THIS IS
A LITANY on the 'wo*man question' in music:

That is
a quote taken from keychange.eu:
"Selected by industry experts as future leaders, the new cohort of artists and music industry professionals will take part in Keychange’s year-long talent development programme which provides women and gender minority participants with the skills and opportunities they need to progress to the next stage in their career."

I must problematize gender categories in music, in global musical practice-s and in listening.
Music and music making do not equal the music industry—which is ever less universal but ever more global. Some are quick in forgetting about the difference. Because boundaries do blur.

I question the 'woman question' in music because:
There is no 'man' in the first place from which a 'woman' could follow.
To search for 'women' (or 'images of women') in music is to exhibit an inherent anti-queer-feminist bias because such music is already defined as a man’s world. The 'woman question' is an invalid premise from which to start analyzing music as a global cultural practice. We cannot take male dominance as universal. Its naturalness and its normalizing has been and is questioned necessarily and correctly in the West. Because in Western culture two dominant anatomies—male genitalia versus female genitalia—symbolize distinct social and moral attributes. Western worldview—prioritizing visual sense—still erects assumptions on behavior, status, resource, function, aesthetics from building blocks made of body type.
This worldview is applicable to the music industry. And music, music making and listening must be negotiated separately.

De-gender music!

Basics
What is sexism: sexism is sex and gender preference or sex and gender discrimination.
Gender is merely to be separated from sex, as in Western worldview sex sits sqarely in every architectural site where social behaviour is constructed.
Basics—What is misogyny: misogyny is a system of discrimination and violence against feminized or rather gendered individuals and communities; gendered people may be homosexual men, may be an indigenous community, may be a trans person, may be women short of capital and far from the power that comes with assets—compared to women closer to power.
Sexism as a patriarchal ideology needs misogyny as a driving force.
Basics—What is genderism: genderism is the ideology that gender division is inherent in human social organization.

Who views social intercourse through the gender lens, must not assume that male domination is a natural expression of gender division. In a gendered worldview, there are no ranked entry points from where musicians from all over the gender spectrum come into music.

But why come to a practice as universal as music with preconceived notions of gender division?
If music is an evolving cultural practice, mustn’t there be times and places when and where gender division was not yet installed, and will be deconstructed? The fact of the matter is: there were many places and times not only without gender division but without gender as such! … There still are!
And why accept the sexist and racist lens applied by the inventors of 'dominant music' and walk the talk with the genderist search for the 'disappeared female music' and the misogynist search for the 'disappeared music of minorities'?
Why not overcome the Western fiction of 'dominant music' (and competition!) with vital, critical, capacious, permeable, transitory tradition and practice, with ambiguous, uncertain, unverifiable, elusive listening, abandoning the dividing either/or morale?

It is never either/or. One cannot draw a square with only an inside. The square will necessarily have an outside. The inside and the outside depend on one another. They don’t compete but go together. They’re one. Or none.

Now remove the square. Imagine a world beyond patriarchy—a very valid notion: culture is all processes and therefore there must have been and will be time and space without patriarchy. Imagine—and rely on your world-sense, don’t prioritize the view: Which step in the process of music making will be affected by sexual intercourse and procreation? Oh, you are right, anatomy and gender are not the same. So, how does your gender bear relation to musical practice, how will your gendered musical practice modulate the music that will be heard?

In musical practice, the question of why some musicians breastfeed babies and the question of why some musicians play the whore or the saint or the holy whore belong in different contexts and should even be treated hierarchically.

Private Note
In my case, when you invite me onto your stage or into your music, don’t refer to me as a propagator of their milk. Don’t refer to me as a propagator of Western gender roles.
Yes, the private is political, and I make music while being a political human. I am trans agender. My world-sense is non-binary, anti-dichotomy.

De-gender music!

Verification
'sex' or say 'anatomy': It is an—artistic and/or personal—choice to introduce one’s bodily functions in intercourse and procreation in music making. Be aware that the functions vary, the roles switch on the broad anatomic spectrum.
Verification—'gender': It is a choice to do the work of genderism while and within or alongside music making. It is then necessary to be an ally to the more gendered musicians—be aware that your gender may be more normalized, and that you’ll have to do your work anyway! But don’t assume gender in musical practice! Don’t assume and don’t accept! As though all musicians assigned female at birth speak with one voice?! As though all minorized musical practices speak a universal language?! Also in the music industry a female artist may look for other women musicians not to resemble herself, but precisely to be different to herself, to make the point that she is an individual artist, not a female or feminized artist.
Verification—'misogyny': It is a choice to represent one’s violent ideology in an outpour and call it 'music'. And it is a crime to bring it to practice no matter which time or space or realm of life. It is no less of a crime to cover up for violators and misogynist practices.

Every day, each person’s performance of gender maintains gender as a social reality. Music is abused as a figurehead of gender performance. Figurehead music, representational music, wants to remove limitations of time, while musical practice, music making and listening as communication can only live as timed, transitory, transformative.
Isn’t it funny to clamp normalized short termed events of intercourse and procreation onto one timeless figurehead? And that this should—once more but, oh, so fashionably—represent the feminized and the gendered and the minorised? You still ask me to not confuse anatomy and gender?

"Music industry is a machine. Music is magic." Music making still needs demystification.

Let's find some first order questions towards music making. Let’s try these sample research questions:
How is access to [a specific musical practice] organized—name the social attributes involved [like class, age, so-called ability, sex/gender, education]?
Why is one attribute over-represented within [a specific musical practice]: Is it me to emphasize it? When did this attribute become a key parameter? Who installed that parameter? How was this parameter codified?
When, by whom and how was [a specific response towards that parameter] established and under what circumstance can this response be altered?

Statement
The 'wo*man question' belongs in the realm of music industry only, in den Bereich der Kreativwirtschaft allein.
Statement—Smash them! Smash capitalism!
Statement—De-gender musical practice! De-gender listening! De-gender music!
Statement—Demystify the process of sound organization and music making!

Through playing I’ve come to live, through playing I can heal. Musical practice is for everybody. Music is communion. Move into me as I move into you. Communion is motion.
This is a
commotion!