[Teedub]

After the controversy about Robin Thicke, to the point where the song is now BANNED from being played by DJs at several British university unions, it got me thinking about the new Eminem album.

I posted this question in the Blurred Lines thread, but nobody as yet seems to have noticed it, or had an answer.

Eminem's new album contains far more 'offensive' and 'misogynistic' language, and far more threats of it than Robin Thicke could even dream of. Yet I have only seen one article discussing it. It was written by a cropped-haired dyke looking chick as expected. Although, to be fair she did praise him as a lyricist overall. Thing is, Eminem does seem to have a genuine dislike of women, and it appears the feminists don't dare go after him.

It got me thinking, why do the feminists pretty much let rappers, in general, off. I suspect some of it is a kind of liberal 'well, they're black so they're minorities so we can't target them' kind of thing. However, Eminem isn't - yet on the whole he's pretty much left alone.

I read one guy in a comments section saying if the Thicke song wasn't so popular then nobody would care, but Eminem is also very popular. Yet I don't see any silly little student groups making parody videos of his songs. I don't see a feminist version of 'Big Pimpin' by Jay-Z either, 'Aint no fun' from Doggystyle... etc.

Any theories as to why?

[azulsombra]

I'm not sure how old you are, so maybe you don't remember this.

They already went after Em with the first Marshall Mathers LP in 2000. Gay rights and womens rights organizations mobilized hard against that album and it was his highest selling album and critically acclaimed. He eventually performed live with the openly gay Elton John famously embracing him on stage which shut up most of the haters.

Feminist really don't want another fight because it will just highlight how they failed to marginalize him the first time. Also the controversy would only profit Em in the long run. Plus most people accept Em as he is, no one is shocked by his content now, he's been doing it for almost 15yrs now.

[Lyokoz]

"For shizzle my wizzle, this is the plot listen up, You bizzles forgot Slizzle does not give a fuck"

Perhaps it's because rap is considered a "black thing", and is therefore irrelevant to the mostly white audiences. Kind of like how "twerkin" was not in the mainstream vocabulary until Miley started using it. Now that it's crossed into the "white mainstream" it's "appalling", "trashy" and "degrading to women". Millions of black and Latin girls doing it? Nothing. White girls start doing it? "Next up at 9:00, "Twerking" and why use should be outraged".

[Teedub]

(11-09-2013 02:34 PM)azulsombra Wrote:  

I'm not sure how old you are, so maybe you don't remember this.

They already went after Em with the first Marshall Mathers LP in 2000. Gay rights and womens rights organizations mobilized hard against that album and it was his highest selling album and critically acclaimed. He eventually performed live with the openly gay Elton John famously embracing him on stage which shut up most of the haters.

Feminist really don't want another fight because it will just highlight how they failed to marginalize him the first time. Also the controversy would only profit Em in the long run. Plus most people accept Em as he is, no one is shocked by his content now, he's been doing it for almost 15yrs now.

I'm 27, I do remember all this. I think I'm just a bit shocked at the extent of the witch-hunt regarding Robin Thicke, that it has made me wonder why rap is sort of left alone currently.

[Sumanguru]

Its left alone because its still mostly a "black" thing and the majority of#solidarityisforwhitewomen feminists don't care about black problems (just ask black feminists, lol). Hence why street harassment of women is awful and they do slut walks and other things against it, but police harassment? Eh. Not their problem.

[Teedub]

^ Yep, feminists are self absorbed and narcissistic, I probably should have worked that out myself!

[Enigma]

It's just the natural progression. Every form of music has seen pushback, from Jazz to Rock and now Hip Hop. When the music first becomes popular, it is criticized the most heavily. Eventually it becomes older and more established and the opposition realize it's there to stay and move on to other things. People that were raised on that music grow up to take more prominent positions within society and bring that acceptance of the art form with them.

Hip Hop was getting killed for decades. It still does to an extent but it's become highly ingrained in the overall culture at this point so you don't see the same pushback.

For the record, I haven't heard much about this Robin Thicke thing here in the States other than what I've read on this forum. It may just be a bigger controversy across the pond.

[Manny09]

When Em had his first run of popularity, from 98-04, he was a BIG target for that kind of controversy. The thing is, Em won, and won big. All the flak special interest groups and non-youth oriented mainstream media gave him only made him more popular, and his next two albums after the Slim Shady LP both sold twice as many copies.

Not to mention Eminem has too many songs where he talks about why he writes the things he does, and has too many songs where he defends himself pretty well (Sing for the Moment, for instance). He wouldn't even have to reply at this point.

"They" only go after targets they think they can beat. Eminem is a Bruce Springsteen-like figure in pop music these days-- even if you're not a fan you respect what he's done and recognize him as an artist. He's going to go down as one of the best ever, and he is probably the most popular artist of the last 15 years for people under 30 years of age.

What does it say when a guy can put out a record like Relapse and still have it go multi-platinum? And then put out a great record in Recovery and become the biggest artist in the world again, after taking so many years off and frankly, not really keeping up with trends. As a rap artist that is incredible. Jay-Z is popular after all of these years, but he has to keep up with trends at all costs, and his last 3 albums had some kind of gimmick surrounding their release, too.

Em has too many loyal fans, and too much respect from the general public. Going after him now would just make "them" look like idiots without a clue.

[AnonymousBosch]

(11-09-2013 02:39 PM)Teedub Wrote:  

I'm 27, I do remember all this. I think I'm just a bit shocked at the extent of the witch-hunt regarding Robin Thicke, that it has made me wonder why rap is sort of left alone currently.

Thicke used beautiful, fit, smiling women in his video. Everything feminists aren't. These beautiful women were naked and men responded positively, despite feminists repeatedly telling them that real men should like fat, ugly, snarky women.

That's all this fight is about.

[Basil Ransom]

I think the reasons are multiple - most of which people got above, that rap is a 'black thing' so it gets less criticism from white feminists, and that Eminem is a known commodity, that these lyrics aren't a surprise from a stranger new to the scene like Robin Thicke.

Another small part of it is the liberal's love of dysfunction and perversion. If you are a dysfunctional person by traditional standards, you often get a pass from liberal audiences. If you're a broke drug addict, it's because someone hurt you as a child so you deserve our pity and support. Eminem's done a fair job of showing what a dysfunctional childhood he's had. His flaws can be written off, to an extent, as 'well he had a tough time growing up.' It's not peculiar to liberals that flaws can humanize a man, but liberals take this to an unhealthy extreme where they elect incredibly flawed people as role models. Transsexuals and single mothers are heroes, etc. So Eminem has a little of that going for him. One can admire Eminem, because he overcame challenges, while most of those heroes liberals choose to love just wallow in self pity and victimhood.

It's sort of like how no one really bitched about Charlie Sheen nearly murdering his wife -,'we know he's a bad boy, what did you expect? So we'll just gloss over his misdeeds and focus on little Tiger Woods.'

And those lyrics do seem genuinely misogynistic. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for them, or that they have no value. Same for the racial equivalent.

[spook]

Feminist women love Eminem!
"Chicka chicka chicka, Slim Shady, I'm sick of him. Look at him, walking around grabbing his you-know-what, flipping the you-know-who."
"Yeah, but he's so cute though!"

[The Lizard of Oz]

Agree with basilransom on this. Eminem's white rage gets a pass because it feeds into the frame that his "misogyny" is just a way of "working out his psychological problems". His texts are literary enough that it's not hard for them to pigeonhole and "analyze" him. Also, it's congruent with the feminists' own white rage.

What really drives them up the wall is "misogyny" (or just the proper valuation of women at their worth) done shruggingly and without the least rage or hostility. That is deadly, and rare.

[Teddykgb]

Someone posted this in another Eminem thread but I think this pretty much sums it up.

[Ryre]

Thicke used beautiful, fit, smiling women in his video. Everything feminists aren't. These beautiful women were naked and men responded positively, despite feminists repeatedly telling them that real men should like fat, ugly, snarky women.

That's all this fight is about.


Absolutely. I think the video is a very powerful demonstration of normal heterosexual chemistry. Thicke is a powerful, suave man, the women are unbelievably attractive, and if you are in the camp of polysexual genderqueer yadda yadda yadda the whole thing is very threatening. Not because it is rapey. Because it so powerfully hits you over the head with "this is how things are supposed to be."

Note: I have no problem with gays, transsexuals, people who are genuinely born asexual, intersexed, whatever. I just have a problem with using all of that stuff to devalue the basic attraction between a man of substance and a woman of youth and beauty.

[Basil Ransom]

I came up with another explanation - probably the most compelling of all.

Feminists have special pressure points - topics, that if approached in a certain way, will have them fly off the handle, seething with anger and hatred. You can see this when certain manosphere pieces go viral among feminists. If you simply said, "I want to kill all women," you'd be hated, but more likely just written off as batshit crazy. But if you explained how to get a woman to have an abortion, or how to spot a slut, or why female self-esteem is undesirable, you've just upset the hornet's nest. All three of those articles attracted tons of hate from feminists and sluts, and they're not the most sexist pieces those websites published (i.e. Return of Kings and Matt Forney).

Eminem's rap doesn't really hit on any of those pressure points. And the things he expressed are so bizarre that an onlooker would be confused - he'd puzzle over it and would look to his personal life for context - his message would be inseparable from the man behind it. Thicke hit one of those pressure points, by saying that girls really just want to fuck even when they say no - when feminists are convinced there's a date rape epidemic going on. And here Thicke is, a slick privileged white dude promoting date rape, so they close in on him. Thicke's personal backstory is irrelevant, because his message of promoting date rape stands on its own. It's not about saying the most hateful thing possible, but hitting a trendy hot button topic among feminists. A century ago, that might be why women don't deserve the vote, now it's how to tell if they're a slut. This relationship is not unique to feminists, but it's certainly more prominent among them, because all of their institutions run by fanning the flames of angry women.

You can see in the article that OP linked, that the author isn't really exaggerating. She doesn't need to - it's all there in the lyrics.

[Bacchus]

It's hard to rehash outrage over the same subject matter over and over again. People already know what to expect from Eminem, so the outrage isn't genuine because the subject isn't surprising. Thicke didn't have a huge hit until "Blurred Lines," so that song was many people's first impression of him.

Tyler, the Creator is an example of how outrage goes stale. Eminem clearly influenced Tyler, who raps in low tones with evident anger. And he and his group Odd Future both generated a large amount of controversy for its lyrics filled with 'misogyny' and rape.

http://www.timeoutchicago.com/music-nigh...odd-future

That article came out in 2011, when Odd Future first appeared on the mainstream and their buzz was biggest. In fact, a google search shows that all of the think pieces about Odd Future came from that year. Tyler has since released two albums that contain the same themes as his first, but the subject doesn't generate as much outrage as it once did.