What's so amusing?

[Denny]

that's the ticket!

intimidation!



an' hangin' with people that run slower than you!

[Kirk B]

When anyone ever questioned my flute playing as a way to question my manhood I would grab them up by the front of their shirts and threaten to beat the living hell out of them until they literally crapped.

I'm a pretty big guy so it usually never gets that far... besides I have some pretty savvy and cool friends.

Me too... 6'2" 210 lbs. And I have plenty of savvy and cool friends too but they're all back in Portland.

[talasiga]

...it's the flute: -- i.e., guys who play any kind of flute are a little bit suspect.

It's all Ted Boehm's fault. Before Boehm, flutes were male if they were gendered at all. This is still the case for the Chinese dizi, for instance, and for other 'ethnic' simple system flutes*.
.....

More inane absolute statements from whatsy.

Bansi the common noun for bansuri in Hindi is nf (feminine gender noun).
Also, some of the oldest cave paintings in India (Ajanta/Ellora) show nubile maidens playing transverse flutes.

[Nanohedron]

Well, Talasiga, it's true that there are records that at least in Western European society the transverse flute was for a time stereotypically considered a man's instrument (certainly true in Scotland, and there the cittern was emblematically a woman's instrument. I play both. Oh dear.). The popular explanatory theories tend to be these: men were credited - pedestrianly - with more lungpower than women; then there are the tiredly predictable Freudian associations from which a woman of refinement should shy; and then there's the suggestion that no wellbred lady ought to allow her face to be vulgarly contorted by playing flutes, whistles, mouthblown pipes, the like. I do recall reading something about how in French society the invention of bellows-blown pipes made it newly acceptable for women to play them during fêtes champêtres...I imagine that was providing they still didn't make faces trying to operate them.

[Denny]

.... bet that faces thing would rule out electric guitar too

[jemtheflute]

Further to Nano's comments, I also understood S1m0n's "gendered" post to be referring to cultural and physical expectations and limitations regarding playing of transverse flutes by men rather than women - not to linguistic masculinity or femininity - after all, in English (what we be writing yur) most nouns are not gender-specific, although in most of the Romance languages the various forms of the word "flute" are almost universally feminine, indeed. In English the word itself has no linguistic gender expectation or "flavour" at all (in the way that ships and other vehicles tend to be "she").

It remains true that the standard size (D) simple system concert flute remains challenging for many women's hands to span comfortably.

It might also be noted that the vast majority of "virtuoso" level classical (Bohm) fluters both historic and current whose names are well known in mainstream classical and even popular musical awareness are male, even today - which for sure probably reflects the usual gender politics associated with career building etc. rather than musical ability - there are many equally fine women players, but at the top they are under-represented, especially when compared to the huge dominance of girls at school level and in the overall uptake of the instrument. Mind you, two of the top half dozen or so Period Instrument players (on wide-space tone-holed wooden, baroque flutes) are women, Lisa Besnoziuk and Rachel Brown.

A certain acquaintance of mine has a distressing anthropomorphic tendency to give his musical instruments personal names - I find this uncomfortable (though I'm quite happy to give boats names and can live not too uncomfortably with cars having names, though don't generally give them myself.....) but don't care what gender names he gives them (mostly, if not all masculine, I think).

[Nanohedron]

.... bet that faces thing would rule out electric guitar too

And that was then and this is now, of course. These days if you're a rockin' grrrrl you gotta be fierce.

[Denny]

another one bites the dust

[Cathy Wilde]

.... bet that faces thing would rule out electric guitar too

And that was then and this is now, of course. These days if you're a rockin' grrrrl you gotta be fierce.

[Nanohedron]

A certain acquaintance of mine has a distressing anthropomorphic tendency to give his musical instruments personal names - I find this uncomfortable (though I'm quite happy to give boats names and can live not too uncomfortably with cars having names, though don't generally give them myself.....) but don't care what gender names he gives them (mostly, if not all masculine, I think).

I used to have a flute that I named An Casúr (Irish for "The Hammer"). I liked that name, and it was a powerful flute so the name fit. But now that my present flute has a two-body setup going, naming it seems just downright impossible. "Castor and Pollux"?......um, no. No, I don't think so.

[Cathy Wilde]

Cain and Abel? Carrot and Stick?

Me, I can't quite get over the feeling that naming your instrument's a little like naming your ... ummmm ... well ... your instrument. Then again, throughout her life my namesake and great aunt Catherine had 14 cats, every last one named "Cat," so maybe it's a family thing (or else we just like the letters c, a, & t).

And I must admit I did toy with calling my wee banana flute "Hesperus" since it was sort of a wreck when I got it.

[Denny]

there's the Twiddle brothers....


or Diddly Dee & Diddly Dum

[Nanohedron]

Crasher and Bollocks.

Me, I can't quite get over the feeling that naming your instrument's a little like naming your ... ummmm ... well ... your instrument.

Is that there one o' them doo-blond-tawn-druzz?

It IS kinda creepazoid, I admit. But in my defense, I only did the naming thing once...and I mean the flute. Cheeky monkey.

On the other hand, if your weapon of choice is bestowed a name by others and it sticks and is referred to by that name, that's definitely different. Sort of like a legendary status. Hopefully it will be some kind of an honor.

[s1m0n]

...it's the flute: -- i.e., guys who play any kind of flute are a little bit suspect.

It's all Ted Boehm's fault. Before Boehm, flutes were male if they were gendered at all. This is still the case for the Chinese dizi, for instance, and for other 'ethnic' simple system flutes*.
.....

More inane absolute statements from whatsy.

Bansi the common noun for bansuri in Hindi is nf (feminine gender noun).

I'm not talking about grammatic gender.

Also, some of the oldest cave paintings in India (Ajanta/Ellora) show nubile maidens playing transverse flutes.

The correlation isn't absolute, by any means. But isn't Krishna the best-known flute player in Indian mythology?

[Aanvil]

The correlation isn't absolute, by any means. But isn't Krishna the best-known flute player in Indian mythology?

Quite obsessed with it he is... I hear he will play until blue in the face.