What's the problem with 'WAP'?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What's the problem with 'WAP'?
Position‹4 of 4: The problem lies with the critics of WAP
Argument‹2 of 3›: WAP critics dehumanise black women

As History Professor Michell Cresfield writes in The Conversation, the backlash against WAP exposes "the fear of sexually liberated black women".

The argument

On this view, the ferocity of the backlash against 'WAP' revealed more about its critics than about the song. Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion made a record about female desire that was no more explicit than countless songs by male rappers who have long boasted about sex without provoking comparable outrage. Yet the response to two Black women doing the same was disproportionate — denunciations of them as filthy, degenerate and a danger to society. Proponents argue that this double standard is a familiar mechanism: male sexual bravado is treated as normal, even admirable, while Black women expressing the same agency are cast as obscene, exposing a refusal to grant them the ordinary humanity of having and voicing desire. The argument places the reaction in a long history. Black women's bodies and sexuality have, for centuries, been subjected to a particular kind of public scrutiny and policing — hypersexualised and shamed at once, denied both modesty and agency. The condemnation of 'WAP', on this reading, drew on that inheritance, treating the artists not as adults making art about their own lives but as symbols to be morally managed. Critics who claimed to defend decency were, proponents contend, reproducing the dehumanisation they did not name. This is why, within the position that the problem lies with WAP's critics, this argument locates the real issue in the act of criticism itself. The song, on this view, simply held up a mirror: the outsized, moralising backlash showed how Black women are still denied full humanity when they claim sexual agency. The problem with WAP, this argument concludes, is the dehumanising lens through which its critics chose to see it.

Premises

[P1]Explicit songs about sex by male rappers rarely provoke the intensity of condemnation that 'WAP' did. [P2] The disproportionate outrage at two Black women expressing desire reflects a double standard rooted in a long history of policing Black women's sexuality. [P3] Critics claiming to defend decency thereby reproduced that dehumanisation rather than addressing the song itself. [C] Therefore, the reaction shows how Black women are dehumanised, and the problem lies with WAP's critics.

Counter-arguments

Critics reply that objecting to 'WAP' need not be racist or dehumanising. Many who criticised the song also object to male rappers' explicit sexual boasting, so the reaction is not necessarily a race-based double standard, and the sibling feminist position attacks the video on gender grounds — catering to the male gaze — not racial ones. Where the response was outsized, that may owe as much to the song's particular virality and explicitness as to the artists' race. Disagreeing with a work's content is not the same as denying its creators' humanity, and treating all criticism as racism forecloses legitimate aesthetic and moral debate.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many critics of WAP also object to male rappers' explicit sexual boasting, so the outrage is not necessarily a race-based double standard. [Rejecting P2] Where the reaction was disproportionate, it can reflect the song's particular virality and explicitness rather than only the artists' race, and feminist critics object on gender grounds. [Rejecting P3] Criticising a work's content is not the same as dehumanising its creators; treating all criticism as racism forecloses legitimate debate. [Rejecting C] The reaction does not establish that the 'real problem' lies with the critics rather than in genuine disagreement about the song.