Up@dawn 2.0

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Women && Hip-Hop (Midterm) Post 3.

This is the last installment of my blog post. The book I have been reading is Hip Hop and Philosophy Rhyme to Reason. I feel the book has good topics and addressed great points. However, I could not truly decided what to make my last blog post about. So I decided just free style a little bit about women in hip hop and women in philosophy.

In philosophy class, I can say we have mentioned one woman who is important in philosophy. Jennifer Hecht's book, Doubt, commented on Hypatia. Hypatia was a brilliant teacher. She taught about mathematics and philosophy. At first, I did not recognize her importance in philosophy, but it was her death that made her important. After Hypatia was killed, Alexandria went on the downfall. Several scholars left Alexandria, and a fire burned the library. All the information contained in the library was lost, so that was a major setback for philosophy. Furthermore, another reason makes Hypatia important, well to me. Hypatia is a woman in philosophy! A subject that men dominated. She was surrounded by men. During her time, being a woman and educated was rare. She was doing things that men only did. She was teacher,and she would go to all male events. Hypatia had courage. She stepped outside the normal for women and tried something different. For women then, the private sphere is where they belonged. They stayed home and took care of the house and children. When a woman decided to invest in her education, she could have been looked at as "one of the boys".  I have no doubt that women who lived during Hypatia's time, thought about the world around them and how it works. They might even questioned certain things about life, but they lived in a time when they were not considered a superior sex. Therefore, I feel for the time period and what was consider normal for the society played a key role in why women were not seen in philosophy as much as men.

Just like in philosophy, women were not a major part of Hip-Hop for a while. When Hip-Hop first came about, it was dominated by men. Men that talked down on women. They called women almost every name in the book from bitch, hoe, and trick. Of course, all these names degraded women. However, when women stepped in Hip-Hop, they were a forced to be reckoned with. For example, MC Lyte who came into Hip-Hop in the late 80s said, "Do you understand the metaphoric phrase 'Lyte as a Rock? It's explaining, how heavy the young lady is." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rsgrgo5f-0) Women are just as significant as their male counterparts. Also, in Queen Latifah's Ladies First, she expressed how women are just as good as men and sometimes even better.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j19AWY78bM) As time continued, women became more prevalent in a world that men seemed to control. However, female hip-hop artists have made major impacts on hip-hop. They have showed women are just as capable of rapping as men are.

In Hip-Hop and philosophy, women are outnumbered by men. Men have been the dominate players in these two fields. They have had more lasting effects in Hip-Hop and philosophy. Nevertheless, women have stepped out of their comfort zone to prove to the world they are just as good and capable as any man in their given field of interest. Women are a major part of society, and we should not be taken lightly.

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