Female Metal Fans

Metal has never been conducive to female audiences, continually degraded and exerting their ‘power’ over women by using them as tools.  They are often depicted as slaves, bound by chain or rope.  A vast majority of the famous metal bands are all male, so what attracts females to the scene?  Keith Kahn Harris describes many different reasons that metal fans begin listening to metal, but many of them are males.  I believe females start listening to metal for much of the same reasons, they feel alienated in society and want to escape their reality and enter the scene.  They find comfort in expressing their individuality, and they seek power that they feel society and the metal scene believe they are not as powerful as men.  From what I have observed in female metal fans is a desire to overcome and disprove the men of the metal scenes assumptions that women are weaker, in music and in real life.  A metal chick is the kind of girl who wouldn’t think twice about pouring a drink on you at a bar for saying something insulting or idiotic.  Girls that play in metal bands want to show the boys how it’s done.  They want to prove they are just as talented and can rock just as hard.  I went to metal show in Portland, Oregon when I was younger and one of the opening bands had a female lead guitarist.  At first, my friends and I looked at each other, laughed and scoffed that there is no way that girl is going to shred the lead solos.  And in fact, she shredded harder than any member of the headlining act.  I think the satisfaction of knowing that every guy in the room will have the exact same initial assumption about her playing skills gives her even more motivation to showcase her talent.  That is the mentality of a female metal fan.  They want to be just as metal as the guys, and often times they are.