Often the speed of social change is so frustratingly slow, which can be so demotivating. For that reason, sharing some incredible, fast change:
I’ve been a choral singer most of my life, including in HS and college (class of 2007), followed by three different community groups. The only time I haven’t been in choirs is the past ten years, during which I stopped because I had little kids and couldn’t make the schedule work. I recently rejoined my old choir. Things that have changed in the ten years in which I wasn’t singing:
Concert dress codes used to be strictly gendered, usually tux for men and long black dress or black dress pants and blouse for women. My group has now made the dress code gender neutral, where there are two options for everyone: a tux OR all-black dress clothes that meet certain requirements (3/4 or longer sleeves, full length pants or skirt, etc). The director (who is probably in his sixties) happily told me, “You can wear a tux if you want! We changed this to be more inclusive of non-binary and trans singers!”
Voice parts used to be fairly rigidly gendered —high female is Soprano, low female is Alto, high male is Tenor, low male is Bass. Now it’s much more common to see people who aren’t cis men singing Tenor, with the key factor being the singer’s actual vocal range
My university choir had a glee club for the men only. Today, that group is open to anyone who can sing the Tenor—Bass voice parts and they share photos of the group that include people who aren’t cis men (I don’t want to assume their gender from a photo) as part of the group, wearing tuxes along with the rest.
Of note: community choirs skew QUITE old, age wise. Off hand I would guess that ~50% of the singers are over 60 in any given group. So it isn’t as if this is a group of only young folks who instigated the change. All the older folks are completely accepting of it, as well.
These changes happened in SUCH a short period of time! I’m so proud of us??!?!!! 🥲🥳🎉
