Rave, Jewish Punks and Female Masturbation

Some interesting pieces on The Guardian today: - the secret history of the UK's 'punky Jews' - images of 90s rave culture - pop music and female masturbation

NME Awards 2014 - Blondie

Nice to see Blondie receive the NME 2014 award for Godlike Genius. There has been some backlash over this, namely that this is the first time a female musician will have been awarded this (emphasis on musician, see Penny Smith 2002). And fair enough, that considering how many female musicians there are there does appear to be a disproportionate amount of male musicians who have received the award. Not too convincing are the mumblings regarding the award being given to Blondie as a band, rather than Debbie Harry in her own right (it's been awarded to bands previously to recognise the genius of said band, their collective effort). But that aside, it does seem to further emphasise that despite the increasing numbers of females in the music industry (whether creating, playing, producing or distributing), there is still a prevalent focus on the men. On a side note...also disappointing to see a number of news reports on Blondie's receipt of this award using very dated images of the band. They're still active so why not use an image which reflects them today?

Post-Youth Punk Women

So as well as trying to be better at updating this blog, I'm now opening it up to include things related to my PhD and perhaps also my sociology teaching. Not that it's going to be that much of a divergence since gender is a prevailing issue within both. I'm in my second year of a part-time PhD in Sociology. The working title is Typical Girls? An Exploration of Post-Youth Punk Women 'Being' and 'Doing' Punk and I want to explore questions such as: How do ageing female punks maintain a punk identity? How is this punk identity expressed? How does a punk identity interact with an ageing identity and life events? What is the relationship between femininity, the body, ageing and 'being punk?' What, if any, significance does the internet/virtual communities hold for post-youth punks?

It's getting to the point now where beginning to actually do research is approaching and a main concern for me is the digital side of the research; how to go about it, whether it's going to be of any use. A second concern is actually finding post-youth punk women who are willing to talk to me! So these are issues I'm thinking about right now. Get in touch with anything you think might be of interest to me.