Leon_AB Midterm

Eduardo Leon

Annotated Bibliography Midterm

March 12, 2018

The Effects of Hypermasculinity in Hip Hop

Source 1: “God is a DJ”:

Bloustien, Geraldine. “‘God Is a DJ’: Girls, Music, Performance, and Negotiating Space.” Girlhood and the Politics of Place, edited by Claudia Mitchell and Carrie Rentschler, Berghahn Books, NEW YORK; OXFORD, 2016, pp. 228–243. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14jxn16.18.

Bloustien’s article offers many insights into hip hop’s everlasting masculine construct from topics such as DJing, the technology world such as youtube and more. It was interesting to see how in either scenario, men were always thought to be more competent and better than females and this goes from DJing both old school and new school and technology. The article pointed out how in either case in DJing, women were always seen as not being able to do what men could do, one because they either don’t possess the necessary prowess as their counterparts or the strength to carry vast amounts of equipment and records, or contrary the new age of DJing, they don’t have the amount of competence as men to learn the new technical aspects of DJing. The last part about DJing, is when Bloustien talks about how it is a masculine space to begin with, which is why women are severely short handed as many don’t feel comfortable being in this male dominated spaces alone. All of this is important to the Hip Hop and Feminism Wiki page because it shows and explains another area in which women are excluded and stereotyped in hip hop culture.

Source 2: African American Femininities in Rap Music Lyrics

Pemberton, J. M. “now I Ain’t Sayin’ She’s A Gold Digger”: African American Femininities In Rap Music Lyrics. no date. Florida State University, 2008.

Page 11.

My next article talks about the lyrics associated with hip hop, how it’s overly masculine and constantly bring down and don’t bring to light the feminine side of hip hop when it comes to female rappers. This is important to the wiki because it shows another side of how masculinity and femininity play into hip hop and the culture. The reason for such an absence of women in hip hop is because of how hip hop is primarily known as an overly masculine industry so for women to recreate or fully embody these personas it would be impossible. I think it’s sad how anything remotely different is considered bad, for hip hop to be such a political genre we see how it is less open to “different”, whether that be female MC’s or different types of rap. Playing devil’s advocate, Pemberton talks about how even women inside of hip hop that are influential are contributing to these problems by appearing in hyper masculine music videos that portray them as sexual objects.

Source 3: Misogyny, Violence and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space

Rebollo-Gil, G. and Moras, A. (2012), Black Women and Black Men in Hip Hop Music: Misogyny, Violence and the Negotiation of (White-Owned) Space. The Journal of Popular Culture, 45: 118–132. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00898.x

The last article articulates this notion of how hip hop has always been feminine, the only difference being is that much of it is trying to keep women quiet. It also documents the struggles of African American females and their “muted” voice. Another key point noted in this piece is how these women have to work even that much harder than men when it comes to their femininity, this is because they not only have to be feminine but possess masculine traits as well as the author notes, “a girl rapper has to be soft but hard; sweet but serious; sexy but respectable; strong but kind of weak; smart but not too loud about it” (Guillermo). This is something that is very important to the piece as it illustrates how through this hyper-masculine behavior, we often see the voices of these women being silenced through lyrics of sex or rape.

Final Summary:

Through my research, the prevailing topic of how hypermasculinity plays a role into hip hop feminism is very important. From the start we see how lyrics and preconceived stereotypes are constantly trying to play into this role of excluding women from hip hop. Some of it has to do with the fact that it’s “different”, this alone, according to men, threatens the ideals of hip hop. All three of these pieces connects because each showcases the damaging and overpowering of male presence in this genre, through the DJing culture, lyrics and misogyny.

The first part talks about DJing and how through various techniques and such has been forced in a male dominated sphere. This is because of factors including women being afraid to be in such heavily male present environment, the feeling of being unsafe and unwelcomed hinders their ability to grow in the culture as well as their skills of being a DJ.

This partnered with the fact that by default they get overlooked and underappreciated, just plays into the everlasting lack of presence of female energy within hip hop.

The second piece I wrote about very much had to do with the lyrics in hip hop. This also correlates to hypermasculinity as a lot of these lyrics are about objectifying women and showcasing the lack of female powerhouses. Another part about this second piece talks about music videos and how they showcase women as mere objects used in the background and usually not equal to the male figurehead. One of the problems with this is that it once again discourages women presence in the hip hop scene by showing them as objects inferior to men. Contrary, Pemberton also discusses how women figureheads in hip hop continue to portray this image instead of pushing it forward, this makes it so that the genre gets stuck in this one niche because it’s not being shown just from one side anymore.

The third and final piece discusses the actual misogyny and violence within the hip hop community and how it affects women and african american women. Hip hop encourages the misogyny and violence through these lyrics and hypermasculinity. Because of all of this, yet again women have to work even that much harder than men to get respected in hip hop not just in terms of skill but in attitude and personality as well.

Overall, the theme of these articles is how the voices of these women are often drowned out by the hypermasculinity of hip hop. It shows the damaging effects of lyrics, objectification in the hip hop sphere and how this also affects the African American community. I think all three of these would greatly contribute to the wiki, the first one being one of the more important ones. I really enjoyed how they talked about the reason why some women are afraid to pursue these paths even though they very much enjoy it. Looking at it through an outside perspective I can see why it looks rather intimidating, the author of the first piece was depicting a scene of a bunch of guys in a basement underground mixing records and DJing and how this would make someone feel unsafe. Especially if you aren’t very much welcomed or respected in that environment to begin with. This scene would make a great addition to the wiki because this just like rap battles or graffiti could highlight the obstacles that women have to go through.