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Three Whoops and a Holler for Jean Shepard and this awesome old song

I usually listen to my music collection on shuffle, and this old song was one of the first that popped up this morning as I caught up on comments here. Recorded by Jean Shepard in 1954, it’s a charmingly blunt criticism of sexist double standards. The notions she challenges  are still, sadly, issues to this day, especially amongst the you-know-who’s-rights-activists and the rest of their pals in the you-know-who-o-sphere. Some of the lyrics:

How come a man can fight and cuss and smoke and drink and chew

Step out on their wives and do the things they shouldn’t do?

But it’s all right in the publics’ eye, they say he’s just a man

But if a woman does one little thing, she’s not worth a …

Two whoops and a holler,

she’s lower than a hound

If she drinks or smokes or tells a joke,

she’s a lowest thing in town

Of course, like a lot of old songs by women in country music that challenge male sexism, Two Whoops and Holler is a product of its time, and doesn’t transcend traditionalist thinking entirely. The song ends  up endorsing some double standards of its own: Shepard sings that “the women ought to rule the world ’cause the men ain’t worth a … Two whoops and a holler, they’re lower than a hound.”

In other words, she ends up offering a mirror image of the original sexism — which is exactly the sort of dualistic thinking that double standards lead to in the first place. Don’t tell the MRAs!  They’ll start going on about female supremacism or some other nonsense.

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RubyHypatia
RubyHypatia
12 years ago

Yeah, two wrongs don’t make a right, but she does make some good points. The sexual double-standard is alive and well. How many nasty names are there for promiscuous women vs. promiscuous men?

Snowy
Snowy
12 years ago

Thanks Ruby.

And now that song is stuck in my head!

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

That song reminds me of the Loretta Lynn song Rated X about the double standard.

Wetherby
Wetherby
12 years ago

Yeah, two wrongs don’t make a right

How about two evils?

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

Every time I read one of Ruby’s comments it makes me want to eat my desk.

lauralot89
12 years ago

I’ve had a morbid fear of being made to eat a desk ever since I read a creepypasta about a man being made to eat a desk…

Anyway that song will be in my head for hours. Can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

jumbofisch
jumbofisch
12 years ago

I thought you said you would eat your dalek shade…..but I have been watching dr.who so…..

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

Hah. 😛

Talking of Doctor Who and Daleks, new series starts this weekend! 😀

Scotty Dudebro
12 years ago

Sorry bionicmommy, but it against the law to mention Loretta Lynn without Harper Vally PTA. (Ah, the good old days when women were so submissive and feminine.)

darksidecat
darksidecat
12 years ago

My Dolly Parton spamming is finally topical

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

Yeah, The Harper Valley PTA! A total classic. Oh, and Dolly Parton, too, this is awesome. 🙂

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

@lauralot

Link to creepypasta?

ostara321
ostara321
12 years ago

Yeah, two wrongs don’t make a right

Exactly. Maybe apply this to other wrongs as well?

Vanessa Emma Goldman
Vanessa Emma Goldman
12 years ago

unfortunately, this bullshit is still pretty common in country music. Exhibit A: “Redneck Woman” Gretchen Wilson. on the same album that song was on were two other songs that pretty much uncritically accept the double standard and the notion that it is always the woman’s fault. the song “Homewrecker” places the blame for an affair on “the other woman” rather than on the asshole man who stuck his ugly little weenie where it did not belong. then in “When i Think About Cheating,” the female protagonsit better not even think about cheating on her man, who is probably the same ashile from the first song.

Vanessa Emma Goldman
Vanessa Emma Goldman
12 years ago

“Protagonist” and “asshole” in the last sentence.

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

on the same album that song was on were two other songs that pretty much uncritically accept the double standard and the notion that it is always the woman’s fault. the song “Homewrecker” places the blame for an affair on “the other woman” rather than on the asshole man who stuck his ugly little weenie where it did not belong. then in “When i Think About Cheating,” the female protagonsit better not even think about cheating on her man, who is probably the same ashile from the first song.

Oh yeah, that is also a common theme in country music. One of the most obvious examples was Tammy Wynette’s hit Stand by your Man

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You’ll have bad times
And he’ll have good times
Doin things that you don’t understand
But if you love him
You’ll forgive him
Even though he’s hard to understand
And if you love him
Oh, be proud of him
Cause after all he’s just a man

That’s the same kind of stuff MRA’s say. Women have to be pure, but men just can’t help themselves. So I laugh at MRA’s that claim country music is “misandric” because they’re angry about the Dixie Chicks or Miranda Lambert singing against abusive dipshits. It’s not like they can’t find misogynistic country songs like Brad Paisley’s I’m still a guy or anything by freaking Trace Adkins.

sthlivingincolor
12 years ago

I’ve always loved the lyrics to “It Takes a Woman” from Hello Dolly for illustrating another one of the contradictions of the female stereotype: that you’re supposed to be dainty and fresh and fragile on the one hand, but a workhorse around the house on the other.

Sample lyrics:

It takes a woman, all powdered and pink
to joyously clean out the drain in the sink.

The frail young maiden who’s constantly there
for washing and bluing and shoeing the mare . . .

(The Walter Matthau version seems to have been removed.)

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

aworld: No idea where to find the specific story (if you meant that), but this is always a… “fun” ( 😛 ) place to go.

http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Creepypasta_Wiki

aworldanonymous
12 years ago

@Shade

I love the creepypasta wiki. Except this one fic I read there that was really long and had an incredibly disappointing climax.

darksidecat
darksidecat
12 years ago

Martina McBride has several songs about domestic abuse and they aren’t abuse apologistic. Including this one about a girl whose mother kills the abusive father.

Nanasha
Nanasha
12 years ago

This is the song that’s currently stuck in my head. Layaway plans, indeed.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

Here’s Loretta Lynn giving another FU to the double standard with “The Pill”:

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

Wow, I remember when Independence Day first came out back when I was a teenager and it was one of my favorite songs. One the newer songs I like that deals with domestic violence is Lambert’s Gunpower and Lead. My only critique is how the video shows her using a scoop shovel to dig a grave, but that’s just a tiny detail.

Here’s Goodbye Earl because it’s a good one, too.

Sgt Grumbles
Sgt Grumbles
12 years ago

Here’s some goddamned country for yous:
http://youtu.be/wKiwOl_z0mM

Sgt Grumbles
Sgt Grumbles
12 years ago

http://youtu.be/4aZvbPHg00M

I swear it was the Wendigo that drove me to the axe,
but I confess that no hand further made me chop and cut and hack.

Deep inside my curdled mind a murky abyss yawned,
and at my feet in endless sleep my family waited for the dawn.

Children, mothers, beasts of burden, not one life was spared.
Gazing on the piles and pyres, I rended clothes and tore my hair.

Deep inside my troubled mind, that gaping hole was filled with blood and moans and fingerbones of all my party I had killed.

On ground and clothes and hard-packed snow, just how much blood I cannot tell.
What Neptune’s oceans could not cleanse did grease my footing down to Hell.

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