As for gay marriage, I have no problem with it as it’s more of a legal arrangement than a religious one like many heterosexual marriages these days, designed to protect whatever family unit people decide to commit to and respective interests and rights. BUT I loathe and despise the name-changing ‘thing’ with a passion. In my teens and 20s I thought it would have died out by now. I’ve noticed gay couples have started incorporating that twisted throw-back into their marriages, more’s the pity.

When you compared the priests to the orchestra conductor, I thought, “Yeah! Women priests! Great idea!” Because what’s the alternative to the man with a baton? No one with a baton? I like non-hierarchical institutions as well as the next person, but I haven’t heard well-played symphonies from non-hierarchical orchestras yet.

If making reformist changes to major institutions (classical music, religion, marriage) didn’t have some kind of impact on taking the patriarchy apart, why would people be resisting those changes so hard?

Simone Young, the darling of Australia’s opera-set, has conducted a couple of world-class orchestras in her time, too. Including the Vienna Philharmonic, traditionally a bastion of male privilege - that was the first time they actually accepted a woman as part of their orchestra.

Simone not only took on one of your more stinky bastions of the music patriarchy, Opera Australia, as its Musical Director but also told them to shove it when they started playing politics with her orchestral numbers.

And musicdom is indeed the patriarchy made aural. In some few investigations, a selection committee ( and sadly for the story, women choosers are as liable to have the patriarchal bias as the men choosers) will always under-assess a woman musician’s ability when they know her sex than when they can only hear her playing. Thus a blind audition will always yield a much greater number of successful women applicants than one which faces the committee to play.

I gave up the quest for public musical employment and came over to teaching.
Which of course I do with my eyes closed.

And while they usually can’t compete in terms of scandals, costumes, or undeserved popularity, symphony orchestras absolutely rival the Catholic church in terms of sheer sexism, and it’s even worse in Europe than it is in the States. I have a French horn player pal, a woman, married to the principal oboe of a major American orchestra, who had to move to Lisbon to get a gig. She was the only woman in the orchestra. At least in the US they let the chicks play violas.

Besides, it’s funky to worship any fictitious character at all, regardless of sex.

It got media coverage because the blah media thought it radical. We likely will never hear about it again.

To use that icky corporate phrase–these women not thinking outside the box.