Feminism and the Streets: Urban Fiction and the Quest for Female Independence in the Era of Transactional Sexuality

• Published in: Palimpsest (Albany, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2012, Vol.1 (2), p.237-255
• Main Authors: Bragg, Beauty, Ikard, David
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American culture; Black people; Civil rights; Contemporary Philosophy; Feminism; Gender relations; Hip hop culture; Language and Literature; Misogyny; Power; Rap music; Sexuality; Social and Political Philosophy; Women
• ISSN: 2165-1604; 2165-1612; 2165-1612
• DOI: 10.1353/pal.2012.0022

Charges of hypermasculinity and female objectification fly, while conservative popular discourse indicts the culture as pathological and defenders view hip hop as authentic expressions of racial and economic disaffection. Because the popular debate tends to get bogged down in either defensive or critical positions, it rarely explores the nuances and complexities of the negotiations of gender ideology that take place in hip hop cultural expression. Specifically, we understand these texts to do the following: (i) extend the concern of traditional feminist theorizing with the quest for female independence; (2) engage the contradictions of feminist theory and practice engendered by individual sexual desire_articulated by hip hop feminists; and (3) offer provocative representations of black men that correlate with black male feminism's concern with examining family structures and challenging the reproduction of rigid definitions of black masculinity. Sharpley-Whiting offers the provocative idea that the commercial success of hip hop culture (typically characterized as a male-dominated form) is heavily dependent upon the presence of young black women. "9 As part of her larger goal of describing how black women negotiate gender and sexuality within these constraints, she also examines the phenomenon of hip hop groupies and the power dynamics that inform their attempts to bed famous hip hop stars as well as their efforts to parlay those experiences into dollars in the form of "tell-all" book publications.