Cancel Culture Part 4: The Magical Mystery WAP (Or: How Cardi B IS #MeToo)
Written By: Anton Sawyer
Warning: This entire article is peppered with profanity. Graphic, descriptive profanity involving a myriad of sexual situations. If you are someone who feels that certain words will send you to the place where the man with the horns and pitchfork conducts his business, you may want to go elsewhere.
Check out the other articles in the Cancel Culture series:
Hey, Cancel Culture-Stop Shoving Your Morals Down Our Throats
Cancel Culture Part 2: Breathtaking Hypocrisies
Cancel Culture Part 3: Baby Boomers Invented It, The GOP Is Perfecting It
Cancel Culture Part 5: Billie Eilish; Live By The Woke, Die By The Woke
In an attempt to maintain complete transparency, all research and statistical fact-checking for this article, and all articles, can be found at our site's bibliography linked here.
To support the webzine, buy me a coffee!
Follow on Twitter
I’m not sure why, but when I woke up hungry this morning I decided to forgo my usual bowl of cereal and crack open a can of worms. Today’s topic is going to be another breathtaking hypocrisy brought about by the Cancel Culture machine and its forgiveness of a #MeToo predator known as actress/hip-hop artist/reality TV star Cardi B.
From her humble beginnings as a stripper to taking over the cultural landscape of the music/performing arts in 2020 with her hit “WAP (Wet Ass Pussy),” she is no stranger to controversy. I’m going to take a look at some of those controversies, and how she should have been canceled by the Social Justice Warriors a long time ago, but instead has been lauded as an empowering icon.
I’m going to have to clear some immediate issues out of the way before we go down this slippery rabbit hole. Because I’m a white, cisgender male, I know there is going to be a decent percentage of people who are going to dismiss whatever I say based on that fact alone. I get it. There’s not a whole lot I can do about that. But, in my defense, I can say that I came from nothing and have been given no special advantages in my life. My parents met while working for a traveling carnival—carnie-folk. I spent the first decade of my life being raised in a trailer park. I’ve been homeless twice, and have lost everything I owned at one point in a nasty bankruptcy and divorce. Though I do know there are systemic issues in our laws and the like that favor white people, the concept of “white privilege,” on a personal level anyway, is not something I’ve experienced in spades. The only time I can distinctly remember where that privilege reared its head was when a cop put a bead on me with his taser when I was trying to help my black friend that was being harassed during a traffic stop (you can read that tale here). Maybe the fact I was white was the reason he didn’t shoot or kill me.
The second obstacle/defense that most of her supporters use when it comes to defending Cardi has to do with the lyrical content to “WAP.” Some tie it to the fear that white men have when it comes to a woman being so open about her sexuality. First off, having grown up listening to such classics as “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)” by W.A.S.P., and “Ass-Fuckin’ Butt-Suckin’ Cunt-Lickin’ Masturbation” by GG Allin, it takes a lot to upset me when it comes to lyrical content. Secondly, if you want female empowerment, listen to Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics. She was forging a path for women in the male-dominated world of heavy metal in the 1980s. Spandex and misogyny were the order of the day, but she was able to help break the glass ceiling at the time for future women of metal music. I don’t see how Cardi is going to help break barriers within the industry by merely spending an hour finding cute ways to express what she views as a key element to her lovemaking style. Though the song itself has had monumental success around the world in 2020—winning three prestigious industry awards and was a top-10 hit in over 30 different worldwide music charts—it’s surprising that it even came out. Considering that just a year prior, Cardi B admitted to drugging and robbing men in her own version of #MeToo predatory behavior. As much as we can argue the merits to Ms. B and her music/lyrics, it’s really just a misdirection to keep the spotlight off of the Cancel Culture wing of the SJWs.
Before her mega-success, Cardi B was a stripper. This is a profession I have zero problems with. Transactionally, you pay money for a service between all consenting parties with laws in place to help prevent it from going too far. I have a lot more respect for the honesty portrayed by those in the exotic dance industry over someone like Eugenia Cooney (you can read about her using her anorexia as a money-making scheme here). The issue with Cardi lies in the fact that in 2019 it was revealed that she had engaged in some legally, and morally, dubious practices. In March 2019, #SurvivingCardiB was trending—a reference to Surviving R Kelly—after she had admitted to drugging and robbing men when she was a stripper. After this revelation came to light, Cardi began making excuses for her actions. "Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive," she said in a statement. "I never claimed to be perfect or come from a perfect world." She added, “I'm a part of a hip-hop culture where you can talk about where you come from, talk about the wrong things you had to do to get where you are." Though her “cancellation” started to gain some traction, it eventually came and went like many of the other scandals which have plagued her career. The big questions are how, and why?
The SJWs of America have made it painfully clear that if a woman is being assaulted in some fashion, the person who did it MUST be held accountable. Keeping this in mind, it begs the question as to why she's skating by? If a social media or YouTube influencer has said or done things in the past, whether a year or a decade prior, it gets drudged up from the sewers and blasted everywhere online in an attempt to destroy their career. We saw it with Shane Dawson, Jeffrey Star, and of course James Charles. I’m not going to defend the horrific statements/actions of those I just mentioned, but I would like to know what they did specifically that was so much more egregious than using a sexual element to entice a victim, drug them, and then rob them blind? Because, it would kind of destroy the whole idea that men can be victims of #MeToo and that the entire movement is about justice, and not gender if this were true.
And that may be the problem. Maybe I’m wrong? Maybe I am entirely clueless and there is some specific portion of the #MeToo movement that I don’t understand. That if someone is assaulted in the way that Cardi B assaulted her victims if the predator does it as a means of survival, then there’s some amount of understanding that should be looked at? Please allow me to speculate for a moment. I cannot imagine a male of any color coming out and saying that when they worked for “Chippendales” they roofied a woman, stole her purse as a means of survival, and then released a song called “Big Squirty Dick,” that they would be applauded in the same fashion as Cardi B.
Check out the other articles in the Cancel Culture series:
Hey, Cancel Culture-Stop Shoving Your Morals Down Our Throats
Cancel Culture Part 2: Breathtaking Hypocrisies
Cancel Culture Part 3: Baby Boomers Invented It, The GOP Is Perfecting It
Cancel Culture Part 5: Billie Eilish; Live By The Woke, Die By The Woke
To support the webzine, buy me a coffee!
Follow on Twitter