Music's War On Women

By Rachel Roberts

When I was 16, I attended a Bring Me The Horizon concert who are one of the leading metal bands in the UK. I had one of the best nights of my life, filled with complete euphoria and emotional release as I screamed the lyrics of the songs that had supported me through my turbulent teenage years so hard, I could have burst a lung. When the night was over and the lights came on, I was ready to go home with no phone storage, muffled hearing and a few bruises but I was met with a sight that made me stay still in my tracks, my stomach shrink and everyone else around me blur into one: A young woman stood before me with her t-shirt entirely ripped off, streams of mascara and eyeliner down her cheeks, bra exposed and looking entirely heartbroken. I zoned back into reality as a young male who appeared to be her friend or partner put his arm around her and lead her out the doors. Was I the only person who had just seen this horrific sight? I looked to my friends but none of them appeared to have seen the girl and were shuffling out towards the venue doors with the rest of the crowd. When I look back on my teen years as 21-year-old adult, that’s one of my regrets – I offered no help. At the time I had no idea what to do, I thought it was best I didn’t get involved and, in all honesty, I was extremely nervous about attending this gig to begin with knowing it would be male dominated and consist of constant moshing. If that same situation had happened now, I would have gone over to her and asked if she was okay, if there was anything I could do, but my younger self was afraid and didn’t know any better.  

This is why it is crucial we educate young people, regardless of gender, on consent and why it is crucial that venues and their security look out for women. No more ‘mosh at your own risk’ signs on the wall, it’s time women and vulnerable gig-goers are provided with protection when they’re just trying to enjoy themselves the same as everybody else. 

There’s no denying we’ve seen change over the years, but it’s not enough. Someone who knows the toxicity of the music industry like no other is Lianna Lee Davies, bassist in rock band, Turbowolf. Lianna has worked in venues and in bands for years and from day one has come face to face with sexist microaggressions and blatant misogyny. “I’ve been in the industry for a long time; I worked at record labels, and I’ve toured the world, it still exists.” she says on our Zoom call. She asks if I can see her (I can’t), “Good! I’ve still got my pyjamas on!” her wicked laugh tells me already that she’s full of fire and energy. Calling from her new home above a pub in Bristol, Lianna currently runs her own vegan food business, employing musicians whilst the Covid-19 pandemic has artists across the UK struggling to make ends meet.  

As a feminist and seasoned veteran of toughing it out to help those who are underrepresented and struggling, Lianna’s first experiences of sexism date back to childhood, “I started off playing clarinet, but I really wanted to learn guitar but my tutor at the time said I was too small to play. As soon as I hit my teenage years, I saved up all my money from doing the housework in my grandparents' house and brought my own guitar.” Now an educator in guitar herself, she reflects on the sexism laced within her tutor’s comments: “It’s absolutely ridiculous, anyone can play guitar, if you go on to YouTube you can see three-year-old's shredding guitars.” And she’s absolutely right, anyone can and will play guitar. Famous guitar brand Fender released a study in 2018 which showed that women account for 50% of all beginner and aspirational players, that’s half of the guitar market being shunned and discouraged. 

Harassment 

Whilst sexism is an issue at the root of musical education and society as a whole, it’s also been nurtured and continued through years of inequality to grow into a full-sized forest of stinging nettles, burning at the ankles of any woman just simply trying to be heard and seen in an environment crafted for the male kind. Sexism birthed sexual harassment and assault, which of course reared its ugly head in the world of an already misogynistic music industry. “I’ve always called people out, I’ve punched a number of people for coming in my face,” she gives a mischievous, guilty laugh, “Which people have been surprised at even if it’s just cat calling.” And do we really blame her? A survey carried out by YouGov in 2018 found that nearly half of women (43%) under 40 have faced unwanted sexual behaviour at a music festival. Even cat calling perpetuates rape culture, allowing statistics like this to thrive, and sadly only 1% of women reported sexual assault or harassment to a member of festival staff, either before or after the event. Lianna’s experiences are telling of the issue all over the world, “Being on tour in Europe and in America, there is still an inappropriate vibe over there which isn’t okay. There’s places that are better for it, there are places in Germany which are very liberal but especially if you’re in an alternative style band it’s very community based at a lot of the venues out there, it generally still is a boys club unfortunately.” She sighs. 

Calling it out 

Lianna feels ‘cancel culture’ is taking a key role in eliminating sexual misconduct, but is doubtful it’s fully effective: “It’s becoming more of a discussion and more people are talking about it so there is slightly less of that but there is part of me that feels that’s because people are afraid, they’re gonna get called out if they do anything out of place now, which is good, but I don’t know... for a lot of the older people in the industry it still doesn’t underline or under pin their values.” Whilst calling people out shows others that same behaviour will not be tolerated, is it also just letting people sit quiet with their sexist opinions?  

As the only woman in her band, her bandmates thankfully are willing to educate other men when they cross a line, “They’re very good, but again it’s a corner that they shouldn’t need to fight for me.” She admits, “I’ve always been calling it [harassment] out, which has got me in to trouble and I'm obviously seen as a gobby bitch for it but that’s my underpinning values as a female artist and as a female in any sort of sub-genre or alternative community; I don’t tolerate anything like that.” 

Lianna has worked in music venues as a manager and during her time there, ensured women’s safety was a priority: “I’ve always really pushed [staff] to listen to women when they’re saying someone is making them feel uncomfortable. You find out a lot of people know each other and that it’s probably like the security guards' mate so they’re not gonna blame them but they need to draw a line between that friendship and being professional. People forget in any other job that wouldn’t be tolerated and you would be sacked.” 

What about now?  

So, what’s happening now? I spoke to Robert Scarlett of 2000 Trees Festival, a rock festival held in Cheltenham every summer. Rob is the creative director at the festival and also coins himself as ‘the person most interested in equality and social justice’, as he is part of the Diversity and Inclusions Committee for The Association of Independent Festivals. This year's festival was due to go ahead on July 7th, yet has now sadly been postponed due to further travel restrictions. However, Rob informed me that 28% of bands in the line-up had women in, that equates to just over 10% of females participating overall. 

He explained to me how the festival approaches booking bands, and how they don’t actively seek female musicians; their process involves just listening to music: “We book the line-up and then we look at what it is. Unless a band has got a female singer, as in when you listen to the band it’s obvious, we don’t know what the band looks like. I'm assuming that a female bass player, guitarist, keyboardist or drummer sounds the same as a male version or non-binary version. So, we don’t actually know.” Initiatives such as the Keychange pledge encourage festivals to seek out women to create a 50/50 gender split in festivals, yet Rob felt this type of programme wasn’t suitable for 2000 Trees: “We don’t really believe that a 50/50 gender balance is achievable at the moment for our genre, we’re a rock festival and we go all the way up to some fairly scary metal which tends to be populated by beardy blokes. Now that’s not to say we shouldn’t try and make those genres more accessible but raw numbers like the PRS Keychange 50/50 didn’t really work for us.” However, he’s hopeful things will continue to change, “We went through our old line-ups and what you’ll find is it goes up and down depending on what's going on, so we had a really good year in 2017, we had 33% of women, which had gone up 16% from 2012 to 28% now with no policy change from ourselves. It’s an upstream problem from us. The better question is why are so few women interested in playing rock music?” 

Whilst many may disagree that women aren’t interested in rock, as we’ve found, education and encouragement at childhood may be behind the lack of women within labels and agencies that leads to the lack of women in festival line-ups, “I think there’s a grass roots problem. I don’t care whether there’s men, women or trans people in a band I just care about their music. One of the things we’re trying to find now is a grass roots organisation to invest in, so we can actually be involved in it in that way.” 

When it comes to the audience’s festival experience, it appears the festival are putting in more initiatives to keep women safe: “We think reporting is a problem, which is something we’ve been working on with our security team. When a guy up-skirts a girl at a festival it’s not the same serious level as something like physical assault or rape so therefore people are less likely to report. They also don’t wanna fuck their whole festival experience up because it can mean hours of you telling your story over and over again. We’ve been working on some policies with security as to how we anonymize that and make it easy to contact the security team and actually have someone specially trained in the security team, often making sure there’s women on sight and that staff are specifically trained to deal with that level of trauma.” He explains, “That was a policy in conjunction with talking to the charity Safe Gigs 4 Women. It’s a constant improvement and sometimes these things boil down to having proper signage, so people know where to go. It’s not a big financial impact for festivals it’s just ensuring you have enough trained people in the right places so they can catch it. As soon as we know someone is walking around up-skirting people then we can police that and know it’s actually happening.” 

While these changes will certainly help many more women and vulnerable audience members feel safe, there’s always room for more improvements – so, what’s going to happen at 2000 Trees? “We’re going to continue to work with Safe Gigs 4 Women and make the reporting process easier. We’re already a safe event by all the measurements you can think of but we’re going to continue to engage with them to make sure we stay on top of trends of behaviour because it’s not a fixed problem it’s a constant vigilance.” If you have any concerns or ideas on improvements, Rob says the festival are always willing to make a difference, “One of the good things about little festivals is we’re approachable and we listen to what customers say so we’re able to implement quick changes.”