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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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Snowy
Snowy
12 years ago

Sooo you’re a troll then? Not that I really expected anything more after that whole “not hating on fat people is a religion” shit you were saying before.

Sgt Grumbles
Sgt Grumbles
12 years ago

What the fuck are you talking about? When did I say anything like that? There’s a world of difference between not hating fat people and saying diets never work, that every fat person ever has a metabolic disorder.

And what’s more, how am I trolling by posting music? I’m more bemused by that notion than anything else.

Snowy
Snowy
12 years ago

Oh sorry, see the problem is we get a lot of trolls here and when someone starts yammering on about how not hating on fat people by saying a bunch of bullshit science that they’re unhealthy is some kind of religion and therefore unfalsifiable my mind just immediately goes to “troll alert”. So you can see how that could have happened, right? Especially when they then go on to start posting country songs titled “Poor Desperate Fools” about horrible cheating women in a thread where people have been posting country songs with a slightly feminist bent and you say stuff like “Here’s some goddamned country for yous”. So sorry for the misunderstanding!

Sgt Grumbles
Sgt Grumbles
12 years ago

Well, when you put it that way, I can see how one would reach such a conclusion. As to the song, I’m not sure if it’s the man or the woman who’s been cheating. Maybe both. What matters is that it’s dark and miserable. Those songs I posted fall under the ‘gothic country’ subgenre.

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

If we’re doing flipped-standards country songs, we can’t leave out “Wild Side of Life” and its response “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels”, one of the few examples of an answer song as well-known as the originals. Hear the two together, a little fast, here:

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

That version does omit the second verse of each song, but it works a little better that way if they’re strung together. The second verse of “It Wasn’t God…” gets to the gender-flipping-entirely thing way more than the first.

thebionicmommy
thebionicmommy
12 years ago

Another country song that does a great job of switching gender roles is Shania Twain’s Honey, I’m Home

I also like the song National Working Woman’s Holiday by Sammy Kershaw, although when I watch the video, I’ll think “Hey, give your wife a break and help out some more!”

Sgt Grumbles
Sgt Grumbles
12 years ago
RubyHypatia
RubyHypatia
12 years ago

Ostara, you agree that two wrongs don’t make a right and suggest I follow that advise, huh? I hate on certain (evil) people and that causes you to hate on me. Are you not being hypocritical by not following your own advise? The irony, LOL.

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

I know this might be hard for you to comprehend Ruby, but we don’t “hate” you because you hate other people, we “hate” you because of what you say should happen to those people.

Notice how our “hate” doesn’t come packaged with what we think should happen to you?

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

Way to fail at irony, Ruby. I’m not even sure we hate you, we just think you’re trite, banal, dim, and have some incredibly ignorant ideas. The only thing I wish would happen to you is a ban.

darksidecat
darksidecat
12 years ago

Ruby only hates evil people, like the poor, disabled people, or other oppressed people who won’t tolerate her bullshit. And she thinks rape is an okay form of punishment. Why we’re ‘picking on’ her I can’t imagine.

Sharculese
Sharculese
12 years ago

Ostara, you agree that two wrongs don’t make a right and suggest I follow that advise, huh? I hate on certain (evil) people and that causes you to hate on me. Are you not being hypocritical by not following your own advise? The irony, LOL.

there’s a difference between ‘hating’ someone and actively enjoying the prospect of serious harm befalling them you dimwitted creep. do you think the stupid shit you say through for even a fraction of a second.

speedlines
speedlines
12 years ago

When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher decided it was time for us all to learn proper debating technique, so he had us face off and debate each other. I was a lazy, passive-aggressive kid and my solution to assignments I didn’t want to do was to do them really half-assed, like Homer Simpson. So I semi-deliberately debated in the worst way possible, using one logical fallacy after another, and of course I lost.

Anyway, Ruby’s comments always remind me of me back then, only difference was I was TEN YEARS OLD and DOING IT ON PURPOSE.

RubyHypatia
RubyHypatia
12 years ago

When you call people nasty names, that’s hate.

katz
12 years ago

So, Ruby…do you think calling people nasty names is morally equivalent to wanting them to get raped, or is it worse?

lowquacks
lowquacks
12 years ago

Not quite feminist country music, but this is one of my favourite songs and reminds me of a few recurring commenters here:

There are tons of version out there, but Possum does it best.

RubyHypatia
RubyHypatia
12 years ago

katz, are you equating me with an evil person in prison for a heinous crime? Let me explain where I’m coming from. I’m an atheist so I don’t believe there’s any after-life punishment. I can’t tell you how much it bothers me that people who have committed evil against others will never be punished enough for it. I just saw a Dr. G episode where a woman was beaten to death, and her boyfriend only served 11 years for that crime. So excuse me for hoping he was raped in jail. Now go ahead and say what a horrible person I am for thinking that way.

BTW, I stand by my original point about two wrongs not making a right. I mean we shouldn’t be misandrists just because misogynists exist. I think we all agree about that.

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

Now go ahead and say what a horrible person I am for thinking that way.

Ok. You’re a fucking horrible person.

You might be an atheist, but it seems like you’re stuck in the thinking that people should be punished like-for-like, or even worse. You’re no better than a fundie in that regard.

hellkell
hellkell
12 years ago

You’re a horrible fucking person, Ruby. BTW, misandry is not a thing, so no we don’t all agree on that. Then again, you believe in extra legal punishment, i.e., prison rape, so the kind of shit that flits across your shallow brainpan is suspect at best.

ShadetheDruid
ShadetheDruid
12 years ago

Actually, scratch that, you’re worse than a fundie. At least they aren’t pretending to be on the same side as me.

Myoo
Myoo
12 years ago

@Ruby
So two wrongs don’t make a right, unless one of those wrongs is someone getting raped? How does that make any sense Ruby, how can you seriously not see the contradiction?

You care more about criminals being punished, often in extralegal and completely unjustified ways, than you care about preventing crimes from happening and the victims of said crimes. That is a horrible way to think, so you tell me what that makes you.

RubyHypatia
RubyHypatia
12 years ago

There you go again, spewing hatred. Hypocrites!

katz
12 years ago

We aren’t hypocrites; we’ve always hated your hideous opinions and have never pretended otherwise.

Rutee Katreya
12 years ago

I’m an atheist so I don’t believe there’s any after-life punishment.

“I don’t believe a god is sufficiently causing enough horrendous and unsuitable punishments, so it falls to us humans to make more”
You are a piece of shit.

There you go again, spewing hatred. Hypocrites!

Yup, it’s totally the same to hate on, say, poor people for being poor as it is to say you’re an ignorant, hateful piece of shit. Fuck off.