WAP empowers black women

The argument

This argument holds that there is no problem with 'WAP' because the song is an act of empowerment for black women specifically: two black women seized control of a narrative about their own bodies that others had written, profited from and policed for centuries. The historical context is what gives the song its charge. Black women's sexuality has long been defined by everyone but black women — hypersexualised in stereotype, exploited in entertainment where their bodies featured as props in male artists' videos, and simultaneously policed by respectability standards that punished black women hardest for any sexual expression. Against that history, 'WAP' inverts every term: Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion are the authors, not the objects; their desire is the subject, stated on their terms; and the immense commercial rewards — record-breaking streams and a number-one debut — flowed to the women themselves. What had been done to black women's bodies in pop culture was, for once, being done by them, for them. Proponents place the song in a lineage of black female artists asserting sexual agency as liberation, and note what the reaction proved: the disgust aimed at 'WAP' — far exceeding anything aimed at male rappers' identical explicitness — exposed exactly the double standard the song defied, while the celebration it inspired among black women showed it had named something real. A record that converts a site of stereotype and shame into one of authorship, pleasure and profit is doing political work, not causing a problem. From this standpoint, the discomfort is the empowerment registering. Because 'WAP' empowers black women, this argument holds, there is no problem with 'WAP'.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue the empowerment claim is asserted collectively for a group whose members publicly disagreed. Black women were among the song's most prominent defenders and among its most prominent critics, several of the latter arguing on feminist grounds that a record trading in the same explicit imagery the industry has always sold does not stop being that because the performers now collect the cheque. Speaking of what empowers 'black women' as a bloc obscures a real argument taking place within it — which is what the rival position describing a crisis in feminism is about. The commercial evidence is ambiguous rather than decisive. Record-breaking streams demonstrate that an industry with a long record of profiting from black women's sexualisation profited again, this time with the artists sharing in it. Whether that is agency exercised or a familiar demand met on better terms is precisely the contested question, and pointing at sales assumes an answer. The treatment of the reaction is the structural weakness. When disgust is read as proof that the song hit its target and celebration as proof that it named something real, every possible response confirms the thesis and none could disconfirm it. That the double standard applied to male rappers is real does not repair this: the standard's existence shows the criticism is unevenly applied, not that any particular criticism is wrong. Finally, the argument answers a narrower question than the one posed. Even granting that the song is empowering for its performers, 'there is no problem with WAP' also has to absorb objections about children's access, about explicit content in the pop mainstream, and about what the record's success signals to other artists — none of which the empowerment case engages.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The history described is accurate and not in dispute, but the argument moves from it to a claim about what empowers black women collectively, when black women were prominent on both sides of this dispute — several critics arguing on feminist grounds that the imagery is unchanged by who profits from it. [Rejecting P2] Authorship and commercial reward show that the artists shared in proceeds an industry has long taken from the sexualisation of black women; whether that constitutes agency exercised or a familiar demand met on better terms is the contested question, so the premise assumes what it needs to show. [Rejecting P3] Reading disgust as proof the song hit its target and celebration as proof it named something real makes every possible reaction confirming evidence, which leaves the claim unfalsifiable; the reality of the double standard applied to male rappers shows criticism is unevenly distributed, not that any particular criticism is mistaken.