Is 2013 The Year for Militant Feminism in music?

[ismnotwasm]

(Long, interesting article)

Enough is enough. So goes the resounding message of contemporary feminism in 2013. An exasperated call for equality from Grimes ("I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living&quot , a vocal condemnation of Greg Wilson's patronising defence of Nina Kraviz's sexuality and an unsubtle message from Planningtorock noisily declaring her objective in 'Misogyny Drop Dead'. Even CocoRosie, usually defiantly numb to heteronormative authority while frolicking in a self-created gender queer bubble, join the chorus of change while promoting their latest Tales of A GrassWidow with Bianca Casady’s frank declaration, "Patriarchy is over".

There's been a solid half-decade of relative quiet from women, politically, in music. Le Tigre fizzled out and Peaches' influence dwindled sharply since her macho parodies Fatherfucker and Impeach My Bush mingled politics with electroclash. The insidious reach of sexual gender violence has continued to infiltrate the mainstream, with the exoneration of Chris Brown being one of many insidious examples. For too long the oblique strategies of neoliberalism have been suppressing society's margins through atomisation, implication and ridicule.

Cue: The Knife, whose new album Shaking The Habitual is probably the most visible example of this current resurgence of feminist militancy in music. Explicit references to Butler, Foucault and Winterson abound, while Dreijer-Andresson hisses through the crackle of distortion, "not a vagina. It's an option / the cock, had it coming" in 'Full of Fire', before dropping a 19-minute stream of uneasy, droning ambience under the revealing title 'Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realised'. No longer the pop infiltrator of the past – licensing 'Heartbeats' to José Gonzáles, Sony and Entourage – The Knife seem to understand that collusion is not only futile but detrimental within a late capitalist system that thrives on co-opting and depoliticising its opposition. We've had a long run of marketable, and ultimately unhelpful, brands of "girl power" thanks to the Spice Girls and Pussycat Dolls, continuing to this day with Ke$ha's sexy feminism and pole dancing classes. So, what changed?


Could it be that the blunting method of what Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism describes as a consumer culture of constant "sugary gratification" is no longer effective in the face of a bleak economic outlook, leaving its citizens to question free market capitalism's very legitimacy as a system to function within? It was recently announced that the Eurozone recession would only get worse, the United States' recovery from economic malaise has been described as the weakest since the Great Depression, and governments have responded with isolationist foreign policy and restrictive austerity measures. When times are tough the people who suffer most are those at the bottom, and it's fairly apparent who they are. Ethnic minorities, the economically disadvantaged, queer groups and women are the ones victimised by rightist ideologies catering to the inevitable reactionary conservatism that comes with economic crisis. US Republican Todd Akin's comments on "legitimate rape", conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh's outrageous remarks equating contraception with promiscuity and David Cameron's anti-immigration rhetoric would do nothing for their popularity amongst their scapegoats, and it's showing. The Occupy movement, civil unrest and marriage equality marches are a response to a deep-seated discontent, and are building momentum as a social and political force.

http://thequietus.com/articles/12375-feminism-music-meltdown-yoko-ono-the-knife