Inspired by DarwinBabe’s feminist article share thread and the INCREDIBLE new song from Petrol Girls which really hits home about sexual violence against women.
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Classic. Really excited for the Poly Styrene doc.
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it’s interesting - though not entirely surprising - that a whole bunch of songs that immediately spring to mind were written by gay white men to be performed by straight black women to I guess mainly gay & black audiences that crossed over/spread to the mainstream
no surprise that the messages of self-agency, the casting out of doubt & shame and the pride of unification and solidarity are shared in such a way - not least because of disco & dancing
good stuff
Share them!
Petrol Girls are brilliant. Talk Of Violence was one of the best albums of 2016. Ren (lead singer) is doing a project with Peter Miles called Paste and they put this out a few months ago - https://soundcloud.com/user-577315323/we-might-be
Ta for the heads up - I’ve known of Petrol Girls but not checked them out until recently. Just awesome.
My band is doing a gig with Ren in May, really looking forward to it.
I dunno, feels a bit weird being a man sharing songs written by men in a ‘feminist song share’ thread
but basically lots of disco & show tunes - I am what I am, I will survive etc.
Men can’t be feminists?
We talked about this in a seminar at uni - it was a Portuguese culture class but my (gay) tutor specialised in queer studies and that particular class was about Amália Rodrigues, a fado singer and apparently a gay icon. His view was that a lot of gay men love those songs and idolise the women who sing them because they share the feelings of women who have to hide away, make themselves fit into a white macho society, overcome struggles with men or poverty or drugs etc. He also mentioned that a lot of gay men related to the tragic stories of a lot of those women e.g. Whitney Houston and Amália herself.
Don’t really want to keep going as I’m not a gay man or black woman and therefore not really qualified to talk about it, also trying to avoid generalising so the above is a bit of a mess, but that was the general picture I took away from his class
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sure men can be feminists/feminist allies (depending on how you slice your onions) but a major problem is the male voice crowding out the female voice in feminist spaces (sorry for the binarism) - ironic given that that is what I’m doing just now in this thread 
great that the songs I mentioned are something of a shared voice between gay pride & feminism in shouting down the oppression of hetero-cis-white-partriarchy but yeah, the problem remains in some ways. Of course you could argue that the death of the author & all that …means what I’m saying here is guff & I Will Survive is every bit as much a feminist anthem as a gay anthem but…well, like I said it feels a bit weird for me to be a man sharing songs written by men in a ‘feminist song share’ thread
but it is isn’t about me, sorry if it seems I’m policing anything - that’s not my intention at all - carry on sharing stuff & I hope this little aside is not too much of a distraction/downer on the thread
Nah, you’re not policing. But please explain what you mean by “the death of the author” - is that referring to how certain works of art, songs in particular, can become detached from their creators and take on a new significance?
yeah, precisely that
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The video starts off a bit slut-shamy which isn’t cool though
That Petrol Girls song is fantastic 
reminds me a bit of the best parts of 90s post-hardcore.
My contribution would be the now sadly defunct GLOSS
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Played a gig with Petrol Girls last year and they’re fucking PHENOMENAL live. Go and see them.