Hyperfrank's Badness homophobia post

[fldsfslmn]

Is no-one else seeing this as an example of tension between 'left-wing neeks' involved in the scene and grime's core audience of predominantly black male teenagers? It's a bit of an elephant in the living room.

I would argue that material conditions are EXCLUSIVELY responsible for either tolerance or intolerance of homosexuality. The rise of the reproductive bourgeois family, which was arguably responsible for "creating"/codifying homosexuality as its own inverted image, laid the framework for the re-integration—a couple of centuries later on—of those same previously unassimilable and unreconcilable bodies. Capitalism can reconcile anything, sometimes it just takes a couple of centuries. Look at San Francisco. It's a wealthy place, no? I couldn't afford to live there. Lots of gays there too, no? Jamaica? Not so rich. Not so friendly to the gays sometimes. I refuse to see this as a failing of "Jamaican" culture or "Christian" culture or "Black" culture or anything else. Homosexuality is less likely to create stress when material conditions are very good. If I don't like gays (or whoever) I can roll up the windows of my SUV and drive on by. Similarly, if I'm rich, I don't have to worry about homosexuality reducing the number of potential offspring among my family/community (and of course, children always = a chance of a better life) since I already have the other economic (which incl. educational/medical/judicial) factors in place for the kiddies that do appear. This is obviously oversimplifying it a bit, but I'm doing my best here.

I don't really see race as the elephant, since it can only lead us back to arguments which will always circle around Jamaican culture. I think the elephant in the living room is really capitalism, or perhaps more specifically a bottleneck in the processing of westerners into the mum/dad/kids/car/ipod/gays continuum. Soon grime will be made in a factory in China and this thread will cease to matter. Everybody wants a fucken SUV.

 

[mos dan]

Interesting. I'm no sociologist so I'm not going to get into that, but still, interesting.. one thing:

I don't really see race as the elephant, since it can only lead us back to arguments which will always circle around Jamaican culture.

I wasn't saying race or cultural background was the 'elephant' necessarily.. I was pointing out that the tension was the 'elephant', rather than saying anything in particular was causing that tension. (As I say I'm no sociologist.)

I don't think anyone 'owns' grime, and it's not where you're from it's where you're at etc, but I CAN see where this sentiment comes from:

all that talk makes me wish palace pavillion, stratford rex, club space, temple were still running and had/allowed grime nights

ghetto dances were the ones now u have to go rave with left wing neeks

Even if it's just a few people who (falsely) think that 'their' scene has been taken over by predominantly white, predominantly m/c neeks.

 

[SIZZLE]

This is an interesting conversation, one I end up discussing with my lefty friends pretty often. I also disagree with homophobic lyrics, and do my best not to play them, basically to the extent that if there is a passing reference I don't find horrible I'll let it by but I won't play things like 'boom bye bye' or similar specific gay killing tunes.

I think more than complaining about it we should be looking at ways to express and communicate why we feel this to be wrong in a way that is understandable by the people we disagree with.

There are two arguments that I principally use:

1) effectiveness/capitalism: ie "don't put those anti-gay lyrics in my song, the gays are a powerful force in entertainment and I don't want them coming after us". This is an easy one that I have repeated to many people in the grime scene and different jamaican artists I work with. It is slightly dishonest because it doesn't rely on me expressing the fact that I mainly dont want these lyrics on my record because I don't like them or agree with them, but it works.

2) morality expressed as compared to racism: This has the major stumbling block in that most prejudiced people classify homosexuality as a "nurture" rather than "nature" issue. One of the reasons I feel it is abundantly clear is that whether or not many gays choose to be, there are very many who absolutely do not choose, who are born that way. When this point can be convincingly established, that these are people born with a stigmatizing lifestyle outside their control then it will be FAR easier for other minorities to sympathize through their experiences of racial discrimination.

This is still a long way off, although discussions like these provide an opportunity to get a little closer.

 

[Slothrop]

2) morality expressed as compared to racism: This has the major stumbling block in that most prejudiced people classify homosexuality as a "nurture" rather than "nature" issue. One of the reasons I feel it is abundantly clear is that whether or not many gays choose to be, there are very many who absolutely do not choose, who are born that way. When this point can be convincingly established, that these are people born with a stigmatizing lifestyle outside their control then it will be FAR easier for other minorities to sympathize through their experiences of racial discrimination.

Religious hate might work better as a parallel since it kind of avoids the nature vs nurture thing...

 

[ripley]

I agree that the power issues in the world are worth taking into account, both in terms of colonial/imperial attitudes and in terms of who's got the money

The way a lot of folks outside Jamaica discuss the lyrics and artists is problematic, but that doesn't outweigh the real problems for anyone who wants to use the music to create an atmosphere. Choosing what kind of atmosphere you want to build is the job of any promoter, label, or dj. I don't have a problem with that.

but the discussion of it as just a Jamaican thing can't be the end of the story on the Jamaican side. Cultural relativism is not the only way to address the concern with power between JA and the world, there has to be a way to make real criticisms of problems.

especially now, as I'm in Jamaica, working in the prison system, and hanging around in Kingston and beyond... I;m trying to find a way to make a better one. Here's one thing (comes out of my experiences and conversations here so far):

I think the way masculinity and masculine sexuality are defined here has totally warped people and made it a lot harder for people to move forward as a society. Cultural relativism would say that the "problems" in Jamaica are not really problems, they are just natural i guess? but the violence, poverty, and political corruption are really evident. I think they need to be changed. And I see some of the roots of that in the way people define acceptable ways of interacting. The sexual practice is ostensibly the issue (people focus on bogus biology arguments), or a biblical one (equally bogus - you should see how most people here eat shellfish!). But the real effect is the way that every interaction between men, or action of men (like how you sit on a chair) is policed so that you are not seen as gay.

Gayness is like this total obsession among so many people here, as is fear of being thought gay, and it limits men's ability to work together in so many ways, and it limits the way people deal with each other. I think it also puts a lot of pressure on women, because men are so restricted in how they deal with each other.

so even aside from the bare rights issue: the fact that people who are gay or perceived as gay have to live in fear and risks being mobbed on the street and beaten to death (and the cops will help or laugh), or arrested for sodomy (for those of you who believe in human rights).. there's also
the harm to society as a whole is in how people are not able to work together and support each other.

 

[mos dan]

fascinating stuff ripley.

the real effect is the way that every interaction between men, or action of men (like how you sit on a chair) is policed so that you are not seen as gay.

Gayness is like this total obsession among so many people here, as is fear of being thought gay, and it limits men's ability to work together in so many ways, and it limits the way people deal with each other.

christ man, it sounds like a lifetime of secondary school.

 

[mistersloane]

fascinating stuff ripley.



christ man, it sounds like a lifetime of secondary school.

or the UK up to 1967

 

[h-crimm]

go on then

I still thought rapid was saying

out to the thugs AND the fags, out to the boys jooking with thier handbags...

until about the third time i saw him at D/C.... that was my most saddeningly un-gay dirty canvas moment. For ruff sqwad there's still a good whack of homoerotic mileage to be got out of reading "i think i know him" as the story of running into someone you met on the gay scene when back in the ends ("he looks delicious, i'm quite suspicious..." etc.)
Just hearing skepta saying "put _his_ number inside your mobile phone, if you want to take him home....go on then! kick him out in the morning, _straight_, back to normal life", can get me back in a good mood after some swagish bun/batt lyrics.

I don't find the badness thing as disappointing as ruff sqwad not being deliberately aimed at fags (as previously imagined) mainly cos the lyric has no personal or imaginative element at all, it's just a dry lifeless restatement of a lyric that's so old people would probably have difficulty remembering who first said it. Plus he's only a little kid. I missed it though, so i don't know, and probably the reaction and the atmosphere would have got to me a bit.

How do people feel about a tune like the movement "I just can't go on", where someone who was raped is called dirty, a whore, a sket, a liar, asking for it and is threatened with reprisals for complaining? It's much more of a real and personal attack.
I imagine there's a lot more girls who'd like to go but feel threatened and excluded than gays who mostly just safely blend with the general field of neeks.

last time i went to heaven they played FWD riddim and everyone went nuts. Much bigger crowd reaction than anything at D/C i'm sorry to say... I doubt badness got that big a response.

 

[Logan Sama]

"I just can't go on" is a very specific personal track isolated to one person and displays a few people's opinions of a situation which is not as cut and dry as the court judgement would have you believe.

However if it was a tune about stabbing up any and every girl who went to the police to report a rape, you would have a point.

And calling a girl a sket who had full consensual sexual intercourse with 2 other men, whom she had only just met that day, before either Mercston or Scholar entered the room is not really a stretch of the term.

 

[Blackdown]

Rinse would probably chuck him off

this reminds me of my point upthread about 'it's not what you say but where' and in this case 'to whom.'

i mean, grime MCs offer to put bullets in people's headtops every day on pirate stations and we actively listen in. does this now change how we feel about the validity of MCs words now that the person being targeted is more likely to be a Dissensian than another grime MC?

 

[Logan Sama]

This is an entirely valid point. Threatening to kill off a faceless MC is no worse than threatening to kill a faceless homosexual. Threats to kill are threats to kill, and whilst there have been precisely zero recorded Grime related murders of homosexuals based on them being homosexual, there is plenty recorded evidence of MCs carrying out acts of violence even culminating in one shooting.

So why the new uproar about this issue now? Is it somehow worse because, as Blackdown put so well, it is something far closer to home than young black lads talking about acting out violent fantasies against each other? Is that somehow more acceptable? Less threatening?

I held the same beliefs about Dancehall artists. Mounting a campaign against them solely because they target one specific group in their lyrics almost validates their rights to threaten others in lyrics.

 

[Sick Boy]

How do people feel about a tune like the movement "I just can't go on", where someone who was raped is called dirty, a whore, a sket, a liar, asking for it and is threatened with reprisals for complaining?

I think it is pretty clear in this track they are disputing the fact someone got raped, not endorsing it.

 

[baboon2004]

So why the new uproar about this issue now? Is it somehow worse because, as Blackdown put so well, it is something far closer to home than young black lads talking about acting out violent fantasies against each other? Is that somehow more acceptable? Less threatening?

I held the same beliefs about Dancehall artists. Mounting a campaign against them solely because they target one specific group in their lyrics almost validates their rights to threaten others in lyrics.

I wouldn't say it's worse, but there is a qualitative difference.

Because in homophobic murders, or in racist murders, such tragedies could (presumably in a lot of cases) have been avoided if the guilty party didn't have an intolerant view towards other groups of people. Ie because they often involve killing strangers.

If young black lads/ old homosexual women/ whichever group you choose to mention are talking about acting out violent fantasies against each other, then this is obviously fucking terrible, but it seems much more likely that the killer knows the victim in such cases (I may be wrong, but this is what I'd contend). Sorting out grievances with a personal edge would seem a much trickier proposition, precisely because each case would be so different.

 

[baboon2004]

this reminds me of my point upthread about 'it's not what you say but where' and in this case 'to whom.'

i mean, grime MCs offer to put bullets in people's headtops every day on pirate stations and we actively listen in. does this now change how we feel about the validity of MCs words now that the person being targeted is more likely to be a Dissensian than another grime MC?

There might be some truth in this, but you don't seem to be allowing for the statistical/common sense probabililty that a fair proportion of MCs/others involved in grime/black working-class audience members (ie people other than Dissensians) are themselves gay.

 

[baboon2004]

And calling a girl a sket who had full consensual sexual intercourse with 2 other men, whom she had only just met that day, before either Mercston or Scholar entered the room is not really a stretch of the term.

Sket means 'ho', presumably? Not a stretch of the term, but an insult to that girl's free choice to have sex with whoever she wants without being judged just because she's a woman, surely?

 

[john eden]

this reminds me of my point upthread about 'it's not what you say but where' and in this case 'to whom.'

I think this is bang on. There is a quite a lot about this in Lez Lyrix book - about 80s London soundsystems being a safe space with their own codes and rhetoric. The discusson hinges around Papa Levi doing some slack diss lyrics against Thatcher which were totally acceptable in the dancehall but got him into loads of trouble when he did them before the watershed live on BBC radio.

i mean, grime MCs offer to put bullets in people's headtops every day on pirate stations and we actively listen in. does this now change how we feel about the validity of MCs words now that the person being targeted is more likely to be a Dissensian than another grime MC?

I think there is an issue about it being performance - people generally don't get upset when cockney gangsters threaten each other on The Bill either but they might if specific references to their friends were inserted into the script?

It's the audience/performer divide, which is exacerbated by the black youth / left wing neek divide.

 

[swears]

Homosexuality is less likely to create stress when material conditions are very good. If I don't like gays (or whoever) I can roll up the windows of my SUV and drive on by. Similarly, if I'm rich, I don't have to worry about homosexuality reducing the number of potential offspring among my family/community (and of course, children always = a chance of a better life) since I already have the other economic (which incl. educational/medical/judicial) factors in place for the kiddies that do appear. This is obviously oversimplifying it a bit, but I'm doing my best here.

What about rich American christian conservatives that are opposed to homosexuality?

Is "reducing the number of potential offspring among my family/community" really an argument made against gays by homophobes? Usually some appeal is made to religion or what's "natural".

 

[Logan Sama]

I wouldn't say it's worse, but there is a qualitative difference.

Because in homophobic murders, or in racist murders, such tragedies could (presumably in a lot of cases) have been avoided if the guilty party didn't have an intolerant view towards other groups of people. Ie because they often involve killing strangers.

If young black lads/ old homosexual women/ whichever group you choose to mention are talking about acting out violent fantasies against each other, then this is obviously fucking terrible, but it seems much more likely that the killer knows the victim in such cases (I may be wrong, but this is what I'd contend). Sorting out grievances with a personal edge would seem a much trickier proposition, precisely because each case would be so different.

No. Random people get killed. Frequently.

It is no worse, nor any better.

The whole debate regarding acceptable levels of death threats is the most arse-backward thing I have ever witness.

 

[ripley]

Sket means 'ho', presumably? Not a stretch of the term, but an insult to that girl's free choice to have sex with whoever she wants without being judged just because she's a woman, surely?

cheers!

 

[SIZZLE]

Also, that movement 'I just can't go on' is mad homo. Despite the whole overt rape and jail context it's a man-ballad. Scorcher sounds like he's about to start crying on it.

There is a whole weird homo undertone to a lot of this 'we don't love them hoes' 'gs up hoes down' mentality. A lot of dudes making platonic love songs and declarations of undying loyalty to each other. A little on the suspect side if you ask me.

Just sayin...


I really like some of the new more emo girl friendly grime tunes that have been coming out bucking this trend. Like Slix (new-ish?) love tune that I don't know the name of, got a sort of low-deepish sample chirp beat, really great emo grime. Might be called 'I love you' but I'm not sure, couldn't be further from dizzee's one.