![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alright, let's get this down on "paper", so to speak, so that I don't have to keep retyping it several times every December. It's the time of year for That Song. You know the one. The creepy date rape song. "But it's not rapey! It's about feminine empowerment! Historical context! It gave women an excuse in a time when they couldn't be openly sexual and needed an excuse to do what they wanted to do!"Bullshit.
Basically all these "but historical context!" defenses are not exactly true. They're a retcon justification because people feel guilty about liking a holiday song about date rape (and one that actually has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with Christmas).
ret·conLet's talk context then if you want to talk context.
/ˈretkän/
noun
1. (in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.
verb
1. revise (an aspect of a fictional work) retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.
Sure, in the 1940s, women did not have the freedom to openly desire sex and (I'm told - I did not verify it but I will concede that this is probably true because it doesn't matter for my point) some people used to use the line "hey, what's in this drink?" wink wink nudge nudge know-what-I-mean? to absolve themselves of responsibility or accountability for the sex that they were about to have. That was a thing.
But that was not a thing *in this song*.
Let's start with the background. The song was co-written by a husband and wife team, Frank Loesser and Lynn Garland. In their social set, in the '40s in Hollywood, there was, apparently, very stiff competition for who could throw the best parties. Hosts were expected to, not only provide the location and refreshments for said party, but actually *be* the entertainment, with singing, dancing, performing, whatever. Whoever was the best entertainment got invited to all the other best parties. And in Hollywood, who you knew was of paramount importance. It not only determined your spot in the social scene, but also got you employment, which affected your livelihood. So this was a Big Fucking Deal.
So the husband and wife duo wrote the song as the climax to their party, hoping it would make them popular. And it did. They literally moved up in social class because of that song. "It was their ticket to caviar and truffles", Garland once said. It made them so popular that MGM offered to buy the rights to it 4 years later and Loesser went on to write several other popular songs for movies and this one in particular even won an Academy Award.
The song is a call-and-response type song, with the characters in the song being named Wolf and Mouse, i.e. Predator and Prey. Loesser even introduced himself as "the evil of two Loessers" BECAUSE OF THE ROLE HE PLAYED IN THE SONG. Loesser would probably defend his line about "evil of two Loessers" as being witty, a play on words. Shakespeare played with words all the time! He certainly didn't *mean* that he was really evil, right? It's just a joke! Don't take everything so seriously!
Except that Schrodinger's Douchebag says that too. Schrodinger's Douchebag is the guy who makes assholey statements, and only after his comments are not received well, tries to excuse them as "just a joke". You don't know if he's seriously a rapist / racist / bigot / other asshole or just a dude with a bad sense of "humor" - he's both! - until you call him on it.So, OK, that's a little ... weird, but a bad "joke" is just one thing, right? Well, the next thing that happened was Garland did not want to sell the song. She thought of it as "their" song. But Loesser sold it out from under her anyway. Garland felt so betrayed by this, she describes the betrayal as akin to being cheated on. I believe the specific quote was something about her feeling as though she had actually walked in on her husband having sex with another woman.
This led to a huge fight which, by some accounts, contributed to the downfall of their marriage and they eventually divorced. So here we have a man who puts his own wants above his wife's needs (or strongly felt wants). Why is it so difficult to believe that he would write a song about pressuring a woman and not even understand that it was bad or why? It shouldn't be so difficult to accept that a man who would do this to his own wife probably has no problem with "wearing her down" and doesn't think his song represents straight up assault.
We have here a pattern where a man just, like many straight men, didn't think about what he was saying or how it would affect women, particularly the women in his life, and he, like everyone else that year, was merely a product of his time and not able to foresee 70 years later where we now recognize the deeply disturbing "boys will be boys" patriarchal reinforcement of the "what's in this drink wink wink" joke.
Frankly, I don't think he thought about his lyrics all that much at all, let alone tried to write some weird, backwards, 1940s female "empowerment" anthem. I don't think he deliberately set out to be an evil villain writing an ode to date rape either, I think he just flat out didn't consider all the implications of a bubbly song where one person keeps pushing for sex and the other keeps rejecting but eventually capitulates. Y'know, like the Blurred Lines song - it's bubbly, it's cute, it's got a catchy hook, but ultimately it's about street harassment, like, he literally said that he wrote the song by imagining a dirty old man yelling things out to hot chicks as they passed by on the street. But people love it because it's bubble-gum pop. Same as this song.
Only with this one, we're *defending* it as a "joke" people used to use because women couldn't be openly sexual. THAT'S PART OF THE PROBLEM. Women needed that kind of excuse because they were not allowed to have their own agency. So romanticizing this song only reinforces the message that a woman's "no" is really just her needing a better excuse, so if you keep "offering" her excuses (i.e. pushing her), eventually she'll find one she can use and give in. Keep pressuring her! She wants it! It's for her own good! It's empowering!
That's some fucked up shit.
But back in the '40s, they didn't really know better, apparently. Women used what avenues they had for expressing their sexuality, and at the time, "what's in this drink?" was what they had. They, and Frank Loesser, were not thinking how, in the next century, women who had taken back some of their agency would be constantly fighting to keep what we have managed to wrestle back precisely because of this line of reasoning - that "no" doesn't mean "no", it means "try harder" because we just need to be given the right push in the right direction.
But as the saying goes, when we know better, we do better. Not knowing any better back then isn't a good enough excuse to keep it around now. It may have been considered "innocent" in the '40s or even "necessary" because of the restrictions that women had, but now we know better. We know both the legitimately terrifying implications of the lyrics in this song as sung straight and we know the patriarchal implications of the lyrics in this song as sung "flirty". He didn't know any better back then, but we know better now.
So now let's get to the context of the song itself.
When Loesser and Garland were performing this song at parties, it was a huge hit ... but only within their social circle. It didn't reach mainstream attention until it appeared in the movie Neptune's Daughter, which is a really odd movie for this song, only partly because the movie takes place in the summer, not the winter. The movie is about an "aquatic ballet dancer" and swim suit designer who mistakenly believes that a South American polo team captain is pursuing her sister but who really wants to date her, and who accepts a date with the team captain just to keep him from dating her sister.
Got that? Swimmer lady thinks polo captain is putting the moves on her sister. Polo captain is not, and wants to date swimmer lady. So polo captain asks swimmer lady out on a date. Swimmer lady agrees to a date with polo captain in order to keep a guy she thinks is a predator away from her sister, but she doesn't like him. She ends up liking him later though, because it's a rom-com musical from the '40s.
Actually, I could have just said "because it's a rom-com" and stopped there, because "two people who don't like each other and don't communicate with each other end up married and we're supposed to think this is a good thing" is basically the entire motivation for the rom-com genre.
Meanwhile, her sister is pursuing some other guy who she mistakes for this polo team captain, and since he usually has poor luck with women, he lets her believe in his mistaken identity. What follows is a comedy of errors and mistaken identity that somehow manages to go from two women who go on a date with two men, get mad at them for things they did not do, learn the truth eventually, and go from being mad at them to marrying them. After one date. Because the movie was written by men in the '40s who followed formulaic story-writing to sell more movie tickets.
This film clearly does not show a woman looking for an excuse to stay. The scene is played as a woman legitimately trying to leave. So, on this date where the swimmer is grudgingly spending time with the polo captain, he puts the moves on her. But she still thinks he's a disreputable jerk who is courting her sister and she is only out with him to protect her sister from him. She is NOT into him (yet).
She grimaces when she tastes the drink ("what's in this drink?") and it's NOT storming outside - the Wolf is lying to her about the weather to get her to stay. It's summer in California, the entire premise of the song is a manipulation to get someone to stay against their will. She is playing the character as annoyed and legitimately trying to leave.
The Mouse is not trying to save her reputation, she is trying to give him a soft rejection, as women were (and still are) trained to do, to avoid punishment for rejection by passing the responsibility onto someone the aggressor would have more respect for (her parents, the neighbors, etc.). It's just another variation on "I have a boyfriend" - she is trying to give excuses that he will find valid without saying she's not interested and risking making him feel rejected and hurt by her disinterest.
The reverse gender scene in the same movie is even worse. Later, the sister is on the date with the pretend polo captain and she is obviously, aggressively, and annoyingly pursuing him. The man is visibly angry at her and trying to leave, and she is physically forceful with him to get him to stay. Apparently, because it's a woman assaulting a man, that makes it funny. But it's not any less rapey when a woman does it to a man, and sometimes it's worse because patriarchy.
Very shortly afterwards, each of the couples apparently gets over all of this harassment and mistaken assumptions and they get married. Which is exactly the sort of narrative that "what's in this drink wink wink" promotes. So even if it *was* the joke-excuse, it's *still* harmful to idolize it *today* because the lesson is that when a woman says "no", she means "keep trying until we find a loophole" and that eventually the man will wear her down and win the girl for himself.
Sure, maybe some women did have to find some kind of "excuse" to save her reputation because she didn't have the freedom to say yes back then. BUT THAT'S ALSO PART OF THE PROBLEM, and also not the point. 1) That merely perpetuates the myth today that a woman's "no" can't be trusted because men just need to give her an "excuse" to say yes; and 2) that is clearly not the context *of this song*.
That is retconning the song to assuage our modern consciences for liking it.
The writer here is not a man concerned with either protecting a woman's virtue or subverting sexual mores for women's freedom. He did not write some female empowerment anthem in which a sexually active woman gets to have the sex she wants by justifying it with the right excuse.
He is just what the Wolf appears to be - a selfish, egotistical man more interested in what he gets out of things than in how it affects the women around him, and fully believing he is entitled to whatever he wants at the expense of what the women around him, particularly his own wife, want. Which was absolutely status quo then and still is today.
And the producers who bought the song and the director who directed the scenes did not feel that the message was "no, really, I want to have sex, just give me an excuse". They very clearly saw the song as someone legitimately rejecting another person because that's how they directed the actors to play the scene.
AND THAT'S HOW THE REST OF THE WORLD SAW AND HEARD THIS SONG FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
How's that for context?
Just admit you like the song even though it's problematic. Own that shit! Have y'all heard the music I listen to? I listen to pop country for fuck's sake! You like that song, the lyrics are disturbing but the tune is catchy. Just accept it.
no subject
Date: 11/29/18 04:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 11/29/18 06:01 pm (UTC)From:I mean, even if she DID "really want to", she had reasons for rejecting him. It's totally possible to want to do a thing and still turn it down, and that rejection ought to be respected.
no subject
Date: 11/29/18 06:41 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 11/29/18 05:28 pm (UTC)From:An aside: I get the banner on the right, but it appears over the text and the only way I can read the text unobscurred is to copy it and paste it into word or something.
Thanks for your examining things like this.
Saw this on Medium.
Date: 12/10/18 05:21 pm (UTC)From:Re: Saw this on Medium.
Date: 12/13/18 03:54 am (UTC)From:Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 03:57 am (UTC)From:I mean, all other arguments aside, the song is not about Christmas. It was written in 1944, it was publicly released in the movie Neptune's Daughter 4 years later, and then it was recorded by Dean Martin on his Christmas album A Winter Romance in 1959. Thanks to that album, we now associate it with Christmas.
As everyone who is opposed to Die Hard being included as a Christmas movie (they'd be wrong, but their argument is not unsound, just their premise) might understand, just because it takes place "in winter", it doesn't make it a Christmas song.
Also, for the record, "Over the river and through the hills to grandmother's house we go" is actually a Thanksgiving song, not a Christmas song. Same thing, just because it takes place "in winter", it doesn't make it automatically a Christmas-specific song.
Leaving out every legitimate criticism and concession of the song's sexual context, there is nothing in the song that's about Christmas. it's just about being cold outside. In many parts of the world, that could be any point in a 6 month period. In my part of the world, that's about 2 days out of the year, neither of which are ever on Christmas day.
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 03:58 am (UTC)From:Guys. Dudes. People. Alcohol is the number one "date rape drug" in existence. One does not need to resort to "roofies" in order to intoxicate someone to the point of invalidating their consent.
Also, I'm fucking allergic to alcohol. Do not slip alcohol into my drinks. Do not slip alcohol into *anyone's* drinks. Don't switch out regular Coke for Diet Coke.
STOP FUCKING WITH PEOPLE'S FOOD AND DRINKS
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:00 am (UTC)From:People REALLY do not want to admit to liking problematic media.
Nobody is saying you can't like it. People are saying that the messages influence our culture and harm people so stop saying that they're "romantic" even if you like it.
#50ShadesOfAbuse #NotABookAboutKink #ICanGiveYouSomeBooksAboutKinkThatBothValueAutonomyAndPlayWithSevereDomination #TheGreatDateRapeSongDebate #FuckYouYesItIs
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:02 am (UTC)From:This person, who insisted that it's "just a cute flirtation" and wouldn't even acknowledge the point that *even given that concession*, it still supports rape culture by making a woman's "no" indistinguishable from "keep pushing me".
Before I lost track of the thread, he asked me if there was any way to rewrite that song in a way that would make me find a winter "seduction" acceptable.
So I'm going to answer here, and if I figure out where that conversation is, I'll tell him directly.
-------
First of all, the word "seduction", to me, implies some level of coercion, so no, I wouldn't find a song about "seduction" acceptable no matter how polite the words are that are used to do it. That's basically just gaslighting - convincing someone to do something against their will but in a "nice" way that they can't tell.
However, to answer the question at face value, yes, there is a way to rewrite that song to be a cutesy back-and-forth play between lovers where one presents an argument for staying in and the other eventually agrees to it of their own free will and interest.
In fact, someone already wrote that song. It's called Christmas Tonight. It's about a couple in an established, presumably long-term relationship where they both seem to be happy and loving with each other. They have social plans this night, but one of them is in the mood to stay home and have some "private" time instead.
The other one is not angry, not "tricked", not cajoled, not browbeaten, and not "worn down". Having been in long-term relationships myself (as well as having been on many "dates" like the one described in the original song), it's a much more believable scenario to be very much in love with my partner and also have ambiguous feelings - i.e. have social plans that I'd like to keep but also want sexyfuntimes with my lover and needing to choose between them.
In situations like that, I believe that one can be persuaded to the other's preference without there being any coercion or gaslighting or neglecting of anyone's feelings because one may legitimately hold a desire for both options.
And the specific language used in this song implies that this is one of those times.
Unlike the Great Date Rape Song, where the lyrics clearly rely on trickery and ignoring a clear and unambiguous rejection of the option offered.
I feel that this song is a much better representation of two people who retain their agency, who have "conflicting" preferences for the activity of the evening but who are discussing the conflict in good faith and good intentions, openly and honestly without any subterfuge on either part, and where one of them ends up persuaded to the other's perspective (although the video is more dubious than the lyrics, IMO, which is also a point against the original song in question).
With the other song, you have to have a history lesson to learn some obscure hidden "context" to interpret the dialog with the exact opposite meaning as is understood today in order to reach the same conclusion (including the understanding that "the answer is no" somehow doesn't mean that the answer is no).
With this song, no history lesson or super secret wink wink context is needed because there is no outright rejection and no hard sell, and the one whose mind is changed becomes an active and enthusiastic participant in the change of plans a full stanza before the final co-sung line (the argument that she really "wants" to stay because she joins in on the title line).
This song is not perfect either, and I will concede any problematic elements of the song. But the question is whether there was any rewrite that I would find acceptable, and this song I find acceptable even given the minor problematic elements that, as far as I can tell, *every* song on the planet seems to have because they're all a product of our respective cultures.
I can like a song that I find problematic. I just try to be aware of the problems inherent in my music, and this song is worlds less problematic than the alternative.
Plus, I like the sound of it much better. I think it's actually a better written song and more enjoyable to listen to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNBuhkgfle0
#TheGreatDateRapeSongDebate #ItIsNotEvenThatGoodOfASong #AlsoItIsNotAboutChristmas
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:03 am (UTC)From:Yes, it would still be offensive. Because violating consent ("the answer is no") is always wrong. And so is a culture that will not allow someone to say yes so they have to pretend to say no, making the other person responsible for ignoring their rejections and creating several generations of people with social power who literally believe that "'no' means 'try harder' because she just needs the right excuse".
***Even if that was true in the '40s, it was wrong.***
Also, it WAS gender reversed and it was even worse.
In the movie where the song made its first public debut (it had been sung at parties among the Hollywood elite for several years prior), the story takes place in summer (so the wolf is clearly lying to get her to stay), and the woman is on a date with a man she thinks is preying on her sister. She is only on the date with him to keep him away from her sister. She is not desiring to stay.
Later, her sister sings the song with a man she is pursuing, and she physically assaults him during the song. But it's totes hilarious because a little girl wrestles a big man to the couch, so that's cute, right?
#WhenWeKnowBetterWeDoBetter
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:05 am (UTC)From:IS NOT BANNING THE MEDIA NOR IS IT A VIOLATION OF FREE SPEECH
When not enough people want to experience a thing anymore, or enough people *don't* want to experience a thing, (and here's the important part:)
***and the people who make money off of providing people with things stop providing that thing ***
that not enough people want (or that enough people don't want), that's not "banning" anything and it's not a curtail of your federal fucking rights.
You can still enjoy the thing in the privacy of your own space. It's not being banned, it's just not being given a public platform anymore. And chances are that it *still* has a platform, it just doesn't have ALL the platforms.
Y'all keep going on and on about this miraculous Free Market thing, where it will self-regulate according to the will of the people, and yet when it actually does that, y'all get pissy because your will wasn't personally prioritized over those the capitalists thought were more important.
Either the Free Market is supposed to bend to the will of the people or it's "catering" and "pandering". You can't have it both ways.
But, of course, we all know that "pandering" just means "bending to the will of the people who want different things than what I want".
So no, your favorite holiday songs aren't being "banned". The occasional radio station has merely opted to consider the opinions of their listeners who don't like the song over those who do.
Because it's a Free fucking capitalist Market and they can.
That's the point of the Free Market - people are supposed to be free to run their businesses however they want, and how they "want" will (so the theory goes) usually run according to what they think their consumers want.
Right or wrong, that's the whole point of the system - to run their businesses how they want to run them, and their choices will be dictated by what they believe their target audiences want.
So radio & television & other media outlets stop playing a thing because they want to make some of their audience happy.
Because it's a Free fucking capitalist Market, so they can.
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:07 am (UTC)From:I did listen to the lyrics. I've listened to them about 6 times per 4-hour shift, every day for 3 months, every year that I've worked in retail.
Also, I'm a theater brat. Don't tell me to listen to song lyrics from musicals. Chances are, I've sung that song more times in my 4 years of high school than you'll hear it in your lifetime.
Forget the ambiguity about "what's in this drink?". Mouse says "the answer is no". That should be the end of the conversation.
It doesn't matter if Mouse really wants to stay but has "reasons" to go. Desire is not the only, or even most important deciding factor in consent. One does not need to have erotic desire to give consent to erotic activity, and one does not need to lack desire for their rejection to be valid.
Mouse could say "I really want to have sex with you tonight, but the moon is out of alignment with Jupiter so having sex will make the Emperor of China's throne shake for a few seconds, and that will annoy him, and we mustn't do that, so I can't have sex with you tonight!" and it wouldn't matter that the reason makes absolutely no fucking sense at all. Mouse said no and that's all that matters.
It doesn't matter that "women" supposedly "needed" to pretend to say "no" in order to avoid accountability for the sex that they really wanted to have 2 generations ago.
In this song, Mouse says "the answer is no".
So when people who are concerned about issues of consent, either for personal or for social justice reasons, say that this song is an example of Rape Culture, a terrible example to set for today's audience, or just a crappy, overplayed piece of kitsch that makes us feel uncomfortable
FUCKING BELIEVE US
Listen to the song all you want in your own homes, cars, and earbuds. Like the song if you like it.
Just stop trying to convince everyone that it's not a consent violation.
Mouse says "the answer is no". Wolf keeps pushing. That's a consent violation. Maybe "the answer is no" did not actually mean "no" early in the last century. First of all, since this is the only pop culture reference I have seen anyone give as an example of this trope, I'm not convinced it's true. But even if it were true, that's not how we think today.
I take that back. That *is* how we think today. Which is how we got the fucking #MeToo movement. It was fucked up then and it's fucked up now. We're only just now, 70 years later, able to say so with any force behind our words.
Like the song all you want, but stop. telling. us. it's. not. harmful. and. stop. telling. us. to. stop. being. bothered. by. it.
I suppose it should come as no surprise to me that people who defend a song where one character ignores the line "the answer is no" would, themselves, ignore the ever-increasing crowd of voices saying "this song is disturbing and should not be given such a high place among our holiday musical standards".
I hope someday you tell someone "the answer is no" and they ignore you, because, hey, sometimes you just need to be given enough excuses, right?
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:09 am (UTC)From:These memes talk about the concept of "political correctness gone mad" and how the anti-PC person they're addressing is offended now about things being "suddenly" offensive.
The response in these memes is that these things were always offensive, and people were always bothered by them, they just didn't have enough safety and social power to speak up about it. Those few who did were, at best, not heard, and at worst, punished sometimes with their lives.
One of my favorite responses to this was something about how your racist grandfather is just "a product of his time" and that means he lived through all the important civil rights movements and still didn't learn a damn thing.
So most of us get that some things used to be OK but now they aren't. And a lot of people get that some things used to be considered OK only by a small group of people but that other people always thought they weren't, they just couldn't speak out about it until now.
And yet, we're still having this same fucking argument about a song and the best defense for the song is "but it used to be OK before I was born! You just have to understand that it was a product of the times!"
Yes, we get that. We've heard that all before.
IT WAS WRONG THEN, IT IS WRONG TODAY, IT'S STILL FUCKING WRONG
And the whole reason this is an argument is the same reason why Elevatorgate exploded.
Someone says or does something mildly problematic, somebody says "hey guys, this is a problem" and had the response been "oh, OK, I see your point, I still like it but I see how this is a problem for you", everything would have ended right there.
Instead, the answer is "fuck you and the pain this causes you, I like it so deal".
So of course everyone who ever thought it was just kinda sorta annoying gets pushed into defending why this is a problem with everyone who thinks their personal enjoyment trumps everyone else's pain (even if mild) and years later we have a polarized topic.
Instead of "I hear you, and I can see why this isn't appropriate. I'll be more considerate of how you experience the world" and we say "thank you, I appreciate that" and everyone goes about their lives.
You know that something done in another era, in another context, does not justify its continuance today, in this era, in this context. Y'all fucking KNOW that.
Be better.
Some Posts I've Made Elsewhere That Further My Viewpoint
Date: 12/13/18 04:54 am (UTC)From:Yes, actually, that's exactly what happens.
No, there is not an individual person who totally understands consent and then one day hears That Song and then suddenly and immediately thinks "hey! I can totally roofie some chick's drink! The song told me it's OK!"
Don't strawman this.
It's part of a *culture*, a systemic devaluing of women's agency. Systemic. This message, that a woman's "no" doesn't really mean "no", is everywhere.
No single instance of this phenomenon is solely responsible for any individual case of date rape. But in the aggregate, we live in a culture that ignores, overwrites, and excuses rejections. This is merely one example. And it's important to point out every single example because they all add up to one giant pattern.
This example is particularly egregious because it's a *Christmas song*. This is supposed to be a holiday filled with "goodwill" and "holiday cheer" and "family" and "joy" and "peace", and we're slammed in the face constantly with a song that undermines that by either intoxicating a woman to get her to have sex or that represents a time when a woman supposedly could not say "yes" and so the entire culture supported a "joke" where she could say "no" but not really mean it.
We're trying to think about family and helping the poor and giving, and this song is talking about creepy sex.
I have lost count of the number of times I've been out with someone - sometimes a date but sometimes just alone with people I thought were friends, or even just coworkers - and they propositioned me and I said "no" in any number of ways, and they. kept. trying.
They kept trying because they actively believe in this "courtship dance" as someone actually called it, where a woman is supposed to reject them as part of the game, as basically the opening bid and they just have to keep bidding until I find the right price, or excuse, or I just get tired of saying "no".
In the '90s, one of the most popular sitcom characters was DEFINED by the "wear her down" concept. He literally had 2 character traits - he was a dork, and he was in hot pursuit of the girl next door who wanted nothing to do with him. He spent years trying to catch her.
And we all thought this was funny.
Over the course of the show, he went from being the comic relief to a sympathetic character that the audience was hoping would "get the girl". Because our culture has more sympathy for a dude pressuring someone who obviously doesn't want him than for a woman being pressured for LITERALLY YEARS to date him.
Our culture encourages the belief that men "deserve" a woman to love them, that they are owed a woman for following the right steps, that they just have to "try harder", and she will be his.
This is exactly the message of That Song. In fact, it's the *most charitable* interpretation of That Song. That's the message that people are *defending* when we criticize it. That it comes from a time when women were not "allowed" to say yes, so she was required to "pretend" to say no until she found the right excuse or combination of excuses that would absolve her of responsibility for her actions.
She needs a snowstorm to trap her in the house. She needs a drink that will intoxicate her so she won't be responsible for what happens to her body while intoxicated. She needs a man to brush aside every objection she throws at him. This is "flirting". This is her "expressing her sexuality".
This is rape culture.
And this is how I made it to age 30 before I recognized that the vast majority of interactions I'd had with men up until that point had been somewhere on the spectrum between minor consent violations & boundary pushing to outright physical sexual assault.
This is why I have to be "rescued" by my male friends at nightclubs. This is why I had to call the police on a stalker who found me at my retail job.
This is why I was engaged to someone and didn't realize that the relationship was abusive until a decade later, and only because I described it to someone whose eyes widened in horror and told me that was abuse.
This is why I remained friends with someone even after he admitted that he *would have killed me* if I had gotten pregnant during the 3 weeks I was finally worn down enough to try dating him and had an abortion because I was too young and not enough in love with him to have a child.
Because he "loved" me, and that "deserved" some "compassion".
This man, btw, did slip alcohol into something of mine, trying to trick me into getting drunk because I had told him that I had never been drunk and had no interest in trying it. He spiked something of mine to get me drunk, and his mother knew about it AND THOUGHT IT WAS HILARIOUS.
So no, Susan, I don't think that an individual will hear this one song one time and go from a respectful person to a rapist upon listening to the lyrics.
I think that this song is one example among many that all add up to the general message that we indoctrinate people with over the course of their lifetimes that says that a woman's "no" can't be trusted and that date rape is OK as long as you don't use the R-word to label your actions.
And I'm fucking sick to death of wrestling men's hands away from my breasts and crotch as part of a "courtship dance" or a way of "flirting", and of feeling more sorry for men who can't "have" me than for myself for being relentlessly pursued to the point of discomfort, and of having my drinks spiked, and of people thinking it's funny when my consent is violated, and of hearing men complain that women never come right out and just say "no" when they mean it ONLY TO IGNORE IT WHEN THEY DO.
So when I hear That Song, the weight of a lifetime of all these experiences comes crashing down on my head in the middle of the fucking store where the musak is playing it, and I can't escape it for an entire season, AND NOBODY WILL LISTEN TO ME because y'all are too fucking invested in being "allowed" to listen to whatever the fuck you want when hearing just a few notes of that song makes me so exhausted from all the assaults and violations and boundary pushing I've experienced over my whole life that I just want to curl up in a ball and never speak to another man again.
But sure, it's "cute" and it's "flirty" and it somehow empowers women to have sex, and I'm just "easily offended".
I hope you get to experience exactly what it means when someone thinks "the answer is no" is just part of the "courtship dance" of some long-lost, more "romantic" era.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY5lKWA2L9E