Capible, pliable women

I just get so angry! Maybe that's why I'm in grad school. Here's the newest argument for writing about Trude and her female colleagues. I just bought Steven Suskin's book, The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations. Anyway I bought this book partially because I heard Suskin talk about it on playbillradio (yes I'm a regular listener) and he mentioned Trude specifically. So I figure...I have to have this book it will more fully explain what it is exactly orchestrators and arrangers do. I just got it from amazon and I do my standard check the index for all of the pages Trude is mentioned on. A fair amount! Great! Except that her biography is a paragraph long (granted all the arrangers are given about the same length) and there is very little else about her actual work. One of the more frustrating references is the show index listening of The King and I. Suskin has already created Rittman with the composition of the "Small House of Uncle Thomas" ballet which at this point I feel like should be common knowledge to the world if they are listening! Anyway...in the King and I listing there is a strange note in the seciotn on the work Russell Bennett (orchestrator for Rodgers) did for the show, " 'Uncle Tom's Cabin Ballet ('The Small House of Uncle Thomas') is by Bennett, who names the composer on the first page as 'Trude Rodgers'. " Is anyone as offened by this as I am? I mean this is just reporting on Suskin's part (I'll get to my real bone with him in a moment) but who the fuck is Trude Rodgers? The fact that her first name and his last name are given so demoralizes her contribution, which no one seems to argue was the whole fucking ballet...all 130 pages or whatever it turned out to be. I must find out why that name was credited as composer. Who did that?!
Ok Suskin, now to you....and here comes my Wendy Wasserstein femisnist side coming out.... Suskin cleverly breaks up the sections of his book into refrain, verse, bridge etc. with a corresponding parenthetical title. Well here's the parenthetical within the parenthetical that drives me nuts. The "Refrain" is subtitled: Men of Notes (and a Few Women, Too). Ok. So to a man, that is being inclusive right? He comes up with a clever phrase...I can just hear him saying..."hohoho Men of Notes...get it?...notes! Oh, oh wait, what about Rittman and Pitot...well I guess I better not offend anyone...I'll add (and a Few Women, Too) hohoho." Well I'm frigin sorry but that offends me too. I don't know if it offends me more...it might actually now that I'm thinking about it because it's basically pointing out that women are just a parentical in musical theatre. It drives me bonkers.
So I'm back trying to figure out which is which. And right now Trude is calling my name. Once I read the book more thouroughly I'll report back.
Pins.