Afterword

I sing sometimes for the war that I fight, ’cause every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right. —Ani DiFranco, “My IQ” American kids are losing ground, showing all the symptoms of social, parental, and personal neglect. Many are left to fend for themselves, and barely manage. Teenage suicides continue and grown-ups do not seem to be getting the point. Our collective failure to confront the rate at which our teens are self-destructing is one of the reasons I have written this book. Although school shootings have opened the nation’s eyes to youth violence and have inspired a full-scale examination, teen suicide is still shrouded in denial, though it would be difficult to find an adult in America who does not know at least one seriously troubled or disturbed teenager—either within their own family or among the families of friends or relatives. And most would probably admit that they have no idea how to understand a problem that threatens to tear the American family apart....

‘Some guy designed this room I’m standing in': marking gender in press coverage of Ani DiFranco

Examining ways in which gender is marked in the press coverage of self-produced, folk-rock artist and record label owner Ani DiFranco, this paper explores how language employed in rock criticism frequently functions to devalue and marginalise women artists' musicianship, influence on fans, and contribution to the rock canon. Investigating how the readerships of different publications may influence the ways in which journalists mark gender in rock criticism, this study utilises a corpus of 100 articles on Ani DiFranco published between 1993 and 2003 from print and online magazines and newspapers in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Focusing on the use of inter- and intra-gender artist comparisons, adjectival gender markers and ‘metaphorical gender’ markers in artist background information, lyrical and musical analyses and descriptions of fans, this analysis maps the discursive conventions that music critics and theorists continue to rely on in reviews and profiles of women artists.