Gender in Metal?

I have moved towards the notion of gender in heavy metal music. As a fan of the genre, and a female, I feel like I am really drawn to WHY I like what I like and how that reflects in the eyes of the public!

I love these two paragraphs from The Society Pages, written by a woman. It provides me with a general summary of the arguments I would like to support in my dissertation.

"Performers and fans have been overwhelmingly been heterosexual men (Walser 1993).  The promotion of an exaggerated and idolized dominant, heterosexual form of masculinity is not surprising when taking into account the androgyny that also exists within the heavy metal realm.  Androgyny was especially prevalent during the 1970s and 1980s when heavy metal music peaked in popularity.  Male musicians and fans with long hair, make up and tight fitting clothes needed a mechanism to assert their masculinity and heterosexuality.  They found it in promoting a “sex-drug-and-groupies heavy-metal lifestyle” (Breen 1991).  This metal mantra was often at the expense of women and homosexual men, who were designated to the category of “other” and represented as a threat in visual images, lyrics, and video representations (Walser 1993).

Since the 1970s, women have increasingly gravitated towards the heavy metal scene.  Women who choose to participate, especially subgenres such as death metal or black metal that are more misogynistic, are aware of the culture of marginalization (Vasan 2011).  These women often report that the metal scene provides a sense of individual empowerment through breaking away from the gendered restrictions of mainstream society.   However, this freedom comes at a cost, which involves reframing empowerment through a masculine notion of legitimation."

Thesocietypages.org, (2014). Heavy Metal Music and Sociological Imagination » Sociology Lens. [online] Available at: http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2013/11/18/heavy-metal-music-and-sociological-imagination/ [Accessed 16 Oct. 2014].