Music and Gender

 Music has always been a huge part of my life. My mom was a singer who was studying musical theatre and my dad played the guitar and the drums. My mom taught me to love musicals like the music man and ballets like the nutcracker. My dad gave me my appreciation for Slipknot and Eminem. While writing this and thinking about the music I grew up with, I accidentally unlocked a core memory. I had to text my mom and spend way too long trying to figure out what that one song with that weird music video my dad used to play for us all the time was. Since I spent so much time tracking it down, here it is.

I grew up in a small southern town that was very, very Christian. My mom was the church secretary and so we went pretty regularly. There were certain beliefs that were impressed upon me from a young age concerning gender and sexuality. It was a very sheltered existence that hindered me in a lot of ways. 

Confirmation class was a requirement for teenagers at our church, as it is at a lot of churches, and this was the start of the turning point for me. After confirmation class, we’d have a youth service. I very desperately wanted a turn as the leader, but only the boys were allowed to do that. The girls were expected to sing. In regular service, I wanted to do a reading, but only men did the readings. I could sing a solo if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to sing a song that would have been considered an extra addition to that Sunday’s service. I wanted to be a part of the regular service and do a reading. As a musician, I never minded singing but it was still frustrating that that was seen as the women’s job in the service. The men would sing too, but they could also lead the service. Women could not. 

In school, I was in the choir. We were all girls, not because we had to be but because boys just didn’t join the choir. We were separated in sopranos 1s and 2s and altos and even in a group of all women, there were still almost gender roles assigned to each section. The sopranos were more feminine and the altos were mostly tomboys or more masculine presenting. I started out as a soprano 1 and I liked that, that fit my voice and it fit who I was. But the teacher developed an issue with me during my first year. If it was my fault, I have absolutely no idea what I did, but she moved me to alto, maliciously, and I was devastated. That was not who I was or who I wanted to be. At the time it felt more upsetting than it should have been. When it came time for solo and ensemble tryouts, we were allowed to choose our own songs but my teacher required us to have a private session with her. I had picked soprano songs and she would not listen to me. She told me there was no way I sounded any good and she would bring me a book to choose from. She came back with a book for tenors and I was horribly offended. I was a girl and she brought me boy songs. She gave me an ultimatum; I either sang from that book or I did not go. So I did not go. The thought of singing a boy song was beyond embarrassing.

When I moved on to highschool, there were two choirs. There was a girls choir, but the other choir was the one you wanted to be in, it was the elite choir group because it had boys. I was accepted into that choir and when he placed me in soprano 1, all was right in my world. 

During that middle school period, I started struggling with my sexuality. Growing up, I didn’t know any gay people. Until about that age, I didn’t really believe they existed because I’d only heard of homosexuality in a religious context. Being gay was a sin and who would choose to be gay? So I really, really struggled with coming out as gay. I felt guilty and sinful and lost, but through all of that, my gender was a sort of comfort. I was a woman and I knew that about myself. 

But that wasn’t really true either and it was through music that I started to learn more about myself. I felt so limited, only ever singing songs for girls. There were so many great songs for guys that I wanted to sing but I couldn’t because I was a girl and girls don’t sing boy songs. I had to explore why do I want to sing boy songs? Is it really because I just like the music? Or is there more to it? In my case, there was more. And so I started singing boy songs. Sometimes I have to change the key, I can only go so low, but it became a form of gender expression for me. I could sing this song that was meant for a man to sing and no one needed to know what it really meant for me. 

Coming out to myself as nonbinary meant being comfortable singing songs meant for either gender. I don’t have to be limited to one side or another. As I get older, I see how blurry the lines always were but growing up in a small, southern, Christian town, it felt like I had a very specific box to fit into. It defined not only the music I sang but how I should present myself as well. I’m very feminine most of the time, and I’m very comfortable with that now that I’ve learned that it doesn’t define me or the music I can make. I have always felt that music and my gender were very closely related, but the relationship changed. When I was struggling with my sexuality, it was “I am a woman and as a woman I sing pretty high notes in parts meant for women to sing” and when that changed it gave me the freedom to express myself in ways that I haven’t to most other people. 

I’ve found recent developments in musical theatre to be very exciting because there are male roles that I would like to play without being seen as a woman playing a man. The current Company revival has a woman playing the lead, which was previously a man. The production is viewed as having genderbent the character, but that’s still progress towards gender no longer defining what roles people can play. With that in mind, here’s a couple of “boy songs” in traditionally male roles that I absolutely love to sing.