gary shank
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Woodstalkers
On the verge of a sonic-sexual Dark Age
Neva Chonin, Special to SF Gate
Thursday, September 16, 1999
Men Behaving Badly. We're supposed to think it's
cute, so we indulgently laugh along with the sexist
slurs, the unsolicited physical commentary, the
grunted street compliments, the implied bonhomie of
crotch grabs, nipple tweaks and fanny slaps. Oh,
guys. They make us so mad. Ouch! Stop it, you.
Then one day we wake up black and blue and realize
that Men Behaving Badly isn't a joke anymore. It's an
epidemic. And we're gagging on our own indulgent
giggles.
A particularly virulent outbreak of MBB occurred in
July at Woodstock '99, when young male rock fans
took time out from looting and pillaging the premises
to sexually assault an indeterminate number of female
festivalgoers. Eyewitness accounts described, among
other things, a rape in the mosh pit during Limp
Bizkit's set and multiple attacks in Porta-Sans. That's
right, Porta-Sans.
Reportage of these assaults has been thin to
translucent. Garrulous MTV has been
uncharacteristically silent. Print media -- particularly a
pair of behemoth music glossies whose names slip
my mind -- have either given cursory coverage or
ignored the rape issue in the course of documenting
the festival's other illegalities (see "looting and
pillaging" above). This, even as NOW mounted a
prominent protest in front of Woodstock promoter
John Scher's offices denouncing the failure of festival
security to protect female rock fans.
"It seems that protecting women isn't as high a
priority as selling records,'' observes ROCKRGRL
publisher and editor Carla DeSantis, whose own
article on Woodstock appears in the magazine's
current issue.
Media aren't the only Good Germans in this war of
silence. With the exception of the Beastie Boys'
Adam Horovitz, who bravely harshed the pabulum of
the MTV Music Video Awards by broaching the
subject onstage, no member of rock's leftist male
intelligentsia has pondered what these rapes mean in
the larger context of rock culture.
Let's not be na=EFve. Popular music has traditionally
been about men who do it all for the nookie, the
nookie, the nookie: Jerry Lee Lewis had his teenage
cousin; the Notorious B.I.G. had his posse of rapping
mistresses; every Podunk band has its groupies.
Through it all, a thin line has separated the sexy from
the sexist and sexism from full-blown misogyny. Mick
Jagger singing about having a woman under his thumb
is one thing. A male Woodstalker pinning her under
his heaving football-trained frame is another.
Sadly, these attacks came at a time when it seemed
women were approaching an unparalleled degree of
acceptance in the rock world. The presence of female
band members no longer evoked wonder or scrutiny;
after a successful three-year run, Lilith Fair retired in
style.
But this summer also saw the ascendance of wigger
metal bands like Limp Bizkit, who signaled, in both
lyrics and style, a return to the pre-grunge, hard-rock
paradigm of women-as-insignificant-others. Where
Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain partied with pro-choice
activists and riot grrls, Kid Rock and Korn get down
with industry supplied, surgically augmented porn
stars.
In the face of this influx of bitch-slapping, metal-rap
rockers, many women are beginning to feel they've
been played for fools by the music industry. On Web
sites such as Hissyfit and the ROCKRGRL message
board, the Woodstock rapes have provoked debates
on music, gender and responsibility that are rife with
passionate charges and counter-charges. One
ROCKRGRL poster screen-named "Njg" sums up the
collective sense of post-grrl shock when she writes,
"While we were sleeping, while we thought that we
were equal, while we were busy with our lives, the
f***ers came in and changed the channel on us and
took away the remote."
Her post is one of many responding to a widely
circulated e-mail from Courtney Love describing the
singer's encounters with oily "chick wranglers" when
Hole played a series of shows with Korn last winter. In
it, Love decries both the Korn camp's abuse of its
young groupies and the stupidity of teenagers who
dog-paddle in waters too far over their heads.
"I don't know if anyone raped her, I wasn't there,'' Love
writes of a battered Korn groupie who begged for help
after an alleged post-concert assault in Australia. "But
SHE was in the lobby, she got 'picked'. SHE put
herself there. Or maybe the 'people' thought she was
a tasty young thing and they put her there. Either way
she attended the ceremony... and [now] after
Woodstock I just feel the SOURCE of this rape
environment is buried somehow in this story --
because this did not happen before now, since '91."
Responses to Love's missive have been universal in
their condemnation of rock's resurgent sexism, but
divided over whether the groupies-turned-victims bear
some complicity in their plight. Should women who
willingly pursue notoriously macho bands into the land
of assembly line fellatio be supported or given an
I-told-you-so lecture when loutish group sex becomes
group rape? How did we wind up with a new
generation of girls who, despite having guitar-wielding
women icons in front of them, still choose to approach
rock stardom on their knees? And should women who
reward rock stars' misogyny with sex share
responsibility with their idols when it comes to
perpetuating a "rape environment" like the one at
Woodstock?
The debate continues, but through all the hyperbole
one fact seems clear. At a time when female rockers
are supposed to be enjoying the fruits of rock's
much-ballyhooed "decade of the woman" and
preparing for a shiny new millennium, they seem
instead to be on the verge of a sonic-sexual Dark Age.
So much for girl power.
"What did we expect?" demands Njg. "We trusted
men again, like we always do. We believed their pain
when they said that they weren't being treated right,
we heard them. And what do we get? RAPESTOCK.
Thank you guys. Thank you very much."
Men Behaving Badly. It's just not funny anymore.