September 6, 2010 • 22 mins
Molly and Cristen examine the gendering of musical instruments, from the lack of male harpists to the gender politics of lutes, in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Chris, and I have
(00:20):
to start by asking you do you play any music construments?
Do I play any musical insturance? Truthfully, Molly, if you
walk into my bedroom, you'll see an acoustic guitar sitting
quite close to my bed, as though I play it
very often to perhaps strum myself to sleep, when in
(00:43):
fact I haven't played it in like two years. Um,
but I did teach myself to play the guitar, and
quite a long time ago. I also taught myself to
play the flute. You're quite a self taught genius. Yes,
it's true. Did you see an instrument you must must
(01:03):
teach yourself to play it? Yes? Uh yeah, but you
know I dabbled in the in the flute. Did you
ever consider maybe playing the tuba? The tuba? No, because
I picked up the guitar and the flute because there
was a guitar and a flute in my house growing up.
(01:23):
I think that you didn't play the tuba because you
knew of the gender stereotypes associated with it. Yes, in homeschool,
the gender stereotypes were crushing. Um, I had to pick
my instruments carefully lest my fake classmates really, do you know,
make fun of me. Well, that's where you had the advantage,
because if you had been in a school with real classmates,
(01:45):
they might have really bullied you. Because today we're going
to talk about the gender stereotyping of musical instruments. And
you know you make jokes, Kristen. But here's one score
one for the homeschool kids who could pick their instruments
without crushing gender stereotypes and possible bullying of their classmates. Now,
(02:05):
before listeners think that we have totally gone off the
deep end by talking about the gendering of musical instruments,
there is a some there is some logic behind this,
okay with this all got started because a listener of ours,
Robbie McKay um at Queen's University in Canada, studies musical
(02:26):
education and he suggestsed that we do a podcast on
women in music, which is a bit topic, huge topic,
and he sent us um some research that he had
done with with links to other research, and one thing
that kept popping up over and over again in all
these studies was this gender stereotyping with musical instruments, like
(02:48):
determining whether or not boys picked the drums because they
want to play drums or because it's more masculine, and
why do you know why our girls gonna play, you know,
the flute like me instead of say a two uh um.
And it's something that researchers have actually been studying pretty
intensively since the late nineteen seventies. There was this large
(03:10):
study conducted by these researchers Ables and Porter who basically
pulled a large group of college students on um gender
associations with different types of instruments. They kind of created
a gender spectrum, if you will, for musical instruments, and
they found that, you know, not surprisingly, drums and guitar
(03:30):
are on the male, and the piccolo, the flute, the violin,
the clarinet are on the female and smack dab in
the middle, the saxophone. The saxophone, we have learned, is
the most non gender associated instrument. For every Bill Clinton
on the Arsenio Hall Show, there's a Lisa sentence, So
(03:52):
it's uh, it's very even handed. And there have been
since Ables and Porter put out their work, there have
been a lot of studies that try to unravel why children,
you know, precious innocent children who haven't been tainted by
our gender gender wars, can automatically assume that some instruments
fall on a on a male female spectrum. You know,
(04:15):
they've done things where they've tried to put children in
front of musicians who are playing the opposite instrument of
what the previous children had assigned his masculine to see
if that would change their minds. Um. They've done things
where they just showed them the picture of the instrument
and the sound of it. You know, if they've done
all these different things that will kind of get into
to figure out why children do this, if it can
(04:38):
be changed, and if it's actually harming them from reaching
their full musical potential, right if there's like a certain
instrument they want to play. Say, if if a little
boy wants to play a flute, is he going to
pick up a guitar instead because he doesn't want to
be deemed a sissy? And a lot of the research
continually comes back to um not only the fact that yes,
these kids are aware from a pretty young age of
(05:01):
these sort of gender um attachments to different instruments. But
it's also the music teacher and the parents who have
the biggest impact, because with these younger music students, the
teacher is going to actually assign the instruments for them
to play, and so they might naturally give a tuba
(05:21):
to a larger boy and give a piccolaw to a
little lady, and um, you know, then on the flip
side of that, a parent might kind of freak out
if um, if the the instrument that the son or
daughter chooses does not necessarily match up with their gender ideals,
(05:41):
gender ideals, gender constructs, if you will. That's actually something
Kristen that summer h Botube picked up on uh in
an article in the magazine Canadian Music Educator. She writes
about being a teacher, first in a co educational school
and then in a single sex classroom. When she taught
in the wed school, she assigned the students their instruments
(06:03):
or you know, she you know, did little things to
help them pick it out, and all the students were
thrilled with their instruments, so excited, and then everything was
fine for a week until she got calls from the
parents who said, you know, my daughter is not going
to play the horn. She's a dainty little girl. She
cannot play the French horn. She will not be playing
(06:23):
the trumpet. Give her, give her a clarinet, give her
a woodwind. And then six years later she found herself
teaching in that single sex setting that I mentioned, and
the girls felt more free in this environment to pick
instruments that they might not have picked in a co
educational classroom. And then interesting thing that she found through
(06:45):
um studying, uh, this this idea of you know, gender
and musical instruments. It's that for girls who pick typically
male instruments, they're seen as trailblazers and pioneers, whereas for boys,
it's a much more different cult process for them to
play a stereotypically female instrument, because they tend to be
(07:06):
ridiculed a lot more if they choose to play something
like a clarinet as opposed to, oh, I don't know, Molly,
a trombone. And even the girls in the single sex
setting were able to realize that that even though they
weren't being taught with boys, they knew that you know,
they did have it a little bit easier than males
did when it came to picking different instruments, and they
(07:28):
specifically said that the flute is the most difficult for
males to play in terms of societal expectation and perception. Now,
on the flip side of that, we ran across another
study trying to figure out what the least gendered musical
instruments are. And I mentioned earlier that the saxophone is
the androgynous ideal, Okay, but the other instruments that have
(07:51):
the least gendered attachments to them are the African drums,
the cornet, the French horn, saxophone of course, and the
tenor horn. Interesting. Yeah, so a lot of these kind
of light brass and they can be in the middle
of That makes sense because a lot of the other
research we had said that girls are going to play
up high, they want very high tones, dainty instruments, um,
(08:16):
and the boys want down low. They want to get
down and dirty. And uh, they also like difficult instruments,
is what one said, you found because they want to show,
you know, that they are mastering something. Now, the more
research we did, the more we realized too that this
isn't just an issue that is unique to American classrooms today.
(08:39):
The roots of this gendering of musical instruments not surprisingly
goes back not only in history but also too different cultures.
For instance, UM, I post a little fun fact of
the day on our Facebook page, Uh not too long
ago when I was that comes from this research saying that,
for instance, in Victorian time times, women who played the
(09:02):
cello had to play it side saddle so that they
wouldn't be sitting there with this giant instrument in between um,
in between their legs. And throughout all these different cultures
you'll find these instruments that are reserved specifically for men
and for women, and in some like men can't women
at least aren't even allowed to touch these very sacred
(09:26):
male instruments. And it's more rare to find the flip
side of that where female instruments can't be touched by men.
And you're talking about a study that we found called
Sounds of Power and Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender
by Vernica double Day, which goes into different practices throughout
these different cultures and really takes a very deep look
(09:48):
not just at the relationship between who's playing the instrument
and who's observing that person playing the instrument, but also
just what went into making the instrument, who made it,
how they made it, um, what sort of gender cues
they installed within that instrument. You know, there are something
I wanted to call this episode things you don't know
about loots, because depending on the kind of lute you're playing,
(10:11):
you are sending all sorts of gender messages. Um. But
she goes into not just your typical bang, you know,
band class instruments, but things that uh, through ancient times
have been played as ways also to signify gods. And
then she gets into the gender of the gods. There
are some instruments that you play when you're trying to
summon a male god versus a female god. And uh,
(10:34):
she says, you know, it's impossible to play these instruments
and those cultures without you know, bringing to mind all
of these gender politics issues. So do you have a
great example that we come throughout their CHRISTA. Yeah, I
do have a great example, she mentions. And this goes
back to um, not just the shape or the sound
of an instrument, but actually the materials used to make it.
(10:57):
And she says that in Eastern Iran makes of the
long necked dutar loot prefer to use the wood from
a female mulberry tree to that of a male because
it's less um, it's drier wood, and therefore sounds better
female mulberry tree. Here's another one. There are these drums
(11:17):
in Indonesia and they, according to her illustrate consistently virile
associations with with frame drums. These drums are always played
by men and its mystically potent objects, maybe bequeathed from
father to son. Performers are members of devotional brotherhoods or
male religious or secular ensembles, and the drumming at companies
text praising the male profet. Now, this gendering of instruments
(11:40):
is kind of interesting because while the construction makes it male,
gives it. This instrument, this loot if you will, well
not if you will it is a loot, gives this
loot a male identity. It is meant for women to play.
So there's this relationship between like male female union. The
(12:02):
Double Day also talks about, but she says that in Yemen,
the point where the strings of the quanda salute are
attached to the base of an instrument is called the
little penis, indicating a male identity for the instrument, and
she says that another researcher has noted that this conforms
to a legend about the origin of the arab loute
as derived derived from the body of a dead boy.
(12:24):
So that's an instance where the player and the instrument
come together in some sort of union and to you know,
put up with heteronormative ideals. Then a woman would only
play an instrument that signified a boy, whereas vice versa
would happen. One thing that she points out that um,
it's kind of interesting is the naming of instruments. She
(12:45):
talks about how the bells church bells in England have
male names like Big Ben in Westminster, Oxford's Great Tom,
and then she points out that we're not past naming
things today. Think of Bob King's guitar Lucy Ill. And
that's another example where a man is playing something that's
been signified as a female. Now I want to just
(13:08):
jump right ahead though, to the old saxophone, because we
can't leave the saxophone dangling, because some people have probably wondered, like,
why is a saxophone considered this ideal gender ideal in
the music world, and Double Day really hits um if
you will, she nails it when she plays she I
guess she plays a solo. She nails the She nailed
(13:31):
that's what we're looking for. She nails the solo. Now.
She says that um, the various physical forms of the saxophone,
it's shape can be interpreted as either masculine um and
she refers to the soprent effect saxophone as especially phallic
looking or feminine. And she says especially the s shape models.
(13:51):
And the other issue relates to it's um, it's straddling
woodwind and brass instruments, and then also the toe nality
of it. It's not necessarily it can go pretty high,
but it can also go proughted low. So it just
it spans this gender spectrum. And so that's why a
lot of these studies will point out that right in
(14:13):
the middle we have the saxophone. And Double Day you know,
finishes up by saying that obviously we're probably not gonna
view loots as these gendered you know objects forever that
this sort of um, all these you know, meanings we
put into the instruments are shifting or people are choosing
to be less cognizant of them. And I think that
that really echoes what the educator found in the single
(14:36):
sex classroom that you know, even though these these stereotypes
still exist, they are breaking down. In fact, ables who
championed that study we talked about at the very beginning
of the podcast did a similar one you're three decades later,
to see if these gender stereotypes still held true. He
found that, um, they are, they are going down a
(14:58):
little bit. That people are choosing to see instruments is
less associated with one particular gender than another. And uh,
then it gets into what can we do to stop that.
There was one thing in the Sunday Times that pointed
out that, you know, the single sex classrooms classroom teachers
experience was not unusual that when you are in a
(15:19):
um all female or all male ensemble, you have more
freedom to choose. And also you kind of have to
play the instrument that is not in your comfort zone
because if you don't, you won't have a balanced, balanced sound.
So they recommended, you know, as much as possible trying to,
especially when the kids are young, you know, put them
into sort of saturated groups just to get them playing
(15:40):
different instruments, so that by the time they come back
together for something like high school band, they've all had
experience playing different things, They've seen different genders playing different things,
and those old stereotypes that you know, a teacher might
have inadvertedly handed down or their parents might have inavertedly
handed down will be you know, wiped away a little
bit more. And this is also something of the National
(16:01):
Association for Musical Education has looked at as well, this
issue of of ensuring that teachers aren't uh giving out,
making sure that teachers aren't assigning musical instruments just based on,
you know, purely on size and on gender. And they
(16:21):
really recommend that the teachers remain cognizant of these kind
of stereotypes that they might have in mind and really
try to uh hone in on children's interests and they
are just natural talents, rather than just making a judgment
called based solely on their appearance. And also addressing the
issue of, uh, you know what about the parents. You know,
(16:44):
you have to deal with their reactions as well if
you give their daughter a tuba. And I think one
point they made that would be really easy to implement
even just in your own home with your own children's
just to to dial up the YouTube and find clips
of women playing typically mass on instruments and vice versa,
finding men playing what we consider the more feminine instruments,
(17:05):
just to show them that, you know, it does exist
that people cross over, for lack of a better word,
with their instruments. And I think, and we'll get to
this in our kind of follow up podcast if you
will on women performers in music, Um, you're gonna there's
there's it's becoming more accepted in general with popular music
for men and women to kind of cross over those barriers.
(17:26):
It's not strange to see a woman with a guitar,
it's not strange to see a woman playing the drums,
and it's not strange to see men picking up different
instruments as well. Sting plays the lute. Sting plays the lute.
Molly really obsessed with lutes now, And just to close
things out and drive the point home that yeah, it
does matter that we facilitate children's interests in music, whether
(17:51):
you know boy wants to play a piccolo or a
girl wants to play a trombone. We wanted to toss
out a couple of facts also from the National Association
for Musical Education that we hear all the time, you know,
because we're always worried about saving the music and all
of that. But it's always good to be reminded of
the importance of music in education, because, for instance, children
(18:14):
with music training have better verbal memory, and they are
better with spoken language, and they have markedly different brain development.
It also improved memory over the course of a year
compared to kids who do not receive musical training, and
that brain development manifests itself later down the road with
(18:34):
higher SAT scores and higher math and English scores and
those statistics. They even stripped out all the socioeconomic factors
that might have influenced that, because my first instinct was, oh,
a school that has a music program might have more
money than a different school. No, that wasn't a factor.
Even kids who are in very simple music programs that
didn't have a lot of money still demonstrated those amazing
(18:58):
brain changes. So it is pretty cool. Yeah, So music
is good. It's good for the ears, and it's good
for the brain and for the soul and for the
soul and the rest Assured, like Kristen said, this will
not be the last time we visit music and women
and gender and all that good stuff because it's such
a broad topic. But we did start with instruments, so
(19:19):
we'd love to hear your tales of learning to play. Yeah,
women out there touting around a double bass, men touting
around a harp, we'd love to hear from you. Yes please,
Mom stuff at house stuffworks dot com. In the meantime,
we'll read an email or two. I'm gonna start with
one from Rebecca, who is writing response to the Women
(19:41):
in Art podcast, and she writes, I would say that
the next time you're in the New York City area,
skip the overpriced and overcrowded moment and take a short
ride out to Brooklyn on the two three train and
visit the Brooklyn Museum. I'm not sure whether or not
it is a conscious effort on their apart, but I
feel like they always have a good representation of current
female artists. It is, of course, the permanent home to
Judy Cargo's renown feminist piece at the Dinner Party, and
(20:02):
the last time I was there, I was treated to
an extensive and very moving solo exhibit by Keith Smith
and worked by another favorite contemporary female artist, Kara Walker.
So thank you, Rebecca and anyone who's headed to New
York anytime soon. There's a travel tip, all right. I've
got a long distance relationship story here from Mark, and
he was in a long distance relationship and has now
(20:24):
reunited with his love. He says, we went to high
school together, never spoke, met after college, and started seriously
dating soon after. Unfortunately, we got together knowing full well
that she was leaving a month later for Americor in
Washington State. We're from New Hampshire. I told people this
something to be effective. Oh she's moving to Washington for
(20:44):
about a year, and he usually said, oh, that's not
too bad, A quick flight out of Boston and cheap
two to which I always had to say Washington State,
and then they said so. The whole time she was there,
a lot of stuff you guys mentioned in your podcast
did happen. I as jealous of her friends that they
could see her and I couldn't. I wasn't suspicious, and
I didn't doubt her. I just envied the people she
(21:05):
got to see, the people she got to go out
with and experienced things with here that even I didn't
have the chance to do with her yet it was
particularly interesting because we were so early in our relationship,
still learning things about each other, so at times it
was especially challenging. But for some reason, we were both
extremely confident that we would be okay, because we said
in the beginning we wouldn't have gotten into this if
we didn't think we could do it. I totally agree
(21:27):
with what you've said about the diconomy between the visit
and actually living together. It's hard to adjust to you.
So we've learned to kind of relish time apart, and
now we've been going strong for over a year. How exciting.
Thank you Mark and everyone else who has sent us
your wonderful long distance relationship stories. They're also happy. Yeah,
dreams can sickening. Actually, um, well, if you'd like to
(21:51):
sticken us further, um or delight us heart, I'm just joking.
I'm molly joking. It's mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com or you can post it for were post
a relationship success for all of our fans to see
on Facebook, and you can also follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast. Then finally, you can check out
our blog and you can find that at how stuff
(22:13):
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
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Stuff works dot Com home page brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From housetop Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristen Chris, and I have
(00:20):
to start by asking you do you play any music construments?
Do I play any musical insturance? Truthfully, Molly, if you
walk into my bedroom, you'll see an acoustic guitar sitting
quite close to my bed, as though I play it
very often to perhaps strum myself to sleep, when in
(00:43):
fact I haven't played it in like two years. Um,
but I did teach myself to play the guitar, and
quite a long time ago. I also taught myself to
play the flute. You're quite a self taught genius. Yes,
it's true. Did you see an instrument you must must
(01:03):
teach yourself to play it? Yes? Uh yeah, but you
know I dabbled in the in the flute. Did you
ever consider maybe playing the tuba? The tuba? No, because
I picked up the guitar and the flute because there
was a guitar and a flute in my house growing up.
(01:23):
I think that you didn't play the tuba because you
knew of the gender stereotypes associated with it. Yes, in homeschool,
the gender stereotypes were crushing. Um, I had to pick
my instruments carefully lest my fake classmates really, do you know,
make fun of me. Well, that's where you had the advantage,
because if you had been in a school with real classmates,
(01:45):
they might have really bullied you. Because today we're going
to talk about the gender stereotyping of musical instruments. And
you know you make jokes, Kristen. But here's one score
one for the homeschool kids who could pick their instruments
without crushing gender stereotypes and possible bullying of their classmates. Now,
(02:05):
before listeners think that we have totally gone off the
deep end by talking about the gendering of musical instruments,
there is a some there is some logic behind this,
okay with this all got started because a listener of ours,
Robbie McKay um at Queen's University in Canada, studies musical
(02:26):
education and he suggestsed that we do a podcast on
women in music, which is a bit topic, huge topic,
and he sent us um some research that he had
done with with links to other research, and one thing
that kept popping up over and over again in all
these studies was this gender stereotyping with musical instruments, like
(02:48):
determining whether or not boys picked the drums because they
want to play drums or because it's more masculine, and
why do you know why our girls gonna play, you know,
the flute like me instead of say a two uh um.
And it's something that researchers have actually been studying pretty
intensively since the late nineteen seventies. There was this large
(03:10):
study conducted by these researchers Ables and Porter who basically
pulled a large group of college students on um gender
associations with different types of instruments. They kind of created
a gender spectrum, if you will, for musical instruments, and
they found that, you know, not surprisingly, drums and guitar
(03:30):
are on the male, and the piccolo, the flute, the violin,
the clarinet are on the female and smack dab in
the middle, the saxophone. The saxophone, we have learned, is
the most non gender associated instrument. For every Bill Clinton
on the Arsenio Hall Show, there's a Lisa sentence, So
(03:52):
it's uh, it's very even handed. And there have been
since Ables and Porter put out their work, there have
been a lot of studies that try to unravel why children,
you know, precious innocent children who haven't been tainted by
our gender gender wars, can automatically assume that some instruments
fall on a on a male female spectrum. You know,
(04:15):
they've done things where they've tried to put children in
front of musicians who are playing the opposite instrument of
what the previous children had assigned his masculine to see
if that would change their minds. Um. They've done things
where they just showed them the picture of the instrument
and the sound of it. You know, if they've done
all these different things that will kind of get into
to figure out why children do this, if it can
(04:38):
be changed, and if it's actually harming them from reaching
their full musical potential, right if there's like a certain
instrument they want to play. Say, if if a little
boy wants to play a flute, is he going to
pick up a guitar instead because he doesn't want to
be deemed a sissy? And a lot of the research
continually comes back to um not only the fact that yes,
these kids are aware from a pretty young age of
(05:01):
these sort of gender um attachments to different instruments. But
it's also the music teacher and the parents who have
the biggest impact, because with these younger music students, the
teacher is going to actually assign the instruments for them
to play, and so they might naturally give a tuba
(05:21):
to a larger boy and give a piccolaw to a
little lady, and um, you know, then on the flip
side of that, a parent might kind of freak out
if um, if the the instrument that the son or
daughter chooses does not necessarily match up with their gender ideals,
(05:41):
gender ideals, gender constructs, if you will. That's actually something
Kristen that summer h Botube picked up on uh in
an article in the magazine Canadian Music Educator. She writes
about being a teacher, first in a co educational school
and then in a single sex classroom. When she taught
in the wed school, she assigned the students their instruments
(06:03):
or you know, she you know, did little things to
help them pick it out, and all the students were
thrilled with their instruments, so excited, and then everything was
fine for a week until she got calls from the
parents who said, you know, my daughter is not going
to play the horn. She's a dainty little girl. She
cannot play the French horn. She will not be playing
(06:23):
the trumpet. Give her, give her a clarinet, give her
a woodwind. And then six years later she found herself
teaching in that single sex setting that I mentioned, and
the girls felt more free in this environment to pick
instruments that they might not have picked in a co
educational classroom. And then interesting thing that she found through
(06:45):
um studying, uh, this this idea of you know, gender
and musical instruments. It's that for girls who pick typically
male instruments, they're seen as trailblazers and pioneers, whereas for boys,
it's a much more different cult process for them to
play a stereotypically female instrument, because they tend to be
(07:06):
ridiculed a lot more if they choose to play something
like a clarinet as opposed to, oh, I don't know, Molly,
a trombone. And even the girls in the single sex
setting were able to realize that that even though they
weren't being taught with boys, they knew that you know,
they did have it a little bit easier than males
did when it came to picking different instruments, and they
(07:28):
specifically said that the flute is the most difficult for
males to play in terms of societal expectation and perception. Now,
on the flip side of that, we ran across another
study trying to figure out what the least gendered musical
instruments are. And I mentioned earlier that the saxophone is
the androgynous ideal, Okay, but the other instruments that have
(07:51):
the least gendered attachments to them are the African drums,
the cornet, the French horn, saxophone of course, and the
tenor horn. Interesting. Yeah, so a lot of these kind
of light brass and they can be in the middle
of That makes sense because a lot of the other
research we had said that girls are going to play
up high, they want very high tones, dainty instruments, um,
(08:16):
and the boys want down low. They want to get
down and dirty. And uh, they also like difficult instruments,
is what one said, you found because they want to show,
you know, that they are mastering something. Now, the more
research we did, the more we realized too that this
isn't just an issue that is unique to American classrooms today.
(08:39):
The roots of this gendering of musical instruments not surprisingly
goes back not only in history but also too different cultures.
For instance, UM, I post a little fun fact of
the day on our Facebook page, Uh not too long
ago when I was that comes from this research saying that,
for instance, in Victorian time times, women who played the
(09:02):
cello had to play it side saddle so that they
wouldn't be sitting there with this giant instrument in between um,
in between their legs. And throughout all these different cultures
you'll find these instruments that are reserved specifically for men
and for women, and in some like men can't women
at least aren't even allowed to touch these very sacred
(09:26):
male instruments. And it's more rare to find the flip
side of that where female instruments can't be touched by men.
And you're talking about a study that we found called
Sounds of Power and Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender
by Vernica double Day, which goes into different practices throughout
these different cultures and really takes a very deep look
(09:48):
not just at the relationship between who's playing the instrument
and who's observing that person playing the instrument, but also
just what went into making the instrument, who made it,
how they made it, um, what sort of gender cues
they installed within that instrument. You know, there are something
I wanted to call this episode things you don't know
about loots, because depending on the kind of lute you're playing,
(10:11):
you are sending all sorts of gender messages. Um. But
she goes into not just your typical bang, you know,
band class instruments, but things that uh, through ancient times
have been played as ways also to signify gods. And
then she gets into the gender of the gods. There
are some instruments that you play when you're trying to
summon a male god versus a female god. And uh,
(10:34):
she says, you know, it's impossible to play these instruments
and those cultures without you know, bringing to mind all
of these gender politics issues. So do you have a
great example that we come throughout their CHRISTA. Yeah, I
do have a great example, she mentions. And this goes
back to um, not just the shape or the sound
of an instrument, but actually the materials used to make it.
(10:57):
And she says that in Eastern Iran makes of the
long necked dutar loot prefer to use the wood from
a female mulberry tree to that of a male because
it's less um, it's drier wood, and therefore sounds better
female mulberry tree. Here's another one. There are these drums
(11:17):
in Indonesia and they, according to her illustrate consistently virile
associations with with frame drums. These drums are always played
by men and its mystically potent objects, maybe bequeathed from
father to son. Performers are members of devotional brotherhoods or
male religious or secular ensembles, and the drumming at companies
text praising the male profet. Now, this gendering of instruments
(11:40):
is kind of interesting because while the construction makes it male,
gives it. This instrument, this loot if you will, well
not if you will it is a loot, gives this
loot a male identity. It is meant for women to play.
So there's this relationship between like male female union. The
(12:02):
Double Day also talks about, but she says that in Yemen,
the point where the strings of the quanda salute are
attached to the base of an instrument is called the
little penis, indicating a male identity for the instrument, and
she says that another researcher has noted that this conforms
to a legend about the origin of the arab loute
as derived derived from the body of a dead boy.
(12:24):
So that's an instance where the player and the instrument
come together in some sort of union and to you know,
put up with heteronormative ideals. Then a woman would only
play an instrument that signified a boy, whereas vice versa
would happen. One thing that she points out that um,
it's kind of interesting is the naming of instruments. She
(12:45):
talks about how the bells church bells in England have
male names like Big Ben in Westminster, Oxford's Great Tom,
and then she points out that we're not past naming
things today. Think of Bob King's guitar Lucy Ill. And
that's another example where a man is playing something that's
been signified as a female. Now I want to just
(13:08):
jump right ahead though, to the old saxophone, because we
can't leave the saxophone dangling, because some people have probably wondered, like,
why is a saxophone considered this ideal gender ideal in
the music world, and Double Day really hits um if
you will, she nails it when she plays she I
guess she plays a solo. She nails the She nailed
(13:31):
that's what we're looking for. She nails the solo. Now.
She says that um, the various physical forms of the saxophone,
it's shape can be interpreted as either masculine um and
she refers to the soprent effect saxophone as especially phallic
looking or feminine. And she says especially the s shape models.
(13:51):
And the other issue relates to it's um, it's straddling
woodwind and brass instruments, and then also the toe nality
of it. It's not necessarily it can go pretty high,
but it can also go proughted low. So it just
it spans this gender spectrum. And so that's why a
lot of these studies will point out that right in
(14:13):
the middle we have the saxophone. And Double Day you know,
finishes up by saying that obviously we're probably not gonna
view loots as these gendered you know objects forever that
this sort of um, all these you know, meanings we
put into the instruments are shifting or people are choosing
to be less cognizant of them. And I think that
that really echoes what the educator found in the single
(14:36):
sex classroom that you know, even though these these stereotypes
still exist, they are breaking down. In fact, ables who
championed that study we talked about at the very beginning
of the podcast did a similar one you're three decades later,
to see if these gender stereotypes still held true. He
found that, um, they are, they are going down a
(14:58):
little bit. That people are choosing to see instruments is
less associated with one particular gender than another. And uh,
then it gets into what can we do to stop that.
There was one thing in the Sunday Times that pointed
out that, you know, the single sex classrooms classroom teachers
experience was not unusual that when you are in a
(15:19):
um all female or all male ensemble, you have more
freedom to choose. And also you kind of have to
play the instrument that is not in your comfort zone
because if you don't, you won't have a balanced, balanced sound.
So they recommended, you know, as much as possible trying to,
especially when the kids are young, you know, put them
into sort of saturated groups just to get them playing
(15:40):
different instruments, so that by the time they come back
together for something like high school band, they've all had
experience playing different things, They've seen different genders playing different things,
and those old stereotypes that you know, a teacher might
have inadvertedly handed down or their parents might have inavertedly
handed down will be you know, wiped away a little
bit more. And this is also something of the National
(16:01):
Association for Musical Education has looked at as well, this
issue of of ensuring that teachers aren't uh giving out,
making sure that teachers aren't assigning musical instruments just based on,
you know, purely on size and on gender. And they
(16:21):
really recommend that the teachers remain cognizant of these kind
of stereotypes that they might have in mind and really
try to uh hone in on children's interests and they
are just natural talents, rather than just making a judgment
called based solely on their appearance. And also addressing the
issue of, uh, you know what about the parents. You know,
(16:44):
you have to deal with their reactions as well if
you give their daughter a tuba. And I think one
point they made that would be really easy to implement
even just in your own home with your own children's
just to to dial up the YouTube and find clips
of women playing typically mass on instruments and vice versa,
finding men playing what we consider the more feminine instruments,
(17:05):
just to show them that, you know, it does exist
that people cross over, for lack of a better word,
with their instruments. And I think, and we'll get to
this in our kind of follow up podcast if you
will on women performers in music, Um, you're gonna there's
there's it's becoming more accepted in general with popular music
for men and women to kind of cross over those barriers.
(17:26):
It's not strange to see a woman with a guitar,
it's not strange to see a woman playing the drums,
and it's not strange to see men picking up different
instruments as well. Sting plays the lute. Sting plays the lute.
Molly really obsessed with lutes now, And just to close
things out and drive the point home that yeah, it
does matter that we facilitate children's interests in music, whether
(17:51):
you know boy wants to play a piccolo or a
girl wants to play a trombone. We wanted to toss
out a couple of facts also from the National Association
for Musical Education that we hear all the time, you know,
because we're always worried about saving the music and all
of that. But it's always good to be reminded of
the importance of music in education, because, for instance, children
(18:14):
with music training have better verbal memory, and they are
better with spoken language, and they have markedly different brain development.
It also improved memory over the course of a year
compared to kids who do not receive musical training, and
that brain development manifests itself later down the road with
(18:34):
higher SAT scores and higher math and English scores and
those statistics. They even stripped out all the socioeconomic factors
that might have influenced that, because my first instinct was, oh,
a school that has a music program might have more
money than a different school. No, that wasn't a factor.
Even kids who are in very simple music programs that
didn't have a lot of money still demonstrated those amazing
(18:58):
brain changes. So it is pretty cool. Yeah, So music
is good. It's good for the ears, and it's good
for the brain and for the soul and for the
soul and the rest Assured, like Kristen said, this will
not be the last time we visit music and women
and gender and all that good stuff because it's such
a broad topic. But we did start with instruments, so
(19:19):
we'd love to hear your tales of learning to play. Yeah,
women out there touting around a double bass, men touting
around a harp, we'd love to hear from you. Yes please,
Mom stuff at house stuffworks dot com. In the meantime,
we'll read an email or two. I'm gonna start with
one from Rebecca, who is writing response to the Women
(19:41):
in Art podcast, and she writes, I would say that
the next time you're in the New York City area,
skip the overpriced and overcrowded moment and take a short
ride out to Brooklyn on the two three train and
visit the Brooklyn Museum. I'm not sure whether or not
it is a conscious effort on their apart, but I
feel like they always have a good representation of current
female artists. It is, of course, the permanent home to
Judy Cargo's renown feminist piece at the Dinner Party, and
(20:02):
the last time I was there, I was treated to
an extensive and very moving solo exhibit by Keith Smith
and worked by another favorite contemporary female artist, Kara Walker.
So thank you, Rebecca and anyone who's headed to New
York anytime soon. There's a travel tip, all right. I've
got a long distance relationship story here from Mark, and
he was in a long distance relationship and has now
(20:24):
reunited with his love. He says, we went to high
school together, never spoke, met after college, and started seriously
dating soon after. Unfortunately, we got together knowing full well
that she was leaving a month later for Americor in
Washington State. We're from New Hampshire. I told people this
something to be effective. Oh she's moving to Washington for
(20:44):
about a year, and he usually said, oh, that's not
too bad, A quick flight out of Boston and cheap
two to which I always had to say Washington State,
and then they said so. The whole time she was there,
a lot of stuff you guys mentioned in your podcast
did happen. I as jealous of her friends that they
could see her and I couldn't. I wasn't suspicious, and
I didn't doubt her. I just envied the people she
(21:05):
got to see, the people she got to go out
with and experienced things with here that even I didn't
have the chance to do with her yet it was
particularly interesting because we were so early in our relationship,
still learning things about each other, so at times it
was especially challenging. But for some reason, we were both
extremely confident that we would be okay, because we said
in the beginning we wouldn't have gotten into this if
we didn't think we could do it. I totally agree
(21:27):
with what you've said about the diconomy between the visit
and actually living together. It's hard to adjust to you.
So we've learned to kind of relish time apart, and
now we've been going strong for over a year. How exciting.
Thank you Mark and everyone else who has sent us
your wonderful long distance relationship stories. They're also happy. Yeah,
dreams can sickening. Actually, um, well, if you'd like to
(21:51):
sticken us further, um or delight us heart, I'm just joking.
I'm molly joking. It's mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com or you can post it for were post
a relationship success for all of our fans to see
on Facebook, and you can also follow us on Twitter
at mom Stuff Podcast. Then finally, you can check out
our blog and you can find that at how stuff
(22:13):
works dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics because it how stuff works dot Com. Want
more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house.
Stuff works dot Com home page brought to you by
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