Culture and Violence Against Women: Exploring Rap and Other Popular Music Genres

Thursday, September 18, 2008

This web conference discussed portrayals of violence against women in popular music song lyrics and videos and explored implications for creating changes to social norms to advance prevention.

HOST:
David S. Lee, Prevention Connection Program, California Coalition Against Sexual Assault

PRESENTERS:
Larry Cohen and Elizabeth Waiters, Prevention Institute
Sonia Lee and Oliver Rollins, Prevention Institute

OBJECTIVES:

• Review the norms that support violence in general and violence against women in particular.
• Describe the pervasiveness and impact of VAW imagery in popular song lyrics and music videos.
• Discuss ways in which men, women and music artists are challenging images of VAW in music imagery, and brainstorm additional ways to change organizational practices in the music industry.

MATERIALS:

• Slides (1 per Page, Color) [PDF]
• Handouts (3 per Page, Black & White) [PDF]
• Text Chat Transcript [PDF]
• Due to technical difficulties, the audio portion of this conference was not recorded. As a result, a recording of this conference is not available.

RESOURCES:

• Essence’s Take Back the Music Campaign. Link to article about campaign
• Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes by Byron Hurt
• Institute on Domestic Violence in The African American Community’s Domestic Violence and Hip Hop Generation Conference
• Men Can Stop Rape have Men of Strength Clubs
• The Jaxsun Group conducts Rape Music’s Influence on Youth Workshops
• Boys to Men (B2M)

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Prevention Connection is a national project of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault and is sponsored by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The views and information provided in our web conferences do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Government, the CDC, or CALCASA.