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Why DO women like prog?
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valravennz View Drop Down
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    Posted: September 20 2006 at 00:30
Originally posted by Hibou

[SNIP] 

I’d say if you’re female, not only must you have an ear for music, but you must make music a priority in your life if you want to enjoy prog : turn the phone off the hook, don’t answer the door, “don’t talk to me for the next four hours while I strap my headphones on” sort of thing. Very few women are encouraged to endulge in such a “selfish” pastime, what with our family lives, raising the kids and all.

 

One day, surely, someone will find a satisfying explanation for this female lack of interest in prog. But something tells me it has to do with (1) the way our respective brains process musical information and (2) the socialogical context that discourages women from indulging in a hobby you mostly emjoy alone.

 [SNIP]

Smile.

 

 
Hibou
You have stolen my thunder - well actually expressed my thoughts very well.Clap I am a female who is now hitting the 50 year mark age wise. I have been fortunate to live in an environment where music has been a priority in the house. I was brought up listening to classical music and jazz and discovered prog music at the time of it's so called, inception in the late 1960's. So - like yourself, Bald Jean, Bald Friede and Three Fates for example, we have grown up with Prog and we are passionate about different aspects of the music - whether it be indepth analysis of prog's technicalities or sheer listening pleasure.
 
I find it hard to believe that there are not many more women who share our passion for prog music. But I agree that the time constraints placed on many women due to family and work committments can mean in many instances of women not being able to make time to listen to music whether it be prog or anything else,  for longer than three and a half minutes that is the average length of a pop song. A pity - as woman can and do, make significant contributions to prog music and unbeknown to many guys, to this forum - cheers Wink 

"Music is the Wine that fills the cup of Silence"
- Robert Fripp


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SolariS View Drop Down
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Just to throw out a general observation. The majority of forums are dominated by men....whether they are about prog or anything else.
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Posts: 2520 		Post Options Post Options   Quote valravennz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 20 2006 at 01:04
Originally posted by SolariS



Just to throw out a general observation. The majority of forums are dominated by men....whether they are about prog or anything else.



 
True because the majority of members of PA's forum are men!! - proves my point to some extent don't you think.Wink

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^ Yes, Hibou as a father of a boy and a girl, as a happily married man, and as a guy who as a teen had a cool, music-loving (a fair bit of prog, too) older sister, I think that general patterns of gender-specific behaviour are almost always a result of  biology and societal conditioning.
 
To pretend there are no real differences in the mental processes of the genders flies in the face of current science, and my own observation of my two children as they grew.
 
(Of course, as always, I am referring to general trends -- there are always exceptions. I manifest many of them myself, truth be told.)
 
Good post, & good to "see" you here, as always, Lise!Smile
Let the monkey drive.

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Originally posted by valravennz

Originally posted by SolariS



Just to throw out a general observation. The majority of forums are dominated by men....whether they are about prog or anything else.



 
True because the majority of members of PA's forum are men!! - proves my point to some extent don't you think.Wink




Well, I don't know that women have any more or less time than men, but I do think it's kinda strange that even on HUGE forums like Offtopic.net, the majority of users are men.


Confused Confused...
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All ladies are welcome!  Please break the carricatyre conceptions!
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Originally posted by Peter Rideout

Embarrassed Oh! Why do women like PROG....Embarrassed
 
They like it because of its cute name, its impressive length, and because Hugues Chantraine likes it, of course! Wink
 
 
Shocked
 
You sure you're not confusing prog with prong?Confused
 
 
 
 
Thanks!!! I guess!Ermm
 
ConfusedStern SmileWacko
 
 
LOL
 
 
Originally posted by Man Overboard

My girlfriend's really into The Flower Kings, probably because of me Embarrassed

 
...then again, my girlfriend's actually a guy Tongue
 
That's allright, the majority of men are lesbians anyway: we only we sleep with womenWink
 
 


Edited by Sean Trane - September 20 2006 at 09:46
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Originally posted by Hibou

Ah, Ghost Rider, you’re fast becoming my new prog hero Hug! And with a thread like this, you’d think all female proggers would finally be coming out of the woodwork. But alas... So here I go.

 

First, let me say that I’m a 56-year old female (don’t ever say you’re too old for prog!). The way I see it is women’s brains are different from men’s, with possible repercussions on (among other things) our respective music appreciation. For the same reason you won’t find many females standing with their hands crossed behind their backs, staring at a construction site (althrough there are some), you don’t find too many females who enjoy highly technical music (again, there are some but they are a minority) - and prog provides plenty of this.

 

I, myself, don’t easily make concessions when it comes to melody contents: a piece can feature odd-time signatures and take many crazy twists & turns, but some harmony must come of it all to satisfy my female brain (that’s why I like mostly symphonic and neo prog). When music steers too far away from melody, I feel like I’m trying to connect with someone lacking basic human emotions. This doesn’t mean I like syrupy ballads, far from it: hip-hop, new age music and crooners absolutely bore me to death.

 

I’d say if you’re female, not only must you have an ear for music, but you must make music a priority in your life if you want to enjoy prog : turn the phone off the hook, don’t answer the door, “don’t talk to me for the next four hours while I strap my headphones on” sort of thing. Very few women are encouraged to endulge in such a “selfish” pastime, what with our family lives, raising the kids and all.

 

One day, surely, someone will find a satisfying explanation for this female lack of interest in prog. But something tells me it has to do with (1) the way our respective brains process musical information and (2) the socialogical context that discourages women from indulging in a hobby you mostly emjoy alone.

 

Sorry for raveling on so. I don’t write often but I just couldn’t let that wonderful thread pass without putting my two cents in. Keep on progging, ladies, and don’t ever let that proggy flame die inside Smile.

 

 
 
Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!.............
 
It takes a sexist thread to bring Lise out of the woodwork!
 
You are way too rare on this forum, LiseHeart (so are women in general).
 
You know outside of Jean's very valid points of our background defining our tastes. But men and women are fundamentaly different and  there are some more appealling area of interest according to the sex you belong to. I was always one to prefer equivalence than absolute equality: The European laws hazve now set that the maximum weight to be raised by a worker without machinery is 25 Kg for men and 15 Kg for women, which is of course understandable, suitable and "wishable".
 
I have friends that have raised their children (a boy and a girl) to be completely asexual in terms of role, toys , friends, entertainment/TV and even clothes (I never said I agreed with this either) and they got really shocked when once the kids got to another (childless or more like children had flown from the nest) home, but with a bunch of games and toys  and their little "boy" (if you can still call that poor kid that) threw himself on the toy guns, and their little girl on the dolls.  All that work of negating the sex difference for nothing (I was secretly jumping up and down when they told me this).  This to explain that construction site (or games) and other areas of creation (prog included)  are more interesting to men because women have the advantage of creating life with their body, and men feel that they have to create differently because they were the odd one out in the child/mother relationship.
 
So women are a minority in prog!!!  I wish it was not so, but men are the vast minority at Madonna concerts. Have to go with the flow and to try to change that is probably wishful thinking.
 
 
 
Actually I participate in the Progressive Ears forum and there is a higher percentage of women (roughly 1/4) there and the some of the threads turn soon or later into sex tirades where the women get often the upper hand.Wink
 
 
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I ain't a women so I really don't know, but I'd imagine that women who do listen to classic rock and prog to be a little more adevnturous than usual.  

 

I, for instance didn’t know anyone else who listened to prog early on. I’m always looking to do something different, and prog is one of those differences.

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Can I add my voice to the discussion? I think the point some of you (Hugues, Lise, Valravennz and others) made is quite valid: men and women are undoubtedly different, as it is useless to pretend that biology may not have any influence on intellectual and psychological makeup. However, the influence of society is also not to be discounted, especially in times like ours, where such differences are exploited in order to allow people to make money out of them - see for instance the model of female appearance propagated by the media, which induces many women to invest enormous sums of money to conform to that model. This is also valid for things like music, books, movies and such other cultural manifestations.

Besides, although it cannot be denied that those differences exist, we should also be careful of so-called scientific discovery on the matter. As a matter of fact, those finds can easily be used to discriminate women in the workplace (as it already happens far too often even in 'civilised' countries) or in other walks of life. What I personally believe is that differences mainly exist among individuals, as far as things like character, inclinations, abilities and such are concerned. Musical tastes also fall within these categories, as does what Hugues calls creativity. There are women who are more creative than certain men, and the other way around - and this is true for ANY sector of life, in my very humble opinion.
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I love the sheer exhilaration of progressive rock's time changes, dynamics, and musical virtuosity. Perhaps I can trace my interest back to a chance sighting of the Mahavishnu Orchestra on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert back when I was 11 years old. I had never heard anything like them before.

Several years later, I developed an interest in Yes after my high school gym teacher played "Going for the One" on the last day of class.  My love of progressive rock just took off from there.
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Originally posted by Ghost Rider

Can I add my voice to the discussion? I think the point some of you (Hugues, Lise, Valravennz and others) made is quite valid: men and women are undoubtedly different, as it is useless to pretend that biology may not have any influence on intellectual and psychological makeup. However, the influence of society is also not to be discounted, especially in times like ours, where such differences are exploited in order to allow people to make money out of them - see for instance the model of female appearance propagated by the media, which induces many women to invest enormous sums of money to conform to that model. >>> Do you not think there are the same pressure out there for men? If you listen to the meadis,  we are supposed to be taking care of ourselves the way women do, pampering ourselves with night creme and even encouraged to use make up (see Ralph Lauren's New Man campaign) and this is mostly approved by women who feel that men should take the same amount of time to the looks as women do: if we fall in the make-up traps, so should men!
 
So the female medias are out to make us look like all-tarted-up-wimps, then they complain that there are no real men anymore. Thanks a lot, girls ClownAngryWink
 

Besides, although it cannot be denied that those differences exist, we should also be careful of so-called scientific discovery on the matter. As a matter of fact, those finds can easily be used to discriminate women in the workplace (as it already happens far too often even in 'civilised' countries) or in other walks of life. What I personally believe is that differences mainly exist among individuals, as far as things like character, inclinations, abilities and such are concerned. Musical tastes also fall within these categories, as does what Hugues calls creativity. >> what I meant here is that for milleniums, men were forced out of the nursery and actually reinforce the walls of that very nursery and make life easier and safer for everyone (including themselves), which is why all of the technology (until recently) was invented and produced by men, but also the artistical: from the cave painting (they depicted the hunting scenes and not the family/nursery life) to mid-XXth Century arts. The only notable exceptions was in the letters dept, where women where accepted from Renaissance onwards, but often again in the lullabybedtime story-telling
 
There are women who are more creative than certain men, and the other way around - and this is true for ANY sector of life, in my very humble opinion.  >> Of course you are right! Look in classical music, women are more than the majority in an orchestra and hopefully women will lead them too. But you are not likely to find a woman playing the tubaWink
 


Edited by Sean Trane - September 21 2006 at 07:05
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a em Hmm I am a woman I just reached 30 and i 've been listening to Prog for a very very very long time... I had my puberty break with some mainstream sh*t aka Michael Jackson and the like but I can't imagine my life without all these bands... And I have a madness over construction sites and corroded metal does that make me less of a woman? I am being terrosised here people...

And now a tale...
I was with a guy who had a definite madness over prog ... and I couldn't comprehend his need to discover because all he had discovered I  listened to all my life...aka Doors, Floyd, Zeppein, Genesis, Yes, Camel, Rush, blah blah blah... I showed him a couple of my favourite lps and he was taking notes...And so was I when he bought cds I totally wanted and never heard of... like Gentle Giant at the time.
But there was one thing that you havent mentioned and I felt. He was trying so hard to prove that he knew, that he understood that he was the complex one that at some point I lost interest in music.I couldn't enjoy it when he was there. I felt as if he was pushing me aside from my own music and childhood memories... and it took a long time and conversations about music and how we should both enjoy it for me to be able to start discovering in my own way again. Sometimes males act as if they are so special in understaning and appreciating that women just ignore their choices.

P.S. I have a nice small collection of Lps and tapes and I am rebuing them in cds and downlading them via mp3 so I can listen to them everywhere...is that a bigger deal cause I am a woman?



Edited by peroxidess - September 20 2006 at 06:10
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Originally posted by glass house

Quote Dirk : Since appreciating prog takes some effort and focusing (for me that is) i wonder if a similar mechanism might be at work here, i'm not sure actually- end quote.
 
I was wondering what Karin thought of this? Tongue.
About the parallel between listening to prog and playing chess, i don't know, i'll ask her tonight Tony LOL.
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Women per se are cool
 
Women who like prog are cooler still
 
Men, i'm afraid, are not
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i dont think women know how to bring the funk. Funk is one of the genre's of music that's universally found throughout this wide spectrum known as prog (whether you realize it or not) esp. jazz-fusion. i think women to start listenin to that p-funk, and prog lovers of all sexes will unite!
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^ Big smile Hugues, much like prog, you KNOW you're a chick-magnet!Cool
 
 
The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about....Wink
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i dont wanna sound sexist, but look at classical music. obviously this is the biggest influence on prog. more so than jazz, psychedelia, etc. all the great composers were men, and then all the classic prog bands were all men as well. ive yet to see a musical movement where women were the majority in the creative force behind it.
 
although it's true, there's more women in orchestra's and symphonies these days. this may be due to men thinking it's "gay" to do that and would rather be in bands, but i doubt this, since i know people in marching band drum corps.
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Originally posted by Peter Rideout

^ Big smile Hugues, much like prog, you KNOW you're a chick-magnet!Cool
 
 
The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about....Wink
 
 
Sssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...................Shocked
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You crazy or sumthin' ????????Angry
 
 
Want everybody to  find out that prog is really a chick-magnet?OuchEvil Smile
 
Let's keep it a secret so we can share in equal shares of the chickpie (75-25% in my favor)Pig and let those self-confessed losers keeping the way they are.............. Censoredvirgins
 
 
 
 
Anyway, it really depends on my last meal, you know, the garlic thingWink?!?!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Originally posted by Ghost Rider

...What I personally believe is that differences mainly exist among individuals, as far as things like character, inclinations, abilities and such are concerned. Musical tastes also fall within these categories, as does what Hugues calls creativity. There are women who are more creative than certain men, and the other way around - and this is true for ANY sector of life, in my very humble opinion.


Couldn't be better said.

I'm not sure there exists a satisfactory answer to the original question, however. As for women in online chats, you guys just aren't looking in the right place.
-P
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