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Eminem, Misogyny, and the Sounds of Silence
Eminem is back and once again looming large over the pop cultural landscape. On the occasion of the release of his new album, Relapse, his full-length, full-color image appears literally larger than life on billboards in major cities from New York to Los Angeles, not to mention cities all over the world. Although the album itself has received mixed reviews, the elite arbiters of cultural taste and artistic merit have given the rapper's return the red carpet treatment.
The New York Times ran a giant photo and story on the front of its Sunday Arts and Leisure section on May 24. Entertainment Weekly featured the 36-year-old on the cover of its summer music preview issue; Time magazine devoted two pages of its June 1 issue to a review of his album and discussion about the state of his life and career. Of course the online universe is also abuzz; at the time of this writing, a Google search with the words Eminem and relapse returned 2.7 million hits.
Despite a five-year hiatus, there is no doubt that Eminem remains a popular artist. Relapse debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 608,000 units in its first week of release.
For those of us who had hoped that his cultural moment had passed, the return of Eminem forces us to confront the disturbing reality that our society remains in deep denial about misogyny and its myriad manifestations in the art and commerce of everyday life. Misogyny (the hatred of women) in rap preceded Eminem and has thrived in his absence. And in fairness, the fact that he is white makes it easier for this writer and other whites to criticize him than it is to call out Black artists whose work is similarly sexist and oppressive. These racial dynamics are important issues to examine in another time and place.
Nonetheless, the evidence of our culture's unwillingness to address the reality and ubiquity of men's violence against women is not merely contained in the lyrics on Eminem's new album, which when they're not exploring the depths to which the artist's drug addiction had taken him, characteristically communicate a deep contempt for women and a violent rage at them. This unwillingness is most clearly seen in the music reviews and overall media coverage of the rapper's comeback.
It is not what they say that is cause for concern, but what they studiously avoid. With a few notable exceptions, such as Alan Ranta on the web site Pop Matters calling Relapse "chauvinistic hate-speech," the high priests of cultural criticism in the journalistic mainstream seem to have decided that Eminem's virulent misogyny is no longer even worthy of a mention, much less an appropriate subject of extended commentary and critique. Is it truly possible that women's lives have been so thoroughly devalued that a multi-platinum musical artist with nine Grammy awards to his name can sing multiple songs about raping and mutilating women and hip sophisticates can't even bring themselves to utter the words "woman-hating?"
It is as if critics have decided that 1) there is (still) nothing wrong with one of the most celebrated musical artists in the world devoting multiple songs to verbal attacks on women and girls, as long as there's a catchy beat and the content is rationalized as "dark comedy," or 2) homicidal misogyny has become so commonplace in entertainment media that there is no further need to discuss it.
A survey of recent articles about Eminem in several major media outlets yields plenty of lines like "a stunning return to form from the man who is arguably rap's most talented lyricist," (Entertainment Weekly), but a near-absence of criticism directed at Eminem or Interscope/Universal Music Group for releasing an album with lyrics like the following from the song "Stay Wide Awake":
Fe Fi Fo Fum
I think I smell the scent of a placenta
I enter central park, it's dark, it's winter in December
I see my target with my car, and park and approach her tender
Young girl by the name of Brenda and I pretend to befriend her
Sit down beside her like a spider, hi there girl you mighta
Heard of me before, see whore you're the kinda girl that I'da
Assault and rape and figure why not try to make your pussy wider
Fuck you with an umbrella then open it up while that shits inside ya
No thoughtful person would argue that music lyrics themselves cause men to be violent; that is the sort of simplistic argument which defenders of Eminem and other misogynous rappers and rockers raise and then ridicule whenever anyone mentions the possible "real world" effects of artistic portrayals. But just as it is reductive and problematic to draw a causal link between lyrics and actual behavior, it is similarly nonsensical to deny that the production and reception of art always has a social dimension. Popular art succeeds, at least commercially, precisely because it resonates with a certain audience - for whatever reason - in a given cultural and historical context.
In discussions of Eminem's choice to feature on his comeback album a number of songs that explore the sadism of his misogynous serial killer alter ego, Slim Shady, is it not relevant to mention the ongoing pandemic of men's violence against women, including the outrage of serial murder? Is it not relevant to ask why some men are so angry at women that they would derive a twisted sort of pleasure from singing along with a first-person narrator (Slim Shady) who delights in terrifying, degrading, raping and murdering them?
In addition to his predilection for writing "comic" lyrics in the voice of a serial murderer, Eminem continues to find lyrically inventive ways to joke about raping women by shoving objects into their bodies, like in the lyrics above, or in the song "3 a.m.," where he casually raps about inserting "...a flashlight up Kim Kardashian's ass." This is in a country - ours - where one out of six women will be the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. And while the reality of rape is not funny anywhere, the global reach of the U.S. entertainment industry means that boys and men can listen and laugh along to Eminem's songs in countries where the rape and mutilation of women and girls are even more common and less socially stigmatized than they are here.
Consider the tragic case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the rape and murder of women are beyond pandemic and are closer in scope to genocide. For years Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist, has operated daily on dozens of women and girls as young as two and three-years-old whose insides have been ripped apart by men who brutally gang rape them, shove sticks and bottles into their vaginas, and sadistically mutilate their sexual organs in unimaginable ways, causing the ones who survive a lifetime of excruciating pain, incontinence, disease and loneliness. In a New York Times article in 2007 Dr. Mukwege said "We don't know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear. They are done to destroy women."
Is it going too far to suggest that when wealthy nations such as ours export music by the likes of Eminem to countries with that level of misogynous violence that we are practicing what might be considered a particularly insidious form of cultural imperialism?
Defenders of world-famous artists like Eminem would surely rush in to say: Eminem is not responsible for these unspeakable outrages! He is an artist! Of course. But is it unreasonable to suggest that when Eminem jokes about sticking umbrellas up women's vaginas that one effect might be that it helps to desensitize his male (and even female) fans across the globe to the humanity and suffering of women? Desensitization is one of the key effects of exposure to violence, both in media and real life. An Alternet article entitled "Torture Chic: Why Is the Media Glorifying Inhumane, Sadistic Behavior?," suggests that the increasing presence of torture in entertainment media, such as on the hit TV series 24, has helped to desensitize Americans to real torture done in our name, such as in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
The silence of mainstream music critics on the possible societal effects of misogyny in popular music has been deafening. If an artist's job is sometimes to be provocative and push boundaries, isn't it a critic's job at the very least to ask questions like: What does it say about our culture that Eminem's lyrics resonate with millions of American men, and even many women? How can we discern the difference between artistic revelation and crass exploitation in Marshall Mathers' art? Does his vaunted lyrical virtuosity provide us with any insight into the larger belief systems - along with individual motivations --- that lie behind men's sexualized brutality toward women? Is he a brilliant artist exploring important artistic terrain, or is he merely going for cheap voyeuristic thrills at the expense of women, knowing full well that no one will hold him - or his record company -- accountable?
One piece of circumstantial evidence for the latter view is provided by Jon Pareles in The New York Times, who explains the process Eminem and his collaborators went through in deciding how to position his comeback:
"Both Eminem and Dr. Dre thought hard about how Eminem should re-emerge. And both concluded the world wanted more Slim Shady. 'I talked to my son about it,' said Dr. Dre, 'and he was like: 'The kids want to hear him act the fool. We want to hear him be crazy, we want to hear him be Slim Shady and nothing else.' "
The tone of at least some of the coverage this time suggests there are a few authoritative voices in music criticism and commentary who have moved beyond the adulatory groupthink that characterized much writing about Eminem back in his heyday earlier this decade. In those headier days, when Eminem was both lionized and criticized for being the "Hip-Hop Elvis," many in the cognoscenti actively sought to rationalize Eminem's murderous lyrical misogyny and homophobia by claiming that the "Slim Shady" character Marshall Mathers hid behind was a creative fictional construct through which the artist sought to explore taboo topics with lyrical dexterity over an infectious beat produced by Dr. Dre. If you didn't get the joke or appreciate the humor, it was because you were too dense or politically correct to appreciate the brilliant artistry at play.
But at least some writers seem to have grown tired of parroting the debatable (and profitable) premise that Eminem is a major artist with important things to say. In one of the most dismissive pieces I reviewed, Josh Tyrangiel in Time magazine ridicules Eminem's attempt to regain the title of America's Most Outrageous:
"Half of Relapse - the aggressively dull and stupid half - is devoted to re-establishing Eminem as a man so unhinged, he's capable of anything or at least fantasizing about anything.... By the middle of the first song, '3 a.m.,' Eminem, or one of his multiple alter egos, has masturbated to Hannah Montana and left a pile of bodies behind the counter of a McDonald's....On 'Medicine Ball' he promises to rape the Pussycat Dolls and spits out a couplet of abuse for Madonna and Rihanna, while 'Same Song and Dance' has him raping Lindsay Lohan in one verse and Britney Spears in the next. Suffice it to say that many more rapes occur and I stopped taking notes. "
The corporate media have played a crucial role in Eminem's highly lucrative career in part by defining the parameters of how he can be criticized. As Jon Pareles writes in The New York Times, Eminem "quickly became an offensive scourge to those who took Shady's fantasies literally, or worried that others might." Note the narrow range of possibilities the writer offers to describe those who might be "offended" by Eminem's art. Conveniently left out are Eminem's detractors who possess a more complex understanding of the effects of violent, misogynous lyrics than whether or not people (men) take them literally.
Another distortion about Eminem and his detractors that many music critics have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy is the idea that resistance is futile, because Marshall Mathers is just too clever. Pareles writes that when combined with Eminem's murderous lyrics, the "bouncy beat and singsong choruses of kiddie music" that characterize Dr. Dre's production constituted a "smiley-faced nastiness (that) was enough to make Eminem a target for the censorious, which in turn gave him a new bunch of antagonists to provoke."
So people who are concerned about the ongoing pandemic of men's violence against women -- including thousands of domestic violence and sexual assault advocates and educators - are "censorious" if they have a problem with lyrics that normalize and find humor in (fictional) rapists' misogynist fantasies of brutality and degradation? Pareles quotes Eminem's response to (unspecified) criticisms of his work with yet another non sequitir: "I didn't get in this game to be a role model." As if criticism of his artistic contributions necessarily implies such an unsophisticated understanding of the social functions of art.
Many of the same people who defend Eminem and dismiss his feminist and gay rights critics are white people - including good liberals and progressives -- who long ago accepted the idea that racist depictions in media play an important ideological role in perpetuating racism, not because whites will go out and imitate the behavior of fictional racist characters, but because the institutional structures of racism require ideological and cultural apparati to sustain them.
It takes no great leap of logic to see that sexism works in the same way. One need not argue that boys and men who listen to Eminem will become rapist-murderers in order to maintain that misogynous music and lyrics play an important role in legitimating men's mistreatment of women by making it culturally acceptable and even "cool" for men to express sexist rage against women and then hide behind the pretense that "it's only a joke" if anyone takes it too seriously. That argument has long been discredited when it comes to racism. What's the difference when the oppression in question is sexism, or heterosexism?
For women and men who work in the trenches of the sexual and domestic violence fields, and see daily the brutal results of male socialization played out on the bodies of girls and women (and other men), bearing witness to the continued success of Eminem, Inc. can be an emotionally excruciating experience. I know plenty of people who would prefer to crawl under the covers and pretend that none of this is really happening.
But those of us who take seriously the feminist idea that rapists teach us something about the society that produced them have no choice but to pay attention to Eminem -- both the content and context of his art, and how critics and others describe and make sense of it. With rare exceptions, men who rape are not anomalous monsters. They are products of their socialization and the deeply misogynist norms that prevail in their societies. In the long term, the only way to reduce dramatically the incidence of men's violence against women is to change the social norms that help to produce abusive men - which includes critically examining what sort of art we choose to celebrate, and why.
In domestic violence advocacy, there is a term used to describe a situation where people contribute to an abusive man's behavior by their conscious actions, by their minimization of his crimes, or by their silence. It is called "colluding with the batterer." It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a society where radio stations continue to play Eminem's records, people continue to buy them, and critics continue to write about them while leaving out any condemnation of their vicious sexism, is a society that is in profound collusion with the batterer.
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I don't like how you seem to imply that rap is the worst misogynist offender. Have you listened to modern rock? "You're crazy b###h but you f##k so good I'm on top of it" is part of the chorus for the creatively titled "Crazy B###h" by Buckcherry. That song was one of the most popular rock songs last year. Or switch on the classic rock for some good ole objectification like Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls". You can find things that would burst a feminists blood vessels in any form of popular music. Its not good, I'm just saying its not limited to rap at all. Lets compare two lines by two popular musicians and see who can guess who wrote what:
"I like the pants around your feet, and I like the dirt thats on your knees, and I like the way you still say please, when your looking up at me, your like my favorite damn disease"
"I sold bottles of sorrow, then chose poems and novels, the gospel was told, some folks swallowed it whole, mentally they fold, and eventually sold, their life and times, deadly like the virus design"
Your two choices are rock band Nickelback and rap collective the Wu-Tang Clan.
Thanks Jackson for confronting the real issue here - mysogyny! I wonder if the real Eminiem is a stand up guy - that is, does he treat the women in his real life with dignity, respect or equaility? Or does his music reflect his own personal values, beliefs and attitudes that women are objects that need to be controlled, molested, beaten and raped? His music certainly supports these beliefs. Where does Eminem as a person end and artist begin? Is his artistic expression a way for young men to connect and justify there own thoughts regarding their rights to "male priviledge" ? If so, which I believe is happening, this reinforces Jackson's point that the acceptance of the music and the lack of outrage regarding the violence directed at women clearly supports and colludes with every male who feels that it is their right to control, molest, beat or rape a woman. Just a final thought, does anyone seem to care that Brenda, the girl he targets in the park, is a human being wih thoughts and feelings or that she is someones daughter or possibly sister and friend. Think for a moment if you were Brenda's father - how might you be feeling about this sob targeting your daughter in the park?
Come on guys, it's not them we are talking about - it's us.
This was amazing. Thank you so much for pointing this out. It has always disturbed me to hear people singing along nonchalantly to his lyrics. Yet, no one talks about it. No one. Not even females, who "go with the flow" and sing along too. This is a subject that needs to be discussed.
This article makes several good points, but it also ignores several things. Chief among these is that there are songs of value on Relapse, such as Beautiful. Also, there is much more to Relapse than the mindless violence of Slim Shady; there is the battle the man Marshall Mathers has undertaken against his drug addiction and the loss of a close friend, which led to his overdose, depression, and disappearance from the public world for several years. Relapse is a journey of self-exploration that goes from the most hopeful (Beautiful) to the darkest (3 am) corners of the his psyche with no holds barred. And as an exploration of the human mind it is sometimes nothing short of brilliant.
Eminem has dealt several times with the issue of artist as instigator vs artist as reflection of society. How the audience falls out on this issue is each member's own choice. It's likely that some people emulate Shady and fail to see him as the caricature that he is. That is perhaps more the failure of the school systems than it is of Eminem, and it's unfortunate. But in a world where a film like No Country For Old Men can be lauded repeatedly and given the Oscar for best picture of the year, attacking Eminem seems like an attack on an easy target, and an outdated one at that.
You state:
"...attacking Eminem seems like an attack on an easy target, and an outdated one at that."
Perhaps you misread the article, and that, perhaps, illustrates "the failure of the school systems", rather than a failing of your own.
To wit:
"The New York Times ran a giant photo and story on the front of its Sunday Arts and Leisure section on May 24. Entertainment Weekly featured the 36-year-old on the cover of its summer music preview issue; Time magazine devoted two pages of its June 1 issue to a review of his album and discussion about the state of his life and career. Of course the online universe is also abuzz; at the time of this writing, a Google search with the words Eminem and relapse returned 2.7 million hits.
Despite a five-year hiatus, there is no doubt that Eminem remains a popular artist. Relapse debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 608,000 units in its first week of release."
Exactly how does this make Eminem an outdated target?
Being the artist whose song, Relapse, debutes as number one on the Billboard 100 does make him an "easy target", I'll grant you that.
correction:
Being the artist whose song, Relapse, debuts as number one on the Billboard 200 does make him an "easy target", I'll grant you that.
[typos - sorry]
Insulting someone's reading ability while you yourself completely read past the point of their argument doesn't really get you off to a good start.
The point-- the reason the target is "outdated" is suggested in the previous remark where the other commenter pointed out how we're lauding films like "No Country For Old Men" (and, might I add, "There Will Be Blood") for their no-nonsense, no-punches-pulled approach to artistic violence. I think there is a lot of misogyny in the entertainment industry in general, but we've got to be able to separate blind misogyny from an artist who is trying to comment on blind misogyny by going over the top and depicting truly brutal concepts in his work. It's outdated because we're supposed to be at the point where we understand metaliterary dialogue within a work-- and are, in fact, celebrating other artists for doing the same. Is the text, devoid of context, misogynistic? Yes. Is Eminem's audience necessarily clever enough to understand that? Some of it might be, some of it might not be. But someone railing about misogyny in Eminem's lyrics is sort of akin to someone complaining that David Mamet says the F-word an awful lot.
(Continuation of above comment) Now as an economist in training I understand the idea of supply and demand in a market economy but I also understand the idea of not only corporate responsibility but furthermore responsibility as a person- a friend, father, husband, son, etc. in a community/society. After the Rhianna/Chris Brown incident, media outlets gave the story its due "week" of time in the limelight, but what has happened since? Has Chris Brown been dropped from his label, have dozens or thousands of radio stations stopped playing his music? What will it take for someone to look beyond the prospects of making money, and into the conscience that deep down must feel some guilt for the means to an end.... What will it take for even one person within the target audience to speak to their friends and protest by requesting their local radio station ban songs by artists such as Eminem from their set-list due to its content, or write to their local store/online store and request that the album be removed? We need mobilization by a sum of parts-suppliers, consumers, and to unite and recognize the damage to all of us as a society, as a community of people, as a family of lyrics, images, and ideologies within the media, which are systematically offensive to women.
Thank you for this much needed article on Eminem and his abhorrent treatment of women within his lyrics, and more broadly, acknowledgment of the problem within rap as a genre in particular. I agree with the desensitization to what should be blatant sexism and mistreatment of women in the media. Eminem is an extreme case and it is not only shocking but disappointing, as you mention, that few critics, journalists, or others within the music industry have not called him out on it, but instead have praised his efforts, and even bestowed him with the "crown jewels" of the music business.
Interestingly, there was a time when stores refused to sell albums because of their "explicit" nature (unfortunately this label was applied more for vulgar language and not necessarily content) which in turn required such albums to carry the label on their covers. Furthermore, consumers have spoken and such a label has hardly become a scarlet letter, and in fact now most of us almost expect to see it. Not that I agree with this somewhat misguided attempt to make a statement about the changing nature of music, but imagine if a store, or more likely now an online store, made a statement about the true content of songs by applying labels such as sexist, murderous, misogynistic, homophobic- what would people do? Would it make them stop and think before purchasing that track? My fear is that they would buy it anyway, becoming even desensitized to those words themselves.
I never liked the sadistic misogyny in Eminem's lyrics. I enjoyed his beats and the songs with lyrics that were boasting, or political, or whatever--and I just excused or ignored the rest. Eminem and I are almost the same age. I've grown since my early 20s, but apparently he hasn't. I won't be buying any more of his albums.
Thank you for this insightful criticism of Eminem's new album. I'm pretty ignorant of Eminem's music and career although I loved his election song that came out just prior to Bush's re-election. It sounds as if he might be frightened that if he moves beyond the sensational music he puts out, he'll be unsuccessful. And, given his audience, that could be true. Until we're strong enough as individuals and as a species to give up blunt material success for more nuanced success that includes the heart and soul, we'll continue to be immersed in these sad dilemmae. There's so much pain in the world, one wonders how a movement toward health can get going....
As the mother of a 15 year old daughter and several young neices and nephews, i am highly resentful of the fact that these types of mysogynistic attitudes are considered "art" and "entertainment" simply because it sells. Child pornography and snuff films sell too but most of us don't consider them valuable products of society or the type of "art" and "entertainment" to which we want our children exposed. But the problem doesn't rest solely with Eminem and the rest of the rappers. I find more fault with the record company executives who are making major profits by promoting the mysogynists. I often wonder if there profiteers have daughters and neices and if they promote this kind of music to their own family members. Do they share this music with the folks they pray with? Do they send free CDs to the schools their children attend? There is something very troubling about people who are allowed to poison everyone else's world while ensuring theirs are kept pristine.
But it's not just the music moguls who are helping to make this world dangerous for our daughters. Consider the television censors who rule that it's not permissible to say words that are degrade folks while it's considered entertaining and amusing to refer to women as "bitches" and "whores" regularly on family-oriented comedy shows. For a society that considers itself highly civilized, we are not even close
I never was a fan. He hates his mother. Any man who hates his mother is not a good spouse or boyfriend. I also think that people in the public who have issues, should do long term therapy. Therapy, requires them to work on themselves and make changes in their own lives, which is hard to do. So, they go out and spew the dysfunction w/o any real desire to fix themselves.
At least Oprah did therapy and then discussed her molestation. The thing with Em is that he is teaching his daughter that men like him are acceptable mates and they're not.
I dated a guy once, when Em's song about killing his wife was getting massive radio play. The guy was talking about his ex and saying how he could relate to EM. Needless to say, we didn't date after that.
Eminem likes to take the unpleasant bits of our collective subconscious and hang them out in public. This makes people very uncomfortable, but he may be doing something useful here, because it gets people talking about it.
He's fascinated by what makes serial killers tick, so he writes a song (3AM) from the first-person perspective of a serial killer. I've read Robert Hare's book on sociopaths, and thought the song was a pretty decent portrayal of sociopathic psychology. I don't care much for Eminem's gratuitous rape and carnage songs, but in others, he makes some pretty interesting observations about the human condition. Deja Vu (on Relapse) is quite insightful re what goes on in the mind of an addict - if you've ever been to a 12-step meeting, you would recognize it. Many of his other songs give a public voice to groups that are normally not heard from much in our society: abused children, the underclass, low-ranking soldiers. Not everything he does is women-hatred or celebrity bashing.
Male on female violence is a worldwide problem, even in Sweden. Yes, women hit men, too. Problem is, men are generally bigger and stronger than women so they do more damage when they become violent. Re domestic violence among gay couples: a) yes, it exists, b) it happens with lesbians too, c) it's not more rare than with straight couples, and d) gay victims of domestic violence (particularly men) have no support structures.
oh dear. you're a fan.
Yep, and I'm a recent fan, and a 44-year old woman with a post-graduate education.
I too appreciate the discussion this is generating---made possible by both Eminem and Jackson Katz who wrote this article. I think the author's point is that he wishes more critics would take on the subject material brought up by Eminem's music. This is a good start.
I have to admit that my heart goes out to Eminem just looking at his photo. He inspires maternal instincts somehow and it sounds as if he could use a lot of understanding, which he probably won't get if he keeps sounding so cruel.
Misogyny makes me feel less safe than I would if I were a man. Things that a lot of men take for granted like living alone, going out at night, jogging alone in the woods etc are places where women are vulnerable because defenseless women are almost always the targets of pathological criminals.
I'm not sure if I can condemn Eminem, his counterparts in hip-hop or rock n roll, the horror movie creators since the beginning of time who consistently depict young girls (mostly high school kids) as victims of madmen, bible thumpers who believe the anti-feminist rhetoric of the scriptures that tell them women are responsible for all the suffering of mankind on earth..etc, etc, etc. ALL these things combined contribute to misogyny.
Eminem wouldn't sell so many CDs if there wasn't already a foundation of misogyny built by society and it is so solidly built into our society in so many ways, Eminem is just the tip of this iceberg. Maybe Eminem is making men look at themselves in the mirror and think about the root of chauvinism and misogyny going back a lot further than the late 70s when hip-hop started.
I've stopped trying to understand why people like Eminem and others who sing gross lyrics are so popular. I guess I've given up. There are many good artists and song writers out there putting out good music but they're dismissed as boring. Boggles my mind.
Oh well. That's why I've turned off my radio and plugged in my CD's and Ipod.
The cruel irony present here is that the focus of awareness of misogyny is an "art" form that itself is purported to be all that is wrong in America. So the misogyny of Hollywood is not a factor because, what, it is a "higher' art form? So Eminem becomes the focus of a culture that is misogynistic and racist, to say the very least. Heavy metal, anyone? Just a bit of misogyny there.
It is a bit easier to point this out than say, the misogyny that is the stock in trade of every religious service that takes place in this nation. Face it, America, the core is all about one hatred or another. So when one dices it in an attempt to suggest that one form is more virulent than another, one is actually indulging that zero sum game.
Finally, is it about attacking the artist or the culture?
Yeah, Eminem's misogyny is so subtle, it must be an attack on the artist and not the culture he promotes. /snarkasm
Thanks for proving my point.
You had a point? You needed me to prove it? You might want to go back and fix that sentence fragment or work on your clauses so that the sentence makes a degree of sense.
My point is that if one needs to refer to Eminem to point out misogyny in this nation, then one is already lost. Eminem is a product of a culture that is racist and misogynistic at its core. And since 75% of all rap music purchased is done so by white youth, who better to express their budding hatreds than one more Elvis Jr?
Thank you for taking a stand against this.
Unfortunately, misogyny is so prevalent in our culture, it is considered impolite to point it out.
Well, in order to answer that question, one would have to look at it objectively and realize that there are two sides to every story. The word I rarely hear is 'misandry', in fact I hear it so rarely that I didn't even know what the definition of 'misandry' was until a couple of years ago. Misandry is nothing more than 'man-hating'. It is primarily thought of as something woman are guilty of, but just like misogyny- each gender is guilty to different degrees. The sad thing is that you rarely hear anything about misandry, but we are constantly hearing about domestic violence in regards to women and the abuse that one gender must overcome. In fact, if you look at the Center of Disease Controls most recent studies, you will find that woman actually initiate non- reciprocal domestic violence more than men. This recent CDC study indicates that women between the ages of 18 and 28 initiate reciprocal violence against their intimate partners about as often as men. It also indicates that women initiate non-reciprocal violence against their intimate partners more than twice as often as men.
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a
Here is a link to a bibliography of over 200 studies indicating that women are as violent as men
www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
i'm confused by your point. Granted, this article is focusing on violence against women, both domestically and internationally... and not violence against men. Are you arguing that because, in a different discussion, there is evidence that women also commit violence that the concern about a culture that accepts one type of violence (and perhaps should be more conscious of other types) - we should just forget the initial criticism? how is the existence of women's violence an "alternate side" to the issue of men's violence, in the sense that the wrongs of one side... hmm.. i guess you are arguing... cancel out the other? Such an argument is logically flawed. You may say that the Eminem songs, enjoyed by women, encourage them to channel their inner killer and encourages their violence as well... but it doesn't in any way decrease the validity of concerns about male violence against women. Finally, and i don't intend to minimize the CDC statistics, but if you look closely at them you will have to acknowledge that men still commit the vast statistical majority of homicidal and felonious violence against women, and not the other way around... There are differences in degree, as well as kind, that you glossed over in your rush to provide what you mistakenly characterized as the "other side of the story."
Right.
The truth is, there's a seething bubble of pureblind hatred coursing through the veins of every culture on the planet.
Libs and progressives don't like to admit it, because most of them have an unspoken (and sometimes unconcious) assumption about the perfectability of man.
And then there are those with a particular sociopolitical axe to grind - who say it's a problem of men - or of women - or of white people - or black people - or religion - or irreligion - or whatever. Not a one of them will even entertain the fact that their particular bogeyman is just one more instantiation of the ubiquitous shadow.
This isn't the age of Aquarius. The human shadow isn't going away. We just have to be honest about its existence in our individual and societal lives, so it doesn't devour us altogether.
Couple of points:
1) It wasn't a question. It was a statement.
2) The level of misandry has no bearing on the statement either way.
3) Self-report studies aren't as compelling as DOJ stats.
http://www.abanet.org/domviol/statistics.html
4) Do you understand selection bias?
You're so right. The preponderance of movies, songs, and TV shows that depict and glorify violence by women against men really is horrifying. Their immense popularity will make this culture's overwhelming misandry challenging to confront, but justice demands it.
The studies referred to are flawed deeply in their understanding of the impact, intent and meaning of women's violence vs. men's violence. Anyone who actually lives in this world and contends that women's violence is equivalent to men's is either fundamentally deluded, or has another agenda which seeks to preserve a patriarchy which has given us rape, battering, slavery, sex trafficking, economic and political oppression, war, poverty, and disease. All an honest man has to do is look at what is happening to women around the world, not just in this country. But let's focus just on the USA. If it were true that women are just as abusive (or even more so as contended by Mr. Morgan) where are all the shelters and hotlines for men that would result from such a reality? Since men control most of the money in this world, it wouldn't be difficult to fund such a network of hotlines and shelters for all the men who are allegedly being abused by women. It doesn't exist because the contention is a lie. What utter nonsense. This is the propaganda of the men's supremacy movement which seeks to preserve the dominance of men over women and girls, a movement which is a mean-spirited, hate-driven extension of men's backlash against women (and some men) who are holding men accountable for violent and abusive behavior, for their sexism, and for misogyny.
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