Ashley Judd vs. Hip-Hop
April 12, 2011 5 Comments
Ashley Judd has been catching heat for recent comments on hip-hop and its enabling relationship to rape culture:
“As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music – with its rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’ – is the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny.”
I happen to disagree, but with bits and parts.
To begin with, it is problematic in and of itself, to have a white woman comment on a culture so closely associated with minorities with such blanket criticism. I’m with The Root here (though I want to point out that they seem to misunderstand what rape culture means), can a sister get some citations?
On that same note, I’d argue that for as much flack hip-hop takes for its tendency towards sexism, it’s not, as she says, “the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny”. This is not the only genre with flagrant misogyny, it’s just always been the scapegoat for misogyny in music; I also consider the mixing and matching music genres have experienced recently- pop, hip-hop, r&b, rock, etc. aren’t valid methods of delineation anymore.
Even though my knee-jerk reaction is to defend hip-hop (too much of hip-hop’s stereotypes are transferred to Black people), I will agree that the majority of hip-hop culture is sexist, and by that I mean that the majority of ‘mainstream hip-hop’ (what you hear day in, day out), and let’s just face it- Lauryn Hill and her ilk, don’t feature on our radios and music charts as much as we say we’d like, and that’s partly our fault. I say ‘partly’ here because to ignore the concept of ‘buying power’ in a capitalist system (which we can all admit, the mainstream music business exists in) would be ridiculous. I’ll give you three guesses what demographic has the most ‘buying power’.
The Rambling Feminist 
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Trahsley Dudd is full of carp and a RACIST to boot!! Please if she cares so damn much why isn’t she attacking her OWN industry?!! Spare me HollyWEIRD is misogynist as hell and not only that keeps featuring men with women young enough to be their GRANDchild. I guess she hasn’t seen any teen sex comedies or slasher movies she is a spolied,overprivileged,whiny HAS BEEN trying to make a buck! That fake a$$ trick would NEVER pull this crap with Bollywood or Japanese horror filmmamkers because they would tell her where to go like they knew the way. But black women can’t WAIT to jump on the bandwagon never mind A##ley was MIA when Don Imus made his disgraceful comments about the Rutgers ladies team. Nor does she seem the LEAST bit upset about all the negative comments both racist AND sexist hurled at our first lady Michelle Obama. She is full of it and then some her own family is in country music which is notorious for glorifying domestic violence Crassley can go f**k herself!
First, I have to mention that this is a feminist blog and as such, I’d prefer it if we’d avoid calling women out of their names in a derogative context. While I might not agree with Ashley Judd’s politics, I’m not going to do to her what I am against.
Now I’m not being sympathetic to her sentiments. I’m pissed off that she thought she had any right to comment on her culture that isn’t hers and broad-stroking it as the one true evil out there. Misogyny isn’t a product of hip-hop, the failures in some parts of hip-hop are the product of misogyny.
Ok sorry for that but here’s the thing I have no problem with her commenting. What I DO however have a problem with is that she chose to single out rappers when there are countless problems with sexism in her own industry. She’s not blind there is just as much sexism in Hollywood than in rap if not more yet she has nothing to say about that?! That’s called hypcorisy where I come from.
Yeah, I get where your coming from.
Hip-hop has always been held up as this awful evil that shouldn’t even count as music. Most people aiming to criticize ignore that hip-hop arose out of frustration with constant oppression. Nowadays it’s been vilified so much that people forget about all other music’s sexism and homophobia. I think that part of the reason you don’t hear too much elsewhere is that the majority of artists in genres like country and rock are white- they’re usually the ones whose voices get heard and listened to.
Thanks for this comment, it fleshed out a perspective I was trying to access :)