Meret Bitticks
About My Guest
Flutist Meret Bitticks maintains an active schedule as a soloist, chamber musician, and clinician in the U.S. and abroad. As a performer, Ms. Bitticks joined U.S. State Department cultural ambassadors, Trio Chicago and Friends, for concert tours of the United Arab Emirates and Australia. She also regularly performs as a soloist and with faculty ensembles and chamber groups. Her recording credits include the Head of Femur album, Hysterical Stars, for the SpinArt label as well as the premier recording of Leslie Basset’s Sounds, Shapes, and Symbols under the direction of conductor Russell Mikkelson.
A passionate and enthusiastic educator, Ms. Bitticks is one of only a handful of registered Suzuki Flute Teacher Trainers and the first flutist to receive a Certificate of Achievement for excellence in Suzuki instruction from the Suzuki Association of the Americas. Ms. Bitticks originated the Master’s of Suzuki Flute Pedagogy program at Roosevelt University, the only degree-granting program of its kind for flute. She has been a clinician for workshops in Canada, Mexico, Australia, and all over the U.S.
Ms. Bitticks believes quality music instruction can only break down barriers when it is available to every person, regardless of age or economic background. With this in mind, Ms. Bitticks volunteered at music camps for the Ecole de Musique Sainte Trinite and Ecole de Musique Dessaix Baptiste in Haiti and trained the first Haitian Suzuki flute teacher. She worked with foster children through DePaul’s Pathways program and has also been a Tuition-free Conservatory instructor for the Merit School.
Ms. Bitticks is an Altus Artist and nurtures a large flute studio at the Music Institute of Chicago. She is also on faculty at Lake Forest College, Roosevelt University, and DePaul University. She lives in Evanston with her husband and two small children.
Shervin Talieh:
Great. We are joined by our new guest in the, On Misogyny Series, and I'm excited about the conversation today. My guest comes from a background and a profession that I know very little about, so curious to explore her experiences there. To begin with, can you tell me your name and who you are?
Meret Bitticks:
My name is Meret Bitticks. I am a professional flutist, and Suzuki flute teacher, and Suzuki flute teacher trainer. One of just a handful of people authorized by the Suzuki Association of the Americas to teach teachers how to teach using a Suzuki approach.
Meret Bitticks:
And I also am adjunct at a couple of colleges. I teach a wide range of students from about four years old to through college and adults, adult professionals.
Shervin Talieh:
Where do you live?
Meret Bitticks:
Oh, I live just outside of Chicago in Evanston Illinois.
Shervin Talieh:
And is that where you were born and raised, or did you move there?
Meret Bitticks:
I was born and raised in Milwaukee Wisconsin. Turns out that I was very fortunate to be raised in Milwaukee at a time that Milwaukee was trying to deal with some of its many publicized issues on race. I went to public school at a time when Milwaukee was busing students in from the suburbs, white students in. And I was one of the few white students who actually came from the inner city of Milwaukee.
Meret Bitticks:
I was raised by two parents who were college professors, and visual artists. My mother was a sculptor, is a sculptor still, is a sculptor. And my father was a painter, and they were both very educated, very liberal, and we grew up in a very liberal enclave of Wisconsin.
Meret Bitticks:
I moved to Chicago, I did my undergraduate degree at the Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio, so I was there for four years, and then moved to Chicago proper for my master's degree in flute performance. And then I just never left. It's far enough away from Milwaukee that I don't feel like I have to be with family all the time, and close enough that if I need to, it's easy to get there.
Shervin Talieh:
What is your earliest memory of sexism?
Meret Bitticks:
I've been thinking about that, and I really feel like sexism, at least in this country, is like the air we breathe. Sometimes we don't even notice that it's there, we just take it for granted. And so, I'm sure that I had been exposed personally to sexism, but my earliest memories come from my mother.
Meret Bitticks:
As I said before, she is a sculptor and she is of a generation that, she was one of, really, only a few female sculptors. Professional sculptors. And certainly in academia as well. And I remember her having to testify against one of her former professors for sexual harassment against many of his female students, including my mother.
Meret Bitticks:
And my parents, I think were already divorced at the time. I think I was about 11 and my father was still supporting my mother through the trial, even though they were divorced. Then one of the earliest memories that have stuck with me, that affected me personally was when my father, who identified himself as a feminist, and like I said, was very supportive of my mother, even after they got divorced.
Meret Bitticks:
I was in high school and my bedroom was in a finished part of the attic, and he had some paintings being stored in the unfinished part of the attic, which is not a great place to store paintings anyway, but anyway. He was storing his paintings there and they were right below one of the skylights, and one day I said, "Hey, dad, maybe you should move your paintings, because I can't guarantee if it starts raining that I'll be able to close the skylight in time." Because it was sort of, my responsibility to close the windows in the attic.
Meret Bitticks:
And he looked at me and he said, "Meret, I have never taken orders from a woman, and I'm not about to start now." And I just remember thinking, "This is my father? My feminist father who's so enlightened?" Not to mention the fact that I was probably 15, so to sort of, be called a woman in that context by my father at the time, I thought was really shocking.
Meret Bitticks:
And of course, I was right. Three days later he had moved the paintings. You know? But he had to sort of, prove this point that he waited a few days to sort of, let me know that he wasn't taking an order from me. So, that was probably the first experience that really showed me that even people who consider themselves allies, even people who we trust can fall victim to sort of, the enculturation of society, and then perpetuate it through their actions upon us.
Meret Bitticks:
And that's when I started noticing more and more, again, as I got older, that even my father had some of these tendencies. He definitely had a bias against middle aged women, and particularly middle aged suburban, sort of, classic, cutesy, kitsch, 1980s women. And that was really enlightening for me, because I knew that my father loved me unconditionally, supported me unconditionally, would defend me to anyone who would hurt me, threaten my boyfriends if they hurt me, for example, which I guess in its own way was sort of, sexism as well. I'm sure he didn't threaten my brothers girlfriends.
Meret Bitticks:
And yet, especially as I got older and older there was this divide there. And then moving on, being a flutist is generally considered, I guess a woman's instrument. A lot of times when people think of flute they think of it as being a very feminine instrument. And for example, in one of my world music classes in undergrad, I think maybe my sophomore year the teacher said, "Oh, in the next class we're going to talk about women in music. How many flutists are in the room?" And it just so happened that all the flutists in the room were women, and I said, "Hey, wait a minute. All the most famous recording artists for flute are men. Of the top tier orchestras in this country, in the world, most of the principal positions are held by male flutists."
Meret Bitticks:
Yes, there is a disproportionate number of women who play flute versus, maybe some other instruments that are considered either more masculine or sort of, gender neutral and yet, we're still, clearly there's something happening here. Which, of course had me labeled as a raging feminist and the whole class thought I was blowing it out of proportion, but here we are.
Shervin Talieh:
What year was that?
Meret Bitticks:
That would have been, probably 2000, about 2000 probably. Yeah.
Shervin Talieh:
Did you ever bring up the topic of that conversation with your father again, as an adult?
Meret Bitticks:
No. No. I think I was probably afraid to rock the boat. My father was a Vietnam Veteran who had pretty severe PTSD. He was an alcoholic, he had his first heart attack when I was, probably around the same time in 2000, and was given, at that point in time he was projected to live about five more years. He lived longer. He lived over 10 years longer than that, but I think after I left home for college we just didn't have that kind of relationship to talk about that sort of thing.
Meret Bitticks:
He ended up getting remarried when I was 26 and he was the type of person who, when he started a new chapter in his life, he sort of wanted a clean break from things that came previous to it. And although he still considered, obviously he was still my father, and obviously he still loved me, it was obvious that his priority was his wife and the family unit that they were making, and that he considered me an adult and so, we just didn't really have those kinds of conversations.
Meret Bitticks:
Although, as I've gotten older I've had more conversations with my mom about her experience, I have a greater understanding of what she's experienced and my mother was honored as one of the 40 most influential women in Milwaukee, probably around, maybe 2010-ish. And her college bought a table at the event, and invited us.
Meret Bitticks:
And the president of the school, the college called her sweetie at an event honoring professional women. Influential, professional women. And I called him out on it, and he said, "Yeah, yeah. I have daughters too."
Shervin Talieh:
Meret?
Meret Bitticks:
Yeah.
Shervin Talieh:
Sorry. Your recording cut out just for a second.
Meret Bitticks:
Oh, no. Okay.
Shervin Talieh:
Hang on just one second. I'm going to make a note here. It was at the 14 minute mark. If you could start again where you were saying that she was being honored as one of the 40 most influential women. Thank you.
Meret Bitticks:
Around 2010 my mother was honored as one of the 40 most influential women in Milwaukee, and the college that she spent most of her career teaching at bought a table for the event and invited me, as her child, as well as other people from the college. And the president of the college called her sweetie at this event honoring professional, influential women and I called him out on it, and he dismissed me saying that he had daughters at home and, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand."
Meret Bitticks:
Meanwhile, my mother hadn't seemed to notice it at all. It stuck out to me like a bright, flashing light and I instantly felt like I had to say something. And I asked my mom about it afterwards and she just sort of, made it sound like if she got bent out of shape every time some old, white dude called her sweetie, that just wastes too much of her psychic energy or something like that. I don't know.
Meret Bitticks:
It's been really interesting now, I'm a mother of a son and a daughter who are very young. My son is four and my daughter is two, and it's helped me grow closer to my mother in a different way, and to understand and appreciate how groundbreaking she was. The life and opportunities that she offered us kids, and to look at her as a model of a professional mother who was creative and yet, I always felt like her priority.
Shervin Talieh:
When you were talking about your father and that realization/disappointment that someone who you considered to be liberal, progressive, supportive, woke, all those sorts of things and still manages to fall short I related a great deal with him. And that's sort of, the origin story, if you will, of what you and I are talking about. Is this realization at 52 that maybe I'm not as enlightened as I gave myself credit for.
Shervin Talieh:
And as you were talking about him I thought of a term that I read about, but I've also heard one of my guests, Jennifer Lee, use. Himpathy. And I'd never heard of himpathy before. I'd never read it. But it basically this idea that even as women are being subjugated to misogyny they find a way to either excuse away or have sympathy for the people that are perpetuating this onto them.
Shervin Talieh:
Am I framing that correctly? Is that relatable for you?
Meret Bitticks:
Yeah. I'm sure that there's a lot more that I can unpack about my relationship with my father, and men generally. I think understanding that it's not always that there are forces acting upon people larger than themselves makes it understandable.
Meret Bitticks:
I definitely can himpathize or empathize with my father, and yet I can also recognize that, that really hurt. I mean, it was a betrayal. The first of, sort of, several little things. Right? Most of this is death by a thousand cuts, and that's, I think one of the insidious aspects of misogyny generally, but also when somebody is an asshole, and I'm sorry to just, but when they're just an asshole you can just dismiss them as an asshole. Right?
Meret Bitticks:
He is just a flat out misogynist, I'm not going to waste my time with that person. Right? They are racist. They are a white supremacist. Yes, I understand what this is, I'm putting this in this box, and I'm moving on. But when it's somebody who you understand to be more complex, who you understand has values that should display themselves in one way, but end up maybe, not always coming through that way.
Meret Bitticks:
I feel very fortunate that most of the men I've dated in my life, and my husband now, have been feminist. They have supported me, they have listened to me, and valued my input and my ideas. And yet, even still one of the things that drives me the most crazy is the interrupting that happens with particularly straight, white men, that they think they're getting their idea across, and they're just bulldozing people.
Meret Bitticks:
And I've made it very clear to my family members, the men who are particularly close to me, that this is not something that's acceptable to me. It's really a hot button. And yet, they always seem to be surprised when I call them out on it. My daughter, who is two, asked the babysitter who is a woman, if she could finish saying her sentence. And I thought, "Well, that is my daughter right there." You know? Nature versus nurture. Right? This is where I'm coming from.
Meret Bitticks:
I understand, this is part, that's why I say it's like the air we breathe. We accept it, we perpetrate it, women perpetuate it ourselves and I'm sure a lot of your guests have talked about intersectionality and how various levels of your identity will change your various experiences with things, but when I applied to be a teacher trainer, for example, with the Suzuki Association, it's not dissimilar from a degree process.
Meret Bitticks:
In that, you have to write a scholarly essay, you have to have had over 100 hours of observations of other teachers, you have to have 10 years of teaching experience, you have to submit videos that follow certain perimeters of your own teaching, videos of your students performances and videos of your own performances. And all of these videos are evaluated by three anonymous, trained evaluators.
Meret Bitticks:
I have no idea what the gender is, but law of averages states that probably, they were mostly female. Just because most Suzuki teachers are women, and I was passed unanimously, but one person on their evaluation said, "The applicant's appearance changed so drastically in the performance videos, that I can't be sure they were the same person, but I trust that it was."
Meret Bitticks:
And, yes, the look on your face is exactly, I agree. Yes. It was a very odd comment to make, and I thought, "Well, surely they can't be talking about my weight." Right? You can take a video one day and get a haircut afterwards, and take a video the next day and look completely different, and still be the same person. So, the fact that my hair was different and I think I wore glasses in one, and not in two of the others, all of those videos were taken within, I don't know, two years of each other.
Meret Bitticks:
And there was no time constraint anyway, on the videos. But I thought, "You're supposed to be evaluating me on my performance, not on my appearance." At what point is it okay to comment on somebody's appearance as part of their professional evaluation process? Yeah. It's pretty interesting to think how many of us are perpetuating these institutions without realizing it, without knowing it.
Shervin Talieh:
You touched earlier about your childhood and the environment that you grew up in. It sounded sort of, upper middle class, highly educated parents, your mother sounds like a renaissance woman and your dad as well, too. Given his history. And as you mentioned, he let you down the way that he did, and in some ways your mom in sort of, not acknowledging that micro-aggression at that event.
Shervin Talieh:
It leads me to this theme, and the story that you just shared about the evaluator, I think really touches on it which is, how, in many ways, sort of liberal, affluent, middle class woman have hurt feminism in some ways, or the evolution, specifically maybe from the second or the third wave, etc. talk to me about that.
Meret Bitticks:
Yeah. Actually, recently, my mom made a comment to me this summer, I think, it was, with all of the protests, the Black Lives Matter protests and she said, "I realize that the feminists of my generation really let, we were blinded to the greater issues and we let, specifically, well, women of color and specifically black women, down."
Meret Bitticks:
And my upbringing I would say was upper middle class, in terms of, well, we're not supposed to have a caste system in this country, but of course we do. In terms of education, for sure, my parents being visual artists and faculty at a small arts college, we were probably solidly lower middle class, in terms of income, but I think education sort of, elevates that.
Meret Bitticks:
And for sure, I'm a person of great privilege in that, my race has always protected me from a lot. Even in growing up in a neighborhood where I was by far not the dominant race. Yeah. We've got a lot to answer for. I definitely would consider myself upper middle class now, and one of the big struggles that I have is how to use my privilege to help elevate other voices and to hopefully not suck all the oxygen out of the room the way I know is done, because it's happened to me. Right?
Meret Bitticks:
But just because it's happened to me, it doesn't give me the right to do it now that I have the opportunity to do it. Yeah. It's very interesting. It's also very interesting to be a teacher at this time and working with students of such a wide range of ages. As they are reckoning with ideas of gender, just generally. Much less gender roles and sexism. It's becoming very normal, at least in our area, for students to not make assumptions about pronouns. For students to consider themselves non-binary. And to demand that the adults in their lives honor that.
Meret Bitticks:
And some of them are getting really good at educating us. It's really, kind of amazing. I feel very fortunate to be in a profession that allows me to learn from younger generations, as well as hopefully help shape them into critical thinkers, because I really, I genuinely believe that one of the main reasons to give a child music lessons, is to develop their critical thinking skills. And that's what we need as a society, is people who will think. We don't need anymore flute players, but we need some thinkers.
Shervin Talieh:
What is sexism like in academia? And then more specifically, you've been in the performing arts, and that's just even another domain that is ripe for sexism and misogyny. Can you expand on that?
Meret Bitticks:
Yeah. How much time do you have? Yeah, that's a big can of worms. I just happened to, not by my own design, I just happened that all of my primary flute teachers were women. At least until I became more involved with the Suzuki approach to teaching, and I studied for a month in Japan with the founder of the Suzuki flute school and he's a man. Japanese man.
Meret Bitticks:
But all my college flute teachers were women, and at the college level when you take lessons you're one on one with somebody. You're in a room with a professor by yourself, and so that's one of the things that coming out now, is that of course there have been a lot of male professors who took advantage of that intimate space.
Meret Bitticks:
One of whom I had actually planned to audition for. I was very close to going to that school, and then I went to the campus and the football field was right in the middle of campus. You had to go around the football field to get anywhere and I said, "Well, this is nuts. I don't want to do this." And so, that was the only reason I didn't audition there and turns out that the guy was an asshole.
Meret Bitticks:
But I knew there were plenty of male teachers in undergrad, and just like in the, Me Too movement when actresses were saying that there was this sort of, almost institutional knowledge that was passed among women. If you're asked to do this, what it means is this. Or, don't go into this, and if they ask for a private meeting it's going to lead to that.
Meret Bitticks:
And we knew that this professor was not allowed to have anything covering the window on his door, because he had been caught with students, or there was one time, this was in the late 90s, because I was wearing Mudd jeans, which nobody wears anymore, but it says, on the back it would say Mudd. Basically the only place that indicated what brand of jeans was right on your butt.
Meret Bitticks:
And the tuba professor said, "Hey, you have mud on your jeans." And I was 19, probably at the time and I have no idea how old he was. Or, for example, there is a, in music, there's a, I guess a discipline called the Alexander Technique, where they talk about body mapping and how to hold your body.
Meret Bitticks:
And the professor for that was male, and it was known that he would touch students in ways that they were uncomfortable with, and then he would blame their discomfort on them, and not on him. I never took that class.
Meret Bitticks:
Fast forward now, I was actually just speaking with one of my college students the other day about, she was having a negative experience with a male professor. Not because he was saying anything inappropriate to her, but just because he had a lack of awareness about everything. And she asked me what my opinion was and I said, "Well, I was the only woman in a room of college students when, for final playing exams, it's called a jury, and so at the end of the semester students have to do a performance for members of the faculty. And I was the only woman in the room for the juries." And it was definitely a good old boy's vibe.
Meret Bitticks:
It was obvious nobody cared about my opinion, and so I kept my onion to myself. You know? And that's the kind of thing that really, again, to circle back to my mom, it really makes me relate to her, where you say, "Well, my opinion's not welcome or appreciated in this space, and so I am not going to waste my time with that. I am going to put my time where it matters, where it makes a difference."
Meret Bitticks:
And of course, it's to everyone's detriment, but in the performing arts I mentioned that many of the top flute jobs are held by men, well that's true most conductors still are male. If you look at jazz, jazz was something that I was really interested in, in high school, and my high school was a downbeat award winning jazz program, and I played in jazz combos there.
Meret Bitticks:
And I was probably one of, maybe three or four girls in the advanced jazz class at the time, and I thought I would pursue jazz in college as well, and I got to college and there were no female jazz faculty, I can't remember any female jazz students in undergrad. And I also realized that too, the jazz kids were all in on jazz and the classical kids were all in on classical.
Meret Bitticks:
And so, splitting my time half and half wouldn't mean that I was probably half as good at both. You know? So, I ended up going the classical route for that reason too, but there's a path of least resistance and you think, "Well, what would have happened if I had fought harder? Where would I be? Would I still be here? Am I an educator now, because I made concessions?"
Meret Bitticks:
I feel very deeply about being an educator. My family, we joke it's the family profession, because my brother also teaches at the college level, so both of my parents, and my brother and myself, and my uncle actually also, he taught elementary school. There's a certain point where it feels like that was just what the expectation was, but it's hard not to wonder. This is an area where it's really acceptable for women to take the lead and be leaders, so is that part of the reason why I felt like it was something I could do? You know. I don't know.
Meret Bitticks:
Also, despite that fact, despite the fact that there are far more women, music educators than men, it still is the men. Men are still in dominant roles and they often talk more in faculty meetings. And the Suzuki Association Of The America's, there's a faction of us trainers who are really trying to address the imbalances in our organization, specifically in terms of inclusion, and equity, and diversity, because we are not a diverse organization.
Meret Bitticks:
And I can't remember what the statistics for teacher trainers are, but mostly women. And yet, the people who keep calling the meetings, and keep writing the emails, and leading it, there's about three men who keep being the ones. And one of them even said, "I'm really conscious of the fact that as a man I'm the one who keeps saying that."
Meret Bitticks:
And then, one of my friends who I thought would have never ever, ever, ever let him get away with that gave him a pass. She responded before anybody else could and said, "No, I don't think that's the case." And I went, "Really, you didn't notice? You didn't notice that in this flurry of emails there have been three primary voices and they were all male?" Out of, there's 36. There's a group of 36 trainers who are really making this big push and without counting I'm guessing six or seven of them are men.
Meret Bitticks:
And the three that, the top three are, you know? And yet, you're angry or you're all of the things. In addition to interrupting, the other thing that drives me the most bananas is when I start speaking forcefully and get told that I'm yelling, because I always think, "Oh, you want to see yelling? I mean, this is an invitation for me to start yelling. I can show you the difference between speaking forcefully and yelling."
Meret Bitticks:
And how I don't recall ever telling a man not to yell at me. You know? When they've been talking in an elevated voice, or even when they actually were yelling at me I don't think I've ever said, "Don't yell at me." You know? Again, this is where we're harming ourselves too. Right? This is something I'm perpetuating too. Maybe the next time somebody speaks in an elevated voice to me I'll tell them that I don't appreciate that tone of their voice. Right? As we talk through these things.
Meret Bitticks:
There's a phenomenon that happens sometimes when you have a lot of jewelry, that your jewelry box or whatever you keep your necklaces in sometimes drops and everything jumbles together. The necklaces get all jumbled together and you don't necessarily know it until you go in specifically for one necklace and you realize that you have this snarl, and you really only want the one necklace, but you have to pull on all of them and you probably have to free four or five necklaces before you can even get to the one that you originally went in.
Meret Bitticks:
And that's what this issue is. Right? This issue is connected with white supremacy. This issue is connected with privilege, with class, with education, and we're all trying to untangle our part of it and a lot of times we don't even know we're tangled up in it until we're confronted with that.
Shervin Talieh:
What an absolutely powerful metaphor to end our session. Meret, you're the first and only professional musician I've ever spoken to, and teacher as well. And a teacher of teachers. There's a lot going on here.
Meret Bitticks:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Shervin Talieh:
You're generous with your opening up about your context, and thank you so much for today. Thank you for teaching me and for sharing your thoughts with me.
Meret Bitticks:
Well, thanks for the opportunity.
Shervin Talieh:
Thank you.