Having been involved in the independent music/college radio world for the last five or so years, and spending far too much time, energy, and emotional involvement on it, one of the most contradictory aspects of it has been the way this scene posits itself as liberal/leftist and progressive in a nearly self-righteous way while also existing as a sub-culture more male-dominated than our mass culture. The latest microcosm of this situation that's been ruffling my feathers is Dusted Magazine, which describes itself thusly: "Daily online magazine highlighting independent and fringe artists. Features a weekly radio chart and interviews"
It's sort of a smaller, snobbier Pitchfork (less pop, less mainstream), but less obnoxious than Pitchfork in that it lacks the preponderence of silliness of Pitchfork, like those damned 1-10 scale ratings for each record. But a smaller, snobbier Pitchfork is the sort of thing I go for, plus Dusted functions as an alternative to the indisputably very very obnoxious CMJ (College Music Journal). Good labels that release worthwhile music pay attention to Dusted. I know a few people personally who are contributing writers.
But Dusted's dirty little secret is that looking at the list of writers is like looking at the list of characters in Tolkien novel: almost no women at all. To be precise, out of 42 writers listed on their website, only 3 have names that could be female (Britt Brown, K. Ross Hoffman, Casey Rea). That's 9.5% women, if they are all women. I know from experience that women constitute a bit more than 9.5% of the contributing body of college radio. From what I understand, the guys that run Dusted, Otis Hart and Sam Hunt, mostly acquire writers by asking people they know of one way or other to write for the online mag. On the "About" page of the site, they claim "Our reviewers live all over the country and vary greatly in age and background." Unless, of course, you consider gender as part of background.
So, this great progressive music website leading the vanguard of people who care about independent music? A fucking boys club. I could just decide that Dusted Magazine is a hypocritical, pretentious publication not worth the eye-strain I sacrifice to read one paragraph from their site. But that would deny that Dusted actually has an important role in things I care a great deal about, that good friends of mine (yes, male) contribute to it, and that women are frequently excluded or subordinated in a sub-culture that brightly paints itself as liberal and progressive.
I wrote a polite (no, really, I was actually polite) email expressing my thoughts on the matter to them today. I haven't heard back from them yet. But I do encourage anyone reading this to also send an email to dusted@dustedmagazine.com, if you feel so moved.
Fuck you, Dusted Magazine Boys Club.
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7 comments:
i second your thoughts on this matter! fuck "rock criticism" and all the boys who practice it.
i think that i would broaden the critique, myself. the album review is a vacuous, masturbatory genre of writing. it rarely illuminates anything other than the writer's own opinion of himself. i tend to cringe when i read even the best reviews on a site like dusted - they strike me as contrived, as a component in the record label indie hype machine.
should a magazine like dusted be taken seriously at all? if, as you say, it plays a big role in something you care about ("independent music" or whatever), should it? if it is an organ that recruits homosocially from among a group of "elite" friends, then i say fuck it. it already has zero going for it. and, when you add the hype function of its articles -- and their homogenous, derivative style -- you get a big ole fuck-all.
oldsters recognize their own embarrassing youth in mags like dusted, and youngsters are marginalized for their gender or lack of connections.
so, i say fuck 'em. there are a gagillion ways to learn about new (and old) music thanks to the (awesome) internet, and female-guided musical discussions are far more available at the college radio station itself.
who needs a monolith of pimply twenty somethings to tell us about all the records we are getting serviced anyway, when we have a far more competent staff of friends and family right here at home?
as always, dick, extremely well put.
i agree that one is probably best off paying as little attention as possible to the opinions of twenty-year-old boys trying much to hard to sound like they have something important to say about some chunk of music. but at a certain point, my interest in music and the desire to know more about it leads me to search out information about music. i find your suggestion that i should simply ignore various sources of such information rife dominated by self-important boys somewhat difficult, because it would eliminate nearly every condensed source of information about music. an ultra-grassroots network of people to discuss music with is a nice idea, but i feel like restricting myself to those narrow confines for information would result in missing out on alot of things going on outside of some self-chosen sphere of voices. is it really possible to eschew obnoxious rock criticism? should all music crticism be avoided?
you are right, naturally, when you call into question the entire edifice of rock criticism. have you ever seen a staff photo for "the wire?" let's just say that the only boobies are made of puffy paint and hang off the trucker hats.
i guess that, in the special instance of "dusted," i was arguing that the magazine, as you've described it, is full of shit. i mean, they get the same records that the radio station gets anyway, right? so if something is going to break i'd rather have one of our reviewers break it to me in the first place.
but, in the wider case of rock criticism, i agree that there is a serious problem. looking over the list of mp3 blogs i read (i prefer crate diggers to new music hypesters), not a single one is written by a woman. i intend to rectify that as soon as i can.
i guess i tend to lend more credence to "networks" of people than you do. i get most of my information about new music from college radio -- a narrow, self-selected group of folks -- and do little reading to supplement my listening. this is a matter of preference, naturally. i tend to believe that one has very little insight into music until it has accumulated some historical baggage. some contextual depth.
i guess what i was getting at is the fact that i simply call "bullshit" on self-important rock music mags and go out of my way to gather my information elsewhere. you are right that that does not solve the problem of access -- or the wider problem of sexism in the indie music community. and it certainly doesn't make more women into pontificating crate diggers.
however, at the end of the day, i am proud to work at a radio station with a female-led music department. i relish the fact that most of our best -- and longest running -- radio shows are hosted by women and that our best and most prolific record reviewers are women. i don't want to sound like a bumper sticker here, but building local communities like the one we have doesn't change the whole world, but it can change the one that we live in.
thank you for the opportunity to re-examine my own prejudices and practices.
looking over the list of mp3 blogs i read (i prefer crate diggers to new music hypesters), not a single one is written by a woman. i intend to rectify that as soon as i can.
you mean, in a bizarre twist on "Weird Science", you're going to construct a woman to write mp3 blogs instead of having sex with you?
(btw, one of the most problematic parts of "Weird Science" is the implied statutory rape. unless in movieland there is a loophole for adult women created by unsophisticated computing technology)
every time i set about to construct a woman, i just end up spending way too much time designing the boobs.
Hi, this is Sam from Dusted. Oddly enough my dad just forwarded this blog to me. We receive a lot of emails like this, and I reply to all of them. I replied to this one, and am not sure why the poster in question chose not to mention this.
I assure you that this is not part of any conspiracy on our part. Otis and I are both extremely busy people outside of our Dusted worlds, and in the past year, have been desperate for writers. We accept writers based on who writes in asking about writing. We look at their samples and bring them on or politely decline. I'm sure anyone who has written to us can attest to this. 99% of the people who write to us asking to write are male. I do not know how to change this.
I will tell you what I tell every female who complains about our gender imbalance: Why don't you write for us? We need writers!
This blog is usually read by approximately three people whom I see on a regular basis, so i don't usually have a formal follow-up post. I did indeed receive a response to the email i sent to dusted shortly after sending it, with basically the same information presented in sam's response above.
Well, now, this post is about 8 months old, so my spring ire has had a chance to mellow a bit. I can sympathize with Dusted's position: it's a small, independently-run organization. No one, as far as I know, gets paid to run it or write for it. Almost everyone who volunteers to write is male. They do what they can.
Women are similarly lacking in the realm of audio-blogs as well, suggesting that even without on the purely individual level there are just a lot more guys out there than women who want to write about music.
The problem with this attitude is that it ignores the powerful role of gender culture in indie rock. Underrepresentation of women in rock criticism is a part of a deeply ingrained male-centrism in rock music. Women don't participate because there isn't anything for them to identify with, no female role models, no culture of female music writers, not to mention that historically women have comprimised only a small portion of the people making the music in question. There is, however, a significant culture of the male music fan, of the male rock reviewer, and it's a culture than I personally have found extremely difficult to become a part of. It sucks when I go into a music store and I see a dad shushing his 9-year-old daughter as he flips through vinyl or a some guy, unsolicited, tries to tell me which CCR record to buy, or when I look in some expensive music magazine and realize that exactly none of the authors' names is Beatrice of Sally.
Blah blah blah. So, if I want to be involved with music but have a problem with the lack of female voices, I'm presented with essentially two options: break into the established, male-centric organizations and attempt to introduce female participation and persepctive; or start my own organization based on a concept of inclusion. There are few situations when I would be inclined to choose the former over the latter.
What bothers me about Dusted and other organizations with a lack of women is that I believe a diversity of viewpoint should be seen as essential from the very beginning. If that isn't important to someone, that's fine. But it isn't something I'm likely to advocate or want to be a part of.
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