You tempt me to repeat an observation I made to my companion (a gentleman of a certain age, of course; my wife was at home) at a concert last week, which is something I have repeatedly observed: the man sits absorbed and motionless throughout the performance while his (presumably) lady-wife fidgets and bobs about, frequently obscuring my view, evidently having been dragged along and evincing every indication of being bored. Of course I generalise wickedly; there are many women there as enraptured as any man but it is nonetheless an observable phenomenon; they also tend to be the ones who save particularly resonant coughs for the quietest moments....
We have in the past remarked upon what a restricted socio-economic-ethnic demographic is represented by the average MusicWeb contributor and reader; as much as we want to be "a Broad Church" and both welcome and value all-comers, it seems that the average classical-music collector is a sadly predictable and archetypal animal: middle-class and over sixty.
I am, however, encouraged by the number of young women in concerts I have attended - and indeed, of female performers on stage, so perhaps it is just the collecting/hoarding bug which infects the male contingent. Now I'll shut up and wait for the hate mail...
I've noticed that the MWI site seems to be something of an exclusive gentleman's club with contributions by fellows on the forum outnumbering those by ladies at around the ratio 10 to 0.
In the good old days of plenty of record shops to go and have a look around it often seemed to me that the majority of those browsing ,at least in the classical sections, were male. Any member of the fairer sex who ventured into the shops seemed to know exactly what she'd come in to purchase and set about doing it without any undue lingering. There is , on the other hand, no notable preponderance of men in the audiences at classical events or in the artists involved in the presentations.
Am I wrong in my observations ? Am I being outrageous, in times such as these, in suggesting that there might be different behaviour patterns in this regard according to gender ?
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