Everyone loves privileged Ivy-league kids rapping about how much better their top-three university is than another top-three university. Especially when they throw in lines about how they rape Harvard women, among other pleasant images of slitting throats and packing gats. Classy, fellas. You do your school proud.
Notably, this seems to be a pattern among these fine young gentlemen. What’s with this week and waste-of-space college kids trying to out-do each other on the misogyny front?
(Question for the lawyers out there: Given that this group is using Yale’s name, and their status as Yale students, to sell records that reflect incredibly poorly on the university, is there any action that the school can take? Just curious.)
via Isabel in the comments.
Ouch. This defintiely takes the Yale-Harvard rivalry too far. Part of me wants to think that this is a joke and a cariacature in some ways, but I’m not sure that that would make it sit any better.
I’m not an attorney (just a lowly law student), but I do know that Yale is very (very very) protective of its name and everything else associated with the school (they have the copyright on “Yale Blue,” I believe, though that might just be a money-making thing). I wouldn’t be surprised if once this creates a big enough wave of backlash, the administration gets involved. They couldn’t stop the kids from spewing the stupid shit that they do in these songs, but they could make sure the Yale name wouldn’t be attached. For whatever that’s worth.
I’m curious to see how this plays out…
Tufts just had a cannon pointed at Harvard. That’s a lot less awful than these asshats trying to claim that it was all meant in jest and that we shouldn’t take it so seriously.
You know what? When it is part of a sea of cultural bilge that tells me every day that my body is not my own property, when it’s coming not only from the mindless overprocessed radio but from people who have a command of the English language that allows them to find “sick rhymes” that don’t require them to make a joke about raping people? When I have to be afraid walking across my campus, even though it’s a women’s school within a larger university and we have a large and active police force?
I will take it as fucking seriously as I please.
The faux-gangsta thing just isn’t workin’ here.
Yale needs to look at its acceptance policy- critical thinking appears to be missing from the list of ‘must haves”.
The best and the brightest!
God, how did i know before i clicked that it was Yale. The undergrads here tend to be a particularly heinous species.
Speaking as an undergrad, the rampant misogyny is more common than anyone likes to think. On the primarily college networking site Facebook, the group “Man Law” (the description of which includes such gems as “No man should talk on a telephone to a girl longer than he will have sex with her.”) has over two hundred thousand members. On a more personal note, the last time I sat down at a campus computer, someone had entered into the username space “Women are stupid.”
We’re letting some really upstanding young men into our universities. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a phrase akin to “Geez, that test totally raped me.” Things are getting ridiculous.
Which is symptomatic of the fact that you can scrape the surface of even the ‘best’ people and still see the problems in our society.
Assholes. Sometimes I’d like to turn some men into women for a month and see how they handle it. Unfortunately I’m a little low on magic powers at the moment.
I am so glad that I have thus far managed, in spite of the efforts of some who felt that I ought to go to an Ivy, to avoid the Ivy League … actually the last time I went to a private school was the Methodist pre-school I went to when I age-wise should have been in kindergarden, but was too afraid of my own shadow to deal with other kindergardeners.
*
Regarding “No man should talk on a telephone to a girl longer than he will have sex with her.” … I’m having trouble parsing this. Do they mean “if I talk to Hildegaard for a half hour over the phone, I should be willing to have sex with Hildegaard for a half hour”? Or do they mean “if I talk to a girl, e.g. Hildegaard, for a half hour over the phone, I should be willing to have sex with a(nother) girl, e.g. Sieglinde, for a half hour”? If it’s the former … yeah … these people are misogynistic creeps. If it’s the latter, I don’t know how I feel about that statement as it is de facto true for me … I’ve never talked on the phone with a female non-family member for a longer period of time than I’d be willing to have sex with a significant other. And I talk to my friends over the phone, both male and female, for long stretches of time … ;)
BTW — doesn’t this say all you need to know about the “elites” who run this country and try to run our discourse who are still either recruited from the Ivy League or are total Ivy-wannabes?
As my dad often complains (he also thought the idea of having a “drug czar” and an “energy czar”, etc., would make good Soviet propaganda — “we overthrew the czar about a century ago … but you supposedly democratic Americans have more than one Czar at a time?”), we got rid of an aristocracy in 1776 … now we’ve got a home grown one (although my history Ph.D. friend would argue that many of the “revolutionaries” didn’t wanna get rid of the aristocracy, they just wanted in on the action).
Judging from what I saw in BORAT, I’m assuming that these guys recently transferred from USC.
listen, boys, I don’t think you could last a week in South Mpls. my boy Slug could teach you a thing or two. you know, about managing to rap and respect women at the same time.
but no, really, come to the midwest. I would love to watch these boys battle Dessa. She’d kick their asses.
/midwest posturing.
I think that the part of what bothers me so much about this is the fact that it comes as absolutely no shock to me. The blatant sexism and misogyny in music is so widespread and common, that things like this just don’t come as a surprise anymore.
And that bothers me a lot.
Beyond stupid. But I have to say, reading the responses on Ivygate blog, I’m heartened by the comments of the people condemning it.
Still, the best and brightest indeed. Now remind me again, where did GWB go to school? *g*
Yes for Atmosphere. The Hiruspecs make me swoon.
And Dessa would take them to the trash.
Oh, midwest love.
I really wonder what discussion about this looks like at Yale, because it’s certainly getting a lot of discussion on various Harvard lists. One thing I find interesting in the comments on IvyBlog is the rappers’ continued emphasis on other people calling them on their gangsta personas. Because, well, I didn’t see anyone Actually accusing them of not being gangsta enough, and yet they’re getting real defensive about it.
But beyond that- it’s just not good rap, or hip hop, or whatever you want to call it. Peppering your lyrics with violent misogyny doesn’t make you an artist. And they seem to be spouting a lot of nonsense about rap/hip hop culture being inherently violent or misogynistic or homophobic, which is pretty ignorant of a lot of influential artists, and also reveals some impressive lack of drive on their part–because someone in that kind of privileged position (and regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds, attending an Ivy means they now enjoy an assload of privilege) has every opportunity to put work out there that challenges destructive cultural norms.
The US needs to dissolve into fifty states that will fight one another in a few European-style wars. Hopefully after 300-400 years Americans will stop looking for ways to have destructive intra-American cultural identities like that and work to integrate into a North American Union.
My theory is that these guys are wastes of flesh.
And I’m totally crushing on you right now.
But not as much as I crushed on Slug when he appeared in the local publications wearing that shirt.
OMG, one of the rappers actually brought up Sascha Baron Cohen and Dave Chappelle in defense of the lyrics. Because being a Jew joking about Jews being thrown down wells and being a black man joking about stereotypes of black men is EXACTLY the same as being a man joking about raping women.
Entitled bastard. There’s a huge difference between being the oppressed one joking about your oppression and being the oppressor “joking” about oppressing. They aren’t fighting the establishment with their humor. They ARE the establishment. Their humor doesn’t subvert the establishment. It props it up.
Yes Lesley,
But they also brought up Eminem, a rapper who is constantly defended by liberals as an important “envelope pusher.”
The most commercial rap is riddled with women-hating of all kinds and it gets a pass– ALL THE F-ING TIME.
No one should be shocked when the rich + spoiled boys join in.
Who are these constant defenders?
I finally listened to about three minutes of that, and … hoo boy. Let’s just leave aside the raping and the bleeding cunts and all that. Let’s leave aside the poseur aspects of it (one of our charming young gentlemen says, “You wouldn’t last a week in New Haven” as if his own privileged ass was out in the hood rather than coddled in the confines of Yale Fucking University). Let’s leave aside the misguided toughness (yeah, like you have a gat or a shank, Yalie boy).
Let’s talk about the quality of the education they’ve had, shall we? Specifically, geography. When one stands in New Haven, Connecticut, reaches into one’s sock and brings a shank forth, then waves it menacingly at the north … one is not menacing Harvard University, which is to the northeast of New Haven. Bennington College is directly north of New Haven, but they’re not Ivy League, and really, what has Bennington ever done to Yale? Your next option, then, is Dartmouth. Which is really NNE, but still a lot closer to North than Harvard is.
Oh, one could claim that one is simply using artistic license, but then one would have to grant “artistry” to the efforts of 108 Tongues. And one simply cannot.
I thought Yale had higher standards for its students. Then again, GWB went to Yale. Perhaps these guys, like Georgie, are legacies.
Well, I can start with the recording academy for the Grammy Awards and then list every liberal (and conservative) I know who defends Eminem and other misogynistic rappers.
The privileged kids mimic the music they grew up with. No, I’m not defending them. I’m saying the misogyny is the problem, not the economic background of those who spout it . This crap goes on in state schools and outside of the school system, too.
It would be nice to think kids who grow up with so many advantages would “know better.” But of course they don’t.
I, personally, haven’t read constant defenses of Eminem by liberals, but even if they do exist, liberal and misogynist are hardly mutually exclusive terms. I wasn’t commenting on a liberal site, but on a feminist one. They are not the same thing. I wish they were. We’d have a lot easier time of it if more liberals actually recognized the misogyny rather than excused it/participated in it. There are certain premises that I assume most commenters here hold regarding the misogyny in rap lyrics, including those of Eminem. I would not necessarily make that assumption on a liberal site.
I am certainly aware that most commercial rap is hideously misogynistic, and I don’t know of anyone here who would disagree. I have read feminist critiques of rap lyrics on various sites. If your point is that we live in a misogynistic culture, then, yes.
I also doubt anyone here is shocked that rich spoiled men are misogynistic. That’s a “hey, the sun rises in the east” kind of thing for me. What stunned me was the audacity of comparing their work to Cohen’s humor about Jews and Chappelle’s humor about black men. I was pointing out their complete blindness to the ridiculousness of members of the class who rape (i.e., the oppressors) comparing themselves to members of oppressed classes. It’s one level of privilege for men not to recognize the sexism in their actions. It’s another to think that a “creative” expression of their sexism compares to victims of racism creatively skewering the racism they are the victims of.
But I never said that the economic background was the problem. By entitled, I meant male entitlement. Not socioeconomic.
I think there’s a difference between defending what someone like Eminem says, and defending his right to say it. I personally can’t stand Eminem, largely because his lyrics bother me so much, but also because I find his voice whiney and grating. However, I will argue with those (mostly conservatives) who think that he should be banned from performing in certain towns, or who panic about a young white man adopting “black” cultural practices. I think it’s also fair to defend someone’s talent — like I said, I’m not Eminem’s biggest fan, but I still think he’s sonewhat talented. It’s possible to do all of that and still think that his lyrics are abhorrent and criticize him for that.
I know lots of people are only talking about male entitlement, but I’m talking about socioeconomic entitlement as well. Male entitlement and misogyny is obviously the biggest issue here, but the fact remains that these are three young men who have just about every opportunity in life open to them — who have more privilege and access to power than 99.9 percent of people in this world — and they use it to promote the same old misogynist and classist ideologies that maintain their positions in society. They will have a wider audience for their views and greater influence over the lives of others simply because of their social status. The fact that these men attend an elite educational institution — the elite educational institution — matters quite a bit. Misogyny is misogyny is misogyny, but its effects can certainly magnified given who is perpetuating it.
[...] your backgrounds are insignificant, even though you’re right on both counts. Jill at Feministe wrote about the music: Everyone loves privileged Ivy-leagu [...]
Lack of drive of course, why on earth should they have any “drive” to understand or empathize for one damned minute the lives of the ‘others’ in society, of whom, might I add, they are perfectly aware of their economic and social power over.
Priviledge is just that, the priviledge to steal from others what does not belong to them, nor was originated by them and call it their own, whether words, culture, bodies, sex, wages, labor or land. Its their’s for the taking, they’re just warming up before they graduate and move onto their real world adventures.
Don’t worry, they’ll get better and we’ll never notice when they pick our pockets and our minds.
Wow. Color me not surprised.
An a capella group from either Harvard or Yale (I can’t remember which) was invited to a jam at my Mount Holyoke dorm my senior year. They “lightened the mood” between songs by telling tasteless jokes that tended to revolve around rape and other acts of violence towards women.
Yes. They told jokes about women being raped at an event where the audience consisted almost exclusively of students from a very liberal all women’s college.
I can’t decide if they were simply jackasses, or stupid as well.
Probably both since they seemed a little confused when we all pretty much ignored them afterwards in favor of the Middlebury students – who actually made us laugh by performing several ‘Nsync songs.
Bringing up Eminem in this context reminds me of his song “White America“:
[White America] I could be one of your kids
[White America] Little Eric looks just like this
[White America] Erica loves my shit
I go to TRL, look how many hugs I get
It’s unfortunate that I like his rhyming style, since I dislike almost all of his content, but I make up for it by listening to Sage Francis.
“Speaking as an undergrad, the rampant misogyny is more common than anyone likes to think.”
Speaking as a recent undergrad at an Ivy League (not any of the ones mentioned here), you are correct. It’s absolutely amazing.
“Lack of drive of course, why on earth should they have any “drive” to understand or empathize for one damned minute the lives of the ‘others’ in society, of whom, might I add, they are perfectly aware of their economic and social power over.”
In my experience, many of them actually are not aware. They (and, until a few years ago, I suppose I could have included myself in “they”) generally think that most people live like them and have the same opportunities as they do. When you spend your entire childhood not knowing poverty or its causes and living outside the cities in almost all-white suburbs where everyone owns two cars and a decently sized home… you tend to assume that that’s the way things just are.
Perhaps the biggest and longest-lasting shock of my life happened over the past few years as I slowly learned just how completely sheltered I was at home. My parents never told me that we lived in a privileged location, made more money than 95% of the rest of the population, lived well off generations of social capital (i.e. are WASPs), etc. Growing up, I just thought it was all normal. Then I started reading, learning, and talking to people.
So, honestly, I think the situation is even worse than you say. If I am any guide, most of them (at the high school and college level) don’t understand their socio-economic position in the first place. Later, they will come to see it and will internalize it as “the way things ought to be, forever and ever.”
The worst part of it is that because of their white skin privilige and econcomic position, it’s far less likely that their female relatives will be exposed to sexualized violence. Wheras people like them set a cultural tone where rape is premissive, especially if the victim is bronwer or poorer than your sisters and mother. Put another way, their sister will probably not be assaulted coming off the all night shift cleaning buildings because she can’t afford a safe means of transportation home. Plus though prviliged women are by no means safe from assault, the priviliged folks at least purport to limit it to assault by THEM, not just anyone. The only real justice is for those who promote a rape culture to spend time iin a situation where they are themselves exposed to the threat of sexual violence; then those lyrics won’t seem so funny. Orange jump suit anyone?
I posted this over at IvyGate, and seeing as there has been a significant amount of discussion here, I thought I would make sure that people participating in this blog had a chance to read it.
MC Matador says:
I apologize to those who I offended with my verse (the 4th). It was meant to be entirely in jest. I did not properly consider the ramifications of writing and recording these lines, and I certainly did not consider the results and implications of doing so in the context of that song; that is, I did not think through how deciding to take part in this song would reflect on my own artistry. After thorough consideration, I know that I would rather have not participated, for the reason that this song does not represent me as an artist, technically or thematically. Although I collaborated with the group in this song, this statement is individual and posted without any consultation with them–I speak for myself here, as I have throughout, without collaboration when it comes to my opinions and feelings regarding the recording. Once again, thank you for your discussion and input; it has helped me realize that although I am still torn about certain issues that have been brought up, I must lean heavily to the side of regret and remorse, and hope to remain faithful to my own art from this point forward.