WAP establishes female power in a male dominated genre

The argument

Proponents of the position that there is no problem with 'WAP' argue that the song is a genuine assertion of female power within hip-hop, a genre that has long been dominated by men and male perspectives on sex. For decades, mainstream rap has been a space where male artists boast about sex and treat women largely as objects of male desire, while female rappers have been comparatively few and often marginalised. For two women — Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion — to top the charts globally with a record in which they, not men, are the sexual subjects in command, is, on this view, a striking reversal of who holds power in the genre. The argument holds that 'WAP' claims authority on women's own terms. Rather than being spoken about, the artists do the speaking; rather than being desired, they declare their own desires and set their own standards. In a musical landscape where explicit sexual bravado has been a male prerogative, two women wielding that same confident, dominant voice asserts that the space belongs to them too, and that female artists can command the genre's biggest platform while centring their own perspective and pleasure. Its record-breaking success amplified that statement, putting women's self-assertion at the very top of popular music. From this standpoint, the song is significant precisely as an act of power and representation: women seizing centre stage in a male-dominated arena and rewriting whose voice and whose desire occupies it. That assertion of female power is something to welcome rather than condemn. Because 'WAP' establishes female power in a male-dominated genre, this argument holds, there is no problem with it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that adopting the genre's most objectifying conventions is not obviously a reversal of power so much as an assimilation to it: replicating the same reduction of sex to boast and body extends rather than overturns hip-hop's objectification, now with women as its vehicle. They contend that commercial success measures marketability, not liberation, and that a record the industry profits from precisely because it is sexually explicit is a complicated emblem of 'power on women's own terms.' Whether the song empowers or merely re-packages objectification is exactly the question the rival positions raise, so 'no problem' understates a genuine debate.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Taking on the genre's objectifying conventions can assimilate to male norms rather than reverse them, so women as the sexual subjects does not by itself redistribute power. [Rejecting P3] Chart success measures marketability, not liberation; the industry profits from explicit content regardless of who performs it, so record-breaking sales do not settle that the song is empowering.