By now, you’ve probably heard that Eminem delivered a blistering freestyle during Tuesday’s BET Hip Hop Awards show, skewering Donald Trump, the many-times-accused sexual abuser and white supremacist who sits in the Oval Office thanks in no small part to foreign meddling, white racial resentment, and a toxic nation where many were willing to overlook his braggadocio about sexual assault under the guise of “locker room talk.”
Many cheered “The Storm,” the Detroit rapper’s unflinching, honest takedown response to Trump’s flippant “calm before the storm” posturing during a White House event this past Thursday. The freestyle featured Em’s trademark style and a broad palette of cultural references, including former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (“F**k that! This is for Colin, ball up a fist!”), Senator and former POW John McCain (“He says, ‘You’re spittin’ in the face of vets who fought for us, you bastards!’/Unless you’re a POW who’s tortured and battered”), and the interconnectedness of his White House and the despicable white supremacist gatherings in Charlottesville, Virginia (“From his endorsement of Bannon/Support for the Klansmen/Tiki torches in hand”). The rap ends with a strongly worded challenge to any Eminem fans (or Stans) doubting the who the good guys are: “And any fan of mine who’s a supporter of his/I’m drawing in the sand a line: you’re either for or against/And if you can’t decide who you like more and you’re split/On who you should stand beside, I’ll do it for you with this: Fuck you!”
In some ways, Eminem (real name Marshall Mathers) is a perfect vessel for such a repudiation: His rhyme scheme allows him, in just over four minutes, to ably connect the historical to the deplorable, racism to Puerto Rico, and taxes to the Green Bay Packers in a digestible and engaging soundbite. Political commentator Keith Olbermann, admittedly not a hip-hop head, called the freestyle “the best political writing of 2017.” That’s what protest music can do.
But at the same time, a longstanding critique of the rapper again reared its head: Eminem has a terrible history of misogyny and violence against women and queer people in his lyrical output. One of his first breakout hits, 2000’s “The Real Slim Shady,” included lines about Christina Aguilera performing oral sex on noted host Carson Daly and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst. “Kim” (2000) is a violent revenge fantasy against his then-wife that concludes with her murder and burial at the rapper’s hands. This hasn’t really abated in recent years: A 2014 cypher freestyle suggested he wanted to “punch Lana Del Ray right in the face twice like Ray Rice.”
Many of the most stinging lines from “The Storm” follow a fairly similar pattern. “And say a prayer that every time Melania talks/She gets a mou…Ahh, Imma stop,” he raps, showing a bit of restraint but still attacking a woman (the First Lady’s name was censored in the initial BET broadcast). Later, he again attacks Trump’s manhood: “Except when it comes to having the balls to go against me, you hide ’em/’Cause you don’t got the fucking nuts like an empty asylum.”
Many pieces have already been written from all sides of the political spectrum. The right-wing website Breitbart suggested that Hollywood was using the rap as a way to distract from the ongoing horror of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assaults, listing misogynist lyrics and capturing the tweets from celebrities praising the rapper. “Ah yes. @Eminem a moral compass who’s been arrested, rapped about assaulting his wife, sued by his mother & anti-LGBT. Real people’s champ,” FOX News contributor (and former Stan herself) tweeted. Various other Republican personalities feigned outrage (and bathed in the waters of Lake Hypocrisy), condemning Eminem while ignoring the respective misogyny of their leader. All of a sudden, the Republicans cared about the women their regressive lawmaking is trying to harm.
Meanwhile, from the left, a different genre—the thinkpieces—emerged, as they often do. The Atlantic mused that the rapper’s retort was special because it marshalled Mathers’s whiteness and spoke directly to the congnitive dissonance of Trump’s supporters, many of whom are likely Eminem fans. In his industry-focused newsletter, Bob Lefsetz applauded his willingness to be directly political in an industry that has been surprisingly conservative in these trying times. “This is everything today’s ‘musicians’ are against,” he writes. “They don’t want to alienate a single potential audience member. … The only person with a voice as big as Trump’s is a rapper. And tonight the king of rappers called him out.” Another thoughtful article in The Atlantic excused Eminem’s critique, calling it “as vulgar as the President” and suggesting that in these revolting political times, our national decency has so eroded that the words and sentiments are commonplace.
How do we appreciate the critique while still condemning much of its substance? What The Atlantic, for instance, misses is that this is not simply about vulgarity. The takedown is of a specific kind: Eminem’s critiques are part of a noxious world where the most resonant way for a man to diss another man is to attack his manhood. Eminem doesn’t only suggest that Trump “lacks nuts;” he suggests that that is a bad thing. More than half the nation’s population similarly “lacks nuts” and it is most certainly not a bad thing. This type of attack furthers the second-class status of women in the American hierarchy, where they are paid less, assaulted more, and the negative against which norms emerge. What’s the worst insult to call a man? A woman.
Or, more specifically, something else: Later, in the portion of the freestyle addressing Kaepernick, Eminem raps “Fuck that! This is for Colin, ball up a fist!/And keep that shit balled like Donald the bitch!” The word “bitch” has a particular currency in these circles. Kendrick Lamar isn’t telling just anyone to sit down in “Humble.” He’s telling a bitch to sit down. Kanye West didn’t just make Taylor Swift “Famous.” He made “that bitch” famous.
This should not be read as an attempt to re-litigate the debates over chauvinism in hip-hop; people like Michele Wallace, Joan Morgan, bell hooks, and a host of other black feminists have walked us through the intersections of masculinity and race that have contributed to the genre’s complicated gender issues. But instead, it’s a reminder that misogyny has its roots at the expense of women—the two go hand in hand. And the ways we come after Trump, Weinstein, and the variety of other disgusting abusers-of-power cannot reinforce the dynamics that gave them that power in the first place.
There is a well-known in term activist circles known as the “feminist killjoy,” which suggests that being a committed feminist often means being “that person” in a social setting or Twitter conversation who stops others’ fun by calling attention to an overlooked oppression. “Feminists are typically represented as grumpy and humor-less, often as a way of protecting the right to certain forms of social bonding or of holding onto whatever is perceived to be under threat,” the scholar Sara Ahmed, who has helped popularize the term, writes in her 2010 book The Promise of Happiness.
We still need to discuss Eminem’s misogyny, even if it cheapens what we want so badly to feel like an anti-Trump victory in these trying times. They need to be addressed together or we do a disservice to more than half our nation. Too much of his victory rests on the same sexist foundations that helped elect Trump in the first place. And as long as that remains the case, the storm will rage on.
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