By David Futrelle
The Federalist — the tradcon clickbait site with the oddly wonky name — has won itself a vast audience of hate-readers by posting some of the most ridiculously backward crap on gender you’re likely to find outside of Return of Kings. Federalist posts regularly go viral on the sheer strength of their stupidity.
Well, it looks like they’ve got another potential hit on their hands, a post with the lovely title “How Acting Like A Feminist Can Ruin Your Marriage.” The writer, a self-described “homeschooling mother of four [with] a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of America” named Carrie Gress, is worried that feminism is making women too girl-powery to be attractive to men.
“Women today are supposed to ‘be bold and assertive,'” she writes, “but could all this girl-power actually undermine our best efforts at finding marital bliss?”
You can probably guess how she answers this question.
Feminism has ushered in a near-universal trend for women to “just one of the boys” or to be better than the boys. It is reflected in our sarcasm, sexual habits, attire, and goals. A recent study found that women are now dropping the f-bomb more than men.
“Fight like a girl,” “Strong is the new pretty,” and “Find your fierce” may sound nice, but we have to ask if they have led women to happiness or an endless fluctuation between ferocity and victimhood.
It’s fairly familiar stuff so far, but Gress breaks new ground with her suggestions on how women can learn how to be the traditional “country girls” of every man’s alleged dreams. It involves Italian poetry, the Grateful Dead, and … Sting. Yes, that Sting.
You can learn a lot if you listen to men when they don’t know we are listening: poetry and music.
From the dawn of time, men croon about particular attributes especially found in women: loyalty, sweetness, a calming presence, kindness, thoughtfulness. Looking past lyrics dripping with lust, a pattern emerges. Dante, the Beatles, Elvis, James Taylor, Sting, The Grateful Dead, Tim McGraw, and on and on—all speak of loving a truthful, kind, loyal, soulful woman who brings them peace. There has been no love song dedicated to a nagging, angry, self-absorbed woman.
Well, none that I can think of offhand. Can any of you think of some? If not, well, there’s literally nothing stopping anyone from writing songs like this and maybe posting them here hint hint nudge nudge knowhatImean?
Also, I’m not quite sure that Mrs. Gress has been listening all that carefully to Beatles lyrics, because if she had been she surely would have noticed that, in addition to writing assorted silly love songs, the Beatles also wrote songs about:
- Setting a woman’s house on fire because she says no to sex
- Murdering a woman for being unfaithful
- Randomly murdering one’s date because why not?
So I’m not sure Beatles lyrics are necessarily the best guide on how to live a happy life as a woman.
Oh, and the worst bit in the Beatles’ Run for Your Life — “I’d rather see you dead, little girl/ Than to be with another man” — was ripped off word-for-word from an Elvis song, so I don’t think Elvis is necessarily the best guide either.
I would say something about Sting’s lyrics as well, but, come on, there’s no way I’m going to voluntarily go and read a bunch of Sting lyrics. Every Breath You Take is pretty creepy, though. Don’t base your life on that.
Ms. Gress better not listen to Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent”, or her head might explode.
I mean…”there’s something about the kind of woman that want you but don’t need you”
“She got her own thing, that’s why I love her”
“There’s something about the kind of woman that can do for herself;
I look at her and it makes me proud”
“Cause she work like a boss, play like a boss
Car and a crib, she ’bout to pay them both off”
“Her favorite thing to say: ‘Don’t worry, I got it’
And everything she got, best believe she bought it”
…yeeeeah, I suspect Ms. Gress might not approve.
(Pro tip though, spare yourself the music video. It’s like they packed in extra helpings of gratuitous grossness to counterbalance any perceived loss of masculinity Ne-Yo might suffer from singing a song about ::gasp:: looking up to a strong woman.)
Love songs for difficult harpy-ladies? Top of my head?
Billy Joel’s “Always A Woman”
Bill Withers’s “Use Me”
Prince’s “Irresistible Bitch”
Top of my head.
@Ray of Rays
He’d probably suggest whirling around a big honkin’ sword. The larger, the better. Bonuses for gratuitous pureeing of demons in the bargain. Actually, I think that’d be not so much a bonus as a necessary.
Sorry to drop by only to do some nitpicking, but this:
kinda ruffles my feathers[*] – specifically the use of “responsible” – since I happened to study this subject a bit.
The idea of torment in hell, including what is called contrapasso (punishment fitting the sin) absolutely did not start with Dante. It exists both in Islamic eschatology (descriptions of the endtimes and the afterlife) and in earlier Jewish eschatological writings; both might have some roots in Zoroastrian mythology (the Book of Arda Viraz has some truly harrowing descriptions of hell, and yes, they include contrapasso) or the ideas might have been more generally going around the area and being expressed by the different cultures.
And yes, Dante had at least some access to at least some of it. Things have been translated and/or excerpted into Latin, and again, ideas have been going around, because that is how stories work, they get told and they travel.
Dante did some amazing stuff, don’t get me wrong, but “responsible” is just not the right word here. He wasn’t the one who came up with these stories, he just kept them going (in his own brilliant way).
[*] This is an awesome idiom, by the way! I really love it. Can just imagine being an angry parakeet.
Okay, and so I’m not here just to nitpick word choices, here’s another song to the pile – Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”. “Don’t know if you’re a bot or a girl” would probably blow Gress’s mind!
[Okay, I edited the link format and the video’s still not embedded – no idea what’s wrong. Just click it.]
(Also, love this video because Bowie looks like the most glam pirate ever, and also like he doesn’t give a shit.)
Embedded! Huzzah
A few more love songs that aren’t about a sweet submissive girl that I thought of off the top of my head:
Ambulance by TV On The Radio –
Your slim frame
Your eager eyes, and your wild mane
Oh, they keep me where I belong
All wrapped up in wrong
You’re to blame
For wasted words of sad refrain
Oh, let them take me where they may
Believe me when I say, oh
I will be your accident
If you will be my ambulance
And I will be your screech and crash
If you will be my crutch and cast
And I will be your one more time
If you will be my one last chance
Oh, fall for me
And The Wrong Girl by Belle and Sebastian –
I went looking for my darling, I went looking for a sign
And I found her in the morning, somewhere in the back of my mind
I’m not what I could be, I need a true love
I went looking and I found one
The wrong girl
The wrong kind
The wrong hand to be holding
The wrong eyes to go searching behind
The wrong dream to have on my mind
The Belle and Sebastian song in particular is a very sweet sounding love song, but the singer doesn’t seem to mind that the woman in question is ‘wrong’.
So, here we have an entire article that comes down to “Nobody likes bluestockings, hedgecreepers or wagtails. Now be the jammiest of jams or you won’t get a husband! More Victorian idioms!”
Punk Rock Girl by the Dead Milkmen.
(Looks like it won’t embed. Grrr.)
(As soon as I come back to the page, it’s embedded. Mysterious! I blame feminist antigremlins.)
Also:
@Penny Psmith, re contrapasso:
That’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing it, I learned something.
If I may ask further: what’s your view on whether Dante was influenced by Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian traditions of eschatology and the afterlife? I could see an argument that contrapasso was a concept arrived at independently by multiple theologians, and also an argument that it was an example of theological cross-pollination like Gnosticism or Dualism.
As long as we’re sharing songs … here’s one about how a total jerkface learns that his world isn’t as good as he thinks it is.
http://youtu.be/KUCAANqWxRE
(parenthetically, re Sting and Every Breath You Take, I had also heard of him confirming that the character “speaking” is a creepy stalker. But also, also – he did (or authorised someone else’s and then performed) an extra version of this song, iirc, for the madres y abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo in which the singer is singing about watching and keeping record of the abuses committed by the military/the government. Does that ring any bells?)
@Alan:
Thanks!
Like I said, he probably had some idea, at least in circuitous ways. What is most often brought up in this context is a work called “Muhammad’s Ladder” – an Arabic text about the Mi’raj (Muhammad’s miraculous ascent to heaven, often connected in Islamic tradition with the Israa’, his nightly journey to Jerusalem [but that’s a whole other thing I won’t get into now]; mi’raj is a rare word for “ladder”, hence the translated name) that was translated in the 13th century first into Castilian and then from that into Old French and Latin, in the Toledo court of translators founded by King Alfonso X of Spain. The Arabic original and the first Castilian translation have unfortunately been lost, but we have manuscripts of the second translations, and there have been translatuons of those made into modern languages, including English.
Anyway, the Latin translation was made by a scholar called Bonaventura of Sienna, which as you can see means he was Tuscan; moreover, another translator at the court was Brunetto Latini, a friend of Dante’s. So already we have a path that can reach him. And besides, this translated work was apparently popular enough in Europe that there were excerpts made of it, so even if Dante didn’t read the full translation, he still could had some idea of it through something like that.
With the Jewish apocalyptic works [here meant in the original sense of the word – a (divine) revelation] I don’t know as much about possible paths of transmission, but they definitely had a connection to Christian apocalypses, so the ideas could pass that way, even if the original texts themselves did not.
And I think that the Zoroastrian influences are all mostly circuitous – for example through Islamic traditions (the idea of the Bridge of Sirat, a narrow and treacherous bridge above hell that the souls must pass to get to heaven in Judgement Day, is one such concept that was definitely taken from Zoroastrian traditions). Can’t say a lot more, though.
But yeah, as you said – the idea itself could go either way. I like the cross-polination concept, personally, since, well, that happens a lot. Even when ideas are originally independent, they still get influenced by what they come in contact with (like languages do, or stories, or anything people do really).
To me they come across as either “here’s a list of ancient standards that benefit ME personally, and I’m used to taking them for granted, so everyone should adhere to them” or “here’s a list of things I did because I was told to and was afraid to think for myself, so everyone should do them because I’ll feel better about not making my own choices if nobody else does either”.
Of course, people can make traditional choices because that’s what they genuinely wanted. But the minute they start pushing their own choices on other people, I no longer believe that is what they did.
“Whisky Girl” by Toby Keith comes to mind (the girl in question even has tattoos and a belly ring).
As for the Beatles, their later stuff featured rough, kinky women (“Polythene Pam”, “Maggie Mae”, “What’s The New Mary Jane”). McCartney penned quite a few sympathetic odes to working women and single moms (“Another Day”, “Lovely Rita”, “Lady Madonna”, “Honey Pie”). Many of Lennon’s most beautiful love songs were inspired by Yoko Ono, who is the very definition of the independent shrieking harpy that most terrifies these Serena Joy types.
Also, LOL at the Grateful Dead being included on this list.
Let us put men and women together
See which one is smarter
Some say men, but I say no
Women run the men like a puppet show
EJ (the Scheming Liberal Race-Traitor), did you know that The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing is a name inspired by genuine attempts to frame Jews for Jack the Rippers gruesome killings of women?
Nice way to pay tribute to independant, strong women.
To me these diatribes always sound like “here’s a list of things I did to surrender agency over my life in exchange for the comforting illusion of a safe, orderly world. Because you don’t do these things, now I can feel superior to you, make dire predictions about your future happiness, and thus feel less bad about my own low position on the totem pole.”
Ironically, there’s a scolding, self-absorbed…almost nagging quality to them.
Anyone know of any love poems/songs written for puritanical church ladies?
@ penny
Heh, it was actually EJ. Although EJ asked exactly the same questions that your post got me thinking about anyway; so maybe you’ve just got precognition powers. 🙂
There was a great three part documentary on IPlayer about the Silk Road that addressed some of this; especially in regards to Zoroastrianism. Well worth a watch if you can find a way of viewing it.
Bands are not averse to using controversial names out of context – Joy Division and New Order being other examples.
Sorry, haven’t read through all the comments, but I’m not sure how being strong, witty, fierce af, bold and even a bit sweary is somehow the antithesis of being a kind, thoughtful, considerate, peace-bringing and supportive partner in a romantic relationship. I mean, I look for ALL these qualities in a partner (and I’m a straight woman, so I’m looking for them in a man) and I try to be all of these things.
There are plenty of songs out there that are dedicated to women who aren’t so sweet
Gosh darn, so it was. Where is my head?
Sorry for the misattribution, EJ!
Re transmission, yeah, trade had a lot to do with that. One of my favourite things I learned in the university course I took about Dante and Arda Viraz was that there are some interesting similarities between the Zoroastrian traditions of a journey to the afterlife and the medieval Irish stories of St. Brendan’s journey – again, trade routes carrying stories and ideas as well as cargo.
I like this song from Cat Stevens, I think it was meant to be an answer to the Elvis song, but changed to a positive perspective.
@Penny:
Not to worry. Thanks for sharing your scholarship!
@Nobody Special:
You’re quite correct. The line went:
It’s weird to think of someone in 19th century London writing that, as they tended to blame Jews for everything. (Including the Ripper murders, even before that line was discovered.) Britain has always been surprisingly hostile to immigrants even as it depends upon them economically, and people have historically taken every opportunity to pin the ills of society upon ethnic minorities.
Alan Moore points out that it’s also a reference to Masonic lore, but then he’s weird.
That band are pretty cool though; considering that they’ve done songs about Margaret Thatcher burning in hell, I’d be surprised if they took the name in an anti-semitic fashion.