On the Women Who Remixed "Loyal"

NOW THIS IS SOME PRETTY INTERESTING SHHHHTUFFF!!!

Those are seven female responses to one decidedly anti-female song in the span of six months. You could package them into an EP, but it probably wouldn’t sell. The work these women put in to challenge Chris Brown’s radio hit might have gone largely unheard (I came to many of those tracks, after hearing Keyshia’s response from the idling car that night, through excited email chains and Twitter exchanges with other women), but that makes it no less important. It’s as important, I’d argue, as the quiet, subconscious critical distance most women put between themselves and the words when they’re dancing to a song like “Loyal” on any given late night out. Misogyny, as a factor, feels eternal; still, it’s almost more retrograde to conclude this analysis with the idea that women respond to being muted by actually being mute. The damage of Songs For Men About Women, and, as Caramanica writes, the “silencing of women’s voices and needs” in songs like “Loyal” and “Cut Her Off,” is only as legitimate as we make it. We can identify misogyny without reifying it; we can call out an old, tired narrative without making it the new, inevitable end. Women are already doing this. No fewer than seven are already on record against “Loyal"; search Soundcloud or YouTube and you’ll find hundreds more. We’re only really silencing women when we don’t actively seek out their voices.

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