No Rock And Roll Fun

BLEEPGRRRL: Or, the sound of self-defeat as mild discomfort over magazine's attachment to DJ Rap leads to foundation of a 'women in electronica' movement. As a tribute - presumably - to electronica's bake and take po-mo mixed-upness, the foundign statement chases itself round and round in knots about how, you know, the creation of separate spaces for women is a kind of cop-out, but, you know, there's a need for women to be treated as not an amorphous blob with a label 'women in electronica', so, um, we're creating a site for women in electronica... and so on.
The thing is, however much editor tara might brislte at it, the dj circuit is dominated by mainly ugly, mainly a little too old, usually bald men; the rave scene did quickly move from 'hey, peace and love' to 'get your tits out, love'; clubs in the UK quite often tend to be owned by men who aren't afraid to lean on people to get their way; from our experience, the work of women promoters and djs is undermined by the way some of their sisters decide to make use of Wonderbras to push themselves forward, making it harder for others to be taken seriously. With this sort of background, the question 'How is it being a woman in an industry dominated by men' might be uninspired to the point of obviousness, but surely isn't invalid? Of course, using that as the hook for a piece doesn't do anyone any favours, but it is an aspect of the experience that's probably as interesting for the general reader as finding out what slipmat she uses.
The boards area at pinknoises seems to function in a slightly more positive way - more akin to Riot Grrl than the Dworkin-quoting recasting of the Women In Rock archetype that the official areas can fall into being. The thing about Riot, of course, was that it worked best when it just happened to be grrls helping each other; it struggled when it became self-aware and stopped offering a critique of society to become a commentary on what it was doing. We heartily endorse what pinknoises offers, but wonder about the tone in which it does what it does.