Klarinet Archive - Posting 000878.txt from 2000/04

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Music and gender (was: Music and Academic Achievement)
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 09:50:06 -0400

Kevin Fay wrote:
> Now it appears that the clarinet is a "female-only" instrument? Heck, it's
> not that long ago that Sabine Meyer had trouble with the Berlin
Philharmonic
> for BEING female. Give me a break.

Diane Karius, Ph.D. wrote that the clarinet
>>may be perceived as a "female-only" instrument at one level
>>(it certainly was seriously skewed that way when I started, a long
>>time ago), but based on comments directed to me, apparently only
>>males can actually be good at it. My favorite of these comments is
>>still "You play clarinet like a man".

Same garbage women have to eat about cooking. "A woman's place is in the
home," but, "All the great chefs are men." The clarinet was neutral in my
Northern California school system. I think our clarinet sections were pretty
consistently about half male and half female.

I've written previously about my grade school and junior high band director's
belief, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that girls don't play the
drums, girls don't play the trumpet, girls don't play the saxophone and girls
don't play bass instruments. The only boy who resisted the director's advice
that real men don't play flute made first chair and played very well for a
grade school kid. He had to eat a heaping ration of homophobic crap. I
switched to orchestra and lost track of him in our huge high school, but I
have a vague memory that he dropped out of music after junior high. If
that's right, I hope he became a comeback player someday, because IMHO, he
had real ability.

Being a kid sucks. You're so *stuck*. As an adult, I've chosen my
environment in such a way that I rarely encounter classic, serious bigots
face to face any more, but when I do, I figure that since I can't control
what other people think, I might as well ignore them and do as I please. If
they don't like who I am or what I do, it's their problem and they're welcome
to it, as long as they don't make it my problem.

If I find a bigot in a position to mess with my business dealings (such as
they are), then I fight back, but I don't even bother to fight back socially
most of the time, because some knuckle-dragger can't influence the people
whose opinion I care about anyway. Anyone who wants to sound like a fool
doesn't need my help. Although, naturally, anyone who hands me an
irresistible opportunity to throw a comeback line had better duck! :-)

Dee Hays wrote,
>>>We decide what we want to do and go do it, ignoring all else. Gender bias
works both ways though. Men take a lot of flak if they *want* to be house
husbands, nurses, secretaries, etc.>>>

Yes. It also bothers me a lot to hear some women negatively stereotype men,
with the hostile, "All men are rapists" slogan, for instance. The guys in my
life are not rapists.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~
"An it harm no one, do as thou wilt."

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