Why DO women like prog?

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned it....

Sean Trane wrote: darkshade wrote: 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.         But to say that men would shun away from orchestras because it is "gay" is quite wrong. I know two orchestra players and this is worse than soap operas about who is shaggin who.

Fritha wrote: Hmm, I think it's at least partly a question of women prefering the music they like to be somehow related to their lives or particular situations in life. Men are happier to just view music as an objective entity, something to marvel at for its own sake (the playing, the song-structures you name it) while women tend to view it more clearly as an outlet for certain emotions (being in love, being joyful, being sad, having relationship problems...or just problems in life in general) It seems to me that the majority of women just have a more intuitive attitude to music and as a result they don't feel a need to dissect it, analyse it and write about it on message boards -you know, the fun part besides actually listening to it Just some thoughts from a woman, who not so long ago had more or less the kind of attitude towards music as the one described above, but then saw the light and took a leap to the other side... Of course, the initial question in this thread was: why DO women like prog? My answer would be: probably for the same reason as men do... for the purely musical aspects of it.

Great answer, Fritha! I think you really hit the nail squarely on the head. In many istances, I think many people lose track of what music is really supposed to be - an art form, yes, but mainly meant to give enjoyment, unless you happen to be a musicologist or a music critic. The same could be said for the visual arts, or for literature: very few people (the "experts" of the field, that is) read a book or view a painting trying to analyse, say, the visual arrangement or the kind of narrative structure used by their author. This kind of analysing attitude is very effective in preventing enjoyment, as a musicologist friend of mine once told me of what happened to her when trying to listen to music outside her job.

I also agree that women's view of music is definitely more on the intuitive side. I know it is like that for me too - although I've never been able to view mainstream pop music as an outlet for my own emotions. When in love, for instance, I have always related to rock songs rather than anything by Celine Dion and her ilk (I remember Gary Moore's "Empty Rooms" was a particular fav of mine some six or seven years ago...). When I felt particularly down, I often took a particular song to symbolise my state of mind - Blue Oyster Cult's "Veteran of the Psychic Wars". This is probably the difference between me and the majority of women: not so much the attitude as the kind of music that I use to represent my emotions in a given moment of my life.

Well, I'm a regular Dutch guy who really likes prog. When I got to know my (Brazilian) wife she was completely unfamiliar with progressive rock, or as a matter of fact, with ROCK completely as she had only be listening to the more popular Brazilian genres like samba, salsa, foho and axé.

Edited by evenless - September 22 2006 at 06:44

I know few girls who listen to prog; frankly speaking,I've introduced them into it.
They all were deep in Gothic/Rock/Metal music (one girl was even aware of Dream Theater and Threshold!!!She had a split CD-R compilation of their songs),so they had a basis for digging into prog.
The one who knew about DT ,was deep into Doom/Gothic/Black etc metal(btw,Katatonia,Tool,Opeth,Lacrimosa and Anathema are among her favourite bands),but also trip-hop,some dark electronics...dark music all the way!!!Besides she's a singer.It wasn't hard to introduce her into GYBE!,Porcupine Tree,Paatos,Mostly Autumn,La Tulipe Noire,Riverside,some moody emotional stuff like Marillion,Clepsydra,Collage and classics like Camel,Genesis,Renaissance,King Crimson etc.I wouldn't call her a proghead,but she enjoys this music a lot and always asks me to send her something more(she lives in another town).
Another one just started digging.The only thing she knew from prog was Tool; I gave her Dream Theater 2 cd-r compilation,it WILL work I guess
The last one is from my university.She wasn't aware of prog,but once I've heard her talking of one funny videoclip called "Televators"...I gave her MARS VOLTA's debut,and she was completely hooked.The next one was PORCUPINE TREE(she's a big fan of them now),then RIVERSIDE and OPETH.Everything has worked absolutely flawless!!!I don't even thinking of giving her a classic stuff - I don't think it would work(or should I try?).Now she's digging into TOOL(already did) and PERFECT CIRCLE.The next step would be PAATOS,ANEKDOTEN and probably GYBE!
Long live brainwashing!!!    
    

Edited by Prog-jester - September 23 2006 at 05:12

Fritha makes a good point, but I'd also like to add a note from a psychological standpoint. Women are more social than men. They gain much more social stock from similarity to others (particularly those of their own gender). Many of the female prog fans here and everywhere are older people who grew up in the days when prog was much more well-known and popular. At that time, it was much easier for women to retain their social position and experiment with progressive music. Today, however, the prevalence of sexual social pressures (excessive alcohol consumption beginning at ages of around 15, median age for a female to lose her virginity of 16, sexualized dress for the express purpose of attracting mates) has lead dance music to the forefront (a drunkard can't dance a waltz, but he can pantomime sex to a simplistic beat).

Men, on the other hand, don't quite attain the same level of self-appreciation from the aforementioned social stock. Men are more competitive and less socially adhesive, which draws them to differentiate themselves from others to a much greater degree than females. As such, progressive music isn't quite the social leap for men as it is for women and can even lead to a measure of satisfaction for competition ("I can understand complex music and you can't!").

Remember that there is no absolute -- my conjectures are meant only to describe established social trends in relation to prog. In any population regression, there is a curve. We always think of the Bell curve (IQs are based on it, for example, with a standard deviation of 15). I suggest that the curve is sharper for females as a result of the aforementioned pressures. Thus, males are more likely to be progressive music fans than females. However, the chance exists for either, and with appreciable diversification trends (more women getting into science and engineering, the globalization of cultural aspects, a possible backlash against exhibitionist sexuality, et cetera), it's quite possible that women could once again be found more commonly in prog areas. It also doesn't hurt that some prog and prog-related artists are becoming more mainstream (in terms of popularity, not musical style), which again lowers that barrier for women closer to the same for men. Think of it like an activation energy in chemistry: a reaction may be exceedingly slow but still occur as a result of a high activation energy (conditions must be just right for the reaction to occur). The addition of a catalyst, however, speeds up the reaction by lowering the activation energy (the barrier). The lower the barrier, the more species you find.

Few comments :

See the problem with threads like this, theres no good answer that is not stereo-typical.

Heh, well... I can only speak for myself, and I've had a "non mainstream" taste in music since I was seven. I think prog got into my life when I was about thirteen. I got the Rush song 2112 by a close friend of mine and I fell in love with it the very first time I heard it. I've tried to "learn" quite a few of my female friends to like prog, and it hasn't worked out good with any of them. And, I've tried to "learn" my male friends prog and now, I've got one friend who's more into prog than I am and one friend who went from synth to prog in about one week. But that's two out of... maybe 30 alltogether. And I've only tried to "learn" about 10 female friends to listen to prog, so it's really not that weird that there are more men who likes it in my social circle.

I think that fewer women like prog because people believe that the women don't like it, and therefore they don't even try to get them to listen to it.

(Sorry about the crappy english)


Edited by Kithulhu - September 24 2006 at 03:56