After the 30 second preview of the video was leaked by HipHopConnection.com, women right’s activists Sharon Haywood and Melinda Tankard Reist sent a petition of 5,000 signatures from irate, concerned citizens over to Universal Music Group and MTV voicing their outrage over the video clip. The activists claimed that the video showed women as only sexual objects and that violence against women as art is acceptable.
“The video features West, Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Nikki Minaj surrounded by the “sexy” corpses of women in lingerie. Other women dangle from the ceiling by chains. Behind Jay-Z, a dead, naked woman lies with her mouth wide open, bluntly indicating her last act was a sexual one. Ross erotically eats a plate of raw meat from between a female corpse’s legs. And West practically rapes the dead bodies of two women in bed. The message of the video is pretty clear: women are sex objects and it can be erotic when they are killed in violent, sexual ways.
The mainstreaming of videos like this increases desensitized and callous attitudes toward violence against women,” said Reist, one of the campaign originators. “Young people are seeing images and absorbing harmful messages which glamorise misogyny and brutalise women. Women are reduced to sex-doll like playthings. So great is the level of desensitization that the barbaric treatment of women and girls is seen as normal and to be expected. We decided to run this campaign because we wanted to challenge the status quo.”
Via: Necole Bitchie & Hip Hop Connection
