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Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown So Much They Would Let Him Beat Them

Do you know what you're saying? Do you really?

You may think you're joking. I want to believe you're joking, because haha, a man putting his hands on you is so funny in the reality from where you are communicating. Clearly, we have different definitions of funny, but perhaps you truly do find it amusing to joke about domestic violence. I am not here to judge you.

I am afraid you're not joking. I'm afraid you are quite serious.

You are saying you are willing to be abused; you are willing to sacrifice your dignity.

For what?

You are impressed by some combination of a young man's music, charisma, dancing ability, and/or good looks. That is understandable. Everybody's got their something. However. You are also saying that suffering Chris Brown's abuse would be a fair exchange for his attention, however fleeting you must know that attention would be. When you look past the image, a celebrity is just a person you know nothing about. Ultimately, you are saying you are willing to be abused for the mirage of fame in the desert of your life.

For people who enjoy S/M, there's this thing called consent, which should always exist in human interactions, but which is exceedingly important when you entrust your body and mind to someone else in such ways. You can say, "I want you to hurt me," or "I want you to humiliate me," or "I want you to dominate me," and someone else will do so. But, and this is important, when you say, in some form or fashion, stop, the pain or humiliation or domination stops, no questions asked. That is a powerful, perfect moment. There is nothing better than knowing the suffering can stop, than knowing you must endure but if you no longer wish to do so, you don't have to because it is safe to withdraw your consent. There is nothing better than knowing you have some control in a situation that feels so far beyond your control.

When you tell a man like Chris Brown, at least the man he has shown himself to be, to stop, he won't. With abuse there is no stopping. There is no consent. There is only suffering that will begin and end as he sees fit. You will never have any control. You will never know how good it feels to endure by your choice because that choice does not belong to you and never will. Do you understand? Do you see that distinction?

I don't know Chris Brown. I have never met him and probably never will. I know his music. Sometimes, it's catchy. Mostly, to my ears, it's contrived and overproduced. I've seen him dance-he can work with choreography. He is reasonably attractive. I don't really get it, to be honest, but I don't need to get it. You likely wouldn't understand who I find attractive, either. What I do understand is that Chris Brown means something to you, that he arouses you physically or emotionally. He arouses you to such an extent you are willing to do whatever it takes to be within his incandescent sphere for even a little while.

Did you read the police report from the infamous incident where Chris Brown beat his then-girlfriend Rihanna? The details are disturbing and graphic and leave the distinct impression that what took place on that night three years ago was not an isolated incident. If you were to "get with" Chris Brown, there's a good chance he would hurt you and not in a way you would like because time and again he has shown he cannot control his rage. He would hardly be concerned with you at all. This is the man he has shown himself to be.

I am sorry our culture has treated women so poorly for so long that suffering abuse to receive celebrity attention seems like a fair and reasonable trade. We have failed you, utterly.

We failed you when Chris Brown received a slap on the wrist for his crime and was subsequently allowed to perform at the 2012 Grammy's not once but twice. We failed you when he was awarded R & B Album of the Year at that same ceremony. This is not to say he has no right to move on from his crime but he has demonstrated not one ounce of contrition. Instead, he has flagrantly reveled in his bad boy persona and taunted the public at every turn. He's young and troubled but that's an explanation for his behavior, not an excuse.

We failed you when Charlie Sheen was allowed and eagerly encouraged to continue to star in movies and have a hit television show that basically printed him money after he shot Kelly Preston "accidentally" and he hit a UCLA student in the head when she wouldn't have sex with him and he threatened to kill his ex-wife Denise Richards and he held a knife to his ex-wife Brooke Mueller's throat. We failed you when Roman Polanski received an Oscar even though he committed a crime so terrible he hasn't been able to return to the United States for more than thirty years. We failed you when Sean Penn fought violently with Madonna and continued a successful, critically acclaimed career and also received an Oscar.

We fail you every single time a (famous) man treats a woman badly, without legal, professional, or personal consequence.

Over and over again we tell you it is acceptable for men-famous, infamous, or not at all famous-to abuse women. We look the other way. We make excuses. We reward these men for their bad behavior. We tell you that as a young woman, you have little value or place in this society. Clearly we have sent these messages with such alarming regularity and consistency we have encouraged you to willingly run toward something violent and terrible with your eyes and arms wide open

I am sorry.

I'm not shocked by your willingness to suffer for nothing in return without the right to consent. That may be the saddest thing of all.

Roxane Gay's writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney's, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger forthcoming in 2017. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. Roxane was the founding Essays Editor and is a current Advisory Board member for The Rumpus. You can find her at roxanegay.com. More from this author →

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Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown So Much They Would Let Him Beat Them

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Dear Young Ladies Who Love Chris Brown So Much They Would Let Him Beat Them Do you know what you're saying? Do you really? You may think you're joking. I want to believe you're joking, because haha, a man putting his hands on you is so funny in the reality from where you are communicating.

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The recent controversy over Nelly's music video " Tip-Drill" has highlighted what we've all known for some time: Hip-hop has a gender problem. And for most of hip-hop's 30-something years, folks have been compelled to point out the sexism, misogyny and homophobia that finds a forum in the lyrics of the young black and brown men who have primarily influenced the genre, and the lack of a womanist perspective that could directly counter those lyrics.

In this regard, the recent decision of the Spelman College Student Government Association and others at the Atlanta University Center to try to hold Nelly accountable was part of a larger tradition, one honed by journalists like Joan Morgan, Raquel Cepeda, Karen Good and Elizabeth Mendez-Berry and scholars such as Tricia Rose, Cheryl Keyes and Gwendolyn Pough, whose new book Check It While I Wreck: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere drops in June. But in recognizing this larger tradition, we should also acknowledge that we may be asking hip-hop to do something that it's fundamentally incapable of.

Let me be clear -- I'm on the front lines of any effort to get the men in hip-hop to rethink their pornographic uses of women's bodies and performance of lyrics that more often than not express, at best, a deep ambivalence about and fear of women (perfectly captured 14 years ago with the Bell Biv Devoe quip "never trust a big butt and a smile") and, at worst, outright hatred. But as we make demands of these artists, it's important that we understand the demands of the peculiar space they occupy within pop culture. Without doubt, the performance of black masculinity continues to be hip-hop's dominant creative force. Yet over the last decade or so sales figures have consistently shown that young white men are the primary consumers of the various performances of black masculinity and the pornographic images of black and brown women found in mainstream hip-hop.

By asking hip-hop to reform, we are essentially demanding hip-hop's primary consumer base to consume music that is anti-sexist, anti-misogynistic and possibly feminist. And in what context have young white men (or black men for that matter) ever been interested in consuming large amounts of black feminist thought? Clearly, these young whites are consuming hip-hop for other reasons. In the case of young white males, hip-hop represents a space where they work through the idea of how their masculinity can be lived -- what they literally take from the hypermasculine "black buck" (think about 50 Cent's influence in the killing fields of Iraq) and indeed it is an integral part of the cash-and-carry exchange.

In a society that remains largely ignorant of the scholarly, political and cultural contributions of women like Anna Julia Cooper, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis ("oh yeah, the chick with the afro, right?"), June Jordan, bell hooks, Michele Wallace, Patricia Hill-Collins, Jewell Gomez, Joy James, Beverley Guy-Sheftall and Masani Alexis De Veaux, how can we expect hip-hop to do the heavy-lifting that hasn't been done in the larger culture? Despite popular belief, hip-hop is not the most prominent site of sexism and misogyny in American society, but a reflection of the sexism and misogyny that more powerfully circulates within American culture. In many ways the images and lyrics used to objectify women of color in hip-hop videos serve as metaphors for the ways that American society actually treats those women. As Pough notes, "rappers become grunt workers for the patriarchy: They sow the field of misogyny for the patriarchy and provide the labor necessary to keep it in operation, much as Black men and women provided the free and exploited labor that built the United States." Remember, the black men on the screen are "performing" -- performing their notions of how American masculinity embodies power through force, violence and exploitation. (50 ain't the only thug or pimp in the room -- there are more than a few in the White House and at the Pentagon.)

In many ways, our discussions about hip-hop culture are the product of a very myopic view of contemporary black expressive culture. Yes, hip-hop needs to be reformed, but it's not as if hip-hop were the only place where young black men and women are discussing the very reasons why hip-hop remains so problematic to some of us. For example, Princeton University scholar Daphne Brooks asserts that few critics have paid attention to the significance of narratives by black female R&B artists. She argues that "Black Women's popular desire is thus depoliticized and disregarded for its reflections on domestic and socio-economic politics and sexual fulfillment." But she adds that what "critics have failed to fully interrogate are the ways in which this subgenre also operates as an extension of hip-hop culture itself." A good example of this is an artist like Syleena Johnson, who has circulated within hip-hop via remixes with the Flip-Mode Squad and most recently singing the hook on Kanye West's "All Falls Down" (no, that's not Lauryn Hill you're hearing). On her disc Chapter One: Love, Pain and Forgiveness (2001), Johnson, recorded the track "Hit on Me," which explicitly addressed the issue of domestic abuse.

If we think about contemporary black popular culture more broadly than what urban radio and BET tells us, then we are likely to find the work of artists like Ursula Rucker and Sarah Jones. Rucker first came to prominence, performing spoken word poetry on The Roots' recordings Do You Want More?!!!??! (1995), Illadelph Halflife (1996) and Things Fall Apart (1999). In 2001 she released her own disc Supa Sista, which included the track "What???", which challenged mainstream rappers to a battle. But Rucker sets up the rules for the battle stating "no krissy, no thongs, no baby-boos or baby-daddies/no tricks no whips no weight pushing/and absolutely no platinum or ice/no guns no lies about your ghetto rep..." essentially challenging her male colleagues to rely simply on their wit and creativity, instead of the standard tropes of ghetto authenticity. In a more celebrated example, performance artist Sarah Jones stepped to the mic to hold mainstream hip-hop accountable with her track "Your Revolution" (on DJ Vadim's USSR: Life from the Other Side). "Your Revolution" is a riff off Gil Scot-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," and on the track Jones takes shots at the sexist lyrics of artists like Biggie ("Big Poppa"), LL ("Doin' It"), and Shaggy ("Boombastic"). But in an ironic twist that perfectly captures the struggles of those who try to hold hip-hop accountable, Jones' lyrics were cited as "vulgar" by the FCC and a complaint was filed after the song was played on Portland, Oregon's KBOO in 1999.

For all those who, like me, are interested in holding hip-hop up to serious scrutiny, maybe we should also get serious about challenging the pervasiveness of sexism, misogyny and homophobia in the larger society. Perhaps only then will the images that circulate within hip-hop be exposed for the absurdities that they are.

Mark Anthony Neal is the author of three books including the recent 'Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation' (Routledge, 2003). He teaches in the Department of American Studies and the Center for African and African-American Studies (CAAAS) at the University of Texas at Austin.

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It's clear that hip-hop has a gender problem -- but where do the influences for these images and ideas come from? Perhaps we should be looking at the influences instead of the performers themselves. The recent controversy over Nelly's music video "Tip-Drill" has highlighted what we've all known for some time: Hip-hop has a gender problem.

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Lupe Fiasco's "Bitch Bad" is only the latest example of a male hip-hop star trying to empower women but actually demeaning them.

Lupe Fiasco's latest single, "Bitch Bad," is exactly the sort of song the world has always expected Lupe Fiasco to make. When the Chicago-bred emcee debuted in 2006, he quickly became a favorite among critics and hip-hop fans in part because he represented a departure from the well-worn themes that had come to dominate mainstream rap music. He traded guns for skateboards, drugs for anime, and stale gangster posturing for a genuine political awareness rooted in concern for the future of his community. At his best, he has represented the revolutionary potential of hip-hop.

Six years, some bad public relations, and one truly disappointing album later, Lupe isn't as universally adored as he once was, but he still knows how to grab attention. His desire to critique the genre and call other rappers to task for the messages and images they project inevitably sparks dialogue, and that's never been truer than with "Bitch Bad," his lyrical attempt at breaking down the hip-hop trope of the "bad bitch."

The problem is, it's just not very good.
In the best cases, these rappers realize the best way to accurately portray the lives of women is for the women to do it themselves
The song's lyrics are lazy, but worse, "Bitch Bad" reveals Lupe's unfortunately uncomplicated thinking on ideas of gender, and yet presents itself as a cure all for our gender woes. We can add it to the long line of well-intentioned songs from male rappers attempting to come off as feminist but actually reinforcing the ideas that make feminism necessary.

The chorus is simple, repeated as if by someone trying to memorize the names of all 50 states and their capitals: "Bitch bad, woman good/Lady better, they misunderstood." Here he sets up a simplistic and demeaning hierarchy of womanhood, in which one can choose to be a bitch, woman, or lady - without even attempting to define what those terms might mean. In the background, he can be heard lightly bellowing the phrase "I'm killing these bitches!" as a way of inverting what would usually be heard as a violent threat to instead say that he's going to eliminate the mentality that creates "bad bitches." The message is unsubtle: Bitches are bad.
Story continues below.

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Rap's Long History of 'Conscious' Condescension to Women

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Lupe Fiasco's "Bitch Bad" is only the latest example of a male hip-hop star trying to empower women but actually demeaning them. Lupe Fiasco's latest single, "Bitch Bad," is exactly the sort of song the world has always expected Lupe Fiasco to make.

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I wasn't surprised that Dr. Dre's infamous 1991 attack on journalist Dee Barnes wouldn't be seen or acknowledged in "Straight Outta Compton." That a film produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the most successful members of N.W.A., wouldn't address the former's infamous violence against women - not just , but also rapper and singer/former girlfriend - isn't as shocking as it is unfortunate. The attack on Barnes made huge news at the time; including it in the film would indicate a level of contrition that portraying Dre as the group's good guy (as newbie does beautifully) would not. Corey Hawkins

However, the issue with N.W.A. and sexism is so much deeper than Dre's physical violence against those three women, by far. As a longtime listener of hip-hop, I'd go so far as to say that the group's most lasting legacy - greater than "F*** the Police," greater than Dre's expansive catalogue as a producer and Ice Cube's reinvention as a family film dad - is how the group contributed to hip-hop's long-standing tradition of seeing black women as little more than "bitches" and "hoes."

For this reason, bringing myself to see this movie wasn't an easy task. The idea that a group that was so absolutely harsh on black women (and spoke proudly of nihilistic violence against other black men) would be reimagined as some sort of American heroes or champions of blackness is disheartening, although very much consistent with the role rap music has played in popular culture for nearly half of it's existence.

The commercial for "Straight Outta Compton," which curiously chooses a black cop as the face of the police brutality faced by members of the legendary rap group (though the actual movie would depict far more intense violence at the hands of white officers), even managed to find placement during the first Republican presidential debate - ironically airing just after the evening's only question about the Black Lives Matter movement.

The reviews, penned almost exclusively for large publications by white male writers, are glowing. Complex 's Cameron Wolf referred to the film as "almost perfect," short of a historically inaccurate baseball cap choice; another hailed it as "rewarding for viewers of any background. Except, perhaps, police." At David Edelstein makes an awkward reference to August Wilson's play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" - he might as well have said, "I know black art, like, really" - and calls it "intensely human and personal in its characterizations and attention to detail," yet doesn't mention the many women who somehow just didn't make it to the story in any meaningful way (J.J. Fad, YoYo, for example.) Variety film critic Scott Foundas hasn't a word to spare on the group's misogyny. Wasn't every writer expected to at least give the, "I know they're sexist, but" caveat here? At least veteran Rolling Stone writer Peter Travers notes that the film would be better if it didn't "sidestep the band's misogyny, gay-bashing and malicious infighting," but finds the final product to be "an amazement, an electrifying piece of hip-hop history that speaks urgently to right now."

The "right now" is a national dialogue about the sort of police brutality experienced by the group's members during their early days, and a mobilization of young people across the country against this violence. But with a handful of notable exceptions (Tef Poe, Jasiri X, Talib Kweli and Kendrick Lamar among them) this moment is far less driven by rap and rappers than it is by black women. Groups like Black Lives Matter, Hands Up United, the Dream Defenders and other organizations that have been visible in places like Ferguson, Oakland and Chicago aren't promoting the male-centric vision of black defiance that N.W.A. represented.

N.W.A's gender issues aren't explicitly addressed in "Straight Outta Compton," but you'll find hints of them in the film (and certainly the soundtrack.) Ice Cube (portrayed perfectly by son O'Shea Jackson, Jr.) is seen shoving a groupie out of a hotel room by her head and saying, "Bye, Felicia," meant to be a humorous nod to the famous line from his film, "Friday." Mothers, girlfriends and wives are present, but none are particularly dynamic or treated as essential to the men of the group. The fact that it was Tomika Woods Wright who let husband Eazy-E know how Jerry Heller had taken advantage of him is acknowledged, briefly.

On the song which provides the film's title, Eazy spits "Smother your mother and make your sister think I love her," and "You think I give a damn about a b*tch, I ain't a sucker. " On "Just Don't Bite It, " Ren opts to receive oral sex from a woman because "There's a slight chance if I f**k she might burn me, and then I might have to shoot the 'ho." And this was before the Cube-less second album "Niggaz4Life," when the group took their misogyny up a notch (with tracks like "One Less Bitch" and "I'd Rather F**k You." )

In an interview following the Rodney King beating, Ice Cube (who has recently departed the group and is flanked by members of the Nation of Islam) tells a reporter, "I'm a journalist, just like you, reporting what's going on in the hood." This is the messaging we have been sold about hip-hop for years, that rappers are telling the truth simply about what it means to be a black man in America. And persistently, that "reporting" has reduced black women to bitches, hoes and tricks - women who are shiftless and calculating, worth little other than whatever sexual services they are available to provide (willingly or otherwise.)

In the wake of the movie's success (and it's quality; I have no problem stating clearly that the film is brilliantly directed and acted), it seems audiences across the country may cast aside N.W.A.'s potent brand of misogyny and focus only the group's willingness to speak plainly about their hatred of police. Unfortunately, it seems they hated black women just as much. And those of us who've called that out (most especially Barnes) have been attacked, dismissed and shamed on social media as opportunists and haters of black men - so much so that one can't help but wonder how many of my own peers share that same sexism.

It hurts to know that black women are (still!) expected to fall in line and celebrate any black male triumph, even when we are trampled in the process. As director Ava DuVernay succinctly tweeted , "To be a woman who loves hip hop is to be in love with your abuser." When it comes to N.W.A, I guess I just love myself - and my sisters - more.

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White critics and rap fans love 'Straight Outta Compton,' but they're missing half the story

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I wasn't surprised that Dr. Dre's infamous 1991 attack on journalist Dee Barnes wouldn't be seen or acknowledged in "Straight Outta Compton." That a film produced by Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, the most successful members of N.W.A., wouldn't address the former's infamous violence against women - not just , but also rapper and singer/former girlfriend - isn't as shocking as it is unfortunate.

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Critic's Notebook

On Sunday night at Hot 97 Summer Jam, Lil Wayne was at the end of his mini-set, in the middle of his protégée Nicki Minaj's performance, when he gleefully rapped his verse from the Chris Brown hit "Loyal," concluding with the incessant refrain: "These ho's ain't loyal!"

Ms. Minaj wasn't having it. "Wayne, what you mean these ho's ain't loyal? It's loyal women in the building," she retorted, with a combination of indignation and theater, extending her microphone into the crowd to capture the supportive screams of thousands of women.

"Don't be mad," she added, because men could use some work of their own.

"Damn, you just gonna call me out like that?" Lil Wayne replied.

She closed the thought: "Ladies, why they be mad when we do them dirty? Who did it first?" Again, she aimed her microphone at the crowd, picking up umpteen female roars.

Those women are capable of loyalty, sure, though probably not to partners who dismiss them out of hand so casually, and who capture that sentiment in song. "Loyal" is one of the most heavily played songs on hip-hop radio at the moment, and its hook isn't much more than just that opinion - remade as "These girls ain't loyal" for the radio version - sung oh so sweetly and repeated ad nauseam. It's draining.

Worse is "Cut Her Off," by the Atlanta rapper K Camp, with its proud assertion at the chorus that "It ain't nothing to cut that bitch off." Any doubts about the severity of "Cut Her Off" - which K Camp has said was inspired by being stood up by a female friend - are allayed by the song's video.

Throughout, K Camp is being yelled at by various women - all easily out of his league, but we'll suspend disbelief for the moment - as he plays video games, gets his hair cut, drives his S.U.V. and generally indulges in the immature behavior of someone not used to taking others' feelings into account.

The savvy and grotesque twist is that while you see the women screaming, you can't hear them - they're on mute. K Camp barely makes eye contact with them. When he looks at the camera and raps the song's hook, he gestures with his fingers like scissors, cutting, cutting, cutting.

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"Cut Her Off" by K Camp is sharply dismissive of women. Credit Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Talk about the silencing of women's voices and needs. Plenty of pop is corrosive in one way or another, and hip-hop and R&B radio is a cornucopia of tough sex talk, aggressive seductions and more. But outright five-alarm misogyny has become increasingly rare. In the Drake era, especially, emotional accountability is at a premium and not a sign of outsiderness.

So there's something dishearteningly retrograde about these songs, and how they diminish women with lack of imagination and ease.

And yet both "Loyal" and "Cut Her Off" are aesthetically enjoyable songs with detestable sentiments at their core. There is no real line in the sand that's been crossed here. Plenty of immoral or emotionally dim work is great. Take the current R&B hit "Paranoid," by Ty Dolla Sign, about a two-timing man whose bad behavior has come home to roost. It's witty, reflective and slightly silly.

Even in the case of "Loyal" and "Cut Her Off," guest stars leaven the mood and the nasty sentiment. Lil Wayne on "Loyal" and 2 Chainz on "Cut Her Off" are less directly offensive than the song's stars, and also more humorous and lyrically clever, elevating a dispiriting conceit into something at least slightly less vapid.

"Loyal" is especially discomfiting coming from Mr. Brown, a young singer with a troubled personal history, including his 2009 assault of Rihanna, then his girlfriend. Mr. Brown was released from jail on Monday, after finishing a one-year sentence for a probation violation, and he still faces assault charges in Washington for an incident last year.

It should be noted that Mr. Brown is capable of unexpected tenderness. He practically floats on "Fine China" - like "Loyal," a single from his long-delayed album, "X" - a Michael Jackson homage that is one of the most tender pop songs of the last few years

And he's the driving force behind "Show Me," the Kid Ink single that has perhaps been this year's most ubiquitous pop-minded rap song. (It recently surpassed Juvenile's "Back That Thang Up" for the record of most consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Rap Airplay chart.) On that song, Mr. Brown is a raunchy but attentive lover - he almost sounds as if he cared.

These are characters, of course - lousy cad one minute, dreamboat the next. (K Camp has a shorter résumé than Mr. Brown, and not much balance on it.)

But it's notable just how out of step with the times songs like "Loyal" and "Cut Her Off" feel. Decades of hip-hop cross-pollination with R&B have softened many of the genre's roughest edges, and its ever-widening fan base is increasingly content with new narratives.

Coarseness will never be expunged from pop, nor should it. When it's delivered with wit and charm and tackled from unexpected angles, it can make for essential listening. Just ask one of the most inventive rappers of the day, who also happens to be one of the bawdiest and the testiest - Ms. Minaj.

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Critic's Notebook On Sunday night at Hot 97 Summer Jam, Lil Wayne was at the end of his mini-set, in the middle of his protégée Nicki Minaj's performance, when he gleefully rapped his verse from the Chris Brown hit "Loyal," concluding with the incessant refrain: "These ho's ain't loyal!"

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Consider this: there is a glaring double standard in the way that we talk about hip-hop music and misogyny.

There's been a resurgence of both interest and criticism of the '90s rap group N.W.A ever since promotion for the new music biopic "Straight Outta Compton" began earlier this year. The film, chronicling the gangsta rap group's rise to fame, has been praised for highlighting the parallels of racial tensions between 1987 and today. It has also been commended for humanizing a group that was largely demonized in their day for their blunt lyrics about life in the hood.

N.W.A in 1991, after the departure of founding member Ice Cube

But "Straight Outta Compton" has also faced some harsh (and valid) criticism, mostly because it largely glosses over the rap group's unapologetic sexism. Key female N.W.A collaborators like rap artist Yo-Yo have been omitted entirely from the film, while the overall presence of women has been relegated to mothers, girlfriends, and groupies, all in the periphery. The group's most notorious instance of violence and misogyny, where Dr. Dre viciously assaulted hip-hop journalist Dee Barnes in 1991, isn't addressed at all.

The film's release has forced the remaining members to address their treatment of women in the past. In an interview for the August 2015 issue of Rolling Stone, rapper Ice Cube vehemently defended use of the words "bitches" and "hoes."

"If you're a bitch, you're probably not going to like us. If you're a ho, you probably don't like us. If you're not a ho or a bitch, don't be jumping to the defense of these despicable females," the rapper/actor explained.

He continued, "I never understood why an upstanding lady would even think we're talking about her."

The interview has added fuel to the ongoing scrutiny that Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and N.W.A have received over the past few weeks.

﻿Ice Cube in "Boyz n the Hood"

Since the 1980s, hip-hop artists have been accused of objectifying women, demeaning women, and promoting violence and sexual abuse against women. They're guilty of colorism, too -- the praise of "lightskinned hoes" and the denigration of darker skinned women is evident even in the controversial casting call for "Straight Outta Compton."

In examining hip-hop's past treatment of women as it relates to N.W.A, we're forced to appraise how hip-hop treats women today. It's safe to say that not much has changed.

Last year, Rick Ross ignorantly included a drug-rape lyric in a verse for the song "U.O.E.N.O," while Lil Wayne had to apologize for the lyric, "beat the pussy up like Emmett Till." Kanye's West's last album "Yeezus," highly divisive, has been called out as one long hate letter to women, and objectifying music videos from artists like Drake and 2 Chainz persist.

﻿Kanye West holding a woman's decapitated head in the video for "Monster"

Hip-hop has a long, sordid, and complex relationship with women. Female MCs including Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Salt-N-Peppa, Lil Kim, and Nicki Minaj still aren't taken seriously as lyricists in a male-dominated genre driven by bravado and machismo, where the distinction between "despicable females" and "upstanding ladies" is made on the whim of male artists.

But it's not just hip-hop that has a misogyny problem. All music does. Rap music isn't the only genre with degrading and demeaning lyrics about women. Videos like Warrant's "Cherry Pie" featuring scantily clad models came before, during, and after some of the most objectifying rap videos.

﻿A moment from Warrant's "Cherry Pie" music video

Sexism is rampant in the punk, metal, and indie rock scenes. And while there's been criticism of non-rap genres before -- the campaign for parental advisories and censorship of hair metal bands in the 1980s for instance -- hip-hop seems to be an easy and constant target.

It makes sense why it's most often the scapegoat. Hip-hop is global, wildly popular, and mainstream in a way that many rock genres aren't nowadays. But there are complexities in the way that hip-hop misogyny must be approached. We can't talk about hip-hop, an art form born in the Bronx and popularized by black and Latino youth, without talking about race. Tied up in these critiques are perceived ideas about black masculinity as aggressive, toxic, inherently dangerous. It's not just the music, but who is making the music that seems to make it so offensive.

So how do we reconcile this?

This isn't an argument for absolving hip-hop of its ongoing sins. And it isn't to say that one form of misogyny in music is worse than another -- a Dr. Dre song called "Bitches Ain't Shit" should be critiqued the same way as a NOFX song called "Punch Her In The Cunt." But we must also address the fact that the narrative of male hip-hop artists universally hating women persists, while there continues to be very little critique of other, white-dominated genres.

Critiques of hip-hop must be contextualized. First of all, not all hip-hop perpetuates sexism. And rape, violence, and the degradation of woman are not a "black thing." Sexism in rap music didn't spring forth solely from black culture, which seems to be implicit in commentary about hip-hop. Rather, the sexism we see in some hip-hop music is a reflection of the sexism that we see in society as a whole. It's important to remember this.

Failing to critique other genres of music ultimately does a disservice to all women. When we focus the debate solely on hip-hop, we narrow problems like sexual violence and abuse to a very specific group, but don't talk about the ways these issues manifest in other genres and impact a much wider range of women. With the scope so limited, how much change can we actually expect?

Hip-hop most definitely has a problem with women, and it's one that needs to be addressed in a real way. That's clearly evident by the fact that, 20 years later, Ice Cube can still defend the music he made with N.W.A -- seminal, but still highly problematic. What's disturbing though is that while we're at least reckoining and grappling with the realities of hip-hop, how we can both love the music and critique it in a meaningful way, the same conversation about other genres hasn't really started. It isn't right that the totality of hip-hop is thrown under the bus while the rest of a super sexist industry gets a pass from having to actually deal with its relationship to women. It's a subtle, but profound double standard, and it needs to be acknowledged.

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What We Forget When We Talk About Hip-Hop's Women Problem

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Consider this: there is a glaring double standard in the way that we talk about hip-hop music and misogyny. There's been a resurgence of both interest and criticism of the '90s rap group N.W.A ever since promotion for the new music biopic "Straight Outta Compton" began earlier this year.