My Experience with Sexism in the Music Scene

A few weeks ago, one of my friends asked me if I’d ever experienced any sexism from my male friends or acquaintances from the many bands I’m apart of. She is a strong vocalist and bassist, and I guess she was asking her female musician friends out of curiosity. I didn’t really realize until that moment, but I had experienced more sexism than I thought.

 I’ve been singing for my entire life, and I’ve also picked up piano, guitar, and bass along the way. I’m very experienced in music, and I’ve noticed the guys who surround me often take that for granted. Usually I take lead vocals, and everytime I want to play guitar or bass on a song for a change, everyone reacts as if they've seen a ghost or something. In one instance, I decided to ask if I could play bass on an Arctic Monkeys song and everyone in the room exploded in different variations of “Are you sure you can handle it?” I ended up getting the song and learning it easily, but my instructor made two other guys learn it “just in case.” Its almost as if it doesn’t matter how hard I try to progress in certain instruments, because I’ll never be seen as equal to any of them. 

I will admit that I’m not the best guitar player, but I’m trying. If the guys would see a younger kid playing badly, they’d say “He’s trying.” If I mess up or play badly they would just say “She’s really bad she should just stick to singing.” It’s quite ridiculous.

They act like I can’t ever be at their level on these instruments, but turn around and act like they’re better vocalists than I am. I’ve worked extremely hard with my talent to increase it and make my voice the best it can be. Even if all of this sexism is unintentional, it still happens a lot, even from our instructors.

We have one girl drummer and everyone is amazed every time she performs because she’s a girl rather than a guy, like most drummers that people see. It seems that these men are invading and acting like they can do anything better than women. Even after all of our hard work, they subconsciously always see us as inferior. I have a very high range when it comes to vocals, and I know that some notes are extremely hard to hit. It sucks when a guy comes in saying that he can hit an E5 harmony in my song when he has no vocal training. Even if I work as hard as I can, even if I blow my voice out trying to hit certain notes or memorize certain songs, or even if I get callous on my fingers and hands from trying to play guitar so much.

 Men never see female musicians as equal, and we are not appreciated the way they are either. We constantly have to work our asses off to keep up with them and even surpass them, but even then, it seems that they don’t see a difference.