Does hip hop hate women?
Posted Dec 7 2007
Bakari Kitwana
How do you educate and raise these issues for next generation?
Joan Morgan
• Name five movies in past year that accurately portray black women. They're invisible in all realms, not just hip hop.
• Acknowledged that hip hop gave her opportunities to speak about these issues.
• On tour, men dominate discussion, even during open-mic session, even though it’s about gender.
• Hip hop is the jump off point to broader issues. If it doesn’t, what’s the point?
Dan Hodge
• There are subtleties that get hard wired into people’s psyche
• Told anecdotal tales of teens not respecting women. People were literally gasping in the crow (ed. Note: what bubble are these people living in?)
• Three categories of women: virgin, slut, b*tch—who is essentially a woman who asserts herself
• Jobs are assigned by gender, such as secretaries
Marcyliena Morgan
• Hip hop’s role is to make these issues relevant to people’s lives
• Glad there are forums to talk about these issues. It gets things out on the table.
Mark Anthony Neal
• He teaches a Black feminism class at Duke. There are 28 students 24 are women, 21 are Black women. He always asks the same question and always gets the same response. Who considers themselves feminists? In this class he got five: three white women-the flip-flop types, one Black woman, who by “looking at her you can tell,” and Neal himself.
• He argues that Spelman offer strong feminist insight and is empowering. There’s no question why Nelly was challenged. There are not many places that nurture Black women like Spelman.
• Argues that hip hop is emblematic of larger issues
Dawn-Elissa Fischer
Is it oversimplifying to say that rappers can’t do better?
Mark Anthony Neal
-Although I missed his complete response to give context to the following, they were still good points
• Point of panel isn’t to get everyone to cheer, but hopefully someone in the crowd will get inspired to act
• Quoting a rape crisis counselor in regards to the Desiree Washington/Mike Tyson case-“Rape is never the punishment for stupidity.”
Invincible
• In response to Joan Morgan talking to 3 AM, but not about hip hop-why aren’t more experiences that people can relate to in hip hop music?
• Told story of being in Palestine and how people there used hip hop to tell their stories. Why can’t it happen here?
• Hip hop reflects same symbols of oppression. Need to connect gender to other issues like economics. Most people are too busy trying to survive to make connections. With youth, hip hop can be a gateway drug to knowledge.
• People need to support alternative outlets like Davey D.
Dan Hodge
• Does work with strippers and uses Hustle and Flow” to generate discussion.
• There needs to be more modeling in the community. Too many women see men as rapists, sex addicts, etc. Need to discuss issues such as homophobia with young men, as well as ideas of masculinity.
• Need to take holistic approaches.
After reading your article I still think the same way. Women have a choice on what they want to do. sure there mind set is not as mature as an older woman but they still have a choice. They know how they are going to be viewed by their actions. I think the media is the one to blame because they show a certain image that its ok to be the way they are. I think that hip hop doesn't hate women because there have been a lot of women rappers in the game. There have even been positive up lifting women rappers like queen latifah.
This is one issue that I still don't know what to think on. When you look at hip hop today, the one thing that people think about is women wearing reavling clothes. Rappers today only use women as an accessory.This, I think, will never change. Sure some people like the artist Common let this affect him. From what I see he does not degrade women. Rappers are afraid of doing this because they think that their statues will go down. The only thing that is tumbling down is their respect for women.
After readng this article i changed some points but think the same about some to. I think that us as women are enough old to know what we want to wear and why we wear that type of clothes. But also I think that for me they prefer seeing a women with clothes that show a lot. On music the only thing they sing about is about women doing different types of activites. They talk about the guy having all the womens they wants and using drugs and drinking alcohol. Many of us don't really pay attention to the lyrics we just hear it and like it because of it's rythim but if we really pay a lot of attention to it we will understand that it only talks about women. Womens for men in a song is basically about a woment that goes every guy that they like and that it has money. On a way that they are trying to put the women in a bad place or that she is the worst person in life.But is rarely the time when there's a song that talks about a women suffering over a guys treatment. But i agree with the panel because is tru about the rappers having a kyric of women just as their game. Because if rappers if they talk about women being the victim or being nice in their lyriccsthey might getlower fans. And will start loosing money because they are talking good about women. But i just dont really understand the rappers why they decided to do it like that.
I think that people need to acknowledge female artist more often because then people wont have a reason to say that hip-hop hates women, also i think that when the rappers refer to women they way the do is because they think that women is ok with it when we're not. I hate when dudes try to call me out my name or refer to me as a female dog. I know thats not how their parents raised them. To me they are making their parents look bad because it seems like their parents didn't teach them how to respect women and thats not right.