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Why aren't there more women on audiophile forums?

I've seen this question bandied about on forums frequently. Here's a long analysis of the subject matter.  For those going to the beach and needing a read, the whole dissertation is available for download.

"Masculinity and gear fetishism in audio technology community discourse"
Annetts, Alex (2015)
Doctoral thesis, Anglia Ruskin University.

"This thesis is a study of audio technology community discourse and its historical features. I contend that the audio technology domain is fundamentally exclusive and hierarchically stratified, based on discursively inscribed prerequisites to participation and enunciation, notably a hegemonic masculine performance, gear fetishism and the articulation of technical knowledge.

I show that communities organised around audio technology, socially construct and perpetuate these features as components of their respective discourses. I expose all three elements to be rooted in culturally embedded gender stereotypes, dating back to a nineteenth century dichotomy of public and private space.

I present a deconstruction of the complex discursive performances of masculinity and offer opportunities for privileged masculine recordists to critically reflect upon their dominance and homogeneity within the domain as an original contribution to knowledge. In this endeavour, I investigate the emergence and development of exclusive tropes as components of audio technology culture, and demonstrate how they continue to be perpetuated in the face of both social and technological developments that offer possibilities to destratify the community hierarchy and enunciative function.

My methodology is based on a comparative discourse analysis of industry and academic texts, as well as the communities that surround and influence the construction of modern audio technology discourse. Case studies are conducted of two leading industry publications: Tape Op and Sound On Sound, and supplemented by an exploration of Women's Audio Mission. I combine these sources with interview material gathered from relevant industry professionals. In doing so, I observe how the audio technology community has maintained barriers to participation, often in the face of technological progress that offers supposed opportunities for democratisation. My work presents an argument against this notion, exposing the supposed democratisation as an illusion of accessibility and thus as mere massification."

https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/702044/
hilde45

Showing 6 responses by hickamore

hickamore
729 posts
 
Despite their opposite moorings, Miller and nonoise are both models worthy of emulation. We should all aspire to think and to write with their clarity and precision, if without their amusing rancor, which they have both earned the right to deploy.

That said, it's rather puny to claim no more than that the contemporary "alt right" has been pissed since the Enlightenment. Your transitory "alt right" didn't exist in the 17th Century. You're thinking of Colossus: the Roman Church, whose orthodoxies imposed cultural hegemony for a thousand years. Church intellectuals are just as well-educated as their secular counterparts, but unlike the latter, they repudiate Sartre's dictum that the intellectual's duty is "to think -- to think without restriction." The Church insists that you think WITH restriction, that is, when Aristotelian inquiry contradicts Church doctrine, doctrine must prevail. Aquinas taught Churchmen how to finesse this trick in the 13th Century, after being inconveniently confronted with the newly rediscovered works of Aristotle. 
hickamore
729 posts
 
Nonoise,

I say tribalism will play itself out because that is what happened after both World Wars. Tribalism caused the wars, and the wars showed the logical consequence of tribalism. Only 20 years passed between the Armistice and Hitler's wholesale invasions. We're now 76 years out from 1945, so it was inevitable that tribalism would recur. The difference -- we strongly believe -- is that since a WWIII would be unthinkable, universalism will necessarily prevail over its sole alternative: human self-annihilation.
hickamore
729 posts
 
MC, nonoise,

nonoise: Hobbes's Leviathan is the state, not the church. And I capitalize "Colossus" only for emphasis. Although both Latin and Roman, the word has no special meaning with reference to the Church of Rome. That I know of.

MC: But you are perfectly describing classical liberalism! The progressive left embraces life, liberty, property, privacy, etc. -- they simply understand the unfairness of laissez-faire capitalism, and seek to moderate its harsher consequences. Don't buy the Right media trick of pretending that something idiotic done on campus bespeaks an embrace of tribalism on the progressive left. We're historically aware enough to grasp that identitarianism is a cyclical thing which crosses political bounds. Our age happens to be suffering an outbreak at the moment. But liberalism will allow this tribalist foolishness to play out to its absurd logical end, as we know it shall and must, while gently stressing the universalist themes of cosmopolitanism, tolerance, human rights, and human equality before the law. 
hickamore
729 posts
 
Perplexing. Agon veterans no doubt understand this anathematization phenomenon better than I do. 
hickamore
729 posts
 
@tomic601 Balance, or rather fostering mutual understanding, is my aim. Most disagreements boil down to the definition of terms and the reliability of information. Once these are cleared up (which almost never happens, but we need to try), all that remains to divide us are temperamental orientation and intellectual capacity. And hey! We're all different in those respects, and an open society welcomes us all. Even in this often fractious forum, I'll bet 100% would reject communism, fascism, cult-of-personality authoritarianism, and probably monarchy too. Meaning we have a great deal more in common than otherwise, which I consider a fine start. 
hickamore
729 posts
 
A submission in a contemporary political theory course claiming there are only two political "models," and that Marxism is one of them, would get an F and be laughed out of the room if read aloud. The only contemporary alternative to liberal democracy is strongman authoritarianism. Even in China and North Korea, no Marxists remain. Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders wasn't even nominated; authoritarian Donald Trump actually became president. Strongman dictatorships in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Uzbekistan, and on and on. Islamic theocracies in Iran and Saudi Arabia (one Shi'a, one Sunni) where the name of Marx dare not be mentioned. So anyone today who's afraid of Big Bad Karl is trembling before a tombstone.

Bet you didn't know that Marx corresponded regularly with Abe Lincoln during the Civil War, eh? Contemporary world-historic figures are like that: wishing to commune with fellow Large Minds. Like the world's nine other Most Consequential Political Thinkers, Marx left a long trail. Quel surprise. But not nearly as long as Plato or Aristotle or Plotinus. Read Plato's Gorgias and you'll swear you were reading yesterday's Congressional Record.
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