How Gender Fluidity in Rap Is Restructuring the Conversation
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From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Franchesca R. Rife April 2021 © 2021 Franchesca R. Rife. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation by FRANCHESCA R. RIFE has been approved for the Sociology and Anthropology Department and the College of Arts and Sciences by Howard T. Welser Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Florenz Plassmann Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 Abstract RIFE, FRANCHESCA R., M.A., April 2021, Master of Arts in Sociology From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation Director of Thesis: Howard T. Welser Any time a high-profile person transgresses gender norms through dress it calls into question the naturalness of the gender binary, but rappers are a special case due to perceptions of them being hypermasculine which are held by both the general public and their fan bases. Increasingly, African American male rappers have made public appearances wearing items typically associated with female gender roles such as skirts, dresses, and purses. Their choices contradict hypermasculine perceptions of rap artists and have elicited a variety of responses from the public on social media sites. Gender theorists remind us that gender is enacted and re-negotiated through performance and social interaction (West & Zimmerman, 1987; Butler, 1988). Given the performative nature of gender and celebrity status, the transgressive gender performances of male rapper’s raise important questions about how people can renegotiate the boundaries of inequalities in the gendered social order. This research study consists of a two-pronged analysis of the content and structure of online conversations where people react to these rapper’s gender performances on Twitter as well as an analysis of data collected from Wikipedia. These online conversations document the current and contested state of the gendered social order within the musical genre and in society at large. Initially, the conceptual relationships 4 between different rappers and ideas about gender are examined using social network analysis to visualize the links that are present between the Wikipedia pages of rappers and Wikipedia pages belonging to gender-related terms. Additionally, comparisons within the Wikipedia context reveal how wide-spread understandings of what is relevant to artists may be different based on what was linked to artist’s pages. Following insights from this analysis, both content analysis and social network analysis are used to study conversations on Twitter. These conversations relate to specific acts of gender transgressions by musical artists which are analyzed as case studies. Within these case studies, particularly pivotal instances of musical artists transgressing masculine gender norms are visualized and then compared to each other, including rap artist Young Thug’s Jeffery album cover and Harry Styles’ Vogue Magazine cover. Comparisons between cases of gender transgressive performances allow for the process of interaction around these gender performances within the social media context to be studied. A combination of the structure of Twitter interactions, the content of conversations, and account popularity are examined. Through these methods, instances where people draw attention to the changing nature of gender performances by male rappers and the influence of race on the perceptions of these performances are interrogated. Because Twitter is a context where news is not only disseminated but also where people can react to each other, this makes it an ideal platform through which to observe shifts to the gendered social. Analyzing these reactions is an optimal avenue through which to analyze shifts to the gendered social order because these reactions, 5 particularly the most pervasive ones, underscore the shifting acceptance of gender performance transgressions. This method of analysis is not without its limitations. For example, comparisons among case studies in which Twitter users are reacting to the gender performances of a wide variety of artists make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about which factors could be influencing the stances of users due to the numerous differences between these artists’ identities and their fan bases. However, from this analysis, it is clear that race factors into how users respond to these transgressive gender performances. In the case of Young Thug, users had a tendency to draw connections between him wearing women’s clothing and his sexuality, implying that he was secretly homosexual, more often than in cases of white rap and popular musical artists. Other findings include the general tendency of users to conflate these kinds of gender transgressions with transgender gender identities and the use of hypermasculine characteristics to reaffirm the masculine identities of rap artists after they have worn traditionally feminine clothing. Collectively, these analyses reveal that Twitter serves as an important platform through which users can critically evaluate and negotiate these gender performances and how they relate to ideas of gender and race. This finding suggests that these performances and the conversations that they generate could serve as important gateways to transforming racialized binary expectations of gender and ultimately to assisting in dismantling the current and unequal binary gender social order. 6 Table of Contents Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 List of Tables ...................................................................................................................... 7 List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 8 From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation ....................................................................................................................... 9 From the Culture of Social Media to Rap’s Subversive History: A Review of the Relevant Literature ........................................................................................................................... 13 The Significance of Links on Wikipedia .................................................................... 13 Twitter’s Environment as An Important Space for Navigating Complex Issues ........ 16 Using Gender and Intersectional Theories to Interpret the Significance of Rappers Transgressing Gender Norms ..................................................................................... 18 How Gender Performativity in Drag Kinging Highlights the Non-Naturalness of The Binary .......................................................................................................................... 25 Current Understandings of Gender’s Role in the Rap Genre ..................................... 27 Hip Hop’s Oppositional History ................................................................................. 30 Methodology: Using NodeXL to Create and Analyze Sociograms .................................. 34 Mapping Links Between Pages on Wikipedia ............................................................ 34 Creating Conversation Networks Using Twitter Data ................................................ 37 Methodological Considerations .................................................................................. 40 Data Analysis of Sociograms from Wikipedia and Twitter .............................................. 42 Young Thug: Brokering Gender Reflexivity Across Musical and Cultural Space ..... 42 Data Analysis of the Content Structure of Conversations on Twitter ........................ 51 Discussing Differential Responses to Artists’ Gender Transgressions............................. 86 The Significance of Twitter and Wikipedia Network Analyses ....................................... 93 References ......................................................................................................................... 95 7 List of Tables Page Table 1 Measures of Centrality for Vertices in the Rap Artists’ Wiki Network ............. 49 Table 2 Measures of Centrality for Vertices in the Non-Rap Artists’ Wiki Network ..... 50 Table 3 African American Rap Artist Word Sentiments in Tweets ................................ 65 Table 4 Words Present in Twitter Conversations About Rap Artists .............................. 66 Table 5 White Non-Rap Artists Word Sentiments in Tweets .......................................... 66 Table 6 Words Present in Twitter Conversations About Non-Rap Artists ...................... 67 8 List of Figures Page Figure 1. Initial Graph Depicting the Links Among Rap Artists’ and Gender Pages ...... 43 Figure 2. Links Among Rap Artists and Gender Pages Filtered by Page Rank ............... 45 Figure 3. Links Among White Non-Rap Artists and Gender Related Pages Filtered by Page Rank ......................................................................................................................... 47 Figure 4. Initial Twitter Sociogram Generated using Search Terms “Young Thug” and “Dress”. ............................................................................................................................