Does a male musician need to worry about being too feminine?

Some people are really hung up on gender roles. I am not referring to women’s rights so much though that is part of it. What I am more referring to is their obsession with men learning to “act like men.”

As a quick aside, when I was growing up, that is how fighting was justified. Verses like “turn the other cheek” were not quoted so much. If someone hit a boy, adults generally encouraged him to “be a man” and hit them back. So I did. And suffice it to say I did a lot of fighting when I was growing up. All was good unless we started breaking things and then things got unpleasant.

Without saying anything negative about my childhood which was a very good childhood by the way, let’s just say that I am not on board with that thinking myself. I sort of think the “turn your other cheek” idea is applicable and I am not even sure where the Bible calls upon men to be ultra-masculine in the first place. But that being said, I do believe that there should be a distinction between the genders. That is a natural thing and there is little doubt that God created men and women distinctly different for very good reasons.

So yes, I am on board with men acting like men but I think some take it way too far. They elevate masculinity and degrade femininity. They have silly cliches that they use to judge boys and girls as to whether they are acting gender appropriate. We all know what those are: boys need to hunt, fish and play sports (and maybe fight a bit). Girls need to sew and cook mostly and play musical instruments. Boys can play the piano (but not the flute) as long as they play like a man.

When you stop and think about it, those cliches are ridiculous. But I want to remind you where they come from: our not-that-distant past. The truth is that we have actually come a long way in a short time. Remember that only 100 years ago, things were much worse; women were not even allowed to vote. In fact, through almost the entirety of history, women have not been treated as equals to men.

Now I am going to say something controversial. If you are on the conservative side of things like I am, you really have to watch yourself on this issue. One of the problems that conservatives have is that they are trying to conserve parts of history that have big problems such as gender inequality. So it is no accident that conservatives tend to be the ones that obsess about silly gender roles. And very frankly, the more dug in a conservative is, the more silly they are going to sound when discussing this particular topic.

In regards to music, here is an example of something silly: there are some conservatives who claim that the music of the church has become feminized. They think it is not march-like enough; it has become too flowing and pretty. Seriously… Those people need to join us in 2014 where our perspective on gender is considerably healthier than it was in 1914.

Though people with that belief system are rare, sometimes unhealthy gender beliefs still afflict us that are more moderately conservative. For example, I was a church for a while that had great music. But every time the men’s group sang, it was a song about battles and marching. That is not a bad thing necessarily or a sinful thing. But I don’t think it is necessarily a healthy thing.

Let’s face it: as a male pianist, I have to think about these things because of various stereotypes that exist. There are specific things that I do intentionally to remind people that I know I am male. But on the other hand, my music is intentionally emotionally-driven with a focus on beauty and I don’t pound the piano to prove my masculinity.

For those of you that are male musicians, just do your best without becoming a slave of silly stereotypes. There is nothing wrong with playing sensitively; the best musicians always play sensitively. Don’t worry about having too much emotional content either. Music that sounds like a battle song is almost certainly not good music.

Above all, don’t bang on the keyboard to prove you are a man. Maybe play a little more ummm like a woman.

And don’t let anybody tell you there is anything wrong with that.