HipHop Feminism: A response to "Boys Will be Boys"

My mind was drawing a blank.


The time came to turn in a proposal for our final paper and I was lost. I'd lost my words. They evaporated with the descent of enveloping helplessness. For someone who usually has something to say or write about, I was unable to formulate a sentence that, as described by Gloria Anzaldua, did not reek of  "esoteric bullshit and pseudo-intellectualizing," (Speaking in Tongues 79).  The past few weeks, I thought I had solidified my voice! Yet as I fidgeted on the couch, and again hours later at my desk, and futzed even more hours later on the floor hoping somehow that changing positions would facilitate the flow of inspiration, I couldn't come up with anything more than beautified truisms or broad generalizations to encompass my final paper topic. The cursor on my word document blinked dispassionately at my increasing frustration. Wasn't there something I could write about that was more than the regurgitation of things people way more knowledgeable than me had already said?  Of course. Did I know how to take a different spin on it? That's where I faltered.


It was only after reading an article about "structural violence" - which taking a variety of institutionalized forms  of "-isms" forms, systemically harms people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs - that I became curious at how the overarching themes of human rights and the restriction of agency when faced with poverty, could be applied to the TNF network. My sleuthing then led me to a documentary produced by Byron Hurt, titled HipHop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. I was riveted within the first few minutes.


Investigating the display of manhood in HipHop, Byron Hurt wanted to know why the lyrics of young male rappers are saturated with ideals of gun play, killing other men, asserting dominance by putting fear into another man's heart, and feminizing the weaknesses of other men. As Dr. Michael Eric Dyson notes, "Masculinity is at heart of American identity," with the collective imagination of a man using violence to establish his position of authority and his manhood.  Like many parts of Americana, such displays of masculinity also influenced the evolution of HipHop.

As Jackson Katz, anti-sexist activist, asserts later, "If you’re a young man, and the culture tells you that being a man means being powerful, being dominant, being in control, having respect of your peers, but in reality you have no real power, one thing you do have is access to your body and the ability of presenting yourself physically as someone worthy of respect, and that’s one thing that accounts for the hyper-masculine posturing of men of color and poor white working class men.  Men with more financial, work place, or other abstract forms of authority don't have to be as physically powerful because they can assert their power in other ways. (16:10)

The violence within hip hop lyrics brings up the question of desensitization to violence. The United States is an incredibly hyper-aggressive, hyper-masculine nation; one that endorses a culture of violence and that of conquer or be conquered. What fails to get noticed though in this narrative is how that type of manhood is ultimately a destructive one of "black death pimped by corporations" (19:30 / 20:45).

But is this display of manhood at the expense of womanhood?  Especially women of color?

A prime example of the controversy surrounding HipHop and its objectification of women as only sexual objects is demonstrated by an event that gained national attention in April 2004. Nelly, a multi-platinum rap artist and businessman, was met with resistance at Spelman College, one of the most famous black women's colleges in the United States. Responding to a particularly explicit hip hop video called "Tip Drill," where Nelly is seen "swiping a credit card down a woman's backside," the student body threated to protest Nelly's presence at a philanthropic event. Nelly decided to not show up.

This issue of female objectification and degradation remains largely unaddressed. As asserted by Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a professor at Spelman college, "black people [generally speaking] do not believe that misogyny, sexism, and violence against women are urgent issues, but that [we] still believe that that racism, police brutality and black male incarceration are issues we should be concerned about (26:15) "If we have a glorified sense of our own victimization as black and brown men, what we must not miss and often do is that black and brown women are also victimized not only by white patriarchy but by black supremacy and the degree of violence of masculinity directed against them (26:26) follows Dr. Michael Eric Dyson.

The documentary then provides the viewer with harrowing statistics: (26:57)

• 1 in 4 black women are raped before they are 18
• Black women are 35% more likely to be physically assaulted than white women
• More than 700,000 women in the US are sexually assaulted each year; that’s 1 women every 45 seconds 
• 61% of victims are under 18  

So, how are women within the HipHop community responding to the structured sexism of a music industry commodifying black manhood and perpetuating an American culture of violence?


This is the question I will explore. The search starts here. And here too. 

Malalai Joya / ملالۍ جویا : A woman among warlords

Malalai Joya's visa application was recently denied by a U.S. State Department consular officer. The reason? Because she was "unemployed" and “lived underground."


Well, duh.


Considering that Malalai Joya was forced into hiding AND has experienced five assassination attempts after her 2004 speech against the placement of warlords within Afghan parliament, denying her a visa to the US was an aggressive attempt to ignore the voice of a key advocate for the Afghan people. Having successfully applied for a U.S. visa four times before, this rejection was a politicized act:  one responding to the fact that Joya is vocal in her opposition to U.S. policy and military involvement in her country.

After a letter writing campaign that flooded the offices of Hilary Clinton, the State Department reconsidered their decision, and finally granted Joya a three week visa to continue her tour as planned.

Reflection of an activist who "raised her voice"

Who would have guessed that this prominent woman would not only speak at Harvard to promote her new book,  but also a respectable yet much less recognizable venue as Willamette U. This woman has a message, and she's bound and determined to be heard. And she's appealing especially to young people. My Transnational Feminism class was privileged enough to even have her undivided attention for over an hour today. Least to say I was incredibly excited... yet I also had some questions.

Primarily we discussed issues surrounding the culture of war and its impact upon women. War culture, or the largely patriarchal power struggles that disempower already poor and vulnerable populations, wreak tremendous havoc upon the lives of women. Whether through rape, violence, disenfranchisement, lack of education, inability for self-sustainance, and overall robbing of agency both within the community and the household, contribute to the oppression of women and is exacerbated by war. With war, women's rights - already suffering from the ambiguities within the UN Declaration of Human Rights, are readily sacrificed for the cause OR are used and abused to promote foreign intervention. Afghanistan is a prime example, where the burqa has become a prime target for Western nations to help "end" oppression. Often Western narratives claim that to free the woman from the stuffy confines of the burqa is to empower her. That to bomb her village to kill Taliban forces - but also in the process killing her husband and child, or destroying her home -  is to "help" her.  Overall, the Afghan women is not only completely oppressed, she is completely unable to remedy her condition. She is a perpetual victim, powerless by the rhetoric constructing her. Thus, the Muslim Afghan woman must be "saved."

But does she?

Joya would answer, "Allhamdulilah, hellll no!"

Times article arguing that to leave Afghanistan is to abandon Afghan women to their oppressors. Joya would respond that in leaving Afghanistan, Afghan women have one less oppressor to fight...

Western intervention and military campaigns ironically continue to perpetuate the problems currently oppressing women, Joya argues. By simplifying the oppression of Afghan women to the burqa (which Joya has actually used to smuggle textbooks to her secret school in Kabul and protected her from the success of assassination attempts), the complexities that come with understanding the struggles of Afghan women are lost, instead becoming a convenient punchline for American taxpayers and privileged white feminists to readily buy into. The construction of the helpless Afghan woman and the call to arms of her American sisters to cast aside the burqa sadly misses the deeper issues that are silencing her. Ridding the Afghan woman of the burqa will not educate her. It won't give her skills necessary for employment. It won't even free her from the oppression inflicted by men.

In essence, "saving" the Afghan woman is contributing to her oppression. By denying the Afghan woman's ability for self-determination, by perpetuating her victimization through warfare, the West is helping to sustain her vulnerability.

Its like the sour, violent twist of a "white horse" fairy tale, where in riding up to a fair maiden "needing" rescue, the rider doesn't see her and instead pummels her into the muddy misunderstandings found within the greatest tragedies. And history repeats itself... as Libya may reveal in the coming months.

Joya's facilitation of our class discussion and her lecture later in the evening only lead me to additional questions. Moreover, I was left feeling despondent. After hearing stories of unimaginable atrocities commonplace in a land under siege, and hearing Joya express her frustration with the role the U.S. has played in debilitating the autonomy of Afghan women, I was left disoriented.

What do WE, acting within the parameters of a global sisterhood, DO in responding to the conditions of women in Afghanistan???

Unsurprisingly, Joya offered a plan of action: the United States must withdraw from Afghanistan, largely so that Afghan women have "only the warlords and the Taliban leftover to fight."

No wonder this disturber of the peace didn't get a US visa.