The Feminine Hip?

"That whole obsession with hip is like collecting records or whatever.  It's more of a male thing." (Gordon, 239)  John Leland asserts that women have a small role in the evolution of hip in his book, "Hip: The History".  He tells us that Hip is a sexist, misogynistic and male-dominated playground but also asserts that the Hip ethos is decidedly feminine.  Put simply, the realm of Hip, in Leland's mind, is within the population of feminine males.  "The chronicles of hip, as told by men, often play like T.E. Lawrence's adventures in Arabia, in which the only female characters were the camels, or like Miles Davis's autobiography, which could be a how-to manual for aspiring misogynists." (Leland, 240)  He further states that females either are the angels of stories or the demons or don't exist at all within Hip's literature.
After some thought I've concluded that he is not completely wrong in his assertion of a sexist Hip but that he is too generalized in that same assumtion.  Throughout the book he assumes that race is the sole factor in hip and "Once Upon a Time" that may have been true but I believe in the past 30 years or so females have taken on a greater role within the evolution of Hip's persona.
That said, it is a fact that the hip ideal is the ideal of the rebel and women have, in the past, been unable to rebel in almost any way.  Gregory Corso said, when asked about the male clubhouse, "There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock." (Leland, 242)  This treatment in the past obviously would have made the emergence of hip women difficult but that is definetly no longer the case and hasn't been for several years.
In short, I'd conclude that in the past hip has been extremely sexist.  However it has gotten better in recent years and will continue to do so at a faster rate than the main stream.