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From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation

Rife, Franchesca R
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1619023038964272

Abstract Details

2021, Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, Sociology (Arts and Sciences).
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 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, 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.
Howard T. Welser (Committee Chair)
Anna Rachel Terman (Committee Member)
Paula Miller-Buckner (Committee Member)
104 p.
Social Research; Social Structure; Sociology
Gender; rap artists; rapper; gender performance; social network; Wikipedia; Twitter; Young Thug; Harry Styles

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Rife, F. R. (2021). From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation [Master's thesis, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1619023038964272

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Rife, Franchesca. From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation. 2021. Ohio University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1619023038964272.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Rife, Franchesca. "From Transgression to Transformation: How Gender Fluidity in Rap is Restructuring the Conversation." Master's thesis, Ohio University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1619023038964272

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1619023038964272
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This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.