Music Feb 1, 2017 at 4:00 am

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Let’s Find Out!

Alex Despain

Comments

2
@1 Dude, did you even read the whole piece or did you stop as soon as you realized it wasn't going to validate your world view? To quote the authors: " ... if this piece made you roll your eyes deeply back into your thick-ass skull and think, 'What a bunch of whiney dykes,' ask yourself what’s wrong with your brain that makes you think that way."

But hey, I guess I should be grateful you stuck with low-grade insults ("prudes and scolds") instead of the rape- and murder-based insults that misogynists so frequently jump to when their shitty behavior is called out. Thanks?
3
What a bunch of whiny dykes.

Also, fuck you. Music and art in general don't exist just to validate your Gender Studies degree.
4
I've learned to be immediately skeptical of people who talk about "womyn" or "womxn" (what, did the 'y' in "womyn" remind them of a Y chromosome or something?), for the very simple reason that they're revising the history of our fair language in order to fit it into the mold of their agenda. It's like people who think that the phrase "rule of thumb" is sexist.
http://i.imgur.com/6g45AxX.png

@1: This.
5
As long as we can all agree that the Barenaked Ladies suck ass first and are sexist second I can get on board with this.

Interesting article. I had never thought about this perspective before. Thanks

7
What about the Black Madonna (a white person), which the stranger has been quick to praise? Is this linguistic faux pas only an issue for men?

http://www.thestranger.com/events/215024…
8
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Birkenstock stamping on a human face - forever.
9
I remember when the Stranger was fun and edgy and provocative. Now most of the political content just sounds like whining by authoritarian regressives.
10
@5: Listen to "War On Drugs", fucko.
13
Great article, ladies (though you could have improved it by dropping the pre-emptive strike patronizing bits).

Culture in the 21st Century has largely been about a tasty piece of fruit called "irony" that got left on the shelf way past it's due date, and now it's like a game of Hot Potato: "No, you YOU explain who brought this into the kitchen!" "I dare you to try a bite..." "I've been eating that for years and I'm fine -- right?!" "It's not that it's gone BAD; it's that taste buds EVOLVE over time..." "Listen up! Now only the people who grow and pick that fruit are allowed to decide when it's edible!" ...

... Or, in the words of local band: "The fruit that ate itself."
14
Agree with the call-out this article advocates, but the click-baity title, along with the decision to enable comments, signals more controversy-trolling. Wonder if these decisions (title & comments turn-on) were choices of the authors or someone else?

@4 I've learned to be immediately skeptical of people ONLINE who ask for clarification regarding simple, linguistic shifts or terminology changes that are easy to look up ONLINE.
15
"But chill is less important when the fact remains that womxn are disproportionately affected by human rights violations, poverty, violence, and really any other shit thing you can imagine."

I can imagine homelessness, incarceration, suicide, and workplace injury. Where's my prize?
16
@10
OK, I listened to it. And I have reconsidered my statement. They suck ass first, especially 'war on drugs' second, and are sexist third. ; )

17
Thoughts: 1)You forgot "kill Hannah" and "kill Whitney dead." 2) "Gay witch abortion" is actually pretty legit, as far as band names go. 3) Reading these comments makes me want to boycott dick forever.
18
I essentially agree with the view that a lot of these names are shitty and problematic, but the idea that men are getting an extra boost in "personal and/or professional gain" from naming their projects "Vermin Womb" or "DJ BreastMilk" just sounds silly. Even Girl Talk -- do you really think what that guy was doing was going to be less of a hit if he had called it Scattergories or something like that? All he did was throw samples of huge hooks together over a beat.

Also, Sister Girlfriend has since changed their name due to the kinds of concerns in this article so you may want to take them off this list.

Also, Gay Witch Abortion is a really good band name.
20
I don't know why more journalists aren't making the connection of the left "exposing" sexism, racism in entertainment when it is clearly shtick, as right wingers did with cheesy "satanic" shtick of 80's rock n roll. Racism/sexism is becoming the new "satanic panic" and is just an excuse for SJW's to virtue signal much like the Christian fundamentalists of the 1980's.
21
@20, see my comment about irony rotting on the shelf -- also, tainting all adjacent culture.
22
It's also incredibly disappointing and frustrating when I'm browsing for music and am hoping to hear womxn artists, but end up digging through a bunch of sad white dudes who either use one of these names or have pictures of random womxn on their covers! Stop it, its sad and annoying, and makes me like your band even less.
23
Uh, @19 Queen was neither all-white nor all-straight.
24
i got dibs on the band name "pocket ham".
25
@14: I Googled it and guess what, nothing came up clarifying why "womxn" is any gooder than "womyn". If you know of any explanation, feel free to share, but absent that it just smacks of arbitrary edginess.

@18: Depends on whether you consider Parsees to be "white". And GermanSausage never said they were all straight, just that they were all cis.

@19, 20: This. Social justice movements have for the most part devolved into virtue signalling by ideologues.

@22: You have trouble finding lady artists at the music store because some guy artists use female-sounding names for their albums? Wew lad, that's a Zeroth World Problem right there.
26
This sort of language guilting from my fellow lefties bothers me for a couple of reasons:

1. Band names are generally decontextualized, and without knowing the backgrounds of the musicians who chose it or their reasons for making the choice, it is difficult to criticize the choice.

2. Even if they made the choice for reasons I do not agree with, I WANT to live in a society in which people hold all kinds of crazy/offensive beliefs. Differences of thought are interesting to me. I have consumed many great works of art by assholes and would be bored to death living in a polite society in which people carefully measure their words lest someone be offended. It's the actions that impact my life or the life of fellow oppressed groups that are unacceptable to me, not the differences of thought or opinion.

So now you have a woman's (or as you would want me to say, a "cis womxn's") perspective instead of that of a bunch of white dudes. And I was a feminist and a musician, even.
27
This article is hilarious to me. I read it as I see advertisements for Chris Brown (woman beater) with a picture of tits or ass (can't tell which) throughout your article. You can't have it both ways, ladies. Most of these band names were meant to be funny, but I see that was lost on you both. Lighten up, Stranger.

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