Rock 'N' Roll Camp for Girls and Feminist Quests for Equity, Community, and Cultural Production

Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses Studies 7-31-2006 I'm Not Loud Enough to be Heard: Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls and Feminist Quests for Equity, Community, and Cultural Production Stacey Lynn Singer Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Singer, Stacey Lynn, "I'm Not Loud Enough to be Heard: Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls and Feminist Quests for Equity, Community, and Cultural Production." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2006. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/2 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. I’M NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO BE HEARD: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS AND FEMINIST QUESTS FOR EQUITY, COMMUNITY, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION By STACEY LYNN SINGER Under the Direction of Susan Talburt ABSTRACT Because of what I perceive to be important contributions to female youth empowerment and the construction of culture and community, I chose to conduct a qualitative case study that explores the methods utilized in the performance of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, as well as the experiences of camp administrators, participants, and volunteers, in order to identify feminist constructs, aims, and outcomes of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. My interests lie in the feminist and activist approaches in the construction and production of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, as well as in the quest for equity, community building, and the production of culture that arises through participation. This thesis discusses the themes of feminism, feminist activism, networking, community building, cultural production, and the waging of equity as they are found in the production and performance of Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. INDEX WORDS: Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, Feminism, Equity, Community, Cultural Production I’M NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO BE HEARD: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS AND FEMINIST QUESTS FOR EQUITY, COMMUNITY, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION by STACEY LYNN SINGER A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2006 Copyright by Stacey Lynn Singer 2006 I’M NOT LOUD ENOUGH TO BE HEARD: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS AND FEMINIST QUESTS FOR EQUITY, COMMUNITY, AND CULTURAL PRODUCTION by STACEY LYNN SINGER Major Professor: Susan Talburt Committee: Layli Phillips Kathryn McClymond Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2006 iv DEDICATION This project is dedicated to all the campers and activists at Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. And to every girl who has ever had her volume turned down by someone else. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I extend a heartfelt and resounding thank you to my thesis chair, Dr. Susan Talburt. Her guidance has led me to this place. Thank you, also, to my committee members Dr. Kathryn McClymond and Dr. Layli Phillips, whose suggestions helped to enrich this project. I gratefully acknowledge the faculty of the Women’s Studies Institute at Georgia State University for awarding me a graduate research assistantship and The Ethel Woodruff Draper Research Fellowship in the Development of Young Women. Many thanks, of course, to Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for girls for allowing me to observe, interview, and participate. I thank my parents, Deena Davis, Larry Davis, and Larry Singer; and my sister Tara Wieghat, for their unwavering support and encouragement throughout this investigation. I am also honored to extend gratitude to my friends Deb Davis, Patrick McColery, Sarah Spencer, Dianne Vagnini, and Katie May Weinstock for seeing me through, each in their own way, and in some way, at every turn. Thank you, also, to Amy Ray and Andrea White at Daemon Records for putting up with my hectic research schedule. Lastly, I humbly acknowledge my elders and ancestors, whose wisdom and guidance transcends time and space. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ….…………………………………….……………… v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………… 1 This is a Man’s World: A Review of Literature …………………...…….. 7 Research Questions and Methods……………………………….………... 26 Glory Days ………………………………………………………….......... 40 On With the Show ………………………………………………………... 46 2 (YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE) A NATURAL WOMAN: NATURALIZING EQUITY AND CRITICAL THOUGHT IN EARLY GIRLHOOD DEVELOPMENT …………………………………………….. 49 A Panel Discussion with The Donnas ……..……………………………... 51 Zines .....…………………………………………………………………... 58 Image and Identity …....……………………………….…………………. 65 Self-Defense ………………………………….…………………………... 73 How to Rock in the Free World ….…………………………………......... 77 Concluding Remarks …………………………………………..……......... 82 3 YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION: FROM RIOT GRRRL TO LADYFEST TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS AND BEYOND ……………………………………………………………… 84 Riot Grrrl: Ladyfest: Rock Camp …...…………………………………... 87 And Beyond …………………………………………………….………... 93 Concluding Remarks ……………………………………………………... 102 4 LIKE A BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER: RACE, CLASS, AND FEMINISM AT ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS …………………..... 104 Race ………………………………………………………………………. 104 Class ……………………………………………………………………… 114 Feminism …………………………………………………………………. 119 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………... 127 REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………… 134 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION It is not a new or secret concept. In American society girls and boys are not awarded the same opportunities. Of course, this is assuming that there are but two sexes. But until our social structures evolve to consider and include gender variations and inter- and transsexuals, sexual divisions will remain as they have, between male and female. Gendered and sexual divisions are apparent in the way we are socialized. From as early as birth, girls are swaddled in pink and are given dolls and baking ovens as play toys to encourage identification with the mother and promote girls’ development towards homemaking and life in the private sphere. According to theorist and former punk Lauraine Leblanc (1999), girls “fall victim to a socialization process that robs them of the qualities of self-reliance, efficacy, and assurance” (p. 8). Boys, on the other hand, are encouraged to play more destructively or technically, and are steered towards toys emulating the violence of war or the construction of architecture. These toys are meant to encourage boys’ development towards life in the public sphere as they pretend to do the work of their fathers. In these ways and more, “conventions of femininity [carry] the implicit and explicit messages to girls and women that they should not be too independent in their thinking, too outspoken, or too responsive to their own desires if they [are] to be accepted in the world” (Taylor, 1994, p. 32). 2 As I stated, this is not new information. During the mainstream (white) U.S. women’s movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, feminist theorists recognized that the funneling of girls and boys towards specifically ascribed social divisions was damaging to personal and community development. Nancy Chodorow drew “attention to the ways in which culture…privileged masculine personality and experience and devalued that of females” (Taylor, 1994, p. 34), and Carol Gilligan found that “girls lose their ‘voice’ as they mature. Girls not only become literally less audible, but their speech is more halting, less certain, their statements, when uttered at all, less assured” (Leblanc, 1999, p. 10). This funneling perpetuated social and economic inequities that were easy for many who studied them to understand, but difficult to challenge. For it is easier to recognize inequity than it is to correct it, especially because, according to Jean Baker Miller, race, class, and gender are underlying conditions that lead to permanent inequality and the formation of dominant and subordinate groups (Taylor, 1994, p. 35, emphasis added). And while Miller includes race and class in her analyses, leaders and theorists of the second-wave feminist movement on the whole under-addressed (at best) the race- and class-based inequities that many U.S. Third World and Black feminists such as Cherríe Moraga, Patricia Hill Collins, and Gloria Anzaldúa have since shown exist. Hence, Reagan-era claims made by the media and right wing groups that the feminist fight had been won and feminism was dead and buried were untrue and grossly premature.1 The struggle was, and is, nowhere near complete. Moreover, voices that were under- represented in the white, mainstream feminist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s were 1 See Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. 3 finally coming to be heard in the ‘80s and ‘90s and helped to create awareness among feminists that the struggle was not one, but, in fact, many struggles against “multiple oppressions of class, race, homophobia, and sexism” (Roth, 2004, p. xi). Ideologically, third-wave feminist discourse locates its own beginnings in response to the post-feminism touted by the mainstream media during the Reagan-Bush era. Post-feminism claims that the strides made by second-wavers towards women’s equality and other rights (such

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