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Kanye West is a real man. Or rather, Kanye West feels the need to try and prove that he is a man in the latest video clip to his hit song "Monster".
Indeed, what could be manlier than the image of Kanye West making sexual advances towards dead women, clad in sexy lingerie, and held down by chains?
After all, this is exactly the message that we would all like to pass onto teenage boys - that women are dehumanised objects that men should treat with violence for their own sexual pleasure - is it not?
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However I do think there is a better way to describe the Kanye West we see in this video clip - a sex obsessed psychopath that gets turned on by violence against women.
The producers of this clip should really watch an episode of Criminal Minds, as it does not take much to realise that a person who enjoys eroticised sexual images has the makings of a violent criminal. Not only is it of immense concern that Kanye West and his producers do not see a problem in creating this video, but it is even more worrying that this clip is intended to be released in the public domain for others to “enjoy”.
Given West’s target fan-base audience is made up primarily of teens - both male and female - one has to question the message he is trying to send. As these teen boys grow up to be men, will they aspire to be surrounded by the drugged up women in West’s music video, sexually available for their every whim?
Are girls really being told to expect this sort of treatment from men? West’s music video is more than an unrealistic fantasy of poor taste... it’s just wrong.
Unfortunately, the themes within West’s music video have not come out of nowhere.
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All too often we see no problem in having a laugh at a comedian demeaning his wife by making jokes about her figure and her sex life, or at a scene in a sit-com depicting the men who respect women as weak and emasculated.
And as many of us become desensitised to this common portrayal of manhood, we can easily forget that there are far too many boys without good male role-models, soaking in all their lessons on manhood from these same scenarios.
West’s music video is simply an extension of these milder themes to which we have become so desensitised. And before we continue to condone that manhood involves belittling women, and that violence against women is arousing, West's music video must be banned - it has simply gone too far. Kanye West, be a real man and don’t release it!