Hi all, I would hope that in these days of equality and maybe political correctness this male dominated area of music-geeks has moved on enough to respect our female colleagues. If these examples are still prevalent or still being cited as normal behaviour, I'm sure even our male colleagues would be put off attending workshops. We should all show and earn respect.
Playing the lute should be purely a demonstration of our artistic abilities and not hide the fact we have other interesting pursuits as well. Here in the UK a geek is called an anorak. A term derived from those with the hobby of train-spotting. They would wear bright orange anoraks (jackets) and travel all over the country just to stand by the tracks and note a particular engine number. Thankfully, our hobby is mostly home-based! Best Wishes Ron (UK) David Tayler wrote >This is a real problem, and not a simple one. I'm not the expert >here, obviously, and never will be, but I have some indirect experience. On the one hand, the lute model is the opposite of the viol model. Many women play the viol, and the organization of the societies for viol encourages that. The lute has failed miserably in this respect. On the other hand, I have received numerous complaints from women who went to lute workshops about the way they were treated. The most typical complaint is having four guys follow a female lute player around on breaks, being treated differently for no apparent reason other than gender, for example, being asked to play lute duets in preference to more experienced players, and so on. I have had people tell me they would not come back, nor go to ANY workshop as a result of their experiences. Of course, some of this goes on at any workshop. I don't really have a solution, except that the viols do this better, maybe we can learn from them. Part of it may be the emphasis on part music. Most of it must be a comfort level. dt To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
