@vas-rayya replied to your post: billy tipton was a transman and i have had it up...
Jazz was also pioneered by women, so that “Billy was just pretending because music was seen as a man’s game” line sounds pretty bullshit.
I found a New York Times article that had the wording i was remembering mostly. The entire thing is a shitshow, so major warnings for misgendering and lesbophobia as well as transphobia (eve in the title of the article!!). like i got even angrier trying to find the phrase in this article. Like kill bill sirens but replaced with “DING DONG. YOU ARE WRONG”
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/02/arts/one-false-note-musician-s-life-billy-tipton-remembered-with-love-even-those-who.html
The actual wording is “With few exceptions [...] jazz was a man’s world. Whether simply as a matter of sexual choice or to get work in jazz, Tipton lived the life of a man.”
So yeah! It is absolute bullshit.
if you study music theory and history like at all then you’d know it was not only not just a man’s world, but it wasn’t a white man’s world either. White men stole it and got popular but there was no reason someone like Billy would have to just ‘pretend’ to get a spot in jazz culture. Jazz was liberating. It had no borders. By design. Jazz is the least likely candidate to refuse a woman.
Likely it just ended up being sheer coincidence that Billy was getting recognized in music as he was using his new name. In fact it’s more likely that as he figured he would get popular, he’d rather his music be attributed to his true name, not his dead name. Ergo...
like it only takes two tiny steps to tear apart this mindset of “RAWR MUSIC MAN’S WORLD RAWR NO WOMEN EVER GOT POPULAR IN JAZZ WITHOUT LYING OR GAMING THE SYSTEM RAWR”
it’s pathetic and i’m tired.