The Twin Forms of Admiration

I've noticed something about music. As ever, it's a generalisation. Plus, it's a little anecdotal. However, it seems to be a thing. Basically I've noticed that all my friends tend to prefer music that's sung by men. These are male friends. (I don't speak to women enough to have a solid data sample.) Anyway, if I recommend my friends music it's always a much harder sell if the singer is female. This is in contrast to how I am. I have a bias towards females. All things being equal I prefer the added bonus of having a beautiful women fill my airwaves. In fact, they don't even have to be especially beautiful. When you have a data sample as small as mine any feminine figure will do.

I would say I'm surprised by this difference. However, in truth, I'm not, as I noticed the very same thing in myself a long time ago. When I was a teenager. Back then I too largely only listened to music sang by males. I picked myself up on this and questioned why. The answer was obvious: I was looking for role models. I was looking for something that I could be. That I could imitate. That I could aspire to.

It was the exact same reason why I had posters of male footballers on my bedroom wall. It wasn't just admiration, it was also aspiration. That player is good at football. I want to be good at football like that player. It was about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be. So naturally when I started learning to play guitar as a fifteen year old it was similar. I wasn't listening to music just to passively consume it. I was looking for a path. A gang to join. Something I could copy and learn from.

So the female artist. The Madonna, or the even the Sheryl Crow or Tori Amos, wasn't useful to me. I didn't want to be a woman doing dance moves on a stage. Or any female figure at all. I wanted to be a Damon Albarn or Noel Gallagher. It wasn't just a question of the music being good or bad. It had to be good and helpful to my pursuit of success. Be it actual musical success or just general social success - i.e. having a good self-image and presenting that to other people.

Again, similar to football, where men will adopt football as part of their self-image long after any hope of making it as a professional player has gone. Just to be one of the lads, or to look manly or whatever. Sure, there may be a genuine love of the game, but it's also a social modus. See, for example, the politician tweeting about the latest England match to look relatable. We all do it to some degree, and it's largely subconscious. Most people tend not to do it as cynically as the politician does it.

Returning to my own realisation, I remember having a sense of internal conflict at the time.

"Hang on, why am I not judging Sheryl Crow in as high esteem as I judge Noel Gallagher?"

Objectively her songs are classics too, yet subjectively I won't quite admit it.

When I confronted this bias I began to understand my own personal framing. I'm male, I have a male bias. After that it really widened up my appreciation of music.

Of course, it helps if you're a bit of an effeminate male anyway, which I was. So it wasn't a huge leap, and once I realised I was free to copy off the girls as well as the boys the flood gates really opened - as far as musical influences went. Then I did begin to internalise and take to heart Sheryl Crow and Tori Amos and Fiona Apple and all the other female artists that appealed to me. The same way that I'd taken Blur and Oasis to heart.

Nevertheless, I wasn't that androgynous. I didn't go full David Bowie. I still copied the males more. I still wanted to be outwardly male and successful, I was just much more aware that I was doing it, and I didn't let that impulse skew my tastes.

[I've touched upon this theme before: Beauty, Self-Image and Gender

See also the Strawberry Jam series.]

Many Years Later

Now, many years later, I've completely given up any dreams of 'making it' as a musician. So now my enjoyment of music is purely as a consumer, and thanks to my self-awareness my bias has shifted in the opposite direction. Making it easier for the girls to get my attention.

[Music has moved to right hand side of the chart for me. See below.]

Whenever I see my male friends react to female sung music it seems obvious that they're still in the teenage mode though. Where music is wholly tied up with their self-image. This might be a little patronising on my part. Though I think I've earnt it, as there aren't too many straight males that openly walked into HMV at the age of nineteen and bought the Immaculate Collection, because they valued the genius of the music above looking like a blazing homosexual.

There's a social cost to being this honest.

The Twin Forms of Admiration

Above: the two types of admiration.

The role model, or 'man crush,' on the one side.

On the other, the people of the opposite sex that we're attracted to - our actual crush.

In very straight, normie-type people these things tend to be very clearly separated. Music, football, other pursuits are in one category. Supermodels, strippers and sweethearts are in the other. For less orthodox people these two sides can get confused though. (Or synthesised if you develop a self-awareness of it.)

So, in fairness to my friends that don't like 'girly' music, it's largely because they're very straight and normal. It's not a failing per se, though it does limit the parameters of what they allow themselves to like and enjoy.

It's just the way of the world to some extent, and I should know it's foolish to expect them to objectively judge a K-pop song.

A simpler example would be wearing a pink t-shirt. It's not a question of liking it or not liking it. In fact, a man might like the pink t-shirt if it's being worn by Winona Ryder (I've re-watched the movie Heathers recently). It's more that the very notion of wearing a pink t-shirt is off limits to the male mind, as the male self-image precludes it. What with pink being de facto the girl colour.

This all works the same way for women too, of course. Only flipped backwards. They aspire to be like other women and admire men as objects of attraction, not as something to imitate. In a general sense.

It's obvious stuff, but if you point it out to people - especially in relation to their own tastes - they'll shriek and protest that all their judgements are strictly impartial.

It's a very interesting thing to consider in relation to art and music.

USA OUT!

The USA crashed out to Belgium in the World Cup last night. It was a strange game.

Firstly, I've been supporting the USA (as my second team - the real magic happened the night before). I even had a little £20 bet on them before the tournament. After the first few games that was looking like a not-so-bad outside punt. The USA had a real sparkle. After last night it looks like the actions of a dribbling idiot. When I go back into work on Thursday there'll certainly be a few "I told you so" remarks.

Part of my rationale for the bet was, "With Trump in the White House anything can happen."

I think that's backfired on me a bit though, as politics certainly did intrude, and it seemed to have a psychological impact.

On paper having your main striker available is a net positive, but things aren't so simple off paper.

Let's Explain The Situation..

So what happened?

In the previous game striker Folarin Balogun got sent off. In footballing terms this was a dreadful decision (in my opinion). He stood on a guy's foot, but it was totally unintentional. It was just one of these accidental comings-together, and naturally it looked much worse in slow motion. At the time I made the observation that judging a player's intent from a two second slowed-down clip is like judging the intention of a driver in a car accident using a two second clip of two bumpers impacting each other. It completely removes the wider context. It also misrepresents the sheer speed at which these things are happening and how limited human reaction times are.

We've seen countless examples in recent years of players being unfairly sent off simply because the mangled bumper footage looks gruesome in slow motion.

[I've posted on a similar theme over on Substack - yes, like everybody else, I'm on Substack now.

The Handball of the British Empire

I'm posting about football more these days as I feel the technocratic rule changes are a very good illustration of how technocracy is impacting wider society in general.]

Back to the USA

Anyhow, Balogun got unfairly sent off, and that meant he would miss the next game. In fact, it could've been even worse for the USA, as they were only 1-0 up at the time and going down to ten men could've cost them the tie. So it was a very unfair decision, but they overcame it to win 2-0.

Understandably they weren't happy about their star striker missing the next game.

Then Trump got on the phone..

Here's where it gets political. The red card was overturned (technically it wasn't overturned, the suspension was just delayed for a year, but that's the gist). Officially it was an independent decision, however, in reality the general view is that the intervention from Trump played a part.

Normally this doesn't happen in world cups. Normally red cards aren't overturned after the fact. No matter how unfair they may be. As it opens a can of worms. Though, to be fair, generally in football suspensions are appealed and sometimes overturned.

Either way, it doesn't make things any more fair overall, as you then run into the question of who decides what should and shouldn't be reviewed? Where does it end?

Is every game going to be re-refereed post hoc by a committee? Is it fair that teams that show sportsmanship and don't contest decisions suffer the disadvantage?

At the end of the day you should accept that the game finishes at the final whistle and that sometimes things happen within the game that are unfair.

The Terrible Performance

So before last night's game against Belgium there was a sense that the USA team had been given a helping hand by Trump. The USA went from being besieged underdogs fighting against the odds to the team that were getting special treatment. In contrast Belgium were now the fired-up underdogs with a sense of grievance.

This seemed to translate onto the pitch. The USA players all looked like they had stage fright. There wasn't a clear purpose to anything they did. They looked like imposters. Belgium, without being brilliant, simply dominated the game.

Now, expectedly, the whole affair is being used to bash Trump and America. This is unfair in my opinion. As firstly, it's been a great tournament. America (along with Canada and Mexico) have been great hosts and every stadium has looked fantastic. Then secondly, this politicisation of football is common now, so the USA have just done what everyone else is doing. Every club and country runs to the ombudsman these days. The Belgian counter-appeals have hardly been a model of sportsmanship either.

(It's kind of funny and fitting that once again it's Brussels versus the US 😅)

Recently we had the Southampton spy-gate saga - for which I had a front row seat.

I Travelled To Wembley Hoping My Team Would Lose

We also had the Senegal AFCON controversy. Everywhere we look we see lawyers, politicians, committees and fiddling bureaucrats.

No one ever says, "It's just a game, things went against us today. Let's just get on with it." Like how men are supposed to behave. And how we'd teach children to behave.

In The End

To conclude, the result was probably the right result for the game of football. Had the USA went through there would've been an asterisk next to it, and we'd have never heard the last of it. Hopefully everyone will learn a lesson from this, but I doubt they will.

Now it's all on England. Though apparently we're now considering an appeal against the Quansah red card. Smh.