WAP celebrates female sexuality

The argument

Proponents of the position that there is no problem with 'WAP' argue that the song is, straightforwardly, a celebration of female sexuality by the women who own it — and that this is something to welcome rather than condemn. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion sing frankly and unapologetically about their own desire and pleasure, asserting themselves as sexual subjects with appetites and standards rather than as objects of someone else's. In a culture where female sexuality has more often been an instrument for others' gratification or a thing to be policed and shamed, a song in which women declare their own desire on their own terms is, on this view, a corrective. The argument places this in the context of how male artists have always operated. Hip-hop and popular music are saturated with men boasting explicitly about sex, and that bravado is treated as normal, even admirable. Proponents contend that there is no coherent reason to celebrate male sexual expression while condemning the identical thing from women — and that the discomfort 'WAP' provokes reveals a double standard about who is permitted to enjoy and voice their sexuality. The song simply claims for women the same freedom men have always exercised. Far from being degrading, proponents argue, frank ownership of one's own desire is a form of confidence and self-possession. Women hearing it can take from it a sense that their sexuality is theirs to define and enjoy without shame. Because 'WAP' celebrates female sexuality — voiced by women, about their own pleasure, on their own terms — this argument holds, there is no problem with it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics respond that 'empowerment' and 'commercialisation' are not mutually exclusive: a song can foreground female desire and still, they argue, package that desire for a music-industry market in ways that reduce sexuality to explicitness. Pointing to men's crudeness is a tu quoque — the fact that male artists have long been vulgar is a reason to criticise them too, not to celebrate the same content from women. Some feminists, as a sibling position notes, contend that equating liberation with graphic sexual display narrows rather than widens what female empowerment can look like. Objecting to WAP, on this view, need not rest on a double standard; it can rest on a consistent discomfort with reducing anyone's sexuality to a marketable spectacle.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Foregrounding one's own desire and being packaged as a marketable sexual spectacle are compatible, so 'the women own it' does not by itself settle whether the song is empowering. [Rejecting P2] That male artists boast explicitly without condemnation is a reason to criticise them too, not evidence that criticism of WAP rests on a double standard. [Rejecting P3] Some feminists argue equating empowerment with graphic sexual display narrows the idea of female self-possession rather than expanding it, so the 'ownership of desire' claim is itself contested.