No Room in the Cipher for Female Hip-Hop Fans?

artists, producers, A&R reps…the list goes on,” she says.

Sexism in hip-hop fandom isn’t only about questioning women’s knowledge of the genre. The present climate of the hip-hop blogosphere may not help matters. Many popular magazines and sites like Complex and The Smoking Section dedicate entire sections of their sites to posting high-resolution pictures of oiled up video models. That, in addition to the sexist content in the music and the attitudes of fans, could detract women from making a place for themselves in the field.

The parallels between sexism in hip-hop and sexism in gaming are amazing, says Leigh Alexander, who writes for Gamasutra, Kotaku and EDGE Magazine.

There is the inability to believe that women are truly knowledgeable about the medium, the offensive content in some games and the underrepresentation of women in the field, not to mention the cycle of patriarchy in both fields seems strikingly similar.

“In the ‘90’s and ‘80’s when games were a way for alienated people to find a safe place to go. People that felt bullied, or didn’t belong had a safe place they could go to by expressing themselves through games,” says Alexander.  “A lot of young, white guys who were afraid of women and didn’t fit in at their school, and would go into these worlds where they could feel powerful.”

“For a while the marketing and culture around these games actually catered to that. It contributed to perpetuating that culture by the way the games were marketed to young, White men and how the games were designed to appeal to young, White men,” says Alexander, noting that these users grew up to be the creators of video games,  “so the cycle becomes even more insular.”

When they are told that “others” enjoy what they love, they become defensive.

“What they hear is that you’re trying to tear their clubhouse down. That you’re going to take something sacred and safe for them and just crowbar it open and change all of the rules, and they start to worry because they feel a sense of ownership toward it,” says Alexander.

Google “misogyny in hip-hop” and you’ll be greeted with pages and pages of theories about it’s origins – from a distrust of women that grew once rappers became wealthy to misogyny as a marketing tool.

She doesn’t believe that many of the people are consciously sexist. Instead, it is difficult for them to understand that games or hip-hop don’t exist in a vacuum.

Late last year, these frustrations led Alexander and many other women (and male allies) took to Twitter to discuss the pandemic levels of misogyny in the gaming world, under the hashtag #1reasonwhy.  From troubling themes in games (rape video games – anyone?) to casual sexism in the workplace and at conventions, women in the industry shared some of their worst experiences.

Alexander, who began blogging about games in the mid-aughts, has had her share of experiences with sexism, from having her opinions policed by men in comment sections to being placed on a link bait-y lists of “Hottest Women in Tech.”

“Within my community, a lot of people believe that I was one of the first, and I can tell you that I just didn’t know what the culture was like. If I had known, I never would have done it,” says Alexander. “For new women starting out, we still have to stick together, or else they’re going to believe there is no place for them and they’re going to run.”