Earlier this month, a feminist in Britain’s GQ magazine asked whether it is possible to “be a feminist” and still “listen to hip-hop.” She’s right to be skeptical — some (though certainly not all) rap songs are cesspits of sexism and vulgarity that glorify rape and sexual assault. For a social movement that has become increasingly creative in the sources of oppression it uses to justify its existence, feminism devotes relatively little time to berating the mainstream artists whose songs include such poetic lyrics as “I beat my b**** up in the street” or “I even make the b*****s I rape c**.”
Rap artists, and some of the more profane elements of broader hip-hop culture, have been partially excused from the Victorian standards of feminism’s third wave. It’s not that feminists haven’t decried the sexism in hip-hop — they have, if only in passing — but the plain, unadulterated misogyny in some rap music seems to evade the broader radar of a movement that has spent the better part of a decade screaming about a handful of lines in an obscure, chivalrous Christmas song from 1949.
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