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What does everybody think about women in Metal and do you think there is a sexism problem? (Doing this for my English course work in school)


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Just as an interesting exercise into how many women play in metal, I checked the members of each of the bands in Decibel magazine's top 40 for 2021.  There was 142 band members excluding guest musicians

 

There was a measly 4 females and 2 of those didn't even play in metal or even overly rock bands.  4/142 = 2.8%

Frozen Soul - Samantha Mobley (bass) - death metal

Hulder - Hulder (plays all instruments) - black metal

Lingua Ignota - not  metal at all - electronica

Fucked Up - Sandy Miranda bass player, vocals  - not metal at all - weird atmospheric stuff.

Exclude the 2 non metal bands and its 2 out of 136 or 1.47%.

 

https://www.theprp.com/2021/11/18/news/decibel-magazine-reveal-their-choices-for-the-top-40-albums-of-2021/

 

 So no bell curves don't explain metal and metal is still a totally male dominated genres regardless of exceptions.

 

 

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I'm not going to make some ridiculous comment stating numbers and percentages (I'll leave my ridiculous comments for everywhere else), but there is plenty of girls at festival gigs, especially Euro Festivals. Yeah I'm sure the majority is still male but the female population is still very well represented and always has been as far as I've seen, and they aren't all just bored women doing shit their other half likes.

There was some might fine looking women at one of the Testament gigs released last year. Might have been Belfast 2018 or something, I don't remember exactly, but the front rows were well populated with them because the camera person found everyone of them....multiple times!

 

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I suspect the camera's focus in on pretty girls.  Indeed the fact that the camera person kept finding them tells you everything.  Marketing is king in metal and sex still sells. 

 

Anyhow I never never said women weren't into metal, merely that the genre is pretty much male dominated. 

 

I've been to Melbourne plenty of times to see lots of different metal bands  and the vast majority of the audience is male.

 

Also totally strange given the demographics of that city as well as Sydney, the audiences were not only largely male but also largely white and of European origin. 

 

 

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The fact still remains there are plenty of females at gigs, especially overseas gigs. Simple statement of fact, not a statement trying to prove you wrong or make less of the observations you have made.

Although I will disagree with this "vast majority" stuff. Females may never be the majority at these gigs but vast majority is a false representation of many of the gigs I've been a part of. As for the largely white Euros at the gigs, I do wonder what you've been focusing on at gigs. Melbourne has such diversity in cultures just by sheer numbers the gigs are multicultural. Like any city Melbourne, and Sydney for that matter, have suburbs where larger numbers of nationalities do seem to make base and gigs in those suburbs often have higher numbers of ethnic supporters but everyone travels to gigs they want to see. There are so many metal bands in Melbourne with multi-cultural members that again gigs are rarely that dominated by one race or group.

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Dunno what gigs you are going to. I usually go to Melbourne  for big name acts.

 

Even at Iron Maiden (last time was Book of Souls) was largely male though female percentage was bigger than at say Kreator or Napalm Death which were nominal in terms of female presentation. 

 

And then compare to Gomez or Living End or Amanda Palmer or Angus and Julia Stone or Pete Murray or Gotye where females were at least 50% of fans and in same cases more.

 

As for Melbourne metal band ethnicity I am aware of one that has an Indonesian female vocalist (read about them in the Guardian of all places) and Vanishing Point (new bass player is of Asian heritage) most of other others I am aware of are exclusively white male (eg King Parrot, Abominator, Desecrator, Be'lakor, Fuck I'm Dead, Blood duster, Abremalin, Parkway Drive, Frankenbok, Ne Obliviscaris, Wolfmother etc).  

 

Sure there is more metal bands in Melbourne and many I don't know of but in those ones I mentioned there is no gender or ethnic diversity.

 

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16 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

I suppose that's he nature of the beast, we all see what we want to see.

There is no subjective perception here.  It is a matter of paying attention.  I tend to be a people watcher too (that and buildings).

 

And I provided a ton of major Melbourne metal bands as examples of lack of diversity.  No subjectivity here.

 

I think my little Decibel exercise was a good little objective exercise on lack of gender diversity in metal.

It was also a decent exercise in ethnic diversity as vast majority of musicians were white.

 

If we did similar exercises with other best ofs from Decibel (Metal Hammer has too much non metal) or websites such as Toilet Ov Hell or whatever, I suspect the results would be the same - metal is still largely male dominated.  And even on multicultural western states it is still largely white European dominated.

 

In fact female representation is still so pathetically low that bands like subpar Venom Prison get foisted up by mainstream metal media sinply on grounds they have a female vocalist despite their complete inability to write a semi interesting riff (and fuck did I try).

 

 

TL; DR metal is still a sausage fest.

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46 minutes ago, KillaKukumba said:

Your Decibel exercise was a very small sample group not large enough to make any comparisons. As I said, we all see what we want to see.

Still I provide an actual sample.

My point was we could extrapolate out to other lists.  Or we could look at gender of all acts at festivals like Maryland Death Fest or Wacken or Helfest and results wouls be same.

We could probably go through all of Metal Archives and the results would be depressingly the same when it comes to atrociously low female participation in metal, especially outside of retro doom  and symphonic/power metal.

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On 2/15/2022 at 7:51 PM, KillaKukumba said:

However I did loose in the end because both ended up interested in Star Wars.

For the avoidance of doubt, I could equally have substituted Dungeons & Dragons or something else for Star Wars. It was something I liked as a kid, but it's not like I now have a glass cabinet with vintage Star Wars figures in it. Promise. 

I do have the following in the corner....but that is more because having boxes of old toys in the garage is kind of dumb. You may as well give them away.

 

 

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I remember the original Star Wars, Empire and Jedi. I don't hate them, I even bought the 20th anniversary editions just to have them. However I was never a huge fan like some people are and I never bought into the new ideas that movie 1 was actually movie 4 and all this stuff was written just waiting to be made. My kids, through their mother, only knew the latest parts of Star Wars and the new shows like the Mandalorian etc. They've got all sorts of toys, games and I think have all the movies. I don't have a problem with their interest, or anyone elses, it's just not something I could ever get into.

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11 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

For the avoidance of doubt, I could equally have substituted Dungeons & Dragons or something else for Star Wars. It was something I liked as a kid, but it's not like I now have a glass cabinet with vintage Star Wars figures in it. Promise. 

I do have the following in the corner....but that is more because having boxes of old toys in the garage is kind of dumb. You may as well give them away.WP_20220216_09_21_46_Rich.thumb.jpg.d312608984684278d40ba9cf933302b5.jpg

 

 

That Garfield is awesome haha. And the Rancor is a solid piece.

And Dead is obviously correct - metal is a sausage fest, aside from the glorious glam and sleaze metal scenes. I would say 1 in 50 of bands I check out have a female member, and 1 in 100 are all female. My cross-section is not comprehensive and focuses on black-goat-death-thrash, but I find it hard to believe there is more robust representation in prog, or funeral doom, or sludge, or many others.

Most fertile ground (see what I did there) for females in metal I would have to say would be retro-doom, power, anything 'symphonic' and maybe metal-core? And honestly most of the time I see a video with a female she is the front and obviously not afraid to play up to the camera (nor should they be - just an observation). My 2 cents but don't overthink it - its just the way it is.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/14/2022 at 8:33 AM, Miss_Teala said:

I did once experience a bit of harassment from a guy when he found out that I had discovered thrash metal music a few weeks ago.
He said some pretty mean things, like how "little girls" like me "cannot handle this stuff".

It also felt condescending to be called a "little girl" like that, since I am 18 years old.
But I sometimes get mistaken for younger than that since I am only 4'11 and apparently have childlike face features, although that still doesn't excuse his attitude towards me.
But it didn't bother me that much, although it was a bit upsetting for a while.

When I saw British thrash band acid reign couple years ago now the female fans were treated very well. There was a female crowd surfing and I've never seen so much care and attention given to this.  Probably average age of crowd being in there 60s might have helped this good behaviour 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/16/2022 at 12:22 AM, Dead1 said:

Metal is ultimately masculine in its whole presentation and aesthetic which makes it unappealing to your average woman. In fact metal has not moved on its presentation as aggressive angry male music at all since the 1990s.  

Yes, I also feel that it is probably more accepted for men to enjoy metal, since it matches the biological/cultural characteristics of men.

The typical gender characteristics tend to be that men are tough, unmoved, aggressive and commanding, whereas women are sweet and tender, non-confrontational and meek, so metal is probably more associated with men for that reason.

I would say that I personally have a very typical feminine personality in that regard, so people often seem surprised when they find out that I have learned to enjoy metal.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 3/28/2022 at 8:01 AM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

If there were more women metalheads the world would be a much better place.

I have noticed that I have mostly got positive reactions from boys when they have found out that I like metal music.

There have been a handful of times when I have felt like they have wanted me to "prove" that I am a serious fan, but I have been a fan for only a few months so far, so I haven't had enough time to become very familiar with everything. 😋

Other than that, they seem very supportive of my interest in it, and they apparently think that it is "cool" when I try to headbang a bit and move my hair around.

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  • 11 months later...

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