By: Dalia Perez
The music genre “Punk” has given women a voice to express themselves about important issues involving politics, race, and violence against women. Punk has given women the ability to fight back against issues like sexual harassment. An example of this involves the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas sexual harassment case. Based on this case Ednie Kaeh Garrison states in her article titled U.S. FEMINISM-GRRRL STYLE! YOUTH (SUB)CULTURES AND THE TECHNOLOGICS OF THE THIRD WAVE, that it forced “many young women to “acknowledge that we live under siege.” But it also encouraged them to fight back” (Garrison, 147). Basically, cases like the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas case made women acknowledge that women are surrounded by injustices which they need to fight against. One-way women did this was by using their voice and all their stored-up anger in creating punk music. Women are not the only ones that express important issues through punk music. In the article Its (Not) a White World: Looking for Race in Punk, Mimi Nguyen states that “You (and I mean everybody now) can be accountable to your social location. Interrogate and historicize your place in society, punk, whatever, and be aware of how you talk about race, gender, sexuality – it’s political… Recognize power in all its forms, how it operates” (Nguyen, 9). By making this statement Nguyen makes it clear that everyone has the power to about important issues like race in punk, but they must be aware of the way they talk about these issues because people are affected by issues differently.
Two songs that relate to these articles in terms of violence against women are GateKeeper by Jessie Reyes and Man Down by Rihanna. Though these songs don’t express that aggressive sound like that of punk music. The song Man Down expresses the harsh reality of what occurs when society continues to let violence against women go unrecognized which leads to women taking matters in their own hands. The song GateKeeper expresses the harsh reality some women in the music industry, movie industry, etc. Go through because they are told that if they are told to do, they will not progress in their industry.
AFRAM337 