A friend of mine has a son who just started middle school. He wants to be in the band and he wants to play the flute. She is going to let him play the flute, but is concerned that he will be teased for playing a girls’ instrument. I had no idea this was a thing. When I hear “flute player” I think Ian Anderson or James Galloway.
So I’m asking:
Have you heard of this gender instrument thing?
Do you personally perceive certain instruments to be for girls or for boys?
If so, is the flute a girls’ instrument?
Do you have experience with kids being teased for playing instruments of the wrong gender?
Where do you live? (She is in South Carolina; I’m in Northern CA. I’m wondering if it’s regional.)
It isn’t something I’ve ever thought of, really, but when I was in school, the chicks played flute, strings, and other woodwind instruments. The guys played brass and percussion instruments. I would say the flute was almost certainly a “girl instrument” in middle school and up. No experience with teasing because boys didn’t play the same instruments as girls, period. I don’t know if that was by design or if boys are naturally more interested in brass, or whatever, but no opportunities for teasing came up. I’m in MN.
It was just like this back when I was in band many many many many moons ago. I played the flute. I thought a “girly” instrument would somehow vanquish my inherent tomboyishness.
One of my classmates played French horn. She was the only girl in the brass section.
One thing I have heard (in the US) is that the ‘cello used to be a boys’ instrument because the standard playing position (seated, legs apart, instrument between legs) used to be considered an indecent posture for girls. It was the stance that was or caused the issue - there was no similar thing with other stringed instruments because you played them standing up (e.g. bass viol) or seated with legs together (e.g. violin).
When I was in a school band (mostly in the 80s), there was a definite divide. Almost all the flute and clarinet players were girls, saxes were mixed, and the drummers and brass were mostly boys. From my observations at events all over the state (Louisiana, if it matters), this was a common pattern.
However, there were exceptions–one guy played a flute, our top trumpet soloist was a girl, and one of my fellow trombonists was a girl so tiny that her instrument seemed to dwarf her. (We did a stunt a few times where she stood on my shoulders while we played; we said it was so people could see her for a change.) I never heard any of them get teased for their choice of instruments. I can’t imagine anyone in the band teasing them over it, and I believe the whole band would have closed ranks against any outsider doing so. We gave each other hell over any number of things, but never over music. Maybe we were unusually tight-knit; we went through a lot together and had a kind of a family feel.
I don’t recall a single male flute player from when I went to high school, trumpets and tubas and drums were male instruments, woodwinds and French horn were mainly female (something about the shape strikes me as feminine.) The string section was predominately female, especially for violins, but there were enough males I didn’t fell odd. Cello + miniskirt was delt with by putting both legs on one side.
I’m a guy. When I was in school, I wanted to play the flute. Because all the other flute players were pretty girls. I didn’t even think about being teased…just being close to those pretty, pretty girls.
Never did get to play (parents wouldn’t let me join the band). But I don’t remember anyone else teasing or being teased. One of my best (guy) friends played clarinet, which had a girly vibe to it. One of my best (girl) friends played the drums.
So I think their might be a slight connotation of boy/girl instruments, but I don’t think its a big deal.
I think flute has the strongest gender association, rivaled only by tuba, which was definitely a boy’s instrument. Clarinet leaned girl but was mixed; trumpets, in my experience, were definitely mixed, though any of the heavier brass - trombones (what I played!), tubas, horns, and so on - leaned more and more heavily boy.
I’ve played flute since 5th grade (except my senior year of HS which I played Trombone). Flute isn’t exclusively female, but it is overwhelmingly female. I think the most males I’ve ever had in a flute section at a time was 3, and flute sections were usually fairly large (10-15 people). Often in the upper-level bands I was the only boy. However, I never got teased for playing flute. It’s not really seen as a girly instrument, despite having mostly female sections. In fact, most of the professional flute players I met were men, so things might change at the professional music level.
Clarinet is even less girly than flute, gender distribution-wise. I think clarinet sections usually split about 50/50 male/female.
I agree that tuba is stereotypically male, but in my HS band 3/5 tuba players were girls (in middle school we only had one tuba). But they weren’t just girls, they were tiny girls. Cue lots of light-hearted jokes about their instruments being bigger than them.
I’ll agree that flutes are ‘overwhelmingly female’, but not always. I suspect members of the band or orchestra are more likely to overlook that than members of the football team. As for heavy brass being only for males, you can talk to our Tubadiva about that! Clarinets strike me as an in-between instrument, as it’s not that difficult for a clarinet player to switch to a saxophone, which, although not “overwhelmingly” male, sort of leans that way. As for strings, the only females in Lawrence Welk’s orchestra were the cellist and the harpist, which means… well, not much. I’m not sure where oboes and English horns would fit on the M/F scale.
Q: What do you get when you have 2 oboists playing in unison?
A: A minor 2nd.
Oboe, like trombone and bassoon, is one of those instruments where most people never get a big enough sample to develop stereotypes for them. Most bands have 2-3 oboes, and even then if you’re in a HS that does marching in the fall, the oboists only play oboe for half the year (same with bassoon). I think most of the oboes I knew were girls, but I’ve only known like four oboe players.
When I was in school, instruments weren’t just male or female. For the female instruments, they were used as an indicator of how pretty you were.
I attribute this entirely to the whims of Mr. Mooney, the band teacher. I have no idea whether this sort of thing happened elsewhere.
Here’s how it worked:
Every girl wanted the flute. It was the prettiest and came in the smallest case. If Mr. Mooney didn’t select you for flute, you could play the clarinet, which was okay too. The case wasn’t overwhelmingly large anyway.
Here’s what happened to me:
When it came time to choose an instrument, Mr. Mooney told me that all the flute spots had been taken. And so had all the clarinet spots. Oh noes. What did I end up with?
A saxophone.
Now there is nothing at all inherently wrong or even “un-girly” about a saxophone, but in this case, being assigned the saxophone was functionally equivalent to having Mr. Mooney say “you’re total dog, kid.” And having to get on a school bus with a big gigundous saxophone case knocking around…ugh. I detested that saxophone. Fortunately, I have no musical talent, so it all worked out in the end.
Well, there are stereotypes about flute girls being super stereotypical vapid pretty girly girls, but I’ve never heard of a band teacher assigning instruments* so I think your situation was rather unique. The clarinet stereotype is “weirdo”. But not like a real freak, more like “the kind of weirdo Zooey Deschanel plays in every movie she’s in” sort of weirdo. Saxophones are clarinet players who want to be trumpet players. Trumpet players are conceited proto-frat boys (or the tomboy female equivalent).
Well, okay, in high school you would list the instruments you can play and the director would select which one you’d play – keeping your preference in mind, but that’s about it.
As for the school band I think some of it had to do with the weight of the instrument in it’s case that you had to carry home in order to practice. The girls weren’t going to lug a bassoon or a baritone around. I tried to play a cornet and even that was a PITA. The clarinet was unisex while the saxophone was for the boys.
But still, when I think of the flute, I think of Herbie Mann. He was quite macho.
With that said, can anyone name me a top notch harp player that is male? I realize that the question invalidates my weight theory but there are no harps in the band.
Have you ever seen a woman playing the tympani? I haven’t. So, there may be some traditional gender divides but that doesn’t mean squat in regards to musicianship. Those gender divides probably had more to do with societal norms and where parents directed their children rather than the instruments being gender specific.
I don’t really know of many harp players. The two I do know are women, but it really depends on what you mean by “harp”. For the large stand-up harps I usually think of women (the specific image that comes to mind is a woman with long hair in a flowing Renaissance dress :p). A smaller handheld harp is almost exclusively male in my mind.
Sure have! Our HS band had a percussion section that was roughly split into snare/bass percussion and “pit band” percussion (as a holdover from that term in marching band) which played xylophone, triangle, bell, and so on. Most of the “pit” percussion were female, by a wide margin, and usually were the ones who played timpani.
Ok, well! This is really eye-opening. I had no idea.
I wasn’t in band in high school and I don’t remember much about who played what.
I did ask my 15 yo son what he thought about a boy playing the flute and the “gender” of instruments. He said it was a non-issue in his peer group. Then he looked up flute players that were guys, and came out to tell me all about them and now I think I have to get him flute lessons in addition to fiddle. :smack:
I should probably mention that my middle school band was like 80 people and my high school band was usually between 160 and 180. Monogendered sections like a lot of people here are describing were a lot more common in other schools that had 30-50 member bands. Our bands didn’t have a “brass section” – they had a “tombone section”, a “horn section”, etc. It was simply too big to classify brass as any sort of entity on its own. I think we had a couple monogendered sections, but if we did it was something like bari sax which only had two people in it anyway. Or bassoon which was monogendered female by the nature that we only had one bassoon player.
I was in a tiny HS band back in the 70’s. The marching band was about 6 rows of 4 people per row. Our displays were decidedly lo-res. But in that tiny sampling we had a guy on flute and a girl on trombone. If I thought the flute was a girly instrument for the guy I wouldn’t have said anything since he was much bigger than me.
But in that tiny sampling we had a guy on flute and a girl on trombone. If I thought the flute was a girly instrument for the guy I wouldn’t have said anything since he was much bigger than me.