Listening to the Rolling Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper” the other day, I was struck by how much the lyrics resembled a misogynistic MRA rant. Ostensibly a song pointing out the hypocrisy of suburban squares attacking the drug culture whilst themselves popping prescription pills, the song extends its “critique” to cover such subjects as the evil of women making cakes from mixes instead of from scratch. (See below for videos of all the songs mentioned in this post.)
So you go from this bit of, ahem, social criticism:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she’s not really ill
There’s a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day.
To this:
“Things are different today,”
I hear ev’ry mother say
Cooking fresh food for a husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake and she buys a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter etc etc
Yep, that’s right. Mick’s as bothered by the frozen steak as he is by the dangers of tranquilizer abuse. By the end of the song, the hypothetical freezer-and-cake-mix-using mother has died of an overdose. Told you so!
Misogynistic rock songs aren’t exactly a rarity – hell, “Mother’s Little Helper” isn’t even the worst offender in the Rolling Stones’ disography.
But unlike more straightforward outbursts of misogynistic nastiness like, say, “Under My Thumb,” “Mother’s Little Helper” pretends to be something nobler: a social critique.
The blogger behind the wonderfully arch I Hate the New York Times blog pointed out to me in a tweet that a surprising number of old rock lyrics play this little trick. Taking the form of a “critique of today’s inauthentic & hedonistic society” they are in fact “directed at [a] specific shallow hussy.”
Along with Mother’s Little Helper, IHateNYT suggested I take another look at the lyrics to Paul Revere and the Raiders’ “Kicks.” And, yep, it’s basically the same thing: a critique of drug use in the form of a patronizing lecture to a young woman in search of “kicks,” starting out with this little bit of I-told-you-so, delivered with a sneer:
Girl, you thought you found the answer on that magic carpet ride last night
But when you wake up in the mornin’ the world still gets you uptight
It turns out that the song, written by the songwriting team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, was inspired by the drug use of a male friend of theirs – though somehow in the song this specific man became a hypothetical “girl.”
And then of course there is the Guess Who’s American Woman, a sort-of critique of America’s “war machines” and “ghetto scenes” in the form of a long, sneering diatribe against a hypothetical woman:
Now woman, I said stay away
American woman, listen what I say
American woman, get away from me
American woman, mama let me be
Don’t come knockin’ around my door
Don’t wanna see your shadow no more
And on and on and on for a very long five minutes and nine seconds.
One of the reasons these songs sound so much like MRA rants is that MRAs like to play the same little game, dressing up their misogynistic sentiments in the form of “social critique.” Thus Paul Elam’s faux-environmentalist attack on female consumers, and all that talk about how single mothers and/or “picky women” are going to bring about the end of civilization. Heck, some manosphere fat-gal-bashers even pretend they fat-bash out of concern for the well-being of the women they’re ridiculing.
It might be entertaining to transform some of these old woman-hating songs into critiques of woman-haters. “Stupid Girl” by the Rolling Stones might be a good place to start. I mean, seriously?
Like a lady in waiting to a virgin queen
Look at that stupid girl
She bitches ’bout things that she’s never seen
Look at that stupid girl
Those are real Rolling Stone lyrics, not a comment from NWOslave. Have at it.
Here are videos of all the songs I mention above:
*small voice*
I like anarcho-vegan queercore 🙁
On a serious note, I find it too difficult to listen to stuff I find really offensive. In the way that there’s about a million bands out there, I’m not giving my money or time to the arseholish ones. I try to sit on my hands about other people doing it, but I also kind of think that if I was listening to someone without realising what a total dillhole they were, I’d want to know about it so I could make an informed decision *coughAmandaPalmercough*.
I’ve also spent about half an hour thinking about all the riot grrrl music I have (more than is generally considered healthy) and trying to find a misandrist one, but I honestly can’t.
@CassandraSays
She had a song called “Independant Woman” as well! And she’s gone for a rapper rather than a Nice Guy! And “Girls”, and “Single Ladies”, and, y’know, just songs about females and shit! And she’s, you know, not white! Queen Bey is an MRA nightmare in so many ways.
@thenatfantastic
That’s okay, too!
/exclamation points everywhere
There’s the whole body confidence thing, too. Remember that it’s very important for women to hate the way we look – makes us so hard to manipulate if we don’t.
kitteh help – no Chisel at all? Not even janelle or forever now? 🙁
Misandry! How dare Sara Bareilles defy a man? 😉
My partner and I have both been huge Beatles fans since childhood, despite their having their own peculiar brand of, as my partner puts it, ‘chirpy misogyny’ (a phrase that could convincingly be used to describe the rantings of one DK Meller). Aside from more disturbingly blatant examples like Run For Your Life, the real classic is Norwegian Wood, which hides its misogyny behind haunting tones and a poetic air. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the thrust of the lyrics – which are not intended ironically or as an example of how not to behave – is ‘This chick acted like she was going to bang me and then she didn’t, so when she went out I literally set fire to her house.’ It’s a fuckin’ MRA anthem.
For the disillusioned ex-superhero fans, I would highly recommend Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing (and the subsequent Marshal Law Takes Manhattan and Kingdom of the Blind), written by Pat Mills, the oldest working socialist in comics and the man who taught me never to have any heroes (which makes him my hero!). It’s pretty much what the term ‘savage satire’ was invented for, and it deconstructs superheroes from a leftist perspective (the three books mentioned above focus on parodies of Superman, the Punisher and Batman respectively). The artwork is sometimes a little ill-suited (at one point a feminist character says of a pneumatic, Eschergirls-esque superheroine, ‘My God! Do you realise that her head is smaller than her breasts?’, blissfully unaware that she herself has been drawn with her head smaller than her breasts in the very same frame) and there are TWs for rape in the first book and gory, over-the-top violence in all three, but it’s a real classic of the anti-genre.
>For the disillusioned ex-superhero fans, I would highly recommend
Not to claim that Marshal Law isn’t great, but personally I would recommend Yoko Tsuno, which is finally getting re-released by Cinebooks these days. It’s a great children’s scifi adventure series with… some oddly modern gender politics. Like the creator never pays any heed to remark on the fact that Yoko’s boyfriend is taking care of her child while she’s out travelling. In fact he’s extremely reserved to remark on her love life at all and their relationship is only very tangentially hinted at through their body language.
Or Passengers with the Wind, in which the MC saves her sweetheart a whole lot.
Damn, I go to bed and miss this. Boo.
Cassandra:
This is how I deal with my love of AC/DC. This may be more justification/rationalization of that love, but they always struck me as goofy and having a sense of humor about the sexism in their songs, not hateful about it.
I saw them off my tits on E, best show ever.
I think Tubular Bells was a hit int he US because it was the theme for The Exorcist.
Kakanian – those sound cool. I’m reminded of (by which I mean I’ll use any excuse to bring up) my favourite manga, Battle Angel Alita, and the relationship between the main character and her love interest. It’s a time-honoured story of ‘boy meets cyborg girl guarding nuclear-powered supply train in post-apocalyptic wasteland, cyborg girl repeatedly saves boy’s life during attack by bandits, boy’s pride is hurt so he starts a fight with cyborg girl, cyborg girl repeatedly kicks boy’s ass using secret Martian martial art, cyborg girl gets captured by bandits, boy rescues cyborg girl, cyborg girl and boy realise they quite like each other, then it rains fish’.
Another good comic-book relationship comes, surprisingly, from Frank Miller, in the Martha Washington series – the romance between Martha and her partner is very sweet, understated and, above all, equal. Of course, they break up after he gets brainwashed by a megalomaniacal supercomputer, but I think that’s probably happened to all of us at some point or other.
I always get jealous when people talk about their musical preferences – I have absolutely no idea how to describe mine. Until very recently I didn’t much listen to or experiment with music at all. You know how teenagers are generally thought of as broadening their horizons and developing specific tastes? I never did that. I’ve always been extremely sound sensitive and I tend to hate new things, so I mostly ignored music. It’s only extremely recently that I’ve started listening to things outside of whatever soft rock classics that my parents have their radios set to, and I still don’t know how to describe my preferences even know that I’ve broadened out.
I’ve always hated Wham’s Everything She Wants
“Won’t you tell me…
Why I work so hard for you?
All to give you money”
“Some people work for a living,
Some people work for fun,
Girl, I just work for you.
They told me marriage was a give and take,
Well, show me you can take you’ve got some giving to do.
And now you tell me that you’re having my baby,
I’ll tell you that I’m happy if you want me to…
One step further and my back will break,
If my best isn’t good enough
Than how can it be good enough for two?
I can’t work any harder than I do…”
Too easy, Ruby. Just too easy. Maybe they had SCIENCE on their side? (Or Youtube, it’s the same thing, amirite?)
I like a lot of music (to include a fiar bit of Dire Straits, and Tubular Bells). I tend to the more rocky-folk (Boiled in Lead, The Oysterband) a lot of Irish/Scottish (North Sea Gas, The Clancys, some Pogues, the odd Dropkick Murphy, The Cheiftans), some 70s stuff (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Janis Ian).
There is a lot of Buffet, and Gordon Lightfoot, some Oingo-Boingo, all of Zevon, some Leonard Cohen, Harry Chapin, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The Judds are ok, and I like Louden Wainright.
Because of my age, a vast swathe of music which is now, “classic” was stuff I heard in my formative years (say 1975-1990 radio), as well as the instrumental stuff I learned/enjoyed when I played the cello.
I also like Renaissance and Baroque.
I know a lot of independent musicians, Martyn Lawrence, Heather Dale, Betsy Tinny, as well as having a slew of CDs from bands which are no more.
And Filk.
I own no Green Day, don’t care for the Black Crowes, I wish I had some Django Rhinehart. Brubeck is nice, Coltrane is OK. Sinatra has his moments, so does Presley.
I never understood Alannis Morrisette being popular.
I like ABBA. Where else will you hear a Swedish Group, singing in English about Mexican soldiers fighting the US?
Pecunium, re: Alanis Morrisette. Have met, was odd. Odd in a way that only famous people who deeply believe their own hype can be.
Oh, are we at the part where we list our musical preferences? Neat.
I am totally That Guy in my geeky friends group, because I’m in my 30s now and yet I tend to prefer music what ain’t got guitars in it.
I like contemporary Top 40, especially house, dance music, and hip-hop. This is obviously where I run into a lot of misogynistic lyrics, and often have to accept that I like problematic things.
I also love vocal and progressive trance, where the lyrics aren’t usually as awful. Or … there. Ditto for spanish classical guitar and ‘dirty tango’ electronica.
I do like a smattering of music from most genres I’ve encountered, including rock, country, folk, and even gothic/industrial (of which I am generally sick to death).
@Kiki: I like Marshall Law too. I like as well how Lynn is depicted like a LITTLE bit over-the-top feminist, like a LITTLE bit of a spoiled middle-class girl who goes on about oppression, and still she’s obviously meant to be COMPLETELY RIGHT in a lot of her analysis. That’s so rare. If there’s a feminist character in media, that character is usually either merely a mouthpiece for the feminist author, or a straw feminist to combat.
Can’t say that I’m an avid consumer of music. I mean, I don’t pirate albums these days and I’ve bought maybe three CDs over the course of the last few years – Kristin Hersh’s “Sunny Border Blue”, “Arias for Farinelli” (Kitschy Baroque castrati Arias) and Dengue Fever’s “Venus On Earth”.
Last piece of music I’ve really spent time on was: “How to listen to and understand Opera”, a multi-part video lecture on that subject and my side dish of music is usually a classic radio station these days.
>Kakanian – those sound cool. I’m reminded of (by which I mean I’ll use any excuse to bring up) my favourite manga, Battle Angel Alita, and the relationship between the main character and her love interest
Yeah, shame that not too much came of it up to now.
I suppose I am better at listing my musical preferences than trying to describe them…even then it’s weird because I tend to like individual songs more than particular artists/genres, and what I like ranges from “Für Elise” to “The Beautiful People,” but anyway.
Artists that I do listen to a lot of include They Might Be Giants, Dream Theater, Lady Gaga, Jonathan Coulton, Emilie Autumn, and Throbbing Gristle.
Artists whose music I like but don’t feel compelled to seek out or listen to their entire output include Swans, The Beatles, Marilyn Manson, Adele, Nine Inch Nails, Aphex Twin, and most current pop musicians.
I’d say I have a thing for creepy and/or lyrically dissonant music, but I also love upbeat happiness, so eh.
I like anything which is prefixed or suffixed with the words ‘dub’, ‘punk’, ‘ska’, ‘anarcho/a’, ‘queer’, ‘riot’, ‘hop’, the occasional ‘core’, or any combination thereof.
F’rex, I’ve just been sent an album to review which has been described as ‘anarcho-dub punk poetry’ and I’m really looking forward to it, and I’m currently listening to a riot ska compilation. I might just make a grammar wheel style contraption to decide what to seek out in future. The system works!
I have a secret liking for the cheesiest sappy songs out there. *nudges her Celine Dion and Michael Bolton out of sight*
I’ll be honest, I have a bit of a soft spot for Taylor Swift. The songs spoke to where I was when I first heard her, a somewhat shallow teenage girl with some crushes, but too much infected by the patriarchy and ‘Christian values’ to actually make the first move. ‘Teardrops on my Guitar’ would actually make me cry. It wasn’t just unrequited love, it was repressed unrequited love, and the knowledge in the back of your mind that even if the other person’s relationship didn’t work out, it would just be more waiting to be noticed, because you couldn’t even admit it outright (See also her song ‘I’d Lie’).
Immature, perhaps, but sincere. I can respect that.
I also find ‘Should’ve Said No’ refreshing for laying all the blame on the guy that cheated on her, and not insulting the other girl he cheated with. As opposed to Carrie Underwood’s ‘Think Before He Cheats,’ and its mocking of the ‘beach blonde tramp’ who sings white trash Shania karaoke and can’t shoot whiskey.