My advice for young players: Advice Part 65

I have always considered myself to be something of a “feminist”. Whilst I have stopped short of reading The Female Eunuch, and have yet to burn my bra or stop shaving my legs (sorry, had to chuck in a few clichés there....), I would describe myself as VERY committed to ensuring that women are treated equally to men.

But in the past month or so, I have come to realise that I have a MAJOR problem reconciling my feminist political views with my musical tastes.....

My advice to young players is that it MAY be acceptable to briefly suppress your moral outrage for the sake of a bit of enjoyment. But as soon as the fun is over, get back on your moral high horse lest it gallops away (I am going to wring every last drop out of that image...)

How do I know this? Let me explain....

It may come as a surprise for those of you who know me, but I have a rather unfortunate penchant for a particular "niche kind" of R&B, hip hop, and rap music.

"A-ha!" you're probably saying. "That's no surprise at all. I bet you like nice, conservative R&B, like Boyz II Men, or Mariah Carey or Rihanna."

But if you thought that, you'd be VERY wrong.

Rather, my predilection is for blantantly sexist and misogynistic music which:

objectifies women
features near nude dancers gyrating in the video clips
is full of lyrics about sex and the singer’s “performance in the sack”

So, some tracks which I like:

Gett Off- Prince
Baby got back- Sir Mix-A-Lot
Novacane- Frank Ocean (this is a KILLER track!)

The strangest thing about this is that there seems to be some sort of positive correlation between the sexism of the lyrics, and the amount I like the song- the more sexist, the more I’ll like it.

What really disturbs me is that if I heard these sort of sentiments expressed anywhere other than in music, I would be absolutely FURIOUS.

But, worst of all, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why I like this sort of music. It seems to exert some sort of irresistible appeal for me. As soon as a sexist rap track starts playing, I can't resist.

This is one of those times that I wish Dr Freud was still alive, because I'm sure he'd have a field day with this sort of fascination.....