Zappa.com

What were FZ's views on feminism? From what little I've been able to glean, I'd say that while he didn't oppose it, he wasn't entirely for it either.

I believe he felt men and women should be equal. After all, he did say that women have just as much right to be assholes as men do.

_________________
You're probably wondering why I'm here
(not that it makes a heck of a lot of a difference to ya)

Refer to "Planet Of The Baritone Women"

_________________
“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

But that was a commentary on the ridiculousness of women feeling that to be on an equal footing with men they had to take on the mannish appearance of what would be seen as throngs of stomping bull dykes. ("A slightly more voluptuous version of fucking somebody's father!" -- "Harry-as-a-boy".)

--Bat

_________________
<------PhotoArtWerk by debutante_daisy http://www.facebook.com/BatchainTheMovie

Germaine Greer, that well known feminist, was a friend of Zappa's according to a radio show she did lately. She's not known for suffering fools gladly, so my guess is Zappa respected the idea of feminism but gladly took the piss out of it when deserved.

Batty, I was just thinking about you when I was pondering my thoughts on the state of the Forum.
Anyway...back to the subject at hand.

It is not like Frank was sexist, he was just writing songs based in reality, not some romantic dreamland like every other artist under the sun.

I know many of my "girl friends" did find a lot of his music shocking. Trust me, they were forced to listen to it if they wanted to hang out with me. I likened turning people on to his music in the same way i would regard hiding in the closet to look at National Lampoon or reading Everything You Need to Know About Sex But are Afraid to Ask.

Songs like Dinah-Moe-Hum, Bobby Brown, Jewish Princess, Keep It Greasy, I Have Been In You are not necessarily easy to relate to when you are in you are a young girl in your teens. At least that is they way it was when I was growing up **born in 1967**. I had older brothers who listened to Frank and many other fine artists so I was predisposed at an unusually young age for the time. I was the exception and still remain the exception seeing that the vast majority of Zappa fans are men. My guess is that every show there are 95% men. Of the 5% of women that are there 3% of them are girlfriends that are obliged to be there and 2% of us are actual FZ fans.

Now that there are old Zappa fans having kids who are also exposed to his music at a young age, I imagine things are completely different? The content young viewers are able to see on tv/internet/cable puts an entirely new spin on what is real today vs. what seemed real 30 years ago. That, coupled with the fact that girls are having sex at an earlier age, are more aware of reality at a younger age, perhaps they can relate to his music better and not be so shocked by it. Hell, the music by itself is shocking enough!!

_________________
"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible"- Frank Zappa

I heard a interview that Frank did on the radio with a guy called "the beemer" {I think that was his name} from the '80's. He told a story about two women {feminists} that were interviewing him and "were out to get him". He said he wrote Bobby Brown after that interview. He said that women like them { feminists} would turn a guy into A Bobby Brown. I think the interviewers first name was Michael. I had the interview on a cassette tape that was in a tape player stolen from my truck. It was around the "you are what you is" days. I remember Frank swore ,and the D.J. bleeped it and Frank said bleeping him was childish. Anyone rember that one ?

_________________
Music is the best!

FZ: Golden shower is a sexual abberation or sexual activity, where one person pisses on another person. So You get the idea that Bobby Brown in this song as the result of following the advice of Womens Liberation, has wound up sitting on a stool with a thing up his ass while somebody pisses on him. And that´s why I think that´s unusual that the song is so popular here. I mean, when I go to a disco and see people dancing the Bobby Brown, I had to laugh.

Heres the link http://home.swipnet.se/bengt-jonsson/zappaint.htm

_________________
Music is the best!

Deb,
What surprised me was how disquieted, ill-at-ease and uncomfortable guys became if I played "that fuckin' sick shit" such as "Penis Dimension", "Shove It Right In" or "B'wana Dik" at 15 and wondered, "What's with these guys? All they ever talk about is 'fucking', 'pussies', 'tits' and 'having big cocks' -- why do they nearly shit themselves when it's in a song that's cleaver and funny?" I was very glad that someone was consistently not writing more silly love songs and I could depend on that!

Oh, the strictly musical portion was just "crazy sounding noise" done by "some crazy guy joke music" whether it was "Little House I Used To Live In", "Willy ThePimp" or "King Kong". It was all just summarily dismissed as "sick shit" with no room for disagreement, case closed. So it's still a minority even of the male population who'd ever be open to Zappa at all on any level. Even I was different. Hah! I'm sure that if there was something just about roundly understood as weird by the conventional majority anyone who knew me from day one would just roll their eyes and think, "Figures!", if I took an interest in it. I was "incorrigible", as I so often heard the word.

Now, as for girls, not a one would ever so much as give that "Zappa-horror" a tiny fraction of one second of a listen -- and I've always had the sneaking suspicion that it was not what they'd heard Zappa do, but largely fecause they were warned by friends, most of whom had never heard a single note directly from Zappa! It was later that I found a few who would listen and two who actually went to the '84 and '88 FZ concerts! I know there was a minor female attendance at those concerts but I swear that nine-out-of-ten were zonked on street drugs and going primarily because of their boyfriends and husbands and just didn't care where they were as long as it was a concert and somebody was performing live.

(A glaring exception I know personally is a friend of one of my sister's for whom I burnt a "YCDTOSA" CD, but she plays albums the way most people read paperback books: listen, enjoy, and store away until 'whenever' if 'whenever' comes. The book: I read it, liked it and tossed it on the pile; the album: I heard it, liked it and tossed it on the pile.)

One who passed by me in '88 was so excited about the number of concerts she had lined up for that week shrieked, "I can't believe this! Zappa tonight and Terrence-Trent Darby tomorrow night! That's just totally un-fucking-believable!" Someone who was with me looked at me and said, "She probably doesn't care where she is so long as she's wasted out of her skull and there's somebody onstage playing something, but to go from Zappa to Terrence-Trent Darby sounds really strange."

But the cry that, "Girls are so young today when they start having sex!", was loudly and clearly heard 30 years ago as much as it is today. As absurd as it is from the laughably ridiculous basis from which it was concocted by the CDC (CDC&P) and trumpeted recently by the hungry media's stenographers concerning how "1-of-every-4 teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease!", they still never learn how their credibility sinks lower.

What's different today is just a whole pile of visual nonsense right up front with just an incidental musical background going on. "It's not a song unless it has a video!", I remember one girl about 14 saying to a news reporter over 15 years ago when the local news was covering an appearance by some big-name with a month-long career at long-defunct local Tower Records and Video.

It's very hard to shock a lot of kids today because they're ore like their moms and dads at earlier ages and that's not as astonishing as we might think when we look back in history and find the average life expectancy to be around 35 to 40 years and having kids actually was done as fast as biologically possible.

What's warped today is the ever-accelerating telecommunications and the inability to process that information, just ingest it. ("I just realized my professor is full of shit but if I tell him that and why he is he'll ruin my chances at having a career!") Entertainment? "Who's the hottie?", has become the largest factor.

--Batty

_________________
<------PhotoArtWerk by debutante_daisy http://www.facebook.com/BatchainTheMovie

Feminism is a dead issue.

_________________
Country music + Black music = Rock and Roll

There are still people who study it. I wonder why... when I took a feminist class I ran away after a week. It was not academical, just plain bullshit.

_________________

Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

The Diversity Industry is the new feminism.

I look at Feminism and all those ethnocentric courses as nothing more than hate groups!

_________________

Someone call?
Oh!.....Sorry,....thought I heard my name....

_________________
You're probably wondering why I'm here
(not that it makes a heck of a lot of a difference to ya)

Hah! Quite the little authoritative judgement there. So how do you figure that? Based on what?




Yes to all of that. There are entire degrees in Women's Studies which amount to nothing more than sending out droves of women (and neutered men) with the belief that the answer to everything comes down to "it's all your fault, you bastards!" It's far from dead. It's more militant and whiney and one-sided and hateful than ever.

_________________
“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

Feminism (or "gender studies"), dear Swifty, is studying art and history of females. It is definitely true that there are very little women whose work belongs to any form of canon (list of things you must know/be familiar with).
Unfortunately it means their work is not looked into from an academic viewpoint. It just means their lives are being looked into, not their products.

In other words, it could've been good, but it's crap. Also remember: it's a young science. Science take decades, even centuries, to become interesting/useful. Feminism has changed a lot since it started. Maybe it'll become a respected science someday. Or not.

_________________

Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

apparently 'Planet Of The Baritone Women' is about 'metrosexual' (before the term was invented) yuppie MEN...

can't recall where I read that, but I'm sure we could find the reference if necessary

anyway... I think it's presumptuous to say feminism is a dead issue... it'd be nice to think it would go away because all those hairy ugly annoying women aren't particularly pleasant to look at or converse with

but to suggest it's gone away because women are now emancipated from the multiple stupidities they're encouraged to participate in, isn't really supported by the facts... we can have a big debate about it, but female role models are more appalling than they've ever been...

I don't think FZ was particularly 'sexist' because he looked down with disdain on everyone who wasn't Frank Zappa (or married to or the offspring of Frank Zappa)... and because he was driven to be especially fair-minded, didn't feel the need to leave stupid women out of his social commentaries... arguably that's not sexist

and his stuff about the difference between women and ladies etc is fair enough... he was identifying a strand of society that expects men to kiss ladies' asses in order to get laid.. again, fair game and not sexist

but let's not kid ourselves that women in western society aren't subject to all manner of bullshit they have to contend with... anyone who's pondered the existence of make-up, high heels and Paris Hilton as a prime role model knows this to be not true

look, most of us guys don't like feminism because it's all about ugly women who're even less likely to give up some pussy than normal women... right? yuk... we don't want to deal with that... but let's not pretend that there are no issues to be looked at here

I mean, I assume some of you people have heard of a song called 'Beauty Knows No Pain'...? "beauty is a coloured pencil scribbled all around your eye..."... that's about how society likes women the best if they shut up and look pretty, cover themselves in all kinds of pink stuff and keep smiling while we treat them like shit

far from being sexist, I think FZ showed remarkable empathy for women, and it's NOT an issue that's got better

_________________

http://www.thescottthuneseffect.com/

That sounds fine. But that's not how it comes out in America. It's a different thing here.

_________________
“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

Do you study gender issues then? Or have you recently studied them? There's a large difference in the "power to the busts" movements and the people that try to stay on the intellectual side of it, though they initially were the same.

_________________

Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

I just graduated from a university in 2006. I talked to a lot of people while I was there. Some of them were people who took these classes. I listened a lot. I looked at text books that people showed me or that I picked up off the shelf and browsed when I was over in the textbook services. I also heard how femist agendas were weaved into MY classes that had nothing to do with feminsm but the professor was a feminist so it got shoved in anyway. So I think I have a real good idea about what is going on and what agendas are being pushed and how they're doing it. It's warped and manipulative.

I'm 100% for recognizing the achievments of an individual who has done something great. I'm also 100% for equal pay for equal skills and results. I'm totally opposed to the rest of the bullshit that has been tacked on. Again, I think it's going to be a LOT different in an American school than in a European school so what I'm saying probably won't match up with what you experience over there.

_________________
“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

Yes... like in high school, the quality of a subject is largely depended on the teacher, so it's different per college really. Maybe some colleges in the US are more mild.
I understand Utrecht, where I study, has one of the better gender issues studies. If the Mrs Babs Butter was really giving good classes, why did she base her lectures on a handbag, and spend half an hour on talking about women in the canon using our street names? It's a pathetic image it's making.

_________________

Join the PackardGoose forum! Send me a PM!

I wouldn't call them mild in regards to gender (and race) issues, I'd call them aggressively biased.

_________________
“The person who stands up and says, 'This is stupid,' either is asked to behave or, worse, is greeted with a cheerful 'Yes, we know! Isn't it terrific!" -Frank Zappa

To me, feminism seems like any other social issue, whether it's race, religion, sexual orientation, lifestyle, masculinism (insert social issue) ect. Any of these, depending on the individual, can be a useful asset in moderation, but when one loses touch with moderation, they take on extreme views by letting themselves become consumed to the point where they adopt an elitist mindset and look down their noses at those who may either not share their views partially or entirely.

Is the woman's place in the home, taking on the role of human incubator or to don the suit and tie and run an international corporation? It's not my place to say one way or the other. In this day and age, at least in civilized societies, everyone is free to choose the lifestyle that best suits themselves (though it's not like this everywhere). Equality is a no brainer in regards to incomes and professional status. I'm hardly an authority on this subject but this is my impression from personal observations.

Q: in 'harry, you're a beast,' you lampoon what you call 'american womanhood.' would you be that blunt today?

FZ: oh, easily. I would change some of the lyrics, but there's no reason why I wouldn't comment on american womanhood. in fact, I'll make a comment for ya right now. the female of the species is divided into three sections. girls, ladies, and women. a girl waits around for a boy to kiss her on the lips. a lady expects every guy to kiss her ass. and a woman likes to have a man kiss her pussy. and that's how you can tell them apart.

Q: and american manhood?

FZ: well, the male of the species is divided into three sections. there are boys, guys, and men. a boy has the option of staying a boy all his life, growing up to be one of the guys, or he can grow up to be a man, okay? a guy wants to be with other guys because they do guy things and a man doesn't give a shit. and so, you can see that the girls pair off with the boys, the ladies pair off with the guys, and the women pair off with the men - if they can find each other. some people think that I'm just down on women. I am not. I'm down on anybody who wants to waste my time, whether they're a man, woman, dog, frog, vegetable, mineral, gas or liquid. I think that the only thing you're not gonna get back is time. If somebody's wasting your time, you gotta be a generous son-of-a-bitch to let 'em do it.

1984

_________________
"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

The more militant, whiney, one-sided and hateful the feminist, the sooner and more likely she'll be a ribbon magnet covered SUV driving Stepford wife and mother of 3 before she hits 30.

That, my friend, is why feminism is a dead issue.