For many years discussions of sexuality were informed by a distinction between 'sex' and 'gender.' The sex of a person was judged to be 'biologically determined' and their gender to be 'culturally and socially constructed' (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 1988: 103). Gender roles are frequently based around the ideas that women are expected to be more passive and emotional and men more assertive and rational. "The first type of essentialism that can be found in this area [music and gender] is the idea that men and women 'express' some essential masculine or feminine forms of sexuality. The second type is that this in turn can be found manifested in the content of particular cultural products and practices." (Negus, p.124). Jeffery Weeks argued that biology merely provides 'a set of potentialities that are transformed and given meaning in social relationships' (1986: 25). One of the reasons why gender has perhaps often been considered to be more 'social', and 'sex' in turn more natural, is that gender is usually more visible as a series of conventions about dress codes, expected public bodily behaviour, manner of speech and so on. Sex, however, is closely connected to 'sexuality,' which has often been informed by beliefs that this should be a more 'private' affair. The distinction between sex and gender is therefore both ideological and misleading. Here I follow the approach of Weeks, who has argued that gender is the 'social condition of being male or female, and sexuality, the cultural way of living out our bodily pleasures and desires' (1986: 45). .
Is 'rock' itself an inherently masculine genre? One of the earliest attempts to start theorising the relationship between rock music and sexuality can be found in an essay written by Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie (1978), in which they argued that rock operated as a form of sexual expression and as a form of sexual control.