Rockin’ Out of the Box: Gender Maneuvering in Alternative Hard Rock

Employing the crucial feminist insight that gender is a constantly shifting performance and not an essential quality related to sex, Mimi Schippers explores the gender roles, assumptions and transgressions of the men and women involved in the hard rock scene. The author focuses on this sizeable section of rock music both because it is widely inclusive of men and women and because it explicitly adopted feminism as its point of departure from mainstream music. Schippers uses the innovated term gender manoeuvering to explain her observations that gender and sexuality are negotiated and always changing features of social relations. This process, she demonstrates, operates as a cultural practice and as an individual strategy of resistance to socially prescribed gender roles. Schippers, who spent more than two years frequenting alternative hard rock clubs and concerts in Chicago, conducted extensive interviews with fans as well as musicians, including Ian MacKaye of Fugazi, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Donita Sparks and Jennifer Finch of L7, and Louise Post and Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt.