Feminist Music: Preaching From the Choir

Off Our Backs, Jul/Aug 2005 by Chapman, Annsley

Unfortunately, all that navel-gazing effectively kept friends and family in the dark about what I believed was wrong with the world and how I proposed to fix it. My evasiveness didn't give them the chance to form their own opinions, and so we all assumed, more or less consciously, that feminist music should be saved for feminist ears. Self-censoring my music choices in front of anyone other than women and men whose minds are already open to women's rights effectively stripped my beliefs of their radical potential. I was preaching to the choir and ignoring the feminist-fearing, Amy-Spencerist masses.

So I loaned out copies of various CDs to friends and acquaintances who did not necessarily identify with feminism. Le Tigre's Feminist Sweepstakes for my fifteen-year old indie-pop sister, Sleater-Kinney's The Woods for my guy friends who like Led Zeppelin and pot, the Au Pairs' Playing with a Different Sex for the Syd and Nancy couple living upstairs, Holly Near's Fire in the Rain for my middle-aged bosses, and Bikini Kill's Reject All American for the sixteen year old male cashier at my old job. Though one friend never bothered listening and another didn't like what he heard, I had at least redressed the error of my previous message that feminism was a private, vaguely embarrassing matter. The majority of my friends willing to play along actually expressed enthusiasm for my CDs, as well as surprise that they had never heard of these musicians before.

Sharing your feminist music is an obvious, simple gesture, and it's not going to shake the known world to its core. But what it lacks in ingenuity and scale it makes up for in feasibility, which is more than I can say about larger, more ambiguous goals like Ending White Male Oppression. Music has galvanized activists during some of the most revolutionary moments in modern history, from gospel chants doubling as hidden messages for runaway slaves to Joan Baez's rendition of "We Shall Overcome" during the March on Washington. On a smaller scale, most people will opt for borrowing your CDs rather than plodding through a feminist theory anthology or buying tickets to the Vagina Monologues (though they might consider either activity post-Sleater-Kinney's Call The Doctor).

I can also think of no better means of jimmying my way into Amy Spencer's brain than if she were to get an Indigo Girls song stuck in her head for a week.

1 "The 10 Things Every Single Girl Must Own," www.match.com/magazine/article2.aspx?articleid=3940

2 "Bitch Please II," performed and written by Eminem, feat. Dr Dre, Xzibit, Nate Dogg, Snoop Dogg, off of Marshall Mothers LP Album, (2000)

3 www.forbes.com/vehicles/2005/05/23/cx_dl_0523feat.html