As Clarke Gail Baines pointed out in her recent post, there are certainly times when our favorite songs give us reason to pause.
In her case it was Miguel’s “How Many Drinks.” In my case that song has always been Aaron Hall’s “Don’t Be Afraid” (Nasty Man Groove), which includes such questionable narration as this:
“No need to run and no need to hide / All the doors are locked baby and I have you inside / You can yell and you can hit me / It just makes me more horny”
Yeah, somebody needs to get detectives Stabler and Benson up in here because we might have a predator on the loose. Seriously, I do not want this song following me down a dark alley. But at one time in my past, I remember this being one of my favorite Hall songs. Just goes to show you how contradictory our culture is about the message of the wrongness of sexual assault.
As defined by this anti-rape culture website:
“Rape culture includes jokes, TV, music, advertising, legal jargon, laws, words and imagery, that make violence against women and sexual coercion seem so normal that people believe that rape is inevitable. Rather than viewing the culture of rape as a problem to change, people in a rape culture think about the persistence of rape as ‘just the way things are.’”
Sort of how we indoctrinate women (since birth) on how not to get raped (including erroneous advice, which in some cases can run dangerously counterproductive to the realities of sexual assault) yet neglect to reinforce with the same level of tenacity the concept of “do not rape.” You know, like teaching folks that certain behavior, say like holding a yelling and screaming woman against her will, a la Hall in this song, is likely not an indication that this anonymous woman is looking for a little sexay time. In fact, as the song title suggests, she actually sounds pretty afraid.
We can say that it was just a sign of the times, that folks didn’t know better, however folks have been having this same conversation since Bing Crosby put a little something extra in Doris Day’s cocktail, while trying to convince her to stay the night because, Baby It’s Cold Outside. And that’s a damn holiday song that our grand folks were singing as they toasted egg nog around Christmas trees. Point is, sexual violence against women has long been normalized in society. And it is not just reflective in music. The website Racialious did an excellent job breaking down how we routinely paint problematic behavior in all forms of popular culture as okay, and even laudable or romantic. Basically in the world of popular culture, the accepted idea is that consent is erroneous. And that women, in particular, can always be convinced to say yes. You just have to be persistent and inventive.
