gender fender bender

[Sean Wilson <krwilson@weir.net>]

Yellow "boiled egg" Ledbetter: you STARTED glow girls? I'm impressed. 
I'm also stunned you did not find offense in the name of the group,
which is a the title for Pete's 1960-something composition about an
airplane crash. Isn't your status as the country's first "glow girl" a
tag which you find just a LITTLE offensive?  I notice your nickname in
this Digest is not "Worlds First Glow Girl" or "Number One Glow Girl."

I'll tell you one of things I find offensive about gender benders like
you: You like to exaggerate a premise to the point where it can be
attacked.  I NEVER said that women fans were not true fans and were only
exposed to the group my men.  I also NEVER said that women fans secretly
pretended to like the group to appease males. What I SAID was that there
was a dearth of women fans at Indianpolis, but not so much of a dearth
in Charolette.  Like it or not, there WERE guys in Indianapolis who
brought their girlfriends to the show, and those birds who came as
someone's "date" knew diddly squat about the group. True, there probably
were exceptions, but I'm just telling you what I encountered. My friend
and I spent about four hours tailgating and walking around the
amphatheater specifically looking for other people, usually females, who
were as much into the Who as we were. We were also looking for good
leads on area boots. When you travel around the country following the
Who, it's nice to get as many connections as you can so the boots can
keep flowing.

Once again, my submission to the digest was an effort to find TRUE
female fans, and to solicit input as to why a genuine gender gap
existed.  Your objection was more to the TONE of the submission, not its
SUBSTANCE.  Typically, you then created a fictional premise and had fun
ragging on it (oh boy, that was a bad one.).

As to your legitimate complaint about my diction, I think you are being
oversensative. The term "birds" was deployed purely to promote colorful
informal tone, and no grammer rules of which I am aware have banned 60s
lore.  Besides, I dig the era.  

I also find it interesting that you still do not want to play the game. 
You STILL will not offer educated speculation as to why women do not dig
the who, on average, as often as men do. Some of the reasons that others
of your gender offered to me were not only damn-honest and enlightening,
but, unfortunetly, created stereotypes that you would like.  Many women
said they dig Roger's bod (you wouldn't want to offer that as a possible
reason, right).  Others said they identified with Pete's sensitive side
(another little stereotype that would not be good, huh?).  Yet another
bird suggested that maybe females were not as into guitar smashing,
hotel destruction, etc., as males, on average, were (would that one
create a problem for you?).

My own hypothesis is really the most gender neutral of all of the ones
offered so far: Much of Pete's writing is about frustrated male
adolescence.  When I was a teenager, that is what first hit me about the
group.  I've always feared that characters like Jimmy in Quadraphenia
and, to a much smaller extent, Tommy, were written from such a male
perspective that females could not as readily relate to them (look at
what happened to poor Sally Simpson). I think the intelligent responses
provided to me proved me wrong.

By the way, I'm a lawyer now. If you want, why don't you e-mail me, tell
me where you live, and maybe we can hook up sometime. I won't call you a
"bird" to your face, and you can call me anything you want.