Empowering female metal musicians through YouTube?
What is it about?
Metal music tends to be a boy's world: both numerically and symbolically, metal music is predominantly male. Although many people tend to think so, the reason that there are few women participating isn't because women don't like metal music. There are actually many women who aspire to become metal musicians, but due to the fact that they 'stand out' in the male crowd, it is difficult for them to be judged based on their skills only. For this article we interviewed male and female metal musicians who use YouTube to figure out how it helps them (or not) to gain access to the offline metal scene. Overall, while women are on the receiving end of sexism in the scene, the internet helps them to circumvent these problems at different levels.
Why is it important?
Metal music is one of the most unequal fields of cultural production regarding gender: few musicians are female. Women in the scene are on the receiving end of many negative and sexist remarks. This article tries to analyze to what extent this occurs and whether female online presence in the virtual metal scene helps women to be taken seriously as metal musicians.