Misogyny Ain’t No Laughing Matter
When you’re asked about the misogyny in your artistic expression, this is not an acceptable answer Ice Cube: “If you’re a bitch, you’re probably not going to like us. If you’re a ho, you probably don’t like us. If you’re not a ho or a bitch, don’t be jumping to the defense of these despicable females. Just like I shouldn’t be jumping to the defense of no punks or no cowards or no slimy son of a bitches that’s men. I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we’re talking about her.” Even less of an acceptable response is laughing off the question as you answer which tells me that your thinking about women, Black women in particular, has not changed in the twenty plus years since you rapped “Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks.”
Not to be outdone, Dr. Dre plays it somewhat cool when asked about the incident in which he punched Dee Barnes in the face and threw her through a door; saying that he had “paid for it.” I might be a little bit confused here, but when exactly did Dr. Dre pay for it? To be frank, these are not NWA issues, these are societal issues that are unwittingly exposed by these excerpts from the NWA interview with Rolling Stone. The idea that there are classifications of women, even when you’re using terms to define women which have commonly been used to degrade and demean them speaks to a deeper issue.
Misogyny as it is defined via Wikipedia is: “the hatred or dislike of women or girls. According to feminist theory, misogyny can be manifested in numerous ways, including sexual discrimination, belittling of women, violence against women, and sexual objectification of women.” All of these things can be found in NWA’s catalogue or in the actions of some of its members, but we must remember not to attribute these things as though they are the exclusive property of NWA. NWA’s members came up around and in a culture that likely viewed women as disposable objects. Things to be had, used, and then discarded. We have to be careful in diagnosing NWA as the biggest problem in hip hop’s history because to be totally honest, hip hop as it functions is rather inherently misogynistic and this is less about NWA and more about the culture and conditions in which the group was born. This is not to excuse or downplay the problem of misogyny in NWA’s lyrics, but it is an attempt to understand exactly why they could rap lyrics such as the above quoted and then twenty plus years later, Ice Cube can arbitrarily wave his hand and dismiss the charge of misogyny. The dismissal of the complaint with a question of “respectable women” was an act of verbal violence upon women who Ice Cube or others would find reason to disrespect and or demean. This is the insidious nature of misogyny. Many misogynists are not aware of, nor would they call themselves misogynists. They may even call women Queens in one breath and in the next breath ask of the activists like Bree Newsome “Where are the Black men?” To ask that question is to believe on some level that Black women are not capable of leading their own revolutions without the heavy presence of male leadership. It is to say that Black women need to be lead by men in order to be most effective. It is the very language of oppression given an air of concern.
The concern over NWA’s movie is not without merit, however because it does gloss over some incidents of violence against women committed by Dr. Dre and in the interest of telling a story that resonates with this current atmosphere of Black male angst against an out of control machine Hell bent on destruction, it misses an opportunity to point out reactive rage against Black women perpetrated by the victims of Police oppression. There is a well known saying as it relates to creating a piece of art, and that saying is you must kill all your darlings. In this NWA biopic, as in most biopics, it appears that the darlings are not dead but worshipped. These darlings were misogynistic, specifically against Black women. It’s time we stopped engaging in hero worship and overprotection of the Black male image and get to the messy business of killing our darlings. That way the full and accurate story can be told without hearing quotes like the above from Ice Cube, and maybe you’ll hear a quote like this: “The songs we make, the art we produce — it villifies women. It reduces our women to objects of sexual fulfillment or just objects in general; we don’t love these women. We are not loyal to our wives, sisters, mothers and daughters if we play and create music that dehumanizes them. We support artists and entertainers who have repeatedly abused and victimized women, and our coverage on it makes them out to be the victims rather than those people who they have violated. We do not stand up and defend our women and, to be rather honest, in our history we never have. “I’m sorry” are such hollow words in the face of such a neglectful history, since we’re so caught up in establishing our places in society that we have forgotten how to elevate our women as we elevate ourselves.”
