Yesterday, after reading Jackon Katz’s article on the Huffington Post (see link below), I heard Eminem’s album “Relapse” for the first time since it dropped in May. I listened to and read the lyrics to his songs carefully and cautiously and I was wholeheartedly disturbed. When Eminem first became a prominent rap artist I was about 11 or 12 years old and I ate up the lyrics to catchy songs like “My Name Is.” It’s a shame that I wasn’t aware of the hatred I was inflicting upon myself when I repeated his rhymes but now, obviously, I’m not excited or even mildly amused by his lyrics. In fact, I’m outright distrubed. Not only by what he’s saying but also by how easily he’s getting away with saying it.
On his new new album, Eminem raps about masturbating to Hannah Montana, shoving “a flashlight up Kim Kardashian’s ass” and assaulting and raping innocent women. His lyrics are graphic, disturbing, disheartening and terrifying:
“Enter central park it’s dark, it’s winter in December I see my target with my car and park it and approach a 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 your the kinda girl that I’d/Assault and rape and figure why not try to make your pussy wida/Fuck you with an umbrella then open it up while the shit’s inside ya/I’m the kind of guy that’s mild but I mightflip and get a little bit wilder/Impregnate a lesbian girl now lets see ya have triplets and I’ll/Disintegrate them babies as soon as that out her with formalda-/Hide and cyanide girl you can try and hide you can try to scream louder/No need for no gun powder that only takes all the fun outta/Murderin’ I’d rather go vrim! vrim! and now you see just how the/Fuck I do just what I do when I cut right through your scalp, uh/Shit wait a minute I mean skull my knife seems dull/Pull another one out, Uh” - Stay Wide Awake
“The enforcer, look at the more women to torture/Walk up to the cutest girl and Charlie-horse her.” - We Made You
His lyrics are intensely misogynistic, poising women as lesser than, sexual objects who do not deserve and cannot posess the capacity to protect themselves, to choose for themselves or to say no. His lyrics are aggressive, demeaning and dangerous, both for men and for women. And what’s most scary is that his songs are getting streamed on websites all over the internet, getting air time on hundreds of radio stations across the country and world and his album debuted at #1 on the Billboard chart and is still going strong on the Billboard Top 200. You don’t have to look at this picture too carefully to realize that something is grossly wrong.
But it’s not unexpected. For decades, our culture has been immersed in misogyny, especially when it comes to music. Many documentaries have tackled the issue head on (See: The Media Education Foundation’s “Generation M,” “DreamWorlds 3” and “Killing Us Softly 3.” at MediaEd.Org.) However, we have yet to see the impact of these important efforts.
But what needs to be made very clear are the detrimental effects and affects of misogyny - both for women and for men. Misogyny limits women, subjugates them, and relegates them to roles of powerlessness and, in a similar way, misogyny has similar effects on men.
Misogyny tells women that they canot have a voice, that they cannot assert themselves, that they do not have the right to choose, that they cannot be strong, that they are victims, that they do not have access to power, that they deserve or ask for violence, that they are perpetual sexual objects for men’s desire and that they are always less than. These are devastating and traumatic ways to grow up in a world into which we enter with devastation and trauma. Women deserve better. Clearly our society and culture has a very difficult time grasping and moving towards that concept but instances like Eminem’s album debuting at #1 do nothing to forward that cause. We need to ask ourselves why. Why do men and women relate to, sing along with, and enjoy the lyrics of Eminmen’s songs? Why have his words become acceptable, why is his hate speech not only tolerated but celebrated? It’s a sick reality that needs to be remedied so that women can access greater freedoms and capacities and so that men may do the same.
Men and women are certainly affected by misogyny in different ways but for men, the concepts and cultural norms surrounding misogyny serve to stifle them - they confine men to certain ideals of manhood. They teach men that there are only certain ways of being a real man and those ways entail demeaning women and inflating yourself. In our culture men learn that being manly means being powerful in an aggressive and violent way. Men also need to be free to re-imagine what manhood might mean, to understand that being a strong man does not mean being physically powerful or dominating. The messages that Eminem spews in his lyrics are venomous to men and to women; they undermine the range of possibilities of who we can and want to be, they frighten and threaten us into small spaces of cultural belonging and they are outrightly hateful (to others and to the self.)
Listen to his songs, read his lyrics and think carefully about them. Is this the kind of message you want adolescents and even children to be receiving? That these are the ideals of manhood, that violence is a successful means of living? That women can only be so little and must always give so much to the men who don’t ask? I hope that others are with me in the answer I choose which is No. Absolutely not. This is not okay. And I don’t want to sit idly by and choose to aid in the perpetuation of misogyny.
I’m launching a grass-roots campaign to raise awareness about misogyny and I’ll be using Eminem’s new album and lyrics as a platform to raise consciousness about the ills of his messages. In the coming days I will be composing a draft letter to send to radio stations, newspapers and magazines across the country. I’ll post the letter here for anyone who might be interested in sending it to their local station or organizations that may be able to benefit from or share in the hope that such myths of masculinity and ills of misogyny can be dispelled by asking the questions and raising the issues. Again, I urge you all to think carefully about the issue and I hope that you’ll join me in the coming days and weeks as I try to launch this campaign.
