Can someone help me understand how these lyrics are being seen as female empowerment?

[QuentinQuarantino]

WAP by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.

Lyrics.

The video, predictably, is surgically enhanced T&A with celebrity cameos providing additional surgically enhanced T&A.

It's being lauded as celebratory of female sexuality and empowerment by lib fems such as Lena Dunham.

I am only(?) 40 and don't consider myself an old fart by any means but I just can't accept that this song (lyrics and video) is anything other than women perpetuating a toxic male view of women as nothing more than receptacles for their dicks.

Hypersexualised, pornified, emphasis on attaining material goods based on how well you perform sex acts.

I know, I know I can just ignore and not be affected but I've always been a huge fan of pop music and seeing this shit so mainstream is just depressing. And as a mother of a daughter it makes me feel queasy.

Russel Brand has just been lambasted for ‘mansplaining’ feminism to women over his critique. I really do despair sometimes. There has to be consistent universal standard, truth and inquiry should be prized by everyone, and women should be free to explore their own sexuality and not channelled sown increasingly narrower channels of what they are allowed to think they enjoy.

We really are in the process of taking the human element out of sex entirely aren’t we? I fear we are entirely in the frame viewing sex itself in terms of nothing more than products and consumers.

My issue is that as usual the "empowering female sexuality" portrayed here isn't about female pleasure at all, it's lauding the "power" of using your "sexuality" as in your sexual performance in an instrumental way to gain material goods/influence over men...

...which is not at all how equivalent male artists portray/conceptualise their sexuality

Oddly enough the same power in els and MRAs believe women have.

Aspirational.

Incels not in els.

I am woman hear me choke on dick.

Yep. I got walloped for saying so in the other thread as apparently I'm saying a woman can't own her own vagina.
I wish some artist would create a strong female word instead and own it and not use it to just give men pleasure.

What a bunch of base shit.

I think it’s pertinent to point out an observation made by Alanis Morissette that the music industry has yet to have its #MeToo moment in any significant way. Aside from perhaps Chris Brown’s abuse of Rihanna, and Keisha’s accusations towards someone who had an awful lot of power over her career.

I don’t think this is any accident either, music I think has a much higher proportion of female audience relative to movies say. As such I think it can have a pernicious effect on young women and teenage girls.

If so called mouth orgasm was really a thing, I expect that men would have been ramming a cucumber down their throats long before now.

Dido:"Is this video putting 2 fingers up to that trope and saying "this is what we, 2 black women choose to do and we don't care what you think" or is it just pandering to and reinforcing the trope of the hyper-sexualised black women?"
That's the million dollar question and as I said before it's complex. In Western society White women have always been the standard with very little representation of Black women in entertainment. Black women were always told "Your skins too dark, your nose is too big, your lips are too large, your butt's too big etc" so they carved out their own representation and owned their bodies/sexuality with confidence. So in a sense it is 2 fingers up.
However there is an agenda at play here, all these think pieces about the song were released at the same time to create a zeitgeist and push a pornified image and the media/social media is complicit in this.

Some articles about the Jezebel stereotype:
www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/jezebel/
www.blackburncenter.org/amp/2019/02/20/the-historical-roots-of-the-sexualization-of-black-women-and-girls
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10057104

Ok, so black women historically have been hyper sexualised, especially in American society. And it’s a racist stereotype. I really struggle to see how creating a song which plays directly into that stereotype is in any way empowering. They aren’t even being subversive or clever with it. The video wasn’t even directed by them- it was directed by some bloke, so we can’t even say “well at least they created this.”

To me it just feels sad, like women proclaiming their right to sexuality except it's a sexuality as viewed through the male lens. I know there will always be women who say, "yes but I like..." but I'm always struck by the fact that the things they like just happen to be the things that men predominently want to do TO them. When I see a woman stand up and say, this is what I want and it's a list of things she would like that take some effort from her partner and may not result in his immediate gratification or empowerment, then I'll feel I'm listening to an empowered woman. When women who want to proclaim their sexuality do something as basic as mention their own clitoris, rather than centring sex around a man's dick, then maybe I'll believe them.

If I’m understanding this ‘song’ correctly, the overall message is “men pay me in order to provide me with sexual gratification, because that’s what they want and why they pay for it”.

I know I’ve led a sheltered life, but I really wasn’t aware that was how the ‘sex industry’ worked. I always thought it was the opposite way round, but I must have got it wrong all these years. Oh well, live and learn I guess...

Beyoncé’s approach....sexy, independent. I own it. I bought it all myself. Who runs the world. THAT is what empowering can look like.

Not empowering at all.

It's a shit version of Khia's song which is also about female sexuality. Khia, though, was talking about female pleasure, what she wanted men to do to her with no mention of men's pleasure at all

Am I the only one old enough to remember ‘You Suck’ by Consolidated?

I’d love to hear the NYT review of it.

Yeah, I thought it was like a shit version of 'My Neck, My Back' too!

It’s basically “look, I can be as revolting And outspoken as men are in my sexual desires.” So I’m personally as revolted by it as I am by the equivalent male versions, which are legion.

I wouldn’t call it empowerment, but i wouldn’t say it’s any worse or better than the male equivalent.

It's strange that exploring male sexuality is all about enacting power and dominating.

Whilst exploring female sexuality is all about enjoying being powerless and dominated.

This is not about linguistic reappropriation - it's more about accepting the negative meaning as correct. Just like the 'uncle Tom' narrative of the faithful slave is not empowering.

Black men using the term n** were refuting the meaning of owned, poor and powerless but possessing rhythm and a big dick by showing that they could dance and have a large member without playing to the owned, poor and powerless narrative.

And it is relevant that it is largely black women. I really don't think that the leaders of black liberation thought it was just for men and that the 'daughters' of Rosa Parks would be thrown under the bus she fought to ride on.

Women, black or white, referring to themselves as 'whores' is not empowering. 'Whores' sell sex because they are poor and powerless. Not because they enjoy sex and are liberated.

It’s a shit song and it does not empower women - quite the opposite. Women should sing about the joy of sex but I don’t think that’s what this song is about. I totally agree with @youkiddingme

“ When women who want to proclaim their sexuality do something as basic as mention their own clitoris, rather than centring sex around a man's dick, then maybe I'll believe them.”

Those lyrics are hypersexualised. It's like some of these artists are in a race to the bottom (no pun intended) to see who can be the most pottymouthed. That is one thing but lyrics glamourising acts of violence and unpleasantness against women are another.

I wanna gag, I wanna choke, I want you to touch that lil' dangly thing that swing in the back of my throat No you don't! Being made to gag by anything is horrible. I don't believe a word of it and I expect there is at least one extra woman in the world who is now going to experience that thanks to these stupid lyrics.

Never lost a fight, but I'm lookin' for a beatin' FFS
You can't hurt my feelings, but I like pain See a therapist and stop endangering other women.

From Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox singing Sisters are doin' it for themselves...to this.

FWIW, I think the business about choking in this particular instance is meant to indicate the size of the genitalia of the man she is wanting to bonk. Or the size required to be a candidate for bonking, in her view. I understand why people might think otherwise as it's so common these days in porn etc, but my sense here is that's not quite what she's getting at.

I wanna gag, I wanna choke, I want you to touch that lil' dangly thing that swing in the back of my throat

Setting everything else aside that is a truly awful piece of writing.