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In light of this week’s indictment against #SeanCombs, I’m reupping this excellent 2023 article by Xochitl Gonzalez from right after #Cassie first filed her civil suit against him.
“What Did #HipHop Do to #Women’s Minds?”
#criminal #law #SexualViolence #ViolenceAgainstWomen #SexualAssault #abuse #power #misogyny #MusicIndustry
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/sean-combs-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-adult-survivors-act-ny/676069/
“…Reading through the filing, I found myself weeping. Ventura alleged not only that #SeanCombs kicked & beat her on frequent occasions, hiding her in hotels while her bruises healed, but that he forced her into sex acts w/strangers, & that he recorded them. Further, Ventura claimed that he often kept her drugged & ‘on multiple occasions’ had her ‘personal medical records sent directly to his email address.’
“I wept because, despite #Cassie having been in my consciousness for nearly 2 decades, this was the first time I saw #CasandraVentura. Ventura was only 19 yrs old when #SeanCombs ‘discovered’ her in 2005 & signed her to his label, Bad Boy. When they officially began dating—after rumors of a long pursuit—she was 21, & he was a 38-yr-old man.
“I wept because no one, including myself, had thought this relationship was weird.
#law #ViolenceAgainstWomen #SexualAssault #abuse #power #misogyny #HipHop
“I wept because, if anything, we’d probably thought that she was lucky. I wept because I’d never seen her as a person. I wept because she had existed for me solely as a product & an accessory to #SeanCombs’s male genius.
“I wept because I felt that somehow in all of this, I’d been complicit.”
“…I never could pinpoint when I fell in love w/ #HipHop; it had simply always been there. But I remember, distinctly, the moment when I realized it had been a #dysfunctional & perhaps even #abusive relationship. I’d been working on a playlist for a friend’s birthday, compiled exclusively of #rap tracks considered classics of the genre, & was giving it a listen while on a run.
“I’d heard these songs hundreds of times over the years, but that day—as a #woman in her 30s making a playlist for a man who’d recently had a baby #girl—I was suddenly hearing them anew. The volume seemed turned up for every mention of ‘hos’ & ‘bitches,’ like someone had taken a sonic highlighter & run it over every verse about devious, promiscuous, & generally disposable #women.
“#HipHop had undoubtedly shaped my worldview, my politics,& my sense of self. I’m sure that, by then, I’d skimmed over countless think pieces about #misogyny & #sexism in the music. But only that day did it dawn on me that I’d spent my formative years w/hip-hop whispering into my headphones that I, as a #woman, was worthless—that #women were interchangeable accessories, extras in songs & videos, not to be trusted, certainly not to be believed.
#SeanCombs #law #ViolenceAgainstWomen #MusicIndustry
@Nonilex I never understood why black women - so strong, so courageous - ever liked hip-hop.
@suedorazio @Nonilex while I enjoy this personal recounting of waking up to external and internal awakening to misogyny can we not make out this is all of hip hop or a problem exclusive to hip hop? There's lots of hip hop that's made by women, made for other women and made by non-asshole men. Can we not erase all of them while calling out the obviously terrible men and while not recognizing the misogyny in the rest of the mainstream music industry too? Some men literally get into music to be able to behave like this and much of the mainstream industry basically exists to facilitate and provide cover for this kind of exploitation (much like the film industry).
*It's totally racist to make this a hip hop problem rather than recognizing it's a music industry problem. There was and is plenty of sexism in rock and pop music of all kinds too, including sexual abuse of minors, sexist lyrics and general exploitation and abuse of celebrity power.
One of the reasons I liked the article was that it DIDN’T make it about ALL hip-hop. I made sure to include the quote:
“I didn’t stop listening to #HipHop. I mean, come on. But I did find myself turning songs off on my walks, avoiding certain artists, gravitating far more toward R&B, old soul, & classic salsa. There is much in hip-hop music & culture that I loved & still love. But after that day, it’s never been the same.”
@Nonilex @suedorazio Yeah but she's excluding hip hop here. She's not choosing to listen to different types of hip hop and hip hop artists, she's shifting genres (as if there's not misogyny in these genres too!)
Also, I'm not dissing the article itself, that's an individual's journey and her feelings (but now that you bring it up, thinking R&B and salsa are misogyny free is a bit naive too!) It was a comment on your post that made me feel it was necessary to comment and to stand up for hip hop.
@fifilamoura @Nonilex My statement was way too general.