Performing Gender - Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Horned

Abstract

Heavy metal has traditionally been a predominately masculine form of music and artistic expression. Many previous scholars have identified a lack of women in the genre to be one of the leading reasons for its misogynistic nature. Traditionally, heavy metal speaks primarily to young, white, working class, heterosexual men. Lyrical content varies from sexual to violent and to the occult. The last decade has seen strides with diversity within the heavy metal community and some scholars claim it is no longer hegemonically masculine, but in fact, in a constant state of flux and diverse in its expression (Scott, 2016). Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study will examine heavy metal lyrics by women lyricists. I propose that Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding theory (1980) guided by feminist communication theory framework (Rakow & Wackwitz, 2004) should offer the greatest potential for addressing how women within the heavy metal music genre use their lyrics as tools for highlighting dominant, hegemonic gender roles within the heavy metal community.