I am a feminist that loves Snoop Dogg's music
Is that even allowed? As the 'purity wars' rage, I figured I may as well offend some of those I have not yet got around to
Snoop Dogg
When I first joined the women’s movement in the late 1970s, I was sneered at for watching rom coms, for preferring dogs to cats, and – as time went on – refusing to go to Greenham Common. (I like a shower, the telly, and clean clothes. I don’t camp.)
Since then, my cultural choices haven’t become any more obviously feminist. If I were asked to describe my ideal evening at home it would involve cooking rabbit, watching The Godfather 2, listening to the album The Doggfather by rap artist Snoop Dogg, while sinking a negroni.
Don Corleone in Godfather 2
Snoop’s music has a clear strain of sexism, but that has never stopped me listening to it. In 2003, I watched as he showed up at the MTV awards with two women in dog collars and leashes. And in 2010 I went to the Glastonbury Festival – my idea of hell (as I said, I really don’t like camping) – to see Snoop live on stage and report on it in the Guardian.
In 2015, Snoop announced that, after years of calling women whores and bitches, he has changed his ways, and will from then on respect us. And while this might make it easier for some to enjoy his music, the truth is that, as a long-time fan, I have never really worried that my musical taste could end up with my feminist membership card being revoked. I have never subscribed to the orthodoxy of the Left, and find stringent group think tedious.
How do I reconcile my feminism with the sexism in some of the pop culture I love? There are certainly some feminists who try to police what they watch and listen to quite carefully. When I interviewed the iconic feminist Shere Hite, for instance, she told me she only watched films by female directors. Now, there are some fantastic women making films, but for a variety of reasons (none of them particularly positive), the vast majority of films are still made by men. Cut all those out, and you’re left with a very limited selection.
Shere Hite
When it comes to songs it’s not unusual for an artist’s voice and the beat to be brilliant, while the lyrics are offensive, as with Snoop’s back catalogue. In recent years, some feminists have responded particularly strongly to this issue, with many British student unions banning the song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke back in 2013, on the grounds that it is “deeply offensive and dangerous”. Lines such as “I know you want it,” “Tried to domesticate you” and “Do it like it hurt” are clearly about rape, but at the time NUS women’s officers were kicking off about it, they were also busy getting me de-platformed from campuses where I was regularly invited to talk to students about the feminist campaigns to end male violence.
A woman at the same 2010 Glastonbury where I interviewed Snoop Dogg
There are lines I do observe - when I notice them. I recall one embarrassing but hilarious moment while singing karaoke at my 30th birthday party. I was halfway through Tom Jones’s Delilah when I realised that it was a song about a jealous man killing his unfaithful wife - an act of femicide. This was an all too real occurrence that I was actively campaigning against at the time.
Tom Jones
To be a feminist is to live with daily contradictions and inconsistencies. In order to exist in the world, and consume pop culture, it’s difficult to avoid hardcore sexism. Hip hop is one of my favourite music genres, but the dominant message is often about men being in control; being hateful to women; and throwing their guns and money around while posing with flash cars. As Byron Hurt said, following the success of his film Beyond Beats and Rhymes, rich, white male music moguls promote African American rap artists with an image that perpetuates the racist stereotype of black men as pimps and gangsters. As a white woman who tries to be anti-racist, it is surely contradictory to my politics that I invest in a genre with this message? The women who feature as backing singers or dancers for male hip hop artists are also often portrayed in a racist and sexist way. Stereotypes of black women are played out in the videos, in which they are framed as overly sexualised and animalistic.
Byron Hurt
To be clear, I do not subscribe to the neoliberal view that individual choices made by women who are at least a bit feminist are even vaguely feminist ones. I don’t think pole dancing or prostitution is liberating, despite the constant suggestions that feminism is all about personal “choice”. Tripping about in spike heels is not a feminist act, and nor is having cosmetic surgery, such as breast enlargement or having a toe removed to fit into the latest Blahniks.
So I don’t think that because a woman is a feminist all her actions are too; and I also don’t think that engaging occasionally in sexist pop culture makes someone less of a feminist. I do plenty of things that are not feminist, on a daily basis, such as watching reruns of Carry On films, and buying products from companies that pay women less than men.
The truth is that, if feminists - especially those of us who prioritise the campaign to end male violence against women - restricted themselves to entertainment that was perfectly non-sexist, perfectly pure, we would be pretty miserable, and have very little to watch or listen to. No football, because of the machismo and sexist chants. A ban on books and TV programmes that are based on violence against women. I would need to throw away all my crime novels, and never watch The Killing again.
As a feminist, under the system of patriarchy, to live a life without contradiction means I would have to wall myself off from the wider world of music, film and literature something I'm not prepared to do. Life as an activist could be unremittingly hard, if you chose to forego such genuine pleasures.
To attempt to be ideologically perfect would not only be boring, but probably impossible. I deflect my guilt by telling myself that I prioritise effecting real and sustainable change for women, because while I may occasionally listen to a sexist song, or watch a film which is miles from passing the Bechdel Test, as a feminist activist I never, ever take time off. If judgemental moralists feel that listening to feminist folk music will bring about better change than direct campaigning to end violence against women, so be it. But I know what I would rather concentrate my efforts on.
(An earlier version of this article appeared in the Guardian in 2015)
So good of you mentioning living with contatictions. I think it is the only healthy way to do so. Of course being aware of it. I avoid purists all togehther but as an old German feminist I did hide my love for the music of Frank Zappa.
I can't stand Snoop or Thicke or much pop music at all and I have become - personally, not prescriptively - unable to listen to music with sexist lyrics. However I'm a mad Miles Davis and James Brown fan and would not theoretically want to sit down to dinner with either.
It's hard to navigate a misogyny drenched culture and I think that rather than insist that no one engage with sexism anywhere, we just find a path that's tolerable and get on with trying to change the culture towards a deeper more genuine equality between the sexes.