Why dont many girls like prog?

Magnum Vaeltaja wrote: Catcher10 wrote: Only we, this insane group of people, call this music prog....That's our problem if we are concerned with why more people do not like this music. I think this is a big part of it. It's not that women don't like prog, because in general I've actually known them to like it quite a bit. I've put on Yes, Genesis, PFM, Harmonium, Focus, Mike Oldfield, Gentle Giant, and all shapes and sizes of jazz fusion, at parties and get-togethers. Did everyone with ovaries leave the room screaming? Of course not; everyone just enjoyed it as they would any other classic rock. If you just present prog as what it is - good music - as opposed to a profound philosophy lecture or moving mythological epic, prog can actually have a pretty wide appeal.  So it's not that women don't like prog, it's just that they don't obsess about it the way men tend to.

hear hear!!!!!

plenty of women love prog.. along with lot of other things.  Only losers play group association and hang out on prog sites wondering where all the white women are at  

Women have better things to do than hang out with a bunch of losers....  if you want women.. start drinking JD, toss a few frat boys out bar windows and burn rubber through town blasting Willie Nelson. Then you'll get all the women you want.  Women like their men bad.. not frickin wimps and pussies like most prog fans.

Pekka wrote: I once spent a long night with a girl I sort of vaguely knew, chatting on MSN Messenger (is that still a thing?) about all the cool bands we were digging up from the PA database as we talked. Discovering stuff like PFM, Isildur's Bane, Novalis etc. together. That was 12 years ago - now we've been married for six years, have two kids and about 2400 albums. They're out there somewhere, you might bump into one when you least expect it.

awesome man... good see ya Pekka.. and that isn't enough.. kids or albums

and no one understands that better than me

This is quite an enigma to me. It seems to make little sense. That Prog is not popular generally is a non-explanation if, as I suspect, there is skewing that is beyond chance. I do wonder also how the distribution of female fans with other styles of music compares. There are quite a number of women who take an interest and may even play Classical music and perhaps major in it in college. One thing there is not are many women represented among players of Prog music, and I wonder if this affects the fan base. No, one doesn't have to be a player to enjoy Prog, but I think it's influential enough to be a serious factor. Perhaps women don't identify often enough with the creation of Prog, even if it's merely a fleeting hypothetical daydream. I would love to hear from the women PA members on this.

I once spent a long night with a girl I sort of vaguely knew, chatting on MSN Messenger (is that still a thing?) about all the cool bands we were digging up from the PA database as we talked. Discovering stuff like PFM, Isildur's Bane, Novalis etc. together.

Prog is such a mixed bag, especially as we use it here. There is such diversity of style and it would be a rare person who enjoys Prog in all its diversity. I don't think Prog is inherently good music. Bach widely is considered to have made good music, but that doesn't mean that everyone should like it. The quality varies, and even then quality is so dependent upon subjectivity.

We've had this discussion many times over the years, by the way. My mother, who usually only listens to classical music, likes Aranis, and my wife, who is onto music such as John Denver, the carpenters and Abba likes the Alan Parsons Project, but neither of them would like, say, Mr. Bungle or any thing metal or hard rock. I like Art Zoyd, and I don't like Dream Theater. I like Prog Folk much more than Prog Metal, I like RIO much more than Neo Prog, and I like Progressive Electronic generally mconsiderably more than Symph.

Using Gentle Giant as an example as I used to be very big on the band, my wife likes Gentle Giant's "Think of Me With Kindness" and my mum likes "On Reflection". A female friend of mine who like classic rock enjoyed "Nothing at All". As long as someone, male or female is a big music lover with somewhat eclectic tastes, chances are that you could find music considered Prog that would appeal to them.

I don;t even consider myself to be a Prog lover, I just happen to love a lot of music that is considered to be under the Prog umbrella. I dislike a great amount of it too.

That said, despite having the reputation in Prog circles of being the ultimate Don Jaun or Casonova, I don't have a huge female fan base to discuss music with. In my somewhat limited experience, and I know that such anecdotal evidence is not of much value, I have found more women/ girls who appreciate the lyrics part of music rather than the instrumental aspect and simple pop songs have been more popular than eccentric long-winded instrumentals. I have also found that the lyrics have resonated more with women I know that deal with emotions such as love than, say, songs about the adventures of intergalactic space pirates. They have wanted lyrics that they could easily relate to rather than fantastical subject matter. I rather think women tend to be rather more pragmatic and down-to-earth than men.

Yeah, we can hear the hysterical yelling in the far distance.

Catcher10 wrote: Only we, this insane group of people, call this music prog....That's our problem if we are concerned with why more people do not like this music.

No gender judgment here but from my experience men are generally much more into music  (not just prog) than females. Maybe it's just my generation. Also now that I think of it, I believe women are much more inclined towards visual arts. Perhaps that could be an interesting case to study actually....

I know a few more men than women who are into music generally, but those women, while not really being "prog fans" in the first place, like quite a bit of it (and at least two like super-experimental noise avantgarde, so some reasons such as "can't dance to it" don't apply).

There are plenty of women at ProgDay & RIO, mix is probably 75:25.