Sex, sexism, rock and ethics

By Josh Steechman

The Avatars are on stage, pounding away, and the breasts of the drummer are heaving mightily. Her name is Claudia Leo, and she’s one of the best drummers in town. I’ve seen her many times, and reviewed her band four or five times. There are two other women in the band, both of which are attractive, but Leo is the most impressively so.

But I never mention it in articles about the Avatars. Just like I don’t mention that the band they’re opening for, The Hard Lessons, has a gorgeous lead singer/organist. Or that the only thing worth watching at the recent Feist show was the lovely eponymous singer.

It can be an odd position to be placed in. Rock writers are stereotypically more interested in a girl’s figure than her fingering, and the stereotype of those slavering, chubby “fan-boys” isn’t all that far off for a large sector of my colleagues. Even when regarding the larger question of the general gender tilt toward the young male audience, most female performers are often evaluated as sex objects isn’t anything approaching a secret.

Valerie Alia cautions specialty writers, a sub-genre of which is “rock critic,” to be careful of both the context and the presentation of issues of gender. She remarks on the treatment of a female conductor and the emphasis on her gender in a piece on the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), and concludes that the review was unethical “because it has a different premise from a ‘normal’ review.”

The emphasis on reaching equality perhaps might have been more acceptable in an earlier time, or regarding the first female conductor of the TSO. However, rock ‘n’ roll has a fundamental focus on sexuality, which is tied up in its history, from “Tutti Fruitti,” through “I’m a Slave 4 U.” Image, surface, and sexuality all play into how an act is received and how it should be presented. Certainly, when Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill played the song, “I Like F***ing,” it was not only a third-wave feminist manifesto set to music, but also was self-evident in a way that can get missed with an over reliance on theory – Kathleen Hannah liked f***ing.

And I have no problem dealing with the sexuality of male musicians. I can appreciate the attractiveness of a guy onstage with his guitar, and I am able to give myself the same detachment that I might when looking at a risqué Mapplethorpe picture: I can understand the lust that underpins the spectacle, but it’s not something that particularly influences my feelings about the work outside of a critical look at its efficacy.

The skintight jeans, the bulges, the thrusting – it’s all part of an act, and I know it. And while any critic should admit that in any art they love, there is an element of envy, of wishing that they could be the artist, there is no threat, and the power structure that backs my authority as a critic is not involved in mitigating any male artist’s ability to express his sexuality (aside from some arguably lingering homophobia, but Bowie pretty much rode that horse off into the sunset). To ignore a female musician’s ability to control her own sexuality is to fall into a trap of patronizing just as much as it is to let her pass on inferior chops because she’s “just a girl,” and that is the position that Alia seems to have staked out.

But when dealing with female musicians within the context of rock, there’s a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t framework that colors all of the discussion. Can you seriously regard Madonna’s mid-90’s work without talking about her sexuality in lyrics and image? On the other hand, there can be no free passes given to mediocre musicians simply because seeing their eight-by-ten press shot makes your hands sweaty. The sexuality is present and implicit, but most not be covered in a way that’s demeaning or exploitive if a writer wishes to be seen as ethical as well as critical.

Further, that sexuality is inherently subjective and personal. What turns me on is not what turn you on, and the feeling of attraction bust be in the moment. It cannot be separated from the writer or the piece. So, it is more honest to announce to your readers that you’d slit your mother’s throat for a few minutes alone with Lindsay Lohan or Lydia Lunch (depending on which way your compass goes), or to keep such feeling sub-rosa under the idea of writing an “objective” review?

Similar to the idea of reviewing a show after having a few beers, a crush, even fleeting, can color the whole show, and is just as much of a conflict of interest as having a friend in a band you review. But part of acknowledging a sexy musician is the up-front notion that whatever they have that makes them attractive has worked on you. This may be a little far from Alia’s example of the female conductor, but her recounting of his strained attempts to seem feminist-friendly strike me as the maneuvering of a writer who would definitely like to have a more intimate relationship with his subject, but can’t bring himself to say so.

That the genders should be treated equally is true. That they are often not is also true. But perhaps instead of attempting to hold writers to the platonic ideal of Alia’s objective, even-handed approach, an alternate view would be to ask the artists exactly how sex and gender informed their work. Would that question have to be asked of both men and women to preserve media fairness? Yes. But the answers of men, because of their power rules, would rarely be as interesting, much like asking while political artists how much race plays into their work.

The minority experience tends to be more interesting because of its rarity, if that exoticism can be ever-healthy. More to the point, there is no consistent, ethical answer. Every situation must be dealt with individually, and hopefully, not presumptively. I choose not to write about women’s sexuality so long as there’s something else to write about, and I’m comfortable with that. I hope the women that I interview are as well.