Gender Equality?? (Yumi)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the effeminate aristocrats started to take “the guilt of the courtier” off, and to shift toward the natural masculine beauty. Around the same time Rousseau was criticizing the effeminacy of aristocrats, there was a movement against the new classical idioms in north Germany. Hiller describes the minuets in symphonies as beauty spots on the face of a man (144). The feminine characteristics of minuets weaken the unity of symphonies created by other three serious movements.
Head attributes this criticism to the widespread ambivalence to French culture in north Germany. In France, as we read in Le Guin’s article, women had more prominent roles both in family and society. For example, salonnières were the ones who directed discussions in the salon. The discourse on effeminacy was a response of north-German composers, where men were still dominating the nation, to the rampant French culture and the raise of the gallant style to protect their national identity.
While explaining why some specific genres are considered as feminine/masculine, Head also insists that being feminine is not bad, but mixing the works of opposite-gendered characteristics diminishs the unity of the work and thus ruin the magnificence. On the other hand, he insists the superiority of north-German manliness. By analyzing the Concerto by C. P. E Bach, he makes a point that the great composers such as C. P. E. Bach can compose works with a minuet, which is considered as a feminine genre, without eroding the masculine sublimity of the work.
Although Head writes this article mostly from north-German view point, he questions the tendency toward masculinization of the music today. Music scholars now only discuss genres in terms of musical forms. Indeed, the discourse on gender and genre, which underlie the eighteenth-century music and society, still deserves consideration.


Question:

1. In the beginning, Head writes that European aristocrats started to threw the effeminate decorations away. On the contrary, north Germans criticized that the music at that time took an effeminate turn. Why do you think this contradiction happened?

2. North-German composers argued that mixing the two opposite-gendered characteristics ruins the unity and thus push down the value of symphonies. On the contrary, now people claim the equality of the sexes, and eliminate sexual imbalance in business. Although the society and music are not the same, the tendency to avoid extreme bias can be seen anywhere in the world today. Considering this, what do you think about the idea that mixing the two opposite-gendered characteristics ruins the unity and thus push down the value of symphonies?