots in gospel and soul. R&B singers also enjoy greater longevity than their dance peers and greater support, particularly where US record companies are involved.

Two years ago the esteemed US magazine Urb ran a comprehensive edition devoted to 'innovators' in electronic music. It presented profiles of everyone from Brian Eno and Afrika Bambaataa to Frankie Knuckles and Detroit's finest, yet no women were spotlighted - unless you count The Art Of Noise and Inner City, both of which have female members (Anne Dudley and Paris Grey, respectively). For this to pass without comment is strange. Oddly enough, Urb has two female editors.

In Generation Ecstasy: Into The World Of Techno And Rave Culture, British commentator Simon Reynolds only incidentally raises the business of women's low representation as DJs when discussing the rise of the deckmaster as artist. And most narratives about Detroit techno - such as Dan Sicko's otherwise excellent Techno Rebels: The Renegades Of Electronic Funk - exclude K Hand, aka Kelli Hand, a member of the city's 'Second Wave' along with UR, Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen. Hand set up a label, Acacia Records, in the late 80s, and has since delivered records on Warp ('Global Warning') and Studio !K7. That Kelli should adopt the androgynous moniker 'K Hand' and refuse an early overture from Mills to amalgamate her label with his Axis Records indicates that she wanted to do things on her own terms.

It doesn't help women's cause, either, that the commercial British dance magazines, like Mixmag, routinely reproduce images of semi-clothed women (a.k.a 'pussy') to sell magazines - which is insulting to all readers with an interest in music.

Sure, it would be easy to execute a formulaic feminist diatribe about male domination in techno, though ultimately would be neither productive nor beneficial to the movement. It is vital to look at the inequities, but to understand them we need to look at how the two genders relate to techno.

For this piece, surveys were sent out to some of the main players in this country's techno scene. A large number didn't respond. Those who did were sometimes brutally honest - as Will E Tell states. "Male domination of any scene or industry is generally due to males being inherently aggressive, being driven by competition and having to appease their egos. Aggression and being egotistic are not traits found commonly in females - maybe this is the barrier?" HMC agrees: "I guess it is a very male-oriented thing, isn't it? It shouldn't be like that... There are a lot of chauvinistic men out there".

Ask techno's international male figures and they are concerned with the gender imbalance and genuinely desirous of involving more females as party-goers (after all, it it creates a healthy atmosphere in a venue), DJs and producers. By contrast, Canada's Misstress Barbara, one of techno's hottest (female) techno DJ/producers, wonders if by focusing on the gender imbalance at this stage we're not actually validating something that is already mutating. "It's time to leave this subject alone and move on".

Mills, the most commanding individual in techno today, recently hosted a discussion on women's role in electronic music on his Axis web site. Soon figures such as Pacou, Alan Oldham, Monika Kruse, Miss Djax and Claude Young were caught up in the fray and, in the end Pacou, made the generous offer of financial assistance and a release on his label for the first female producer to send him some "considerable upfront techno tracks".

As for Mills, he doesn't understand the discrepancies himself. "From a production standpoint, there's a lot of technical knowledge that you have to have - it's kind of like tinkering. There are a lot of machines and there are a lot of lights and buttons, and it's like building a spaceship, in a sense. That's the only thing I can detect. But when it comes to actually listening to it, that's one thing that I can't quite figure out - why it's so drastic, the demography: male versus female. From my years, I see from time to time it fluctuates, but it's always predominantly male, actually. And then males get together and they make a much more aggressive sound which goes even further away from female ears".

The discrimination tends to manifest itself on a local level. Even in Melbourne, female DJs are marginalized, given slots early in the evening or in the side-rooms at events, but these same individuals will rarely discuss their experiences openly, as it would conceivably be detrimental to their long-term careers.

According to popular belief, several factors account for women's absence. These usually center on the series of binarisms - high/low, cerebral/immaterial and good/bad - that correlate to the different genders and underpin the value system of contemporary Western society. Many feel that while the males attend parties for the music, females are concerned with dolling up, being picked up and socializing - all trivial pursuits. It follows that men demonstrate a greater inclination to collect records and train spot. And so it's assumed that males take a more serious, intellectual interest in the music.

Some suggest females prefer vocal-based music, where the meaning of the song is transparent, to the usually instrumental electronic music, in which the message is subliminal and abstract. One contributor to the Axis discussion went so far as to post that women don't have the intellect to understand techno's concepts. "Electronic music is too cerebral for women. It's just another higher math they can't grasp. As with all art, the expression is a right-brained thing, but this one requires full cranial involvement. The ability to conceptualize sequence in music - especially in razor-sharp techno music where sequential pattern for that higher plane, far out sound is all important - is for the most part foreign to women".

What is most interesting is how the underground/popular dichotomy that defines techno as a cool, radical musical genre, as opposed to pop, is mapped onto gender. It's widely thought that females prefer pop and commercial dance (and this encompasses house and trance) to techno, which being underground, is deemed 'masculine'.

You can also distinguish a number of stereotypes of women in the dance industry - aside from the vacuous female raver and the house diva, there is the tough woman who plays the 'male' game. Women have always been active behind the scenes - as managers, label managers, booking agents and publicists. Laura Gavoor, who once ran Derrick May's Transmat, now manages Juan Atkins. Holland's Miss Djax, herself a DJ and producer, has presided over the Djax label for over a decade. And Adelaide's Remote manages the affairs of HMC.

When it comes to the visibility of women in techno, there appear to be both regional variations and temporal fluctuations (some have even inferred that drugs are gendered, but that's beyond the scope of this article). "I think DJing can almost be compared to the rock 'n' roll thing of the 50s - you only heard of names such as Buddy Holly, Elvis, etcetera; in the 60s you heard the Beatles, although artists such as Janis were appearing," Simon Digby muses. "With techno, more and more females will slowly be doing it, but it's still at its early days". As Munich's DJ Hell observes, Germany, where techno is huge, has from the beginning supported female DJs and producers. Hell's Munich-based International Deejay Gigolo Records has issued records by Miss Kittin and the techno punk trio, Chicks On Speed. And then, as with Melbourne, parties in Spain and Brazil are well attended by guys and girls alike, whereas in the UK the turnout is predominantly male. The healthy demographic in Melbourne could possibly be attributed to the fact that Trish Maunder, a DJ and writer, was fostering the music with her Interzone column in beat and radio programme in the early 90s. Maunder has served as a strong role model.

Significant academic research has been undertaken into the nexus of gender and music (there are journals devoted to the psychology of music), but these studies tend to look at the situation in terms of the education system and speculate why it is that girls choose certain instruments to play or why they may excel in music at school yet are then under-represented in the professional side of it. Of course, techno - and its rave offspring - stands outside of the institution. Clearly, the academy is lagging behind popular culture. The nature of postmodernism is such that contemporary academics are so obsessed with theory, itself abstracted to the point of being incomprehensible, as to have lost sight of the real world of pop culture and subcultures and, above all, the dialectic flux that governs them.

However, some useful information can be gleaned from studies that illustrate, for example, that girls are generally considered more 'verbal' than males - so maybe this is why women identify with vocal tracks and guys prefer instrumental music - and that they are also more sensitive to sound, which could be why, as Mills says, techno can hurt "female ears".

Feminist academics have long argued (somewhat reductively) that historically women's creativity was perceived to lie in their procreative role - making themselves look beautiful to court a male to provide for, and protect, them, and later nurturing life - while the men engaged in, and claimed, building civilizations and cultural pursuits like art and music as their way of expressing themselves. Madonna's arrival fitted in nicely with the postmodern enterprise and also prompted a change in feminist research and a fresh focus on popular culture, though postmodern feminism has not yet progressed beyond her.

The prejudice against females festers in the underground record store. Women are typically intimidated and patronized by male staff. Instead those females who dig techno rely on the media for their information, rather than record store networks, and so their collecting is rendered a singular activity.

Promoters are too conservative to push female DJs. It's true that it is difficult for any DJ to get a break. Yet women lack the confidence to persevere. They are put off by scene politics. This can assume the guise of sexism where a female DJ is concerned, or she may construe it as sexism. "I think there's a common theory with many promoters that a woman won't be able to do the job properly as far as DJing goes", says Kate S. "It is uncommon for females to even get the chance to try to prove themselves, so therefore the myth will never be dispelled. For example, if a female is, say, put on first or last at a gig, as is often the case, how are they able to create the same atmosphere as a prime time DJ? It's not possible. I think it's important for females to keep remembering it's not a battle, only if you make it that way, or it's too easy to feel defeated and just give up. I know many females that's happened to".

Katy K takes a slightly different line, "I agree that the female presence on an average DJ line-up is pretty sparse, but this is definitely not due to lack of support for female DJs. Other girls who I talk to get enough work - in some cases more than the guys".

Unfortunately, many of the high profile female DJs - DJ Rap, DJ Heaven, DJ Sonique - are, to be blunt, either average or poor. While very few male DJs project themselves as sex symbols, most of the prominent females (notably DJs Rap and Heaven) resemble models. Sister Bliss and Mrs. Wood have skills, but spin trancier styles of dance music that are not considered 'cred' by purists. Bexta, the country's most prominent female producer, is routinely criticized by the underground for her derivative take on trance. Female tokenism does more harm than good. And, without credible role models, the absence of female DJs and producers becomes self-perpetuating. "If you're a woman, and you're playing as well as, if not better than, the men, then people will stand up and take notice, so it did actually work in my favor", says Mrs. Wood, a veteran of nu NRG who played up a camp housewife image early on in her career. "If you're second rate, it looks very bad".

Inevitably, both successful male and female DJs tout the idea that women are apprehensive about technology - and this must carry weight. Girls' interest in gadgets and computers is not actively encouraged. And so it could be that the lack of female music-makers comes down to socialization.

It's important to ask if techno, in all its myriad of forms, isn't inherently gendered 'masculine'. And here, again, opinion is divided. There are no 'universal' constructs of gender; it is moderated by other social factors - nationality, ethnicity, generation, sexuality, and biochemistry - so these could explain variations. And then there is that much underrated factor known as 'personal taste'. Nevertheless, the dominant form of techno today is perceived as a cold, emotionless, and even latently aggressive and violent, which has limited appeal to women. Digby describes it as "testosterone-driven", while his WET Musik label partner, Will E Tell, goes further: "I look at techno as the electronic music version of heavy metal - it attracts adolescent males as its main demographic. This style of music has more often than not been characterized by a hard-edged sound, which appeals to more males than females".

Detroit chameleon Carl Craig, who is married to a hip-hop/funk DJ, Hannah Sawtell, says, "The way my wife listens to music, she listens to music because of the melody, because of the feeling involved within it, and the way men listen to music is just to get the thrill, in some ways (laughs), so it's definitely a male-oriented music".

Kate S believes that it depends very much on the style of techno. "I definitely think the newer minimal, harder 4/4 style of techno common these days appeals to more males than females, and is rather masculine. When techno was a genre that covered trance, acid and other elements (which are considered their own genres these days), I think techno appealed more equally to both genders. Techno is commonly very bass orientated, so maybe it has something to do with that.

"I remember the old KLF track 'Women Respond To Bass', but, for me, it's all about the emphasis on the mids and highs, or melodies in the case of many females I come across. I often find when I DJ females really respond to the funkier techno tracks. I also notice female DJ often mix differently to the guys. I'd bet there's something going on with the way the brain receptors process the sounds differently for each sex!"

Misstress Barbara, while conceding that hard music draws in the males, says, "There are many women who love techno, it isn't right to think it's a masculine thing. There's no gender to music. Not only techno, but to music in general. It's like keeping on thinking that there's gender to colors, and that pink is for girls and blue for guys. That's bullshit. And color choices are results from tastes as much as music is a result from tastes. And tastes have absolutely no gender at all".

Voiteck concurs: "I don't think that techno is more masculine, however, for me, techno is about the unknown, which can often be dark, cold, different, weird and experimental, and that seems to be more of a masculine thing, perhaps. I think all people hear and perceive music differently to each other, especially techno, so I don't think it's a male/female thing. To hear, just like anything else, you must practice, so anyone is capable of hearing more and more if they practice. I mean, eventually your hearing gets really good when you can focus on listening to different elements and segregate the sounds in your head. Anyone can do that! Just like with vision! Who sees better - males or females?"

Ironically it was that Detroit icon Madonna herself who in the early 90s proclaimed that "techno equals death", only to later embrace William Orbit's epic house and christen herself 'Veronica Electronica'. Madonna rationalized that the music had taken a more soulful turn that she liked. Still, she sanctioned two brutal (though brilliant) remixes of 'Power Of Goodbye' by UK techno stalwart Luke Slater, who later admitted that his intent was to "massacre" her voice. Slater, who exposed his own sentimental side on the track 'Love', is certainly no Madonna fan. What's more, he articulates the scorn that so many (male) techno purists express, not just about Madonna but pop artists and vocalists in general - many of them either female or appealing to a female demographic.

Madonna never participated in Detroit's formative techno movement (she had already left for New York), but she did spark her own revolution in pop/dance culture - and her exclusion from Urb's 'innovator' edition is unfortunate. The legacy of female innovators in electronic music - Madonna and Bjork among them - has been dismissed simply because they are associated with a pop medium. The US musicologist Susan McClary, who has studied Madonna and Laurie Anderson, is right when she observes, "What most reactions to Madonna share is an automatic dismissal of her music as irrelevant".

Needless to say, Derrick May believes that the ascendance of the harder, minimal and less 'soulful' strand of techno has not only alienated women, but also its original African-American followers (and maybe that can extend to some white boys, too). This cycle of dance going through phases of deep/hard is not confined to techno. Peshay has stated that fewer females are attending drum 'n' bass events in the UK because the music has become too dark, while UK house luminary Tom Middleton dislikes the hard "tech-house" of Mills and Dave Clarke. "I much prefer a room with a mix of women and men, so there's a balance of energy, but techno on the whole draws mainly a male kind of energy, and I find that very boring. It doesn't move me at all. So I'm quite happy to go into a big party and, if it's full of men with their shirts off, just jacking to the groove, I will play a tune that has a bit of soul in it and some really warm bass, and just clear the floor and get the women back in there. Then the people will tune into an entirely new vibe".

The purism of the techno is masculine, but many females single out Mills as one of the producers who they feel has funk and soul.

It is possible to flip the script and examine those male techno producers who have explored certain emotions - their 'feminine' sides - in the music that conceivably they can't express otherwise as heterosexual males. May's seminal work is very 'feminine' and emotional in its impulse, with layers of strings, melody and poetic titles, and the same can be said of Mills' beautiful, gentle 'Humana', inspired by the birth of his daughter.

Females respond differently to the music. Their relationship is more emotional; they are interested in the music as it relates to the music-maker. Instead of deconstructing the DJ's sets through trainspotting, they are inspired by what it is the DJ is actually creating out of those selections. They tune into the DJ's facial expressions as they mirror the music, accenting the subtleties, the feelings, in the records. It's experiential.

Females need to learn how to listen to minimal techno from their own perspective - it's not all 'thrusting' beats (which is what by and large ropes in the guys); in the work of Mills, Oliver Ho and others can be heard accents, details and counter-rhythms.

The ideas posited by the influential French philosopher Julia Kristeva are enlightening in reclaiming techno as a music that is beyond gender. She argues that both masculine and feminine sexual drives are expressed in literature (and this can be correlated with music). Her thesis is that we all have male and female sides to our personalities and that the arts allow us to express these. A 'masculine' approach to composition would involve constructing a beginning, middle and end - working towards a climax - while a 'feminine' expression is more multiple and fluid. Yet these forces can co-exist. Since most electronic music (take, for example, 'Strings Of Life' or 'The Bells') doesn't have a classical music structure, and is based on repetitive patterns, it could be described as inherently 'feminine'.

DJ Toupee has hit on a similar view: "I think music in general embraces both the masculine and the feminine. The making of music involves both of those forces in any individual. The energy of outward expression is more masculine; delving inside the self and retreating to the shell of the studio to extract the thought and feeling from the mind and soul and translate it into notes, more a 'contractive' feminine pursuit - inherently emotional and intuitive as well as partly ordered and rational. Women are just as capable as males of making and understanding and being moved by it".

The gender gap in the techno scene appears to be changing and the ascendance of Misstress Barbara, who gets props from Dave Angel, Christian Smith and Richie Hawtin, proves as much. She has disseminated her music through prestigious labels like Carl Cox's In-Tec and Christian Smith's Tronic, and now oversees her own, Relentless Music (www.relentlessmusic.com). "I haven't be scared to jump, and fight if I had to, and I don't really feel blocked or whatever because I'm a girl - maybe sometimes, yes, but then I take the backdoor and I get there anyway, and then I end up getting all my respect".

There have been countless parties worldwide devoted to all-female DJ line-ups, but most of the women are fundamentally opposed to segregation, even in the name of positive discrimination. May stresses the importance of female music-makers openly discussing and sharing knowledge to inspire future generations. "I don't think there are enough women involved with dance music, besides the vocalists. If more women would try to find out more about making this music, I think they'd realize how fulfilling it is. There aren't enough women talking about how wonderful it can be." In the studio, technology allows women to transcend gender. Nowadays children are being introduced to computers at a younger and younger age in schools and, for girls, this will break down their apprehension of technology and give them the confidence to harness it to express themselves. And then there is the freedom afforded by the Internet. Female techno boffins can today avoid the stress of record-shopping by ordering from online stores or network by subscribing to mailing lists, both of which offer them a degree of anonymity while they bide their time.

Female Innovators:

The site also includes a list of female innovators who have either influenced or acted as catalysts within the international electronic dance music culture...

http://www.undergroundcommittee.com/main.htm

[beatz]

Nobody listens to techno

(and NY is full of posers)

[mugwump]

Your making it awful hard to stay away

you....

(Nice read..thanks.

Keep it up.)

[LavenderMenace]

Originally posted by mugwump

Your making it awful hard to stay away

you....

(Nice read..thanks.

Keep it up.)

awe, thanks

[barvybe]

um...it is really long

but a cool article

kinda waffles back and forth on some stuff, no concrete theories or anything.

Mistress Barbara is the shit though - seems like everyone agrees on that.

I def. agree that when you hear female dj's on average they aren't as good - probably cause there are so many fewer of them that if you have any name you can get booked for things. But, there are some awesome women out there - baby ann, barbara, spacegirl, etc.

shannon - get your ass on the decks so you can hit the big time.

[LavenderMenace]

Originally posted by barvybe

um...it is really long

but a cool article

kinda waffles back and forth on some stuff, no concrete theories or anything.

yeah, agreed. But seriously, I've been looking for articles discussing feminism in conjuction with the electronic music scene for a long time and this is the best thing I've come across by far.

maybe I should start writing again

[mugwump]

Originally posted by barvybe

um...it is really long

but a cool article

kinda waffles back and forth on some stuff, no concrete theories or anything.

Mistress Barbara is the shit though - seems like everyone agrees on that.

I def. agree that when you hear female dj's on average they aren't as good - probably cause there are so many fewer of them that if you have any name you can get booked for things. But, there are some awesome women out there - baby ann, barbara, spacegirl, etc.

shannon - get your ass on the decks so you can hit the big time.

Agree..

There are some GREAT gals out there with

no notice..

You all should swing by Drinkland

on a Friday and see what "DINKY"

is doing..she's about to blow up.

[barvybe]

sounds like a good idea mugz...

hey lav, you write it and i'll shop it to my publishing friends

[hotcheme]

wow you're right that was interesting.

i can't believe i read that whole thing.

[Xpander]

I think that article just proved in so many ways that I'm a girl.

And reminded me how I can't stand Madonna.

[somebitch]

"Male domination of any scene or industry is generally due to males being inherently aggressive, being driven by competition and having to appease their egos. Aggression and being egotistic are not traits found commonly in females - maybe this is the barrier?"

i agree with the above.

Some suggest females prefer vocal-based music, where the meaning of the song is transparent, to the usually instrumental electronic music, in which the message is subliminal and abstract. One contributor to the Axis discussion went so far as to post that women don't have the intellect to understand techno's concepts. "Electronic music is too cerebral for women. It's just another higher math they can't grasp. As with all art, the expression is a right-brained thing, but this one requires full cranial involvement. The ability to conceptualize sequence in music - especially in razor-sharp techno music where sequential pattern for that higher plane, far out sound is all important - is for the most part foreign to women".

This is completely absurd and makes me

However, some useful information can be gleaned from studies that illustrate, for example, that girls are generally considered more 'verbal' than males - so maybe this is why women identify with vocal tracks and guys prefer instrumental music - and that they are also more sensitive to sound, which could be why, as Mills says, techno can hurt "female ears".

vocals are annoying for the most part.

Misstress Barbara, while conceding that hard music draws in the males, says, "There are many women who love techno, it isn't right to think it's a masculine thing. There's no gender to music. Not only techno, but to music in general. It's like keeping on thinking that there's gender to colors, and that pink is for girls and blue for guys. That's bullshit. And color choices are results from tastes as much as music is a result from tastes. And tastes have absolutely no gender at all".

she's so cool

[barvybe]

somebitch - while i agree with you in general somethings are definitely true

- on the whole women prefer vocals

- on the whole men perfer hard techno

now, this might be largely the result of cultural mores and nothing else, but i don't think its fair to agree that guys are more agressive and egotistical and then reject the corralative of that regarding females and vocals.

personally i think women are just as aggressive and ego driven, they are just held back somewhat by what our society accepts as normal behavior on gender basis. professional women, in my experience, are at least as aggressive / back stabbing / whatever you want to call it in the workplace, and women can be down right evil when it comes to fighting over men. (men are evil in these ways too - don't get me wrong)

anyway, i just hate stereotypes in general.

barbara is the shit

[laraver]

Great Post! The article hit a lot of very valid points.

I would say this about female DJ's situation: Having Penelope Tuesday posing in her gstring and pasties for the DJ Divas video in DJ Times does nothing to further their cause or credibility as artists.

In my opinion if you have the skills you won't need to peddle your pussy.

The female DJ's who do subscribe to that type of promotion and imaging of their selves should step off and make room for DJ's (male or female) who put their skills over their image.

[mugwump]

http://www.dinkyland.net/

[cyclonewehner]

Thanks everyone for the feedback!!!

I am new to this site. I was just told that my article had found its way onto this site and that it had provoked discussion - which is very cool. I was unaware of this site before!

I guess the points raised above would be explained if you were aware of the original source of the article! I actually wrote the story a few years ago specifically for a publication in Melbourne, Australia - it was my concept and, as an avid reader of magazines, I had not read anything else that really addressed this issue.

Techno has always been strong in Melbourne - Jeff Mills was voted most popular DJ in an Australian magazine poll. The dance music culture is different to the UK and US, in this regard, so that accounts for the focus on that scene.

The magazine, Go, was published by a community dance station in Melbourne called KISS FM (no relation to the UK station) and then sent to a small band of subscribers - everyone involved was working on a voluntary basis. Every issue they would pretty much let me do an article on whatever I wanted - which I loved! My day job is working as a contributing ed to a dance magazine and as a freelancer, so it was great to have that freedom.

I had been thinking about the topic for some time and gathering material. However, I really regretted not having more time to formulate my ideas over a period of time as I found the actual writing raised new angles. The work involved in the story was comparable to an honours thesis yet I had just a couple of days and I had to prioritize my rather demanding 'day' job (I can turn around 10, 000 words a week!). I actually went way over the word length suggested to me and they then had to accommodate that. I sent in the story late and held up everyone!

I never set out to come up with any 'concrete theories' as I really don't think this is possible - I wanted an approach that was discursive and fluid and raised some new ideas.

I feel that if nothing else the article was a good starting point for discussion and I am very happy that it has proved to be that.

Cheers!

Cyclone

[barvybe]

ahhh...nice hearing from the author

didn't realize this was a couple years old.

so, how do you think things have changed since then?

pete

[Xpander]

Originally posted by cyclonewehner

Thanks everyone for the feedback!!!

I am new to this site. I was just told that my article had found its way onto this site and that it had provoked discussion - which is very cool. I was unaware of this site before!

I guess the points raised above would be explained if you were aware of the original source of the article! I actually wrote the story a few years ago specifically for a publication in Melbourne, Australia - it was my concept and, as an avid reader of magazines, I had not read anything else that really addressed this issue.

Techno has always been strong in Melbourne - Jeff Mills was voted most popular DJ in an Australian magazine poll. The dance music culture is different to the UK and US, in this regard, so that accounts for the focus on that scene.

The magazine, Go, was published by a community dance station in Melbourne called KISS FM (no relation to the UK station) and then sent to a small band of subscribers - everyone involved was working on a voluntary basis. Every issue they would pretty much let me do an article on whatever I wanted - which I loved! My day job is working as a contributing ed to a dance magazine and as a freelancer, so it was great to have that freedom.

I had been thinking about the topic for some time and gathering material. However, I really regretted not having more time to formulate my ideas over a period of time as I found the actual writing raised new angles. The work involved in the story was comparable to an honours thesis yet I had just a couple of days and I had to prioritize my rather demanding 'day' job (I can turn around 10, 000 words a week!). I actually went way over the word length suggested to me and they then had to accommodate that. I sent in the story late and held up everyone!

I never set out to come up with any 'concrete theories' as I really don't think this is possible - I wanted an approach that was discursive and fluid and raised some new ideas.

I feel that if nothing else the article was a good starting point for discussion and I am very happy that it has proved to be that.

Cheers!

Cyclone

Great job Cyclone.

Perhaps you should consider furthering your take on this with some more through research. Perhaps if you can conduct some research into the views of more contemporary female DJs, you can draw a better picture of what what attracts them to, or turn them away from techno.

I'm not sure what it is you do now, but if you ever had the chance to look further into this subject, I'd be interested in hearing about what you come up with.

[cyclonewehner]

Hey!

At the moment I am actually trying to rationalise my writing as I am actually working all hours, all days, all nights, and I am exhausted - I tend to take on more than I can handle. I kind of wish we were paid better in Australia for music writing so that an established writer could really focus on one or two projects at a time, not several. It's hard in the current economic climate for anyone in the music industry, so I think everyone is hustling a little! I would love to spend more time furthering personal projects, such as the Gender story, but these days when I finish deadlines I just wanna sleep or catch up with music friends and see the sun!

With that topic, I kinda feel like I've been there, done that - sure, there's more work to be done in that field, but I am more fired up about other topics.

I think the dance scene is mutating. I know on a local level in Melbourne there are far more prominent female DJs across the stylistic spectrum - so where once it was a boys' club that is less of a factor now. What's more, the scene has diversified more. And there is some amazing production work afoot.

But thanks again everybody for the constructive feedback, I really appreciate that you guys read it!

Cheers

Cyclone

[LavenderMenace]

Originally posted by cyclonewehner

Hey!

At the moment I am actually trying to rationalise my writing as I am actually working all hours, all days, all nights, and I am exhausted - I tend to take on more than I can handle. I kind of wish we were paid better in Australia for music writing so that an established writer could really focus on one or two projects at a time, not several. It's hard in the current economic climate for anyone in the music industry, so I think everyone is hustling a little! I would love to spend more time furthering personal projects, such as the Gender story, but these days when I finish deadlines I just wanna sleep or catch up with music friends and see the sun!

With that topic, I kinda feel like I've been there, done that - sure, there's more work to be done in that field, but I am more fired up about other topics.

I think the dance scene is mutating. I know on a local level in Melbourne there are far more prominent female DJs across the stylistic spectrum - so where once it was a boys' club that is less of a factor now. What's more, the scene has diversified more. And there is some amazing production work afoot.

But thanks again everybody for the constructive feedback, I really appreciate that you guys read it!

Cheers

Cyclone

WOW! So awesome that you responded! yeah, I'll reiterate: this was honestly the most interesting article I've ever found on this topic. Thanks so much. I actually wound up having some really interesting conversations last night because of it.

I hope you'll keep us informed of any new writings. (doesnt have to be gender-related.)

[Melissa Fong]

hey- 2013- MANY years later... and i'm incredibly interested in this topic of techno and gender. I think the topic got revived with Nina Kraviz

Nina Kraviz: Why did Feminism go down the drain of a Bubble Bath? | Melissa Fong

I'm looking to combine my career and my love for techno music- and exploring the topic of masculine space in techno music. Not particularly thel ack of female representation in terms of DJs- although that is related and important.. but more about the masculinzed spaces at the actual parties and wondering if any other women (or men) notice that the crowd is overwhelmingly male and how they feel about it.

any comments would be appreciated.

Great job Cyclone.

Perhaps you should consider furthering your take on this with some more through research. Perhaps if you can conduct some research into the views of more contemporary female DJs, you can draw a better picture of what what attracts them to, or turn them away from techno.

I'm not sure what it is you do now, but if you ever had the chance to look further into this subject, I'd be interested in hearing about what you come up with.