This study theoretically relies on feminist perspectives of gender difference that identify a threefold dynamic of othering, objectification, and doing gender. Developing the notion of othering, we build on the classic work of Simone de Beauvoir (1952) concerning the notion of woman as the Other and, extending from this groundbreaking work, Judith Butler's (1990) concept of gender performativity. In turn inspired thereby, we rely on contemporary perspectives of objectification and doing gender. We find it important to explain this intellectual lineage of our perspective as rooted in classic work before it is applied in a contemporary context in order to adequately bring out the intellectual grounding of our work. Thus, by explaining the theory of our research at some length, this chapter seeks to avoid stepping into the world of heavy metal without a disciplinary basis and an appropriate model of analysis. Instead, we apply sociological concepts of gender in our study on women in heavy metal as a necessary basis for our empirical investigations. We believe these excursions, in this chapter and the next, are also justified for this book to reach its target audiences beyond expert scholars of gender, especially devotees of music and popular culture, as well as students and others interested in learning the foundations and objectives of sociology and gender studies.

Woman as the Other

Historically, theories of the social and cultural differences between men and women focused on the biological characteristics of, and differences between, the two sexes. At one time, biological perspectives asserted that men were the superior sex because of their larger physical size and greater physical strength. Such views were also justified by philosophical and, especially, religious ideas that held that women should be submissive to men. Although there are some early historical precursors to the development of feminist thought that would break with such sociologically unsustainable ideas (Madoo Lengermann and Niebrugge 1998), it took as late as the middle of the twentieth century for feminist advances to be made in social thought. In 1949, feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir published the French-language version of her seminal work The Second Sex (de Beauvoir 1952), making her, even that recent in time, among the first to argue with great consequence that biological differences between men and women are not the cause of women's relative inequality and men's power.