Men only?

Oh dear dear dear, Thus the contraversy already discussed in this thread such a long long time ago arises once again.

Yoohoo? Was Derek Dick a mysoginist? (Look at my previous post- I need some answers here! )

Franklinstower3 wrote: My friend and i were discussing this very thing a few hours ago! haha. Anyway our theory is that most woman are more concerned about what people think of them and therefore will try and "fit in with the crowd" so until prog becomes popular most woman wont like it. Could be all wrong just my two cents.

No comment....

Seriously speaking, there seem to be a lot of people in this thread who are venting their anger or contempt at women using music as an excuse... What I really think is that there aren't just "men" and "women", but individuals that can be extremely different to each other as concerns feelings, tastes, abilities and so on. In my opinion, it's more a question of "mass" against "individual" than of "men" against "women". Nowadays most PEOPLE (irrespective of gender) tend to try and fit in with the crowd, doing what it's generally considered cool to do.

Back to prog.... I've got many male friends, and only one of them is seriously into prog. The others like everything from Anastacia to Lloyd Webber musicals, and they hardly know who Yes or ELP are - let alone more obscure acts!

AngleofRepose wrote: Noting that the thought has crossed Summer's mind that men naturally excel in science more than women for brain chemistry makeup reasons (complicated, but the example that made sense was that autism oftens leads to genious math minds - such as mathematician and economist Steve Nash - and is linked to testosterone imbalances while in the womb. This is why men are more often autistic) and that substantive tests have also linked music with math it might follow that complex music is easier to digest and sort through by men than women.

Interesting that autism connection with men. Maybe this also has something to do with women generally being more sociable than men.

I wonder, are men more likely to be introverted than women?

By the way, who is Summer?

Bob Greece wrote: RaphaelT wrote: the bulk of Fish - period material was about Derek's problem with relationship and it was quite mysogynic (Script For A Jester's Tear, The Web, the whole Fugazi, large parts of Misplaced Childhood). So you would not expect many girls listening to that stuff. Starette wrote: *gets desperate, bangs head again'st wall in fustration and decides to calm herself down by listening to Marillion*

RaphaelT ...can you inform me about the apparent mysogeny behind Script for a Jester's Tear? I've just got into Marillion more than anyone else at the moment so I'm all of a sudden quite interested.

I think this site would be a considerably poorer place without our female forum regulars, and I think they all deserve a huge round of applause for putting up with all the testosterone...

Hibou wrote: Flip_Stone wrote: And who knows, maybe those long guitar solos, keyboard solos, and odd drum patterns appeal to something in the inner parts of men. Hey, maybe Flip_Stone is on to something, here. It’s a well-known fact that females freely discuss their feelings whereas guys tend to keep to themselves. Who knows, maybe prog is a way for guys to get in touch with their inner selves?   I (a female) don’t exactly fit the typical female image when it comes to “talking it out” (I’ve been told this often enough to know). When life is rough, instead of grabbing the phone and babbling away, I shut myself in, strap the headphones on, put an album in my CD player and blast away for a couple of hours. It feels great!

Is that a biological or is it cultural fenomena? If the later, is it just western culture?

As Starette said: men being out hunting alone whilst women are at home together this seems to be a very  old cultural fenomen which then can be seen throughout many different cultures. Today, at least in the richer countries both men and women get to work (Canned Heat - Let's work together). This would mean that someday if we continue to go the the job women will at last start listening more to prog. (This theory sucks, I don't understand it myself.)

Bilek wrote: I don't really know what's going on for the last 4 pages, but one fact also drew my attention: Not only women don't give an ear to prog at all, you won't also find many women musicians in prog scene. I believe there's even more women on metal stages!

Yes, you're right. It is quite difficult to understand.

Bilek wrote: The only thing that bothers me about women not being involved in prog is that I have difficulty in listening to prog at home while my girlfriend is with me! Thankfully I made her like some "lighter" pieces, such as JM Jarre, some Kraftwerk and little bit of Can! God help me with it. (At least I have headphones at work so that I can listen to music 8 hours a day)

I don't think you'll ever get her to like the avant-garde stuff. Well, 8 hours a day is pretty good - it's a lot more than I manage (headphones give me earache!).

Prodigal wrote: I know why prog doesn't appeal to most women... they get easily bored, and they're not fond of complexity in music. I'm so lucky to be a man.

shut up shut up shut uP!  (...don't take my apparant anger seriously by the way. I just realized, that you wrote 'most' in bold, too late.)

It's ok now Bob Greece- I'm over the weirdo 'why did I have to be a girl?' phase. As i said before: Estrogen! And quite ashamed of myself for that matter too . I actually think this is a great topic you started- certainly gave rise to interesting conversations.

I guess we can boil it down now: Women are different in the sense that their subconcious mind focuses on the emotional human-sphere. (s'cuse me if it seems I'm talking philosophical bulls*t: I've been typing up an essay, for the past 12 hours, on ancient greek vase painting. Fun fun fun  ) And because women focus on emotions, they tend to talk about them more with others. Not only that but us girls learnt to do that culturally through the ages. Men are out- we're stuck at home. What can we do? TALK!  (Nobody hates Social Anthropology more than me.) Whereas it's a well known fact that men tend to be more closed-up. So, yep, you're right when you said that this music is an outlet for men....person who posted before me that I don't know the name of because I can't be bothered looking it up but it begins with 'H'.

The perfect human is a balance between these two things. The perfect human is a hermaphrodite-son-of-gods, androgenous, asexual creature. So we should all be happy with what we have to be happy with.  

.............What the f*k am I going on about?!

That's all I had to say: an apology, a suggested conclusion and a goodbye. I had better go to sleep now before hurt myself.