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HOW COME THE HIP HOPPERS ARE SO MEAN TO THE WOMEN? AND IS THERE SOMETHING IN THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THEM SO?

So asks Joshua Clover, pseudonymously guest posting over a series of days at Sasha Frere-Jones’s place, and laying out his question more clearly in an email to Carl Wilson of Zoilus.

My initial grumpy reaction said that no matter how badly misogynist the hip hop lyrics can be -- and that’s very -- the misogyny of white rock and mainstream culture in general gets a free pass when there’s a scapegoat of color to focus on. This is the truth, but it does not excuse misogyny in hip hop.

After my anger about white culture’s “get out of misogyny free” card gets back in the cage, two possible answers to Mr. Clover’s question come to mind.

1. Violence against women signifies power, and power attracts people. Something deep in us respects the aggressor. The aggressor gonna go out and fight for his meat. Respecting the aggressor is the way of capitalism. It also probably helped George Bush win the election. Over and over from the wrongwingers, I heard or read that the American people “understand” that George Bush “gets” the War On Terror and the Democrats don’t. Given the givens of the Iraq War, according to this hypothesis, “getting” the war on terror means blowing up Arabs, any Arabs, no matter their inability and lack of interest in harming the United States. In the pop culture of hip hop and rock and roll, the dictum to respect the aggressor gives rappers the Bad Boy cred that rockist pundits (such as those at “Rolling Stone”) see as necessary for the continuation of The Rock. Loving the Bad Boy is an aspect of Respecting the Aggressor, and Rock Loves the Bad Boy.

2. In musical terms, the musical emotional rhetoric of the hard beats of some hip hop lends itself easily to an angry verbal emotional rhetoric. Same is true of punk and metal. If you’re looking for a vehicle for anger in our culture, misogyny is a widely accepted one. This is not to say that hard beats lend themselves only to anger, or that misogyny is the only vehicle of anger, just that according to our nurture they’re a natural fit.

Hard beats and anger. I read several months ago that metal is the most popular pre-combat music among American soldiers in Iraq. Made sense to me.

Damn.