Trygga Rum: En studie kring separation, kropp och känsla i könsseparatistiska musiksammanhang

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate how participants and organisers of separatist musical contexts experience the environment within these spaces based on norms, emotions and body. The theoretical framework mainly draws on Sara Ahmed’s (2014) theories on body and affect written in The Cultural Politics of Emotion. The analysis of the informants’ perceived gender norms also includes Michel Foucault's theories about subject/power and Judith Butler's gender performativity. In order to meet our aim, we have conducted six qualitative interviews with women who have experience as participants and/or organisers of different separatist music organisations. The informants' statements as well as their experiences were analysed using discursive analysis. Furthermore, this study highlights how feminist ideas are adopted and changed over time, especially around questions of essence, gender construction and separation. The results of our research indicate that musical contexts outside gender-separatist spaces are characterised by forms of inequality in terms of perceived undermining of music-making women and transgender people. The informants believe that this perceived undermining results in diminished self-esteem, negative emotional charges linked to instruments and rehearsal rooms as well as disciplinary restrictions on one's own music-making. They further state that gender-separatist musical contexts counter the negative effects of inequality and promote women's and trans people's freedom of action in music. Thus, one could argue that these contexts are important as strategies for gender equality within music as they provide safe spaces, where female performativity, performance anxiety and learned masculine attitudes can be challenged.