"I have playlists upon playlists teeming with songs boasting questionable lyrics. And even artists not from this decade are culpable for promoting a sexist message.
In The Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb,” Mick Jagger squeals, “The squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day/Under my thumb … The way she talks when she’s spoken to/Down to me, the change has come.” The Doors’ “You’re Lost Little Girl” is blatantly patronizing. Even The Beatles’ “Run For Your Life” describes their intent to assault a woman who defies them — “You better run for your life if you can, little girl/Hide your head in the sand little girl/Catch you with another man/That’s the end ah little girl.”...
Ellen Willis, The New Yorker’s first popular music critic, sheds light on how one might do this. Willis wrote about rock and roll when it was rampant with misogyny, but instead of feeling oppressed and subjugated by offensive lyrics, she found herself empowered by the music. She wrote, “Music that boldly and aggressively laid out what the singer wanted, loved, hated — as good rock ’n’ roll did — challenged me to do the same, and so, even when the content was antiwoman, antisexual, in a sense antihuman, the form encouraged my struggle for liberation.”
Willis found consuming sexist music did not discourage her political and social ideologies. In fact, in some way the music provoked her to muster her own voice in response, just as boldly and aggressively."
This is such a constant struggle.
I disagree with the bit at the end that campaigning against a musician coming to perform at your school is "censorship"; from my perspective it's saying "this makes me uncomfortable and I don't want it in my space" - it's like blocking someone on twitter. But whatever, that's a much bigger thing.
I took a class on how to be a member of American society and gain the benefits of popular culture while also being feminist, and it was amazing to just go around and be like 'well, here are all my guilty pleasures' and then celebrate that and be sort of joyfully and intellectually engaging with problematic things.
Maybe it's about doing it in community; like, just you-do-you in understanding communities. And then building from there.
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