Women and Metal

            This week’s topics in metal are rather interesting to me because it covers a topic that I am generally very passionate about: gender and sexuality. As Kahn-Harris states in his Extreme Metal, “Openly gay scene members are extremely rare.” It is well-known now that the metal scene is dominantly a masculine thing, being entirely surrounded in the toughness and violence and the sexual activities of the straight, male culture. This was very evident in the media we watched for class this week, especially in the glam metal videos. While this is surprising to some, the glam metal scene was certainly a mockery of the woman gender and the homosexual crowd. It is clearly a statement of “I’m so secure in my straightness that I can cross-dress and dress like women, and even though I do this, I screw tons of women.” In my personal opinion, however, I find this whole thing to be rather immature and is quite an insult to what it means to be a woman. This insult certainly comes from the men in this metal scene that think this way, but also from all of the women in the scene too. In fact, I find the women in this scene more angering than anything. They let themselves be seen entirely as sex toys and provide for these men knowing all too well that they are being used. It is just stupidity!

            On the same topic of women in metal, I think that it is important to look at the position of a woman in the position of being a metal band member as well. This is a tough scene for women; it almost puts them in the situation of prosecution against their gender. It is absolutely ridiculous that a woman is required to be sexy and slutty to be considered a “successful” member in the metal scene. I am totally with those women from the media that we watched in class this past week that pretty much say “fuck what a woman is supposed to be; let’s do what we want!” In modern society, it is common to focus on the outer beauty of a woman and the sexiness of her. In this sense, I believe that metal is just as disenchanted as the rest of the world. They are simply going with the flow of what the general population says a woman should be. From what I could see, the “metal” woman members of bands were not part of the true metal scene with their clean cut image because they are forced to be something else entirely from the stereotypes of modern society.