Summary Of From Fly Girls To Bitches And Ho's By Joan Morgan

In her article “The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women,” Imani Perry argues that the objectification of women in the music industry is normalized in our society. Her purpose is to persuade us that most feminists who fight against the objectification and exploitation of women are ultimately colonized by the sexual fantasies of men. As a law professor at Rutgers Law School, Perry structures her text in a very effective manner. Using a general-to-specific organization scheme, she begins by outlining the recurring image of sexualized women in music videos, then presenting various cases of prominent feminist figures in the music industry.

In Joan Morgan’s article “Fly-Girls, Bitches and Hoes: Notes of a Hip Hop Feminist”, she shows the way rap music has changed through it popularity. The widespread appreciation of rap had negative impacts upon the black community. Morgan talks about this through her Feminist point of view. She focuses the topic on what rap music says about the African American culture in Hip Hop. Rap music and Hip Hop were invented through the pain of African Americans. Hip Hop and the Rap industry use sexism and machoism to express the long years of oppressive pain they went through by the hands of the white people. Especially for the black brothers who continue that oppression by using provocative words that degrade the black sisters. Morgan states that blame isn’t only on the brothers

This denotation to the silent cries supports for an emotional appeal to an example of the silent cries in African American women. As stated in the title, Powell is aware that black women are merely being betrayed in the hip-hop industry and simply states that the choice of words that hip-hop artist chose to rap about is simply “the ghetto blues, urban folk art, a cry out for help.” (298) and it is rubbing off on almost every man in our American society and giving them a different perspective of women all because women refuse to speak out and speak up. “As a result, female rappers are often just as male-identified, violent, materialistic, and ignorant as their male peers.” (298). Over 100 years ago, women were not even allowed to vote, the closest they got to voting was sitting there and watching. They were not allowed to work, they were forced to be stay at home wives while their

Women have decided to consume hip hop regardless of the sexism and machismo of their rap artist spouses. Historically, black women who have sex with other women haven’t been recognized in the Black community. Also, the expectations are the same in hip hop culture because men reject lesbians. An example is the murder in 2003 of Sakia Gunn after she declared her lesbian identity to a group of males. We all know that in hip hop culture men predominate and precisely masculine. Women can achieve a higher professional success than men regarding no matter their sexual orientation. In other hand, women represent different controlling images like the whore, the mammy and temptress. Homophobia in hip hop is translated into forms of oppression, discrimination and violence for gays, lesbians and transgender. “Black women rappers interpret and articulate the fears, pleasures, and promises of young black women whose voices have been relegated to the margins of public discourse.” Their voices are in constant dialogue with the public and men rappers about sexual promiscuity, emotional commitment, infidelity, the drug trade, racial politics and black cultural history. If we pay close attention to female rappers, we will notice that they address questions of sexual power, economic opportunities and the pain of racism and sexism. Women rappers has been promoted as sexually progressive, antisexist voices because of “an understanding of male rappers as uniformly sexist.” Discussions of women

Misogyny exists not only in Hip-Hop but also in American society as a whole. Objectified female bodies are everywhere: in advertising, on magazine covers, and television and movie screens. In Hip-Hop women are exploited and viewed as objects. In raps they are often called “bitches” and “hoes”, and place them in music videos half-naked furthering the

The essay, “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos,” discusses the pervasive misogyny found in hip-hop lyrics.The author, Joan Morgan, argues that by comprehending what is occurring in the hip-hop culture to generate

In the music videos, I saw women being mistreated. I can’t knock someone’s hustle but I don’t think artists need to take their videos to the extreme. I didn’t feel like Biggie, Tupac, and Cash Money [popular artists in the early 90s] were as fixated on the women. They were more about showing off their money and cars, and clothes. (Roberts-Douglass & Curtis-Boles, 2012, p. 10)

Hip-hop feminism expands on Collin (1990)’s concept of varied experience. Throughout her book, When chickenheads come home to roost, Joan Morgan defines what hip hop feminism is, why it is needed, and its potential impact and empowering qualities for Black women and girls growing up in the post-civil rights and post-feminism era. The emergence of technologies and media has influenced how Black women and girls view themselves, as well as how others view them, and how they can create and spread their narratives. While commercial hip-hop detaches from women’s rights and permits misogyny, one’s use of hip-hop as an art form in itself can be politically and self empowering for Black women and girls. She also illustrates how the image and internalization of the ‘strongblackwomen’ has been devised from slavery, yet still holds a presence and impacts the health of Black women.

In this essay, Joan Morgan talks about how the hip hop allows African Americans to articulate their pain. She considers that the beauty of hip hop comes from is its ability to express all kind of feelings, but many feels that hip hop lower women to just a sex object. In her journey to understand what is happening to men in the black community, she exposes herself to the music of famous male rappers. To her surprise, she discovers that the macho appearance is just a disguise to hide how hopeless they feel when it comes

One of Rap music's greatest criticisms is that it is sexist in its portrayal of women. Some argue that Hip-hop music teaches young children to look at women as "bitches" and "hoes", as women are often called in various hip-hop songs. It is this negative message that has constantly kept rap music in a national spotlight. Critics view sexism in rap as a symptom of an increasingly crumbling set of social values in the black urban community.

Hip-hop culture and culture’s misogyny can be traced back to the golden era of hip-hop. In hip-hop, culture terms for men created an image of a “big-man persona” such as “baller” “pimp” and derogatory phrases such as “bitch” “ho” became common phrases to distinguish women. The rapper persona was to have a macho attitude, extravagant living, and having multiple women beside them was the way to express the Hip-hop lifestyle (Layne 1). Artists such as N.W.A., one the few pioneers of 90’s gangsta rap has associated their music with misogyny. The song titled “A Bitch Iz A Bitch” in the album Straight Outta Compton revolutionize

“ For Jay-Z, the song and the gesture were about taking the worst of what life presented and simply letting it roll off, not letting it move you away from your goals, from your mission” (American Rap Can Promote Political Empowerment). An article showed how Barack Obama brushes his shoulders off showing that he does not have time for Hillary Clinton’s attack towards him. This action from Barack Obama had many people jumping out of their seats, they saw it as a good message inspiring them to not let anyone get in between of their dreams. Jay Z’s Hip-hop song “Brush Your Shoulders Off ” is used during Barack Obama's video as an empowerment. All songs have a strong message, not only for teenagers but also adults. On the other hand, non-supporters do not see music this way. There are people that don’t see Rap music as an encourage. Some artists use their talent to sing about women, and how guys should treat women; however, nothing positive ever comes out of this. There are some artists that use women as a sex toy. This brings an encourage in listeners to do the same thing with their partners, even if women do not want anything. The women's defense brings men’s madness and this is where men commenced abusing women physically and emotionally. Women shouldn’t be going through this sort of situation; unfortunately, people do not see that this is an incorrect

Many of today's hip-hop artists grew up listening to classic rap or at least the 1990s gangsta versions. The lifestyle that was once frowned upon is now glamorized and sought after. Even though hip-hop has become commercially successful, it is still distributed by white dominated corporate America. It is marketed through white dominated, mainstream media outlets. Record companies seek out controversial artists that draw attention and free publicity in the media. Female artists are marketed as sex symbols. If they aren't, their careers are short lived. They may speak about equality between the sexes in their songs; they are still sexualized in a negative way in the media. They are disrespected and often referred to as "bitch" or "ho". Exotic dancing is glamorized. Videos of half naked women dancing played on mainstream music networks has made today's youth feel that this behavior is acceptable.

This study was motivated by the lyrics rapped in hip-hop songs and the connection they have with how these artists conceptualize women. The researchers looked for a connection between the hip hop genre and how certain artist promote feminism throughout their songs. They defined a hip hop feminist as “women and men who step up and speak out against gender exploitation in hip hop,” (Tyree & Jones, 2015, pp.62). Rap throughout the decades went from speaking out against inequality and negatively shifted toward materialism, sexuality, and misogynistic language. There are four distinct types of identification of women throughout the lyrics of the hip hop songs which are, “mammy, matriarch, sexual siren, and welfare mother or queen,” (Tyree et al., 2015, pp. 59). Each of these identifications contribute to the type of song being sang, such as mammy’s which are respectable and loyal women and matriarchs are women who are independent and hold a family together. These two types of women bring homage to women in rap lyrics whereas sexual sirens and welfare mother/queen are identifications that degrade women in rap lyrics.

The culture of hip hop was created in the Bronx in New York City in the mid 1970’s. This includes the specific music genre of rap. Rap music focuses on the violence, racism, and hardships of poor black men who were prominent residents of the Bronx (Rhodes, H. A. ,2003). Another key theme to rap music is misogyny and sexism towards females. Since the creation of rap music, its popularity has boomed with the masses and become an extremely successful genre of music. Forbes magazine with Nielsen Music says, “R&B and hip-hop are now responsible for 25.1% of all music consumption in the U.S., while rock claims 23%.” Therefore, making this genre the most prominent in the United States (McIntyre, H. ,2017). The success of this genre comes with the prevalence of the message of misogyny and sexism towards women. Therefore, it is a good time to analyze if misogyny has led to the huge success of the genre of rap music.