Excerpt:
Last week I got a tweet from someone telling me that they liked my Best Feminist Music Videos of 2013 post, saying they weren’t surprised that there was no country on that list and pointing me to an article on the marginalization of women artists in country. While women country artists these days definitely are marginalized within the genre, the truth is that there was no country on that list because I don’t really listen to much modern country. But I actually do like some of it — I’m partial to the ladies of classic country, myself — and I was reminded how much flack country music gets for being sexist despite there being a long feminist tradition within the genre.
That conversation also reminded me of something else I’ve been thinking about for a while. Despite the fact that basically all genres of pop culture are generally pretty sexist — art is a reflection of our society, after all — some genres get more flack than others. I’m thinking specifically about hip hop and country. At face value you’d think these two genres really have nothing in common, but the parallel that I see here is class. All the criticism that both hip hop and country get for being so super sexist actually seems to be related to a hatred of the cultural products of America’s poor. Both hip hop and country have roots and long traditions in telling stories of struggle, poverty, and resistance. So when I hear someone say “I listen to everything but rap and country,” that just indicates to me that this person isn’t keen on poor folks. What else is there in common?
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