Tyga’s music is a symptom, not a disease. To be sure, his music reveals many of the underlying problems at play here, specifically misogyny and rape culture. But directing outrage at Tyga himself ignores and in a way trivializes the very real problem of sexual assault at Harvard. Banning Tyga from Yardfest would be like handing a rape victim a Band-Aid—a superficial, ineffective gesture unworthy of congratulation.
Rapists (at Harvard at least) don’t rape because of Tyga. They do it because of Harvard’s broken disciplinary system (“Oh, you sexually assaulted some girl? Why don’t you take this term to do a fancy internship somewhere and come back next year”). They do it because Harvard pushes all drinking and socialization into male-dominated social spaces. They do it because girls feel uncomfortable identifying as feminists, because they don’t want to get a bad rap as “the whiners who ruined Yardfest.” They do it because they can in this environment. This is already a problem on campus, whether Tyga performs or not. In short, to remove Tyga from Yardfest would be a false victory—a feel-good show of armchair activism that doesn’t address the deeper problems at stake here—and one that could alienate potential allies from a feminist movement at Harvard.
Yardfest is the single event where Harvard students unify and have fun together in a public, inclusive environment. Every other weekend of the year, we splinter into exclusive social groups that can result in power structures conducive to sexual assault. So please, activists, don’t ruin this for us. By all means use this event to foster dialogue and debate. But let us enjoy this ratchet music together as classmates, as a community, and most importantly, as equals.
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