Being turned down for a band because there's "already" a female instrumentalist. Putting up with techs who assume that women can't operate their own equipment. Being preyed upon by industry men. These are a few of the threads running through Katherine Yeske Taylor's She's a Badass: Women in Rock Shaping Feminism, a sobering collection of profiles of 20 powerhouses who haven't let their relative rarity as women in rock deter them.
Taylor's portraits are informed by her interviews with her subjects, presented from oldest to youngest, from Suzi Quatro (b. 1950) to L.A. Witch's Sade Sanchez (b. 1989). Taylor's subjects work across the rock spectrum and include a representative from each of three monumental American all-girl bands: the Go-Go's (Gina Schock), the Runaways (Cherie Currie), and L7 (Donita Sparks). While each profile has a straight-up biographical component, Taylor steers the conversations toward the experience of being female in a male-dominated profession, and it's fascinating to note the extent to which the musicians differ in terms of whether they identify as feminists: there are unqualified yeses, hard nos, and squishy positions in between.
In her introduction, Taylor suggests that all of her subjects are gender-equality activists, intentionally or not. As Gina Schock puts it, "People ask, 'Are you a feminist?' And I say, 'Yeah, but I believe I'm a feminist by my actions and not as much by my words.' " Her words, like those of the 19 other women featured in She's a Badass, are worth listening to at high volume. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer