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smiting the sensitive male chauvinist

August 10th, 2006     by Thea Lim     Comments

If you’re just joining the conversation, Anna blogged about the “sensitive male chauvinist” and Nicole responded that Bob Dylan’s been called out for his hostility to women in his music. That made me think of this great piece called “Where the Girls Aren’t” by Jessica Hopper. It was written a few years ago, and it immediately sparked a pretty intense debate among my friends, who were hardcore indie rockers at that point.

Music like punk and emo (and its cousin, indie rock) is assumed to be pro-gender-equality, just because a)in some ways it started out that way b)the whole sub-culture is kinda counter-cultural, with the do-it-yourself, and rejection of cookie cutter pop. BUT, Jessica Hopper argues that this rep is actually totally false and that emo in particular is extremely male-dominated, and lyrically very misogynist.

Seriously read this article! It was one of the first things in a long chain of events that slowly turned me off boy-rock (and other things. like, you know, patriarchy). Anybody wanna buy my Get Up Kids box set?

PS If you had trouble before 4 p.m. EST on 10 August following that link to the full article, try it again now.

Tags: media savvy

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