Steven C. Martino PhD. et al
This article focuses on the music’s effect on adolescents’ sexual behavior. This study went over the course of three years, working with teenagers as they grew. In this study, they mapped music preferences, the content of this music, and how sexual experience/behavior grew over time. The major distinctions are that they divided music based on standards of degrading and non-degrading. Degrading music consists of “lyrics are likely to promote the acceptance of women as sexual objects and men as pursuers of sexual conquest”. The non-degrading music simply had references to sex or to romance. The study found that “ adolescents who listen to a lot of music containing these objectifying and limiting characterizations of sexuality progress more quickly in their sexual behavior, regardless of their race or gender”.
I think this is funny, because I see some parallels to this and the first article “Classic Rockers- The First Generation: Just Give Me Some of that Rock and Roll Music”. This study only focused on mainstream artists. Of all genres that they worked with, their data shows rap as the biggest perpetrator of degrading sexual behavior. Their study worked to show that music with such influences will have negative societal impacts. Unlike music with just plain sexual content “ listening to music with degrading sexual content may have important public health and other societal consequences, because those who initiate sex early have more STDs and unplanned pregnancies”. This is humorous because this is the same rhetoric that was used to characterize the early rock and roll movement. Though this article is has some numerical backing, it still echoes this post-war fear of powerful, and predominantly black music.
This isn’t to say that rap music doesn’t have songs that have unbelievable accounts of objectifying female and male sexual standards. Many songs and artists glorify prostitution, rape, infidelity, etc. However, this study is trying to turn this music into the perpetrator. It is almost like calling it devil’s music all over again.
In this era, we need to stop looking at symptoms and more at causes. Sex has always been a part of the adolescent story. Teenagers are going through tons of biological changes. Earlier civilizations allowed their children to experiment with sex.
Sex is not the issue at hand. The issue is poverty, lack of education, and societal inequality. It’s not about censoring what people say, but rather changing the systems that are forcing them to speak that way.
"Words I Never Said" Lupe Fiasco
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