Frankly... visual  Toxic Cloud

After a long break, the music festivals are back again this summer. But the line-ups are still mostly (cisgender) men: not much has changed there. Susi Bumms describes a metaphorical toxic cloud hanging over these male-dominated stages.
 

Going to music festivals is a popular summertime pastime. And another pastime at those venues, although admittedly not quite as fun, is counting the number of men and women on stage.

But the results are nothing new. Even as records gave way to CDs, CDs to download codes, and download codes to streaming platforms, one thing has remained the same: it’s still for the most part only one gender group playing the instruments and manning the mics.

The first time I joined a band, fifteen years ago, women instrumentalists were few and far between, but I was told that that was changing. And they’re still saying that today.

Here’s one iconic moment I sometimes recall:

Flinging the tampon | Illustration: © Susi Bumms It was 1992, and Donita Sparks, the lead singer in the all-female grunge band L7, went ballistic about an equipment malfunction and flung a used tampon from the stage at the Reading Festival in England.

That was iconic and, more to the point, an awfully long time ago.

How can it be that women and non-binary people, who used to be so bold about not trying to please and started to take up so much space, still occupy so little of it?

Gatekeeper guarding the stairway | Illustration: © Susi Bumms What this means in figures is, according to the Künstlersozialkasse (German social security fund for artists), female musicians earned about 21 per cent less than their male counterparts in 2021.

Toxic Cloud | Illustration: © Susi Bumms We can’t wait for another 500 tampons to be flung from the stage to get female and non-binary musicians headlining more stage acts. And hopefully we won't have to: feminism has to work even without getting vaginas involved.

As I see it, there’s a diffuse toxic cloud hanging over festivals where almost all the performers on stage are (cis) men. You may have fun and dig the music, but you know there’s a form of structural discrimination blocking the way into the line-up. We’re going to keep pointing out this cloud till everyone sees it. That's why we’re keeping gender-score. And that's why I’m writing this column.


 

June 2022