Reggaeton: much more than a feminist matter

Abstract: Reggaeton is one of the main musical and cultural exponents of the Hispanic contemporary world. Feminist analysis and criticism are common, and the style itself is evolving. Here I defend that Reggaeton is not just a feminist issue, but a class phenomenon.


In the attached clip, Spanish X-Factor judge Eva Perales strongly criticizes Reggaeton music, and more specifically, an amateur couple made of two Hispanic migrant men. Some of the sentences and arguments of Perales are:

(i) Have you ever listened something else apart from Reggaeton?
(ii) Reggaeton damages me as a woman (…) I do not like sexist lyrics (…) Why don’t you talk about women in other way?
(iii) [After mocking] Reggaeton kicks my ass.

The song, sentences and arguments from the Crazy Boys state:

(i) [Song The Maniatic Girl] Look, I fancy the Maniatic Girl (…) I like your body, and you all (…) You make me brutally horn (… ) You are easy, you flirt me and I become crazy, crazy.
(ii) [To Perales] You are abusing the weak.
(iii) Reggaeton is music too.
(iv) You are a racist of the music.

Even when this episode happened in 2008 and it might be intentionally prepared and streamed, similar scenes following same patters have happened during the last decade. In general terms, feminism activists and scholars have analyzed and criticized Reggaeton, and former and new Reggaeton singers have lately adapted (Merlyn 2020, Morales 2020, Villagra 2007). Sexism is highlighted, but Reggaeton is also considered violent and vulgar in comparison with already settled genres. The attached clip perfectly prints Reggaeton hotspots. 

Reggaeton spread during the 90’s in Hispanic America among lower class societies and it tended to print their reality characterized by discrimination, sexism, violence and vulgarity. Upper class Hispanic American societies criticized and ridiculed the new style. Spanish society, richer in average and many times far from Hispanic American contemporary currents, first ignored Reggaeton and then criticized it, similarly to upper class Hispanics. However, the new style has been powerful enough to permeate into the whole Hispanic -and Global- society (Carballo 2007). On the other hand, singers are adapting and blurring its sexism, violence and vulgarity, and sometimes it is used for vindicating feminism and women. Here I remark that there also are geographical, racial and normative aspects, and all of them, together with the feminist issue, rely on a class difference.

Geographical difference

Reggaeton spread in Hispanic American countries. Only after a decade, it was introduced in Spain among criticism. The America-Europe difference towards Reggaeton is still present. Reggaeton in Spain responds to Hispanic migrants and global tendencies more than to linguistic, cultural or historical ties. Economic standards in Spain tend to be higher than in Hispanic American countries, while Hispanic migrants in Spain tend to hold worse positions.

Racial difference

Inside Hispanic American countries, racially speaking Reggaeton is more popular among Hispanics than among Europeans and Caucasians. Links between race and class in Hispanic America are well known and deeply studied, showing a tendency of middle and lower classes being Hispanic mestizo and aborigines, while upper classes maintaining Caucasian features (Domínguez 2018; McCaa, Schwartz & Grubessich 1979). In Spain, Reggaeton is far more popular among Hispanic migrants.

Normative aspect

Reggaeton has been devalued in comparison with mainstream already established genres: the norm. Reggeaton’s sexism, violence and vulgarity, derived from lower class styles and ways of living, is attacked from upper class people and established genres creators. However, as it happened with many other cultural manifestations, Reggaeton -or at least, a soft Reggaeton- is permeating, convincing global spectra and making norm.

Conclusions

Eva Perales and the Crazy Boys discussion was rapidly analyzed from feminism. But it is much more than a feminist matter: it is a woman criticizing sexist singers and styles, but also a Spanish criticizing two Hispanic American migrants, a white manager criticizing two dark-skinned mestizo creators, a rock lover criticizing Latin music, and ultimately, a rich person criticizing two poor people.

The real difference underlying the whole discussion is economic. Poverty and discrimination explain rough sexism among low class people, the refusal to mainstream styles and the emergence of new subversive styles. Upper class people tend to defend the establishment, in this case represented by settled genres. In the Hispanic America context, economic difference is linked to race difference, and the same economic difference partly defines differences between Spain and Hispanic America. Many times, Spanish and upper class people criticize sexism, vulgarity and violence, but they do not focus on the real problem: poverty.


References

Carballo, P. (2007). Reggaeton e identidad masculina. Intercambio, 3 (4), 87-101.

Domínguez, J. I. (2018). Race and ethnicity in Latin America. Routledge.

McCaa, R., Schwartz, S. B., & Grubessich, A. (1979). Race and class in Colonial Latin America: A critique. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21(3), 421-433.

Merlyn, M. F. (2020). Tell me what you listen to and i will tell you who you are. Representing women in 100 of the more popular reggaeton songs in 2018. Feminismo/s, (35).

Morales, C. D. (2020). Una propuesta para el análisis de los estereotipos femeninos en los videoclips de reggaeton: Caso práctico de los cuatro vídeos más vistos en 2018 en YouTube. Revista Internacional de Cultura Visual, 7(1), 13-26.

You are as special as everyone else. Review of Daniel Bernabé’s “La trampa de la diversidad”

Joven-Romero, M.A. (2020). You are as special as everyone else. [Review of the book La trampa de la diversidad: cómo el liberalismo fragmentó la identidad de la clase trabajadora, by Daniel Bernabé]


Tondol Beach (Pangasinan, The Philippines) is probably the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. Crystal waters, coral sand, palms and a small islet at the end of the landscape. Still virgin with no hotels apart from some humble cottages addressed to the local tourists of the province. A day of 2018 I fled Manila, I arrived there and I found two couples of western foreigners with dreadlocks, the only foreigners apart from myself. While I was having a bath, some poor local children were taking star fish in the shore and were throwing them deep into the water as a matter of game. The foreigners shouted and scolded the children: You are damaging the starfish! A few moments later, the same foreigners were bargaining a meal in a humble local canteen. That meal costed 60 pesos -a bit more than one euro- and they required it to be vegan.  

Some months later, a dumb foreigner was playing and feeding crocodiles with a fishing rod in a crocodile farm, still in the Philippines. He uploaded his stupid video in Facebook and quickly one of his friends replied: That’s not ecofriendly! In her analysis, the friend did not take into account that that crocodile farm fed poor families in the region. Actually, out of the last ten publications of the mentioned friend, two of them were memes or jokes, seven of them were related to ecologism and feminism, and only one of them was related to poverty and inequality associated to Mexican ethnic minorities.

Similarly, ecologists are boycotting diving with whale sharks in Oslob (Cebu, Philippines). But still, in their analysis they do not take into consideration that such activity improved the miserable material conditions of around one thousand people in the area.

January 8, 2020. The #FEMINISM event is taking place in Uptown Mall, Bonifacio Global Center, one of the richest cities in Metro Manila, where there is a luxury you can hardly find in western cities, in contrast to the miserable living conditions of more than half of Manileños. A bunch of young women wearing expensive trendy clothes and hairstyles sing, shout and show the same global feminist mottoes while some local media record the event. Feminist demonstration in March also take place in that city, governed by a counsel of big corporations’ representatives, the same corporations that built the city. At that moment, an anecdote of 2019 while doing some cooperation work in the poor district of Punta came to my mind. There was a young woman with some children and, after a short conversation, we trusted each other. I asked her about feminism, and she admitted having suffered sexism, but in a different way I was expecting. Far from being violent, her husband was lazy, did not work and used his time playing basketball or computer games. He even allowed her to have sexual relations with other men. But she had to work, supply money, do the housework and take care of the children. She confessed that many days she could not sleep. Sexism translated into a material inequality inside a class problem, something mainstream feminism does not pay enough attention.

Being a passionate of multiculturalism and multilingualism, when I came to the Philippines I was excited about the huge diversity of the country, with more than 180 languages. Rapidly I did and I am still doing some linguistic research, as I had previously done with the Aragonese language. But if in the latter case the main parameter to find good informants was the age, in the Philippine case the social class is the parameter to follow: rich people tend to acquire the lingua franca, English, and sometimes they even forget the community language, while poor people preserve it more pure. While researching, another question prompts my mind: Is it really worthy and ethical to work for the preservation of these languages when the real and urgent problem of these people is to improve their material conditions?

Here we arrive to go one of the key ideas printed by Daniel Bernabé in his book “La trampa de la diversidad” [From now on: The Trap of Diversity]. Diversity seems to be a good and even necessary value, especially in contrast to values of systems that try to eliminate it, like fascism. But diversity can be defended and promoted once material conditions are guaranteed for everyone, not before. The same friend who criticized the dumb guy feeding crocodiles with a fishing rod admitted the poverty problem, but she replied: We can and must work on all these causes! Stop thinking about priorities! Life is not about priorities! – I am sorry, but we have limited resources and that makes our lives to be a matter of priorities, and decisions according to these priorities. And our global basic priority must be to guarantee basic material conditions for everybody. Unfortunately, we have reached a point in which people value more their diversities than basic economic conditions