Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

124 • islands of resistance
Johanna were all women. A woman designed all of the posters and
logos. Women played in the majority of the bands. All of the sound
artists were women. A woman offered up the venue, and there were
women technicians setting up, running the boards and striking the
festival.
Radio, like many other forms of media, is still male dominated, particularly
on the technical end, so it is notable that the gender balance
was skewed towards women. Pirate Emma P stated, “Honestly, women
are involved because a woman started and coordinates the project.
There are women involved because there is a space intentionally created
for women. Of course this makes a difference — it’s great to create
media with women, especially in a technical realm that tends to be
male dominated or at least not structured so that women can participate
easily.” 7 Moreover, for the unruly woman there is an attraction to
the life of seafaring pirates, who refuse to be regulated, and live by
their own set of rules, often freely chosen by the particular ship and
crewmembers involved. 8 This situation is even more transgressive for
a woman pirate. She becomes a symbol for appropriating roles and
lifestyles that are not hers by tradition. She plunders (metaphorically
and literally) what she desires: power, wealth and excitement, breaking
rules and achieving autonomy. 9 This archetype speaks to me, and the
role of a woman pirate has appealed to me in the creation and running
of TAR, a pirate radio station that can resurface as required, whether
for protest, politics and music, or in the creation of affinity groups,
festival and adventure.
I am not the only woman attracted to clandestine activities, to the
freedom that comes with creative self-definition, to the liberation that
comes from being a pirate radio practitioner. This capacity for selfdefinition
is amplified because radio is not visual. It provides space for
women to construct themselves without a visual focus, a space where
the male gaze cannot occur. Paradoxically, radio has been said to be
the most visual of mediums because of the listener’s imaginative ability
to construct visuals at will. As Angela Carter, known primarily for
her fiction and radio dramas, contends, radio allows for magic, or the
invisible, space that must be filled in by the listener. 10 This applies to
all radio, but particularly to pirate radio, where there are few active
constructions of women’s appropriate roles, and a spirit of rebelliousness
runs rampant. Listeners may still construct visuals of who might
be behind the microphone, but they do so within a context where par-