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.