By 
24-09-2024
Benedetta De Rosa
Women’s Rights Researcher,
Global Human Rights Defence.
Dissing. Etymologically a contest of insults between rappers/trappers to the tune of more or less sung pseudo-rhymes. One starts off, hurling barbs, mocking, criticising and often insulting another person, usually also belonging to the rap/trap music milieu. The other responds and starts a rhyming banter.
In chronological order, we have one between the three Italians Fedez, Tony Effe and Niky Savage, all men, who dissed each other via Instagram stories and four sung verses. The dissing has gone viral on social media, but at the moment, when, how and who started it matters little, nor does the exact chronology of events. But we are interested in some of the verses sung to tar the opponents. Here are some of them: “my hands are heavy, I’m slapping your whore”, “you were my bitch, not Taylor Mega”, “good with your mouth, grade: ten, you passed”, “I didn’t leave you the verse, you asked my bad copy, OK, you act like a whore”.
This is how modern poets clash, insulting each other, but as can be seen, the target of their insults is always and only women, especially those close to them. They humiliate each other’s ex or current partner, and the male who hurls the heaviest insult earns the most points in the challenge, and so the usual sexist clichés still prove difficult to break down.
The world of rap and trap music is traditionally male dominated and sexist, and the objectification of women is one of the recurring themes, along with violence, drugs and money. This seems to suit most of the public, especially the young, who continue to sing those notes, indifferent to the problems they imply. And if there is a media case like that of the dissing between the Italian rappers, they find it hard to recognise the intrinsic machismo of the verses, because perhaps they consider the insults towards those ex-girlfriends as the simple fact of the matter – if a woman has had many sexual partners, she deserves to be called a slut – still repeating sexist stereotypes about female sexuality. Or one refers to female rappers who are completely comfortable with their sexuality and its expression in their image and songs, then wonders what the problem is if a male rapper uses certain epithets, if a woman does it in the first place. Here, one should address for a moment the difference between a woman’s self-determination, which also passes through the re-appropriation of her own sexuality and body, and the sexualization of the female body of patriarchal origin, which instead passes through the objectification of the female body by the male gender without the consent of the woman in question. In the first case the woman is the subject, in the second she is the object. This is why a man cannot take the liberty of doing whatever he wants with women’s bodies, especially by clinging to the excuse of what women do with the body that belongs to them.
The protagonists of the dissing draw support and benefit from this, and although some awareness is growing thanks to the work of activists and other figures in the public scene, they are not only indifferent, but promise new instalments of the show. For example, one of the three recently released a song that has as its title precisely the name of the ex-partner of one of other rappers, to whom he also reserves direct insults. This, however, does not change the story; we are talking about a song drawn from more or less elementary verses and boorish symbolism that in any case ends up involving third persons, strictly women.
Sources and further readings
Armelli P. (2024, 20 September). Vi facciamo riassunto del dissing Fede-Tony Effe (così non dovete ascoltare le canzoni), WIRED. Retrieved on September 24th, 2024, from <https://www.wired.it/article/fedez-tony-effe-dissing-riassunto/ >.
Nardi A. (2024, 19 September). Tony Effe e Fedez: un dissing tra cliché sessisti e machismo imbarazzante,Luce!. Retrieved on September 24th, 2024, from <https://luce.lanazione.it/spettacolo/tony-effe-fedez-dissing-cliche-sessisti-machismo-ldiqpc34>.
ThePeriod [@theperiodoff] (2024, September 21). Questi “versi” sono presi a caso [Post file]. Instagram. <https://www.instagram.com/p/DAIt4bRseDm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D&img_index=6/
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