Rappers' Delight
Voices of protest are popping up here and there, ever so slowly, to register their complaints about the woman-hating lyrics and culture of some popular rap music. In the last year the protests have come from inside hip-hop culture, where it should have the most impact (no one is going to listen to a bunch of white middle class intellectuals, especially women, as a general rule).
This latest piece is by a teenage girl from Ohio, a rap fan and feminist struggling with this cultural conflict. This excerpt especially warmed my heart, because it is directly opposed to the idea that cultural expressions like art don't influence attitudes and behavior. You know, the folks who claim that watching violent movies 10 hours a day since age 5 doesn't affect them in any way.
'Instead of simply promoting fads like Lacoste shirts and Cristal, through their music, rappers are spreading their views on women to an audience of teenage boys larger than Fat Joe's waistline, and I feel the effects everywhere I go.
From the school hallway, where on more than one occasion I have heard comments about the way I fit in my jeans, to the mall parking lot where pick-up lines usually begin with "Ooh, sexy ... " teenage boys express the same misogynistic sentiments as their rapping idols. I know that music is not the only driving force behind their behavior, but I believe rap's influence on my peers is stronger than the light reflecting off Jay-Z's ice.'
Say it!! But I am bothered by the sense of hopelessness (she calls it her hope, but I think it's actually pretty defeatist) in her conclusion, though. I don't expect this 17-year-old to have a solution, but if feminist teens are feeling hopeless, what hope do we have? On the other hand, just the fact that she wrote this and that it appeared on Alternet gives me tons of hope. Hope shmope. Always hoping things will get better, aren't we.
'I'll just hope that one day in the spirit of MC Lyte and Ms. Melodie, the future of popular radio will include new songs that don't make me want to alert NOW.'
A bunch of people responded to her on Alternet with brilliant suggestions like "change the radio station," and "listen to other kinds of rap and/or musical genres that don't degrade women." Totally missing the point, they are.
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I wholeheartedly agree with on this point. The ever increasing acceptability of treating women like meat is something our society could do well without. It’s not so much that people make this kind of stuff, or that people listen to it, it’s that it’s not shameful to do so.
I know you’ll disagree, but this is something feminism has brought on itself. Under the guise of ‘equal treatment’, the lowest common denominator was elevated as an equal of good behavior. Prostitution? Pornography? “Women can do what they want, after all men can behave badly, why can’t we. Anyway, holding women to some model of ladylike behavior is paternalistic, chauvinist, judgmental discrimination” goes the thinking.
As well, a bit ago the local leftwing college station was plugging a women’s march, only they phrased it “for those who consider themselves women”. That’s the thinking driving much of the wretched social behavior as well. Once being a woman can mean anything, it comes to mean nothing, or even worse, it comes to mean what the most ill thinkers in society think it means since the social attitudes which held them back have been destroyed.
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