Talk about real abuse
Protesting decades-old song lyrics an empty gesture
The Rape Song. That’s what one Facebook friend recently called it. Others chimed in with endless “likes” and comments about how the Christmas tune “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” sung by a host of male/female duos since its first recording in 1949, glorifies sexual assault, shames women, and attempts to minimize an evening of coercion and date rape drugs into a sweet little flirtation between two consenting adults.
All this, over a ditty that Frank Loesser wrote in the early 1940s to sing with his wife at their housewarming party, as a way of letting their guests know it was time to leave.
As I read the Facebook conversations, and have listened to the ongoing public debate since then, I started to wonder if all my work in violence against women and all my training in domestic and sexual violence had failed me. Had I been humming this tune with no regard for the damaging messages it sent to men and women?
One of the main challenges of sexual assault is the idea of intention versus perception. Often, what a perpetrator intends is very different from what the recipient perceives, based on a whole host of life factors that are as unique as the people who experience them. Our recent, heightened awareness of sexual violence has made us super-vigilant in ways that are empowering, inspiring, and, every now and then, completely off the mark.
When I look at where we are right now — and not where we may or may not have been in the 1940s, here’s what I see:
1. Given our current sexual climate, one interpretation of the song is that it is about the date rape and drugging of women.
2. Given our current sexual climate, another interpretation is that it is about the shaming of women for actually wanting to stay and engage in consensual sex.
3. Given our current sexual climate, I am not surprised that, after 70-plus years, people are suddenly enraged about a song they’ve had plenty of opportunities to boycott, thanks to the recent trend of publicly boycotting such things without taking a whole lot of action after the fact.
4. Given our current sexual climate, I am getting really fed up with the hashtagging and the sound-biting approach to the very real, very lifelong suffering of survivors who don’t want their experiences characterized in 140 characters or less, or “liked” and “loved” and shared with the little bit of energy it takes to left-click a mouse.
5. Given our current sexual climate, I am frustrated that, instead of harassing radio stations to stop playing the song, people aren’t using their energy to generate real conversations about consent, assault, and how many ways there are to say “no.”
6. Given our current sexual climate, I am reminded of the time, a few years back, when schools were lobbying to remove all the racial slurs from Mark Twain’s work, because such language was “offensive,” and instead of copying and pasting diluted messages on social media, people came out in droves refusing to stand for the censorship of something that was created in a time when that was a very real way of life. I remember how many of us agreed that deleting the ugliness and refusing to acknowledge our past crimes against humanity was the surest way to repeat them.
7. Given our current sexual climate, I am reminded of how often we give words power when we are too cowardly to act, when we refuse to volunteer at a rape crisis center, or donate to Planned Parenthood, or work with politicians to lobby for laws that could better protect women and children from such crimes against their basic human rights, or talk to our own precious children about consent in ways that are age-appropriate and have nothing to do with sex, but are about their right to refuse hugs and kisses and pats on the back and handshakes, and about their need to get permission from others before making any physical contact with them whatsoever.
8. Given our current sexual climate, I am not at all surprised that the best we are doing, the most energy we are willing to expend, is the sudden boycotting of a decades-old song on social media.
9. Given our current sexual climate, I hope that no one thinks that boycotting a song makes them an ally, a supporter, or a resource for those of us who are working in the trenches, or suffering in the darkness of sexual assault and its lifelong trauma.
I don’t know much, but this I know for sure: Closing our eyes and ears to that which is ugly and deafening will not make it go away. It will keep it alive. And it will give it power. The only way to disempower is to use these moments to have the necessary conversations. To talk about the paradigm shifts that have happened since this song was written, and that still must happen if anything is ever going to change. But boycotting a song, and insisting that radio stations no longer play it, is like trying to lose weight by insisting that the local grocery store be shut down.
So go out and do something different. Be radical. Dare to confront the issues through real conversations and researching laws. But please, for the love of all that is holy, let’s not focus on song lyrics because we have no idea what else to do and are hoping no one will notice.
As a starting point: I have an alphabetized listing of the rape crisis centers in every state in the country, and they’re all looking for volunteers and monetary donations.
Closing our eyes and ears to that which is ugly and deafening will not make it go away. It will keep it alive. And it will give it power. The only way to disempower is to use these moments to have the necessary conversations.
Heather Haskins of East Greenbush is a writer who has worked in the field of domestic violence. The list of rape crisis centers mentioned in this article can be found at http://tinyurl.com/ ybf9mues.