“I am capable of making more things with my body than children.“ and “to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one.“ BAAAAANGEERRRRRRRRRR BANGER !!!!!! so apt
Thanks for writing this piece, this is super interesting. I’m curious to hear more thoughts on how, or whether, the way we choose to engage in should be gendered at all. I ask because when I read the quote “Every woman artist will have the realization: to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one.”, I feel there is a delicate balance between intrusion/presumption of understanding and appreciation/analysis.
As an example, take a book I recently read, I Who Have Never Known Men. In much online discourse, it is represented as a feminist work, but I’m not sure that’s all there is to it. Yes, the fact that they are all women, and the fact that they do not interact with men, functions as a necessary conduit to the greater existential philosophical *point* to grapple with. But if the pain that opens up that conduit is unique to the female experience, can a male reader really *get* it? Another example, that I’ve been obsessed with recently, is Samia’s latest album. Yes, the conditions which led her to the ideas she explores on the album are more likely to be intimately felt, viscerally recognized, by someone who grew up a woman in our society. But, that doesn’t mean that the questions it raises about identity are not universal.
On a more personal note- When I felt that certain instances of “for the online thought daughters media 101” (term used with nothing but love), like Ladybird and The Bell Jar, really resonated with me, it actually made me self-reflect really deeply about gender identity. It sounds silly, but I guess that’s how indelibly embedded our ideas of gender are in media consumption. If I, a man, read these moving, vulnerable thoughts on the human condition, thoughts that stem from pain specific to a woman’s experience, does that say more about me or about the art? If the pain-to-insight transmutation pipeline is so often eloquently expressed by those who occupy less-privileged positions in society, what is the best way to engage with the art as a universal, while simultaneously honoring the intimate and specific origins, that the reader may not share? I know it’s often used in jest, but I genuinely feel compelled, on some level, to respect the sentiment of “<X piece of media> is for the girls”! Spaces to communicate honestly with others of the same lived experience are integral, and should be protected! But also, I think ultimately I don’t want engaging with media to be pointlessly, or excessively, gendered!
Sorry for rambling! I’ve just thought about this a lot re: the art I like. Super excited for your upcoming album!
This is actually something I was just talking about with another writer friend! In the quote of female experience vs human experience I was sort of setting up the false binary that I think operates both ways. The idea that the "female experience" sits diametrically opposed to the "human experience" is used both to denigrate women's art and siphon it off to a removed place AND to discredit explicitly feminist art as just a warped presentation of universal human experience.
Absolutely I think "feminist work" does exist and is valuable *because* it is explicitly feminist and/or about some facet of women's experience. But I also think that other people can and should find meaning in that work because the work is *also* about the experience of being a human. Many people before and smarter than me (thinking of Toni Morrison specifically here) have talked about how oppression dehumanizes the oppressors as well as the oppressed. I think that's one angle that men, for example, could find meaning in explicitly feminist writing -- as a way to connect with their own humanity by recognizing the shared humanity of women.
And of course it all gets more complicated because there is perhaps no "universal woman experience," especially on the intersectional axis of race, class, transness, etc... and yet there is dignity and importance of noting collective experience to some degree and investigating that experience under its own category of observation. I need to hit a re-read of Andrea Long-Chu's "Females" lol.
Looks like I also rambled! Thanks for the insightful comment!
Thanks for the response! Totally agree about the false binary, that’s a great way of describing that. It’s really fascinating to hear an artist’s perspective on this, both regarding the idea of a work fitting into a collective and the idea of how the work is experienced by others (and who the others are!)… thx for the various references as well, this is probably a topic I’ll need lots of angles on to really get a good framing lol
"Every woman artist will have the realization: to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one." Wow. Loved this piece!
For most of this piece I was just sitting there boiling. Sure, dude, let’s present earnest sentiment in songs performed by women as some sort of an alien technology with no clear purpose. Right.
thank you for this piece!! i write songs as a hobby and even then i feel frustrated when it feels like someone is interpreting them as purely confessional, or like a therapeutic diary entry, rather than a work of interpretation (a work of art!)
The realm where I most encounter and am aware of female artists is music (I am a man). You're right, most of the time I find a lot of their work to be an expression of the female experience rather than the human experience. That is somewhat related to the medium, I believe. The majority of Taylor Swift's songs, for instance, I experience as observing her perspective as a woman. I rarely listen to them feeling a sense of shared experience.
However, I will say I found great solace in Carly Rae Jepsen's album "Emotion" while my marriage was declining and during divorce proceedings. In that album she often sings about the pain of unrequited love, of not feeling like she is enough, of being in a relationship with someone who doesn't care for you in the way you would like. I will say I have never felt more affinity for an album produced by man, woman, or other, and I truly felt like she spoke to the human experience.
I don't know if I have a point except to say that it is possible to make universally relatable art as a man or a woman, but also it's probably very hard to make universally relatable art!
(Note not all the songs in Emotion are melancholy like that. Many upbeat songs!)
“I am capable of making more things with my body than children.“ and “to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one.“ BAAAAANGEERRRRRRRRRR BANGER !!!!!! so apt
Thanks for writing this piece, this is super interesting. I’m curious to hear more thoughts on how, or whether, the way we choose to engage in should be gendered at all. I ask because when I read the quote “Every woman artist will have the realization: to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one.”, I feel there is a delicate balance between intrusion/presumption of understanding and appreciation/analysis.
As an example, take a book I recently read, I Who Have Never Known Men. In much online discourse, it is represented as a feminist work, but I’m not sure that’s all there is to it. Yes, the fact that they are all women, and the fact that they do not interact with men, functions as a necessary conduit to the greater existential philosophical *point* to grapple with. But if the pain that opens up that conduit is unique to the female experience, can a male reader really *get* it? Another example, that I’ve been obsessed with recently, is Samia’s latest album. Yes, the conditions which led her to the ideas she explores on the album are more likely to be intimately felt, viscerally recognized, by someone who grew up a woman in our society. But, that doesn’t mean that the questions it raises about identity are not universal.
On a more personal note- When I felt that certain instances of “for the online thought daughters media 101” (term used with nothing but love), like Ladybird and The Bell Jar, really resonated with me, it actually made me self-reflect really deeply about gender identity. It sounds silly, but I guess that’s how indelibly embedded our ideas of gender are in media consumption. If I, a man, read these moving, vulnerable thoughts on the human condition, thoughts that stem from pain specific to a woman’s experience, does that say more about me or about the art? If the pain-to-insight transmutation pipeline is so often eloquently expressed by those who occupy less-privileged positions in society, what is the best way to engage with the art as a universal, while simultaneously honoring the intimate and specific origins, that the reader may not share? I know it’s often used in jest, but I genuinely feel compelled, on some level, to respect the sentiment of “<X piece of media> is for the girls”! Spaces to communicate honestly with others of the same lived experience are integral, and should be protected! But also, I think ultimately I don’t want engaging with media to be pointlessly, or excessively, gendered!
Sorry for rambling! I’ve just thought about this a lot re: the art I like. Super excited for your upcoming album!
This is actually something I was just talking about with another writer friend! In the quote of female experience vs human experience I was sort of setting up the false binary that I think operates both ways. The idea that the "female experience" sits diametrically opposed to the "human experience" is used both to denigrate women's art and siphon it off to a removed place AND to discredit explicitly feminist art as just a warped presentation of universal human experience.
Absolutely I think "feminist work" does exist and is valuable *because* it is explicitly feminist and/or about some facet of women's experience. But I also think that other people can and should find meaning in that work because the work is *also* about the experience of being a human. Many people before and smarter than me (thinking of Toni Morrison specifically here) have talked about how oppression dehumanizes the oppressors as well as the oppressed. I think that's one angle that men, for example, could find meaning in explicitly feminist writing -- as a way to connect with their own humanity by recognizing the shared humanity of women.
And of course it all gets more complicated because there is perhaps no "universal woman experience," especially on the intersectional axis of race, class, transness, etc... and yet there is dignity and importance of noting collective experience to some degree and investigating that experience under its own category of observation. I need to hit a re-read of Andrea Long-Chu's "Females" lol.
Looks like I also rambled! Thanks for the insightful comment!
Thanks for the response! Totally agree about the false binary, that’s a great way of describing that. It’s really fascinating to hear an artist’s perspective on this, both regarding the idea of a work fitting into a collective and the idea of how the work is experienced by others (and who the others are!)… thx for the various references as well, this is probably a topic I’ll need lots of angles on to really get a good framing lol
❤️
Loved this
"Every woman artist will have the realization: to most men, your work will be an expression of the female experience instead of the human one." Wow. Loved this piece!
great stuff eliza
For most of this piece I was just sitting there boiling. Sure, dude, let’s present earnest sentiment in songs performed by women as some sort of an alien technology with no clear purpose. Right.
Reading this after reading Tennis’ response on ig to their numerous male-written Pitchfork reviews is especially resonating
thank you for this piece!! i write songs as a hobby and even then i feel frustrated when it feels like someone is interpreting them as purely confessional, or like a therapeutic diary entry, rather than a work of interpretation (a work of art!)
(ps. you cooked)
The realm where I most encounter and am aware of female artists is music (I am a man). You're right, most of the time I find a lot of their work to be an expression of the female experience rather than the human experience. That is somewhat related to the medium, I believe. The majority of Taylor Swift's songs, for instance, I experience as observing her perspective as a woman. I rarely listen to them feeling a sense of shared experience.
However, I will say I found great solace in Carly Rae Jepsen's album "Emotion" while my marriage was declining and during divorce proceedings. In that album she often sings about the pain of unrequited love, of not feeling like she is enough, of being in a relationship with someone who doesn't care for you in the way you would like. I will say I have never felt more affinity for an album produced by man, woman, or other, and I truly felt like she spoke to the human experience.
I don't know if I have a point except to say that it is possible to make universally relatable art as a man or a woman, but also it's probably very hard to make universally relatable art!
(Note not all the songs in Emotion are melancholy like that. Many upbeat songs!)
and this guy is dragging joni mitchell on top of everything else ???
such stunning writing
u stun me as always….
Eliza….. you absolutely cooked with this one
this is amazing