Where are the women and non cis males?

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

[Cross posted in the two most intellectually stimulating forums I know]

[After-closing-edit] I don’t regret, but I’m kinda sorry I opened this conversation. I was naive in thinking we could discuss this without turning on each other’s experiences. It saddens me that the people thinking this is a non-issue (which is valid) couldn’t just leave the ones thinking it is an issue, to discussing it. Diversity is great. If you respect others perspectives and just stand back to the fact that there might be true and valid experiences and feelings, although you never had them.

I’d like to think that creative, geeky, tech minded, gear focused, electronic musicians come in all shapes and forms. But on the internet they (we!) all (ok, a definite majority) manifest themselves as pretty much cis males. It’s certainly a quite homogenous group.

When I check the stats of my subscribers on YouTube, 97% define themselves as men and are situated in northern America or northern Europe. That matches my general sense of demographics on most music forums and facebook interest groups.

And although this is one place where the conversation is mostly civil and nuanced, I understand the general lack of diversity. Because some men (yes, men!) tend to take up a lot of space using a discourse and lingo that is sometimes quite misogynistic and excluding.

So what can we do to allow for even more diversity in this community? And how can we act to make room for more and different voices in the electronic music community as a whole? What’s on us? What’s on the manufacturers and producers of gear?

I certainly think the creative, intellectual process of making music and geeking out on musical instruments could be even richer if including more perspectives and experiences than from those who are pretty much like me.

:heart: :heart: :heart:

//Carl-Mikael

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#2

I haven’t seen any evidence of this. Granted I’m only on this forum and a few fb groups. But again, I’ve not seen any sort of conversation that holds any sentiment of hating women, and nothing I’ve seen seems exclusionary?

Edit: in my experience, most women tend to steer towards singing. If you want women to get into the electronic music scene, perhaps Elektron could make a multi-voice voice synth/vocoder with effects slots and looping.

Edit Edit: and an LFO or two. Basically a DT with vocoding/voicesynth capabilities and more effects that are more popular for putting on vocals

Edit Edit Edit: and time-stretch pitch-shifting with harmonization capabilities

#3

^ hm tbh stereotypes like “most women prefer singing” are part of the problem.
here it’s really not bad but tbh the topics floating around are somewhat man-cavey.

Like, any place like this must feel like it’s already full of dudes doing dude speak, which is not untrue.

“got GAS?”
“yeah, GAS!”
- a very interesting and inclusive conversation

likely the lady producers - and sadly they are still a minority - are more focused on producing / getting shows / surviving etc.

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#4

While I do think that the overwhelming majority of people you’ll find in online synth forums are cis-males, I also think that people who fall outside of that spectrum either 1) don’t feel the need to call attention to their gender, or 2) at worst do not wish to be singled out for that reason. The latter is particularly upsetting, of course, but unfortunately some people can’t seem to help themselves. Just last week on Gearslutz I observed a mod commenting on the photo of a rather well-endowed female poster who had included a photo of herself in her profile pic…two hours later, I noticed that she had changed her photo to one that didn’t draw attention to her “assets”.

Synth geeks may not push the same kind of machismo and sexism as you find with guitarists, but it’s certainly still an issue.

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#5

That’s great. Really - I might just travel in muddy waters.

But I’m thinking that there ARE plenty of women in the electronic music scene. But that they (mostly) do not surface on internet forums. Which is a valid choice. But not if it’s because of what @Accent is giving example of.

I’ve also seen plenty of such examples. Granted on FB-groups. Not here.

Someone posting a picture of a women playing a synth. Immediately someone else responds “Oh, what a piece of work”, “Yeah! The synth is nice too”. Or even “…the old missus let’s me… purchase whatever”, “My GF can’t properly see what’s newly acquired so I’m getting away with GASing”. It’s just signaling a skewed (and excluding) gender perspective.

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#6

One reason for that, here on Elektronauts, is that we moderators make it a point to nip those things as soon as we see them, either by coming across them in our daily reading of posts, or by flags.

It is our goal to keep that (and other) content out of this forum, and if we are doing our job right, you shouldn’t come across it.
Of course, this does not mean it doesn’t happen or doesn’t exist.

To answer @CarlMikaelBjork’s question. I think maintaining a safe and healthy environment for discussion is something that not only the moderators, but the rest of the community can do. Topics such as this one, and flagging posts that promote misogyny and exclusion is a step in the right direction.

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#7

Exactly. I don’t wanna be identified by my gender either. Definitely not. And for all I know there might be a much larger diversity hiding behind the profile pictures and avatars than I could ever imagine.

So it is hard to discuss. But I feel the issue deserves attention.

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#8

The other big production forum should change its name and ditch those awful threads

I can’t even say it i hate it so much

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#9

It’s pretty techy chat mostly on this forum. I think that’s something that men often seem to gravitate toward more than women. These aren’t exclusively ‘male interests’ of course, but it’s maybe just more a part of our nature to go overboard on them. Getting obsessed with and talking about material stuff. Cars, computers, phones etc. We’re idiots :wink:

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#10

Quoted as this is the crucial part of the title post.

Answers to these questions, and subsequent discussion could really do this community some good. Rather than standard “men are from mars, women are from venus” discussion.

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#11

I dunno. I guess I have a very individualistic perception, so I don’t see myself in these places as a man on a group with a bunch of other men talking about man-things like men. I see myself as a musician discussing gear with other people with a passion for making music.

And I find the scrutiny over the term GAS due to the fact that “women might not like it” to be a little patronizing in and of itself.

There’s a balance that needs to be maintained between things being inclusive and things being organic.

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#12

now I’m intrigued: Just how often do you come across such posts with potentially offensive content?
I can’t even recall one single instance of stumbling across something deliberately hurtful and hold the Elektronauts community in high esteem.

#13

I’ve seen it quite a lot, even on here. It’s much worse on Gearslutz, maybe because the demographic skews older. I think the other posters have done a pretty good job at giving examples of the sort of macho language this thread is about, but often I find myself failing to report it for a couple of reasons: 1. it’s hard to detect, because after spending some time on this sort of forum you kinda internalise the language and forget how toxic it can be, and 2. often the offending post is very subtle and wouldn’t necessarily warrant moderation, but is still indicative of an exclusionary viewpoint.

Still I think the best course of action is to stay alert, report, talk about and call out this sort of behaviour when we see it.

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#14

Aaaarrgghh. There’s got to be just as many techy, idiot women. I do not think nerdiness is exclusive to people with dicks and beard.

On a more serious note. I really do not believe those type of interests are biological. It must be a result of culture. A culture we could be the ones shaping.

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#15

Totally, another example of how a really gross name can be normalised to the point where you don’t realise it’s problematic.

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#16

I don’t want to stray off topic much. Perhaps someone can start an “ask the mods” thread or something, if there is further digression.
But each week there is at least one incident that we are addressing. Some weeks have more. They’re not always based in misogyny or exclusion, but many are.
Many are personal attacks.

Some incidents require more time and discussion between the moderators than others.

The vast majority occur within new product threads (products by Elektron and other companies), as that is where the concentration of emotional posting occurs.

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#17

I don’t think 99% of posts on the forum have anything wrong with them. When a girl or whoever posts I wouldn’t want/expect them to feel they had to write in some hypersensitive way. We’re all grown ups and on this forum everyone is cool and polite. I think us making out like girls or whoever are intimidated or whatever is probably kind of an anti-cure to a non-problem? Did see a couple of pics on here the other day of some girl in a Roland dress. That’s probably the worst/only thing that springs to mind as something that might make me feel uncomfortable looking in at this forum.
In general god knows really tho. These aren’t really questions that men can answer.

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#18

I wouldn’t think there would be “just as many” and I think the mental framework steers in this direction. I recall a study done with newborns where they would present a baby with an object and a face and they saw that the male babies spent more time looking at the object while the female babies spent more time looking at the face. While there COULD be an element of exclusionary behavior in the electronic community, I think the fact that it’s mostly men came about mostly organically

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#19

people posting here are creating a space. they are not taking room away from anyone. they are doing the opposite. if people decide not to join, that’s on them. it has never been easier to get into electronic music and production than it is today.

i don’t see a lot of working class people and people from lower income backgrounds in any music scene. that is a much bigger problem than the gender issues that some rich and privileged berkley students make up just to have something to cry about.

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#20

I think it must be pointed out that you don’t have to see yourself as a man in a group with a bunch of other men because you are the default. It is never a problem for you to be that because it’s always men. That’s…literally the essence of privilege. That doesn’t make you a horrible person. It just means you are likely never reminded of it because everyone around you is like you, so you don’t have to be aware of being the outsider (at least not in terms of gender; I make no assumptions about anything else). So you are allowed to “just be a musician.” Women are never allowed that. We’re the “female DJ”, the “lady producer”, the end of every sentence in music forums that ever begins with “where are the…” a few posts away from the “your synth is like a woman because…” type topics.

There is nothing organic about the inequity and the absence of women. This idea of “balance” you stated, as if one could “go too far” with inclusivity is a false dichotomy. The inequities in music (or any technical field or any field in general) have long been intentionally reinforced with benevolently sexist comments like “women tend to gravitate toward singing” (as stated by someone above) and “men are just more into the technical side of things” (stated by eleventy billion men since the dawn of time), or by overt sexism like the aforementioned “a woman posts a pic of her with a synth and gets all sorts of thirsty comments from dudes” or men booking from within their peer groups (mostly men) instead of looking outside those groups because they want to hear more music from women (hint: most men don’t seem to care that they are not hearing music made by anyone other than white dudes…some curiosity might do us a world of good).

I think y’all are mostly asking some good questions in here. But tbh, asking each other (a group largely comprised of men) about why there aren’t more women/non cis males is likely not going to earn you any real answers.

And asking the women here (of which I am one) is fraught with frustration mostly for the women. Any time I have EVER attempted to explain why these numbers are skewed, I then spend the rest of my time having to argue with men telling me why my perceptions/experience are incorrect. So I tend to avoid it unless I am feeling argumentative or particularly thick-skinned. Lately, that means I mostly avoid because I’d rather not subject myself to more abuse/waste precious time that could be spent fiddling with my beautiful Machinedrum and my borrowed RYTM. :wink:

The big answer to the big question of why we aren’t speaking up much in music forums is: we have before and we got fucking tired of the bullshit we got for doing so. You may not like that answer, but there it is, nonetheless.

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