How to tackle the macho NY Philharmonic: A psychologist writes

The German-based US pianist and psychologist Heather O’Donnell, founder of The Green Room, has written a timely analysis  of the crisis inside a macho culture. Among other remedies, she proposes:

…I believe that a rape-tolerant culture in the classical music industry boils down to three factors. This is a spontaneous proposal and certainly needs to be carved out with more precision and reflection, but here goes:

Two of these factors are individual-level traits, and one is a big fat systemic failing. Actually, they all boil down to systemic failings, as do most societal illnesses.

‘Pathological immaturity’: Musicians’ developmental process can be thwarted if they are not granted the space and time to develop as human beings, which, in a small subset of the population leads to disastrously sociopathological belief systems. Rape can seem, to a rapist, to be a good stand-in for consensual sex if he lacks the ability to humanize the other, recognize the other’s emotional depth and sense out the other’s experiential complexity. Empathy can be thwarted or even deadened if a person lacks access to human developmental experiences and processes. This pathological immaturity impacts people who needed a lot of time and care to grow into responsible and empathic adults, but for some reason or another (such as extreme training regimes in childhood, or perhaps their own histories on the receiving end of abuse), didn’t.

‘I’m better than you’: if musicians are drinking the toxic Kool-Aid of comparative and hierarchical thinking, they can mentally and emotionally justify sociopathic expressions that display and solidify power differentials. Rape can be an act of sexual gratification for the rapist, but it is also, perhaps predominantly, an expression of power and dominance of one person over another. Power dynamics show up in other ways. There are SO MANY cases of music teachers who entered into sexual relationships with students as young as 14, 15, 16 years old. Luckily, we currently live in a society in which it is generally understood, that sexual relations between a teacher and student, ESPECIALLY an under-age student, cannot be considered equal (or consensual in the minor’s case), regardless of how big the student’s crush on the teacher might be. The teacher-student relationship is just one hierarchical relationship structure in the industry. It could just as well be the conductor-orchestra player, juror-contestant, or presenter-musician. In the case of Cara Kizer, there was a clear power differential. Her rapist, Matthew Muckey, had tenure. She did not. If one grows up in an environment in which every day, every single f-ing day, we align humans on a scale of better-worse, more powerful-less powerful, more worthy-less worthy, then it’s not so very surprising when the power expression turns criminal. It’s just a step further down the road of toxic hierarchicals.

‘Rape requires a supportive culture’: Now, onto the systemic issue: rape doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It requires enabling cultures and organizational structures. Abuser-tolerant organizations are characterized by an adherence to unchangeable and entrenched traditions and the idolization of leading figures who may perceive themselves as exempt from societal norms and responsibilities. It seems to me that the general culture of the Classical Music industry is situated somewhere within two (seemingly) disparate model groups: 1) the church and 2) college frat boys. The church model enables ‘gods’ to carve out their own self-serving rules, and assigns lower-standing members of the society into servile and enabling roles. The frat-boy-world is steeped in hook-up culture and sexual competition among its ‘brothers’. Both models display a general disregard or even disdain for women who are viewed as lower-class members of the society.

Read more here.