harps are for girls?
Nov. 8th, 2005 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxThis is a niggling thing to pick up on when you consider that you're talking about an organization (the Vienna Philharmonic) that basically doesn't admit women, period, but still. What's with the incessant repetition of the phrase "non-harpist woman"?
Yeah, yeah, massive overreaction to a word in an article about something much worse. Still. I suspect it's yet another level of sexism [What, from a group that won't let women join? I'm shocked!]. I mean, they had to let a woman harpist in, cause otherwise they just wouldn't have one - so she wasn't exactly integration. But real men play real instruments... like the piccolo.
It sounds stupid, but that's exactly the attitude I encountered throughout high school (and hell, come to think of it, middle school) and college from other musicians - including teachers. Playing the harp is something only women do (which it actually isn't), and is consequently (despite involving the same skills as most other instruments, not to mention the whole 40-80lb weight of the thing) beneath notice. Sure, that wasn't explicitly in the article or the Vienna folks' minds, but it's a common and frustrating misconception.
[Thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sonicage, I'd almost forgotten how sexist the music world can be.]
Yeah, yeah, massive overreaction to a word in an article about something much worse. Still. I suspect it's yet another level of sexism [What, from a group that won't let women join? I'm shocked!]. I mean, they had to let a woman harpist in, cause otherwise they just wouldn't have one - so she wasn't exactly integration. But real men play real instruments... like the piccolo.
It sounds stupid, but that's exactly the attitude I encountered throughout high school (and hell, come to think of it, middle school) and college from other musicians - including teachers. Playing the harp is something only women do (which it actually isn't), and is consequently (despite involving the same skills as most other instruments, not to mention the whole 40-80lb weight of the thing) beneath notice. Sure, that wasn't explicitly in the article or the Vienna folks' minds, but it's a common and frustrating misconception.
[Thanks,
sonicage, I'd almost forgotten how sexist the music world can be.]