Race, Gender and Media Class Reflection Part 6

Our topic for class this week was violence against women in music videos and images of women in the media. The main goal was to decipher how women are portrayed in media and the stereotypes that they are portrayed to have.

I particularly liked this week because we were able to break down two songs that I am familiar with in Eminem's "Love the Way you lie" featuring Rihanna as well as how Nicki Minaj portrays herself in her music.

As mentioned in Lind's book, music like Eminem's song only empowers the feelings about women that society can have: that men and women are equally responsible for perpetuating violence in relationships, that women asked to be abused, and violence is a means to ignite sexual arousal.

In that section, Lind goes on to say that "although females can be violent toward male partners, the opposite (men attacking women) is the norm. Representations negating this reality rigorously reduce perceptions of male accountability." While this is true to an extent, it seems that Lind is almost dismissing the fact that men can be abuse victims as well, and that she is approaching the issue from a very one-sided angle.

While it is normal that more men are abusive in relationships to women, I'm not sure that "I Love the way you lie" functions to say that it's entirely equal, or that it is trying to reduce male accountability for abusive situations. If anything, male abuse victims are listened to less and women accountability for abuse is held to a lower standard.

Nearly a quarter of all domestic violence victims are men, according to domesticviolenceresearch.org. While females make up most cases of domestic violence, men should not have to be dismissed just because they are a smaller number. 

One of the first times I've disagreed with Lind on a topic.


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