Having your talents undermined because you’re “the girl” in the band?

I work as a professional musician.  I did a lot of schooling for this…I have both a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree in Music, plus I did a lot of extra study beyond that.  Currently I play in several ensembles that specialize in freely improvised music – sometimes verging on experimental sounds.  There are very few women in my field playing this type of music.  I am almost always either the only woman in the band, and i’m sometimes the only woman in the festival or larger event.  The musicians closest to me respect my talent and i’m often considered to be the strongest player in these groups and these concerts.  However….being that i’m female, this has sometimes been problematic.

I once formed an ensemble with a man which I had some success with.  As we collaborated more with other musicians, I kept being offered external opportunities and other musicial projects (whereas he never was).  I know that the reason for this was because he just wasn’t that great of a musician.  He had no formal training, and in all honesty, he was one of the poorest musicians i’ve ever played with in a professional setting.  As time went on, I didn’t find this partnership to be creatively stimulating anymore, so I quit and moved on.  When I told this person I was leaving, he gave me a very long lecture in which he stated outrgitht that "the only reason why you’re getting these new opportunities and i’m not is because you’re an attractive girl, and these men want to be with you".  I couldn’t have been more offended.  It made me wonder if an attractive man would have been told the same thing.  I really don’t think so.  It felt as if everything that i’ve worked so hard for had been completely undermined just because i’m female.

That was just over a year ago and i’ve had great success since then.  In fact, I was even nominated for a Music award in my local community (unfortunately I didn’t win, but it was still an honour)  However, i’m still the only girl in the various ensembles I play with.  Because of the incident mentioned above, I sometimes wonder if I will find success based ONLY on my musical skill, or if it will always come down to "well, she’s the girl in the group – put her at the front of the stage and always put her in the foreground of all the pictures".  I consider myself to be a feminist (obviously, or I wouldn’t be posting here), but I can’t decide if I should embrace the fact that I get extra attention because i’m a woman and the focal point by deafult, or if I should resist that and try to make my music speak for itself with nothing else to help it along.  I’m interested to hear perspective on this from other feminists.