Misogyny is the language of popular music -rock, country, hip hop. From the beginning there has been a prevalence of woman hating in rock and roll. And I don't mean hating a woman. Hating a woman isn't misogyny, the Eagles "Already Gone" is not misogynistic, it is too specific to be, whereas "Yesterday's Papers" is. Despite Henley's "victory song" against a woman he manages to dump before she dumps him, it is a specific hatred.
"Yesterday's Papers", on the other hand, asks "who wants yesterday's girl? Nobody in the world…", a universal put downs, one Elvis Costello, once considered the poster boy for misogyny, would mimic on "This Year's Girl": "those disco synthesizers, those daily tranquilizers, all this and no surprises from this years girl.
The height of sophistication when compared to hip hop: "Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks / Lick on these nuts and suck the dick / Get’s the fuck out after you’re done / And I hops in my ride to make a quick run."
You can't blame hip hop for misogyny without blaming the blues: same crime, different language. Lennon got it right, women are the slaves of the slave.
And we can't blame music for that either.
Plus it is a worn out subject… but how about misandry -women hating men as a gender, in rock and roll. Does it exist? Again, I am not discussing hatred of a specific man, but of the male sex.
Country have bucketfuls of man haters, but there doesn't appear a hatred of the male sex. Really, men have been better at pointing the finger at themselves, Nick Lowe's "All Men Are Liars" comes to mind.
But the rejection of men by that other sex does exist.
The feminist movement went hand in hand with the 1960s but the music was neither sincerely feminist nor pro-misandristic. It would take the punk rock movement for women to begin to express their fear and hatred of men.
I once had a very good friend, a lovely woman but she was overweight, kept herself in baggy dresses that hid her, and in nearly everywhere managed to make herself look as unattractive, or at least as ordinary, as possible. She would actually have been quite pretty if she'd had the slightest interest. One drunken night she told me that she father had raped her during her childhood. She wasn't gay, she was disinterested in sex, and she was terrified of men. I have two points to make about her.
1. Women have excellent reason to be scared of men. Not only are we emotionally retarded, if not entirely vacant, we respond to conflict through violence and we are bullies. This is nthd out for girls (one in four was the last number I read) who suffered sexual or at least some of physical abuse at a young age.
2. The easiest way to hide from men is by not making yourself appealing to them.
In popular music, this was manifested in punk rock. To this date there has never been a clearer or better idiom between the sexes. The women in punk wore theb&dclothing but ripped it up, cut off their hair, and made themselves as unappealing to MAINSTREAM male sexuality. The punk boys were into it: these women expressed their sexuality with their peers and not the status quo of class conscious UK.Also, punk was the leasts exual of music, both in lyric content and in the main participamts/ Johnny Rotten memorably called sex 15 minutes of squelching. This also lead to Rock Against Sexism and eventually to bands like Jam Today, who refused to play to men at all. Increasingly, and as part of the Andrea Dworkin feminist anger at men, these bands HATED MEN.
A band like the Au Pairs, with men in the band, were misandrists, it is just that when ever Lesley Woods wrote about men, she despised them.
It would take another movement, the riot grrrls in the States, for male hatred to go mainstream.
A couple of things:
1. Being a lesbian doesn't make you a male hatred.
2. Living in a sexually segregated society, doesn't make you homosexual.
BUT -there are some reasons for gay orientation:
1. Biology (nature's way of cutting down the species)
2. Environment
3. Psychology.
And when it comes to psychology, certain lesbians sexual orientation is due to hatred of men. Also, nearly all sexually segregated societies find an increase in homosexual activity, be it prison or a Nunnery. Again two reasons, 1) Homosexuals choose a sexually segregated society or 2) Sexual appettite based upon availability.
Bubbling under the 1990s Washington DC riot grrrls was a hatred of men. According to Wikipedia, riot grrrls subject matters included "rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, and female empowerment". All legitimate subject matter and certainly, bands as great as Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Sleater Kinney, need no excuse from this quarter. But the Stones were the greatest rock band of all time, and they were misogynists, I see no reason why I shouldn't call the riot grrrls misandrists if that's what they were.If all the riot grrrls can see is the horror of men (and if I'm wrong, prove it), if they condemned men as a sex to the exclusion of any positive elements, I consider that hatred of men. It was a music movement where, if only because of its name, men were not welcome to join in.
I understand women hating men better than the reverse, the way I understand blacks hating whites better than the reverse. The question is power, and denying that men have the power on this planet is like denying that the major record labels still run the music business. Wounded, maybe, but still the top dog. I wouldn't be a woman for anything, if a woman treated me the way I treat women she wouldn't last the day with me. And I'm an insanely nice guy with women.
But that doesn't deny the strains of music where women write "Herstory" -where women exclude men and want nothing to do with us.
At around the same time, there were two women who skirted a form of heterosexual misandry. Alanis Morrisette, certainly on Jagged Little Pill and Under Rug Swept, distilled an intense hatred of A MAN that seemed so furious it infected every man. On the latter album, the stench of child abuse (Alanis was 16 years old at the time of the affair she writes about) clogs the songs.
On Exile In Guysville, Liz Phair is seriously damaged from her years of teenage promiscuity. The album sounds great but it is a howl of pain directed at pain. Whatever Phair might have consciously felt, subconsciously it is a raging hatred of all men.
On to current days and the one singer above all who appears to hate men is Rihanna. It could be the Chris Brown effect but in current videos and in conversation, in the violent imagery of her life performance, there is a very real anger about her -a very real distaste for men right this minute.
Thank you for this. -an old punk rock chick who wears minimizer bras to be taken seriously