A Small Experience with Sexism
I played a show at yourtownship last night. Two men came close to the front of the stage during my sound check. When my percussion started pumping over the sound system, one guy shouted, “woo! Turn it up!” His friend shouted, “woo! Turn up the cleavage!”
First, let me make one thing perfectly clear: This was not a compliment, not even a severely misguided one. It didn’t make me feel the slightest bit good. It just made me feel ashamed, intimidated, self-conscious, and reduced. It was a comment on my body that permitted no response from me. I wasn’t a musician, a performer, or even a human being to him in that moment; I was just an object of amusement for him and his friend.
I confronted him right away—not as artfully as I would have wanted, not even as angrily as I would have wanted. I was seeing nothing but blinding white heat—I was already tired, stressed and nervous about my show—and now I was so angry I wanted to cry. I think I said, “I don’t know who you are, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t act like an asshole.”
Then, when I got on the mic, I said something else, also not what I really wanted to say. I basically said that there are some rude people up front, and that’d it’d be great if friendly people would come closer.
Friends and strangers, male and female, came to the front right away. Several of my female friends actually confronted this man, who eventually retreated towards the back of the room and was gone before I finished my set.
Did I feel that I needed protection? I don’t know. I didn't feel physically threatened, but I didn’t feel safe either. I did need a barrier between me and them—a psychological and emotional one if not a physical one. That man created a powerfully negative energy at my show—a show I had rehearsed for dozens of hours, a show into which I’d put my hardest work, my deepest emotional investment, and my most intense mental energy. In that moment, I felt all of that work and investment being reduced to some kind of amusing novelty—just a woman in a woman's body on a stage.
It is fitting that the song I was sound checking when this man made his idiotic comment was my newest song, “Wrists, Hands, Fingers.” It is about maintaining integrity in spite of all the degrading things that embodied existence can put you through. It is a song about being more than one’s body; transcending one’s body. It is a song about seeking to encapsulate my true self, my best self, my strongest self, in this creative act, in writing the best songs I am capable of writing. It is not a new theme for music, but it’s one that is vitally important to me. As a person living with multiple sclerosis, I worry about losing my identity. It’s empowering for me to say: I am this music. I am this creative achievement. I am not this body.
I felt a whole new layer of meaning in that song last night.
