Week 7 – Forum – Gender and Music Technology (1)

Well this was an uncomfortable forum. I know exactly how the girls would have felt being a minority with the majority telling them why they are there or even how they think. Really, it wouldn’t have been any different if we discussed why there are very few Aboriginal people in the industry. I doubt it’s got anything to do with women being inadequate, incapable or not politically driven. Maybe they’re just not interested. It’s probably that simple. To generalise that men do the work and ‘tinker’ with things therefore make them better users of technology is pretty ignorant. The simple fact is more likely to be that women just aren’t interested. Period. ‘Interest’ should be the question here. Not how many wombats one can hunt or how many clocks one can tinker with. If women were interested in music technology in a big way, they’d no doubt run rings around a lot of guys. Half the guys I see around town think they’re engineers, but I’ve often heard the question “how do you use a compressor?” for example. Most engineers who don’t know their craft intimitely try to fake it to make themselves look good or act like ignorant apes on the job with egos the size of Jupiter. Women don’t do this. They’re not afraid to ask for help.
I’ve been called a girl on the job before by fellow engineers. Apparently I was a girl because I asked for help in setting up a Midas console for monitoring and patching in some racks for it at a concert at Thebarton Theatre. Unbelievable, and he refused to help me and so I had to figure it out myself and then got yelled at because they were waiting for it to be put together. In the end (just for people’s interest) I couldn’t do it and told the guy to f**k himself and help me and stop being a dick. Men are wankers to work with and yes I’ve been known to be a wanker too.
Anyway, at the end of the day an equaliser is an equaliser and a compressor is a compressor so no matter what gender uses it, it will work the same and do the same job depending on their skills. So to finish up I'll quote Jacob. "Do we need to care?"

-

Hmm, do you even dare click here...

Whittington, Stephen. 2007. Forum Workshop “Can You Tell the Difference? - Gender in Music technology”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th April.

Probert, Ben. 2007. Forum Workshop “Can You Tell the Difference? - Gender in Music technology”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th April.
Loudon, Douglas. 2007. Forum Workshop “Can You Tell the Difference? - Gender in Music technology”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th April.

Sincock, Amy. 2007. Forum Workshop “Can You Tell the Difference? - Gender in Music technology”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th April.

Morris, Jacob. 2007. Forum Workshop “Can You Tell the Difference? - Gender in Music technology”. Forum presented at the University of Adelaide, 26th April.