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what is damaging to women. I’m not saying that people hear his music and will go out and kill women, though I do know a woman who was raped by a guy who was reciting Eminem lyrics. It does happen, there are enforcers for every ideology, a certain number of people who will hear stuff and act it out. But you can’t regulate culture on the basis that somebody will actually perform a fantasy, otherwise there would be no erotica. But I do regard Eminem as a pornographic artist—his ideology is similar to porn in many ways. I would never say that he isn’t talented, he certainly is, but the reason why he is where he is is not his talent—it is his ideology. His ideology made him stick out from the pack. He was a white boy dissing women and gay people, though it is primarily about women. From a social perspective this is really dangerous because when a generation grows up under these values they become sexualized and normal, and people really do begin to live their lives by them. You will find women picking guys like this, getting into relationships with damaged guys. The real character Eminem portrays is very damaged. A simple question to ask is why has the greatest artist of his generation never written a love song to an adult woman?”

I’m reminiscing on your tenderness: Eminem and Kim Scott at their non-denominational wedding ceremony in St. Joseph, Missouri, on June 14, 1999.

Eminem is like a million others. For better or worse, he embodies modern male machismo and a new paradigm of the young American male. He is opinionated, uncompromising in his values, devoted to his daughter, untrusting of women and any authority but his own, and above all very, very angry. But his younger fans, as well as his older ones, do not see Eminem’s view of the world or his influence as the role model he purports not to be as problematic, or even worth mentioning, judging by the unwavering positive public opinion. Male dominance in popular music has a long history, from rap to blues to rock and roll, and contemporary permutations of it have grown more raw with time. It is seen, it seems, as ritualistic, primal, and central to some music, just as the mating dance is to some male animals. In the context of Eminem’s genre, male dominance and competition is certainly a cornerstone of hip-hop, in which the primary goal is to emasculate your enemy.

As a result, homosexuality is a top-tier insult in rap. In the same light, if women and feminine characteristics are seen as weakness, then men displaying the same are equally weak. In lyrics, rappers order foes to “suck their dicks,” call them “bitches,” and tell peers they feel are copying their style to “stay off their dicks.” In this hierarchy, the least-feminine man rises to the top as the alpha male. That might be why Eminem has never written a love song: In a game in which he’s already under the microscope, he can’t afford to reveal sentimental feelings (i.e., a weakness for the “lesser” sex). Of course the answer could be as simple as the fact that Eminem’s longest romantic attachment has been complicated, to say the least. Eminem does reveal his weakness, constantly—it is at the heart of some of his best work. As he said in “Hailie’s Song” on The Eminem Show, “My insecurities could eat me alive.” He is an artist in touch with his Achilles’ heel, but he compensates for his sensitivity with the best defense: a good offense.

“It’s been so important to harder rap and for black males to be as male as you can be for a lot of interesting reasons going back hundreds of years,” says Sia Michel. “Sometimes that means talking about bitches and other times it’s talking about fags and other times it’s talking about violent imagery and guns. Hard music in general has so often been misogynistic, whether it was metal or hard-core rap, that as a woman, if you want to listen to that music at all, you have to start picking through the code and trying to figure out what is truly offensive to you and what you think is anti-woman for some kind of cheap cosmetic reasons.”

With exceptions such as LL Cool J and Common