Time to draw the line...
I'm the first person among a group of people who would be resistant in allowing people to have the advantage on knowing how I define myself. While my resistance does not lie in feeling ashamed of who I am or where I come from but it comes from the fact that my entire like has consisted of being labeled. But at the same time I feel the need to almost contradict myself because I know that by not being clear and upfront and providing a definition of exactly who I am is allwoing someone else to define me...
A hip hop feminist must not feel obligated to define who they are but the obligation may come in presenting exactly what a hip hop feminist supports such as "a progressive politic that aims not only to eradicate sexist lyrics and images, but also to address the ways these representations work in concert with exploitative systems to thwart self-determination." (Durham 305) These labels and definitions become important when the mainstream culture begins to reproduce an image that does not define the "real" culture.
Comments
I agree that there is a definite conflict between the choice of giving a definition of yourself, and choosing not to, and how others give you a definition instead then. The work of a hip hop feminist should stand for itself perhaps and not need to be defined, but in reality the outside world will always come up with different ways to describe things that often put much more negative spins on general outlooks.
What exactly it takes to be thought of as a hip hop feminist is hard to define because there are many things that ride the border. If someone believes in the message and supports it by buying the CDs of a prominent hip hop feminist female rapper, aren’t they a hip hop feminist, even if they are not as actively participating in the political aspects? In Michael Jeffries “The Name and the Game of Hip Hop Feminism� he quotes Marx Ferree and Carol McClurg Mueller as saying “feminism as the goal of challenging and changing women’s subordination to men� (214). Therefore anyone who aspires to this goal should be included, because those who believe are the ones who may act in the future. If those who are not currently acting are entirely excluded then they will not be moved to act in the future, which is what the real goal of hip hop feminism is all about, inciting action to change the submissive role that women are often portrayed in.
Pough included in her definition that to be a hip hop feminist someone has to feel conflicted about the rap music that they listen to, but also that they need to be fully immersed in the hip hop culture. This is only partly true because someone can feel very passionately about a subject and even be an avid activist within a community without being truly immersed with in it. The lines of what counts as being a hip hop feminist or not solid and are ever fluctuating from case to case, because to solidify those lines is to exclude a wealth of believers that may integrate more fully into the hip hop culture and become active hip hop feminists in the future.
Posted by: Larissa Stemberger | February 12, 2009 10:43 PM