Paper 3: Gender & Sexuality in the 1970s
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Class23-YourSquawIsontheWarpath-FeminismPopularMusicinthe1970s.pptx“Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”: Feminism & Popular Music in the 1970s
Rock, Hip-Hop, and Revolution History A383 Prof. McGerr
Spring 2020
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I. “Women’s Liberation”: Feminism in the
1960s & 1970s
II. “Cock Rock”: The Feminist Critique of Counter-Cultural Music
III. “I Will Survive”: Women in Disco
IV. “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”: Country Feminism
V. “No One’s Ever Gonna Keep Me Down Again”: Pop Feminism
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I. “Women’s Liberation”: Feminism in the 1960s & 1970s
Emergence of new ideas, new activism leading to new critique of popular music generally & rock in particular
1. Liberal Feminism
Emerging middle-class movement demanding equality in the workplace & politics particularly
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
National Organization of Women (NOW) 1966
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
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2. Radical Feminism
Late 1960s
Younger women with roots in black freedom struggle & campus activism
Private and public focus: “The personal is the political”
Male violence/women’s control of their bodies—rape, abuse, abortion
Celebration of broader range of identities--
lesbianism
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Much of radical feminism focused on culture:
How men used words & cultural categories such as beauty to denigrate & subordinate women
Protest against Miss America beauty pageant, Atlantic City, NJ, 1968
3. Anti-Feminism
Marabel Morgan, The Total Woman (1973):
“It’s only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his queen!”
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Phyllis Schlafly, leader of movement against the Equal Rights Amendment
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II. “Cock Rock”
Feminist critique of countercultural rock as male privilege
Reinterpreted 1960s
Undermined rock’s revolutionary image
But how much impact?
1. “Susan Hiwatt”
First important example: anonymous 1970 article, “Cock Rock” in feminist magazine Rat (aka Women’s LibeRATion).
Republished under pseudonym “Susan Hiwatt”
( play on British amplifier company)
From Generation…
In school, “Hiwatt” saw rock in generational terms:
“It was the only thing we had of our own, where the values weren’t set up by the famous wise professors. It was the way not to have to get old and deadened in White America.”
…to Gender
“It took me a whole lot of going to the Fillmore and listening to records and reading Rolling Stone before it even registered that what I was seeing and hearing was not all these different groups, but all these different groups of men.
And once I noticed that, it was hard not to be constantly noticing all the names on the albums, all the people doing sound and lights, all the voices on the radio, even the D.J.’s between the songs—they were all men.”
“Massive Exclusion of Women”
“Because in the female 51 percent of Woodstock Nation that I belong to, there isn’t any place to be creative in any way. It’s a pretty exclusive world.”
No women electric guitarists or drummers
Women singers but they had “to be twice as good just to be acceptable”
Aretha Franklin: “Soul Sister Number One”
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Rock: Janis Joplin
Susan Hiwatt: “…an incredible sex object…a cunt with an outasight voice…easy to fuck.”
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Folk’s more acceptable women
Judy Collins
Joni Mitchell
Note the acoustic guitars
Male guitar gods
Jimmy Page
Jimi Hendrix
Studio player Carol Kaye:
Still the only major female exception
Joy of Cooking
San Francisco folk-rock band led by pianist Toni Brown & electric guitarist Terry Garthwaite (Ruby Brown)
First album Capitol 1971
Allison Steele, “The Nightbird”
Pioneering woman DJ, WNEW-FM, New York City
“The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.”
Rock Misogyny
“Because when you get to listening to male rock lyrics, the message to women is devastating. We are cunts—sometimes ridiculous (‘Twentieth Century Fox’), sometimes mysterious (‘Ruby Tuesday’), sometimes bitchy (‘Get a Job’) and sometimes just plain cunts (‘Wild Thing’).”
“And all that sexual energy that seems to be the essence of rock is really energy that climaxes in fucking over women…a million different levels of women-hating.”
Women Still Necessary
“Women are required at rock events to pay homage to the rock world—a world made up of thousands of men…Homage paid by offering sexual accessibility, orgiastic applause group worship, gang bangs at Altamont.”
The Exception to the Counter-Cultural Revolution
“And so women remain the last legitimate form of property that the brothers can share in a communal world.
Can’t have a tribal gathering without music and dope and beautiful groovy chicks.
For the musicians themselves there is their own special property—groupies.”
Linda de Barres, “Queen of the Groupies”
2. “Does Rock Degrade Women?”
New York Times article, 1971
Marion Meade, journalist,
b. 1934,
Northwestern graduate involved in women’s liberation movement
Would publish Bitching, women’s
views of men, in 1973
Echoed much of “Susan Hiwatt”
analysis
Rethinking Woodstock
“…a fantasyland that welcomed only men.
How about the women? Barefooted and sometimes barebreasted, they sprawled erotically in the grass, looked after their babies, or dished up hot meals.”
Organizer Michael Lang
basks in the glow of admiration
60s Revolution wasn’t real
Rock’s reconfiguration of masculinity in the 1960s—unisex clothes and long hair a la Beatles?
Just “hip camouflage” for continuing sexism
‘60s worse than ‘50s
Earlier rock didn’t cast women simply as passive sexual partners or bitchy emasculators
Rock heroes of 60s guilty—Beatles, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones
3. Impact
Feminist critics subverted the history of rock as rebellion
In some ways reinforced 1950s critique of rock as degeneracy
But very little changed in the world of rock in 1970s
III. “I Will Survive”: Women in Disco
Meanwhile, female performers played a larger role in disco
1. Disco Divas
Major star, Donna Summer
b. LaDonna Gaines, Boston, 1948
Left psychedelic rock band for solo career
“The Queen of Disco”
1975 breakthrough hit, “Love to Love You, Baby”
Numerous hits into early 1980s, including
“Hot Stuff”
Gloria Gaynor
B. Newark, NJ, 1949
1975 hit disco album Never Can Say Goodbye
“I Will Survive”, 1977 # 1 hit
Grace Jones
B. 1948, Jamaica
First hit, 1975, “I Need a Man”
“The Queen of the Gay Discos”
2.Why So Many Women?
John Rockwell, NY Times:
“…a high, piping sound suits the silly, partying mood and bounciness of many disco songs.”
Women singers suit “national mood” of “sentimental escapism”
Rockwell:
Women in disco:
“cult figures for homosexuals.”
3. Still Exploitation
Rockwell: “Disco music…is ultimately a producer’s music, which means men’s music, which means the exploitation of women to suit male fantasies, be they homosexual or heterosexual….
At worst it’s a puppet-like acting-out of a male fantasy of women as objects or as slightly grotesque figures of exaggerated lust and dominance.”
4. Too simple?
Rockwell’s argument effectively erased disco divas—as if Summer, Gaynor, & Jones had no identity of their own
Or as if identity couldn’t be complicated:
Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” was simultaneously a “gay anthem” and a feminist anthem, too:
Weren't you the one who tried to crush me with goodbye Do you think I'd crumble Did you think I'd lay down and die? Oh no, not I. I will survive
IV. “Your Squaw Is on the Warpath”: Country Feminism
Once again, country offered a surprising contrast to rock culture
As before, country had plenty of divas
1. Country Conservatism
Paradox?
Country music had more women star singers
But their message about gender seemed conservative
The music of Marabel Morgan & Phyllis Schlafly?
Dolly Parton
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2. The Sound of Submission?
Tammy Wynette:
b. Virginia Pugh, Bounds, Mississippi, 1942
“(You Make Me Want to Be) A Mother”
“Make Me Your Kind of Woman”
“Don’t Liberate Me (Love Me)”
But, like Patsy Montana’s “Cowboy’s Sweetheart” in 1930s, 1960s country was complicated
Wynette offered a kind of resistance for traditional women, too:
“Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” (1967)
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“Stand by
Your Man”
#1 Billboard Country
#19 Billboard Hot 100
The ultimate in female submission?
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“Stand by Your Man”
Tammy Wynette & Billy Sherrill (1968)
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You'll have bad times and he'll have good times
Doin' things that you don't understand.
But if you love him you'll forgive him
Even though he's hard to understand
And if you love him oh be proud of him
'Cause after all he's just a man.
2. Loretta Lynn
“The Coal-Miner’s Daughter”
b. Ky., 1935
Traditional image
Married 1948
Six children
But husband urged her to sing
Canning, 1958
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Assertiveness
“Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” #1 Country Hit, 1966”
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1968 single,
1969 lp album
Like Merle Haggard, seemingly unexpressive performance style allows expressive lyrics
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“Your Squaw Is on the Warpath” Loretta Lynn
Well your pet name for me is Squaw
When you come home a drinkin' and can barely crawl
And all that lovin' on me won't make things right
Well you leave me at home to keep the teepee clean
Six papooses to break and wean
Well your squaw is on the warpath tonight
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Well I've found out a big brave chief
The game you're a huntin' for ain't beef
Get off of my huntin' grounds and get out of my sight
This war dance I'm doin' means I'm fightin' mad
You need no more of what you've already had
Your squaw is on the warpath tonight
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Well that fire-water that you've been drinking
Makes you feel bigger but chief you're shrinking
Since you've been on that love making diet
Now don't hand me that ole peace pipe there ain't no pipe can settle this fight
Your squaw is on the warpath tonight
Well I've found out a big brave chief...
Yeah your squaw is on the warpath tonight
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“The Pill” 1970:
All these years I've stayed at home
While you had all your fun
And every year that’s gone by
Another baby’s come
There's a gonna be some changes made
Right here on nursery hill
You've set this chicken your last time
'Cause now I've got the pill
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Country Feminist?
“I am not a big fan of the Women’s Liberation, but maybe it will help women stand up for the respect they’re due.” 1976
V. “No One’s Ever Gonna Keep Me Down Again”: Helen Reddy & Pop Feminism
The biggest feminist “message” song came—not from rock—but from mainstream pop
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1. Helen Reddy
b. 1941, Melbourne, Australia
Show-business family:
Her rebellion was to want to be a wife & mother rather than performer
To the US in 1966, divorced, a single mother with a 3-year-old child
Gradually made it as a singer
Remarried & moved to LA 1971 #13 Billboard Hot 100 Hit:
“I Believe in Music”
2. “I Am Woman”
In 1971, Reddy wanted song reflecting her experience in the women’s movement
Found only “total doormat” songs; wrote her own statement instead
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Radio stations wouldn’t play it
She went on afternoon TV talk shows;
Women viewers then phoned radio stations to demand the song
Mike Douglas
Show,
Philadelphia
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“I Am Woman” Helen Reddy & Ray Burton (1972)
I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back and pretend
Cause I've heard it all before,
And I've been down there on the floor
No one's ever gonna' keep me down again.
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Yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom for the pain
Yes, I paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong
I am invincible
I am woman.
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You can bend but never break me
'cause it only serves to make me
More determined to achieve my final goal
And I come back even stronger
Not a novice any longer
'Cause you deepen the conviction in my soul
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I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my loving arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long, long way to go
Until I'll make my brother understand.
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3. The (Male) Critical Reaction
Critics: Reddy was “beneath contempt . . . a purveyor of all that is silly in the women’s lib movement”
But another: “As an admitted male chauvinist pig in the one or two areas in which my own wife has not yet beaten me into submission, I must admit the …distaff libber’s anthem-of-sorts would normally raise my hackles…But Miss Reddy sings it so well…that her modicum of breast-beating (or should I call that ‘chest-beating’?) for the cause on that one song is fair enough.”
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Reddy: “For a lot of men, thinking about the women’s movement makes them grab their groins. What can I say? I didn’t say that we were going to cut their dicks off or anything, you know?”
#1 Billboard Hot 100, Dec. 1972
1973 Grammy, Best Female Vocal Performance
Controversial acceptance: “I want to thank God because She makes everything possible.”
Letters: “You skinny, blasphemous bitch”
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Theme Song, United Nations “International Women’s Year” 1975
Some feminist activists considered her not radical enough
Another example of effective “political” music: no policy prescriptions
Instead, lowest-common denominator music—collective identity, group pride
Like Haggard, “Okie from Muskogee” & James Brown, “Say It Loud”
Conclusion
Rock “revolution” wasn’t absolute
Paradox, again: country& mainstream pop arguably more “feminist”
1970s music radical—gay identity, feminism—by doing what popular music had always done: redefining gender & sexuality
