This is where I am right now: I don’t even want to hear SONGS by men. That is the extent to which I don’t want to hear male views and opinions right now. When I am on my morning walks, I will give a song by a man a brief chance—but such songs pretty much always turn out to be:
• “girl don’t you understand i just want to have sex with u”
• “I am so amazing, I will be legend, in a thousand years they will still be celebrating me because I am the greatest, I laugh mockingly at everyone who said I wouldn’t make it”
I am not here for it, not right now and I think it’s possible NEVER AGAIN.
I am still using the playlist Spotify created from the song Sledgehammer by Fifth Harmony, and MOST of the songs are by women. And also, the songs/singers tend to be rather upbeat and confident, which I am enjoying right now. But I found I was bothered by the songs in which upbeat, confident women plead with presumably mediocre men to consider dating them / staying with them. Then I had a sudden smack of realization: most of these songs do not use pronouns and do not say “boy”/”man.” It is in fact STARTLINGLY HETERONORMATIVE to assume that these upbeat confident women would waste their time on men! THESE SONGS MIGHT BE WRITTEN TO WOMEN!
I recommend listening to songs this way; it really gives a whole new tilt to things. She is not begging some dick in a stupid hat to please please please put down his guitar and/or video game controller and/or “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here” debate and pay attention to her! No! She is instead wooing an interesting, layered, kind, worthwhile WOMAN. Perhaps one who is considering running for office!
I like this! I have everything in iTunes, so I don’t think I can share playlists (or I don’t know how to if I can), but I have playlists for several different moods that are all woman artists – “Angry Women”, “Burn The Patriarchy”, “Women Love Songs”, “Positive/Uplifting”, “Songs to Sing Along With at Top Volume”. (I have…a lot of playlists.)
Now those are playlists I am very interested in hearing or seeing and trying to duplicate!
Yes, please share!
I am dying laughing and also so very delighted.
Have you listened to the album by The Highwomen? Amazing, feminist worldview songs—even with a love song to another woman. I can’t get enough of it.
Love this album.
HA! I love this.
I so highly recommend Dua Lipa’s album Future Nostalgia! There are only a couple of songs on the album that have pronouns at all, and one of them (“Boys Will Be Boys”) is specifically calling out the problematic socialization of boys. My girlfriend and I are always absolutely thrilled to find songs sung by girls that don’t include male pronouns, so that they can feel fully for us (so if anyone has any other suggestions please share)!!
“If She Ever Leaves Me” by The Highwomen might fit the bill for you and your girlfriend!
I was just commenting to a friend this week how my top stations on Pandora are all along the lines of “Angry Lady Music” or “Angry Lady Workout” .. or a few without Angry, but still like “Girl Power” or “Female Singer/Songwriter.” In other words… yes.
I also have a plain white tshirt that says in giant black block letters “I HAVE HEARD ENOUGH FROM OLD WHITE MEN” and I cannot tell you how much satisfaction I get these days when I wear it out and about (I mean, there’s not a lot of Outing and Abouting these days, but like… to the grocery store. Picking up a coffee from dunkin donuts. STILL. STILL.)
Early on in my coming-out process, when all I wanted to listen to/read about/watch was love stories between two women, I actually forgot that heterosexual couples existed and soon began hearing even mainstream-pop-song-probably-written-from-a-woman-to/about-a-man as being about that woman singing to her female lover. So… maybe that can happen to you? Haha
All the amens.
Just curious, do you know/see when people using The Old Reader Star or Like your posts?
Oh! No!
Oh, rats! I thought you might like to see it. I wonder if/how that info is supposed to get back to the author? Outside my sphere of knowledge, sorry. I often see people clicking Like (including me), and I wanted you to get that happy feedback.
Anyway, Like! Star! :)
You have worked your magic, because now I will IMAGINE people liking!
This made my afternoon “She is not begging some dick in a stupid hat to please please please put down his guitar and/or video game controller and/or “I’m just playing devil’s advocate here” debate and pay attention to her!” That is everything.
I find it really hard to be so anti-men when I am the mother of three sons. They are getting some of the backlash for things they did not do.
I don’t find it hard at all to make a distinction between “the individual boys and men we know and love in our lives” and MEN IN GENERAL. I am attempting to teach my sons that the answer is not “But I didn’t personally do that!! #NotAllMen!!!” when they hear about yet another terrible thing men have done / are doing, but instead to turn their minds to what they personally can do to stop their fellow men from doing those things, and how they can avoid participating in it themselves. Otherwise, we’d never question the terrible things men in general are doing, because of the men and baby boys we loved, and that seems…incorrect.
I love you.
Thank you, Swistle.
I JUST DID THIS WITH MY HUSBAND THE OTHER DAY!!!! “If it’s not something you do that this woman is angry with MEN about, why not push your fellow men to STOP DOING IT, instead of getting upset that you’re being lumped in with them?”
Very well said.
Yes! I can’t explain exactly how, but this reminds me a little of telling men to consider, “what if she were your wife or daughter?” concerning how they treat women. In the same way that “not all men!” misses the point, needing to see a woman as someone’s wife or daughter in order to treat her respectfully also misses the point.
Not to derail your excellent point, but same with white people and racism. Just because I PERSONALLY didn’t shoot someone/ own slaves/ say a slur, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take my share of accountability.
YES. And, like, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t TALK about the damage white people have done, because of worrying about how the white people we know and love might feel about belonging to that group!
Same. I guess unfortunately for Oldest he’s living in a time that is absolutely rich with men doing shitty things and other men not calling them to task on it. So we’ve had more conversations than he’d probably like about (1) why the behavior at issue is garbage, (2) why I expect him never to behave in a similar manner, and (3) he needs to call other men out if they are being horrible. I’m certain these are conversations no one had with my husband because people just did not talk about these things when he was growing up but I’ll be damned if Oldest doesn’t know better and at a bare minimum know he shouldn’t let crappy behavior just slide. He knows I want him never to be the kind of man that makes my blood boil.
Yesterday we were in the car and my 6yo daughter was singing along to a Heart song and my husband looked over and smiled and said… I can tell you listen to this with her a lot. (She has just reached the point where she can sing along.) And I was like, YES bc LADY ROCK. Unfortunately I think it was “Magic Man” but still. Listen to the guitar, girl!
You. are. the. BEST. thing. on the internet right now. “Some dick in a hat” is immediately being inserted into my lexicon.
May I suggest the Indigo Girls? They have been around forever (and just put out a new album!) and their original songwriting is hard to beat if you are in the mood for folk rock. Over the years they have put out some covers that really turn the tables. Hearing two queer women sing Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue (“She was working in a topless place/ And I stopped in for a beer”) comes across quite differently than hearing a man sing it. Other covers by the Indigo GIrls: Mrs Robinson (“Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes”), All Along the Watchtower, Clampdown (“We will train our blue-eyed men/ To be young believers”), Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.
Oh yes! The first time I heard the Indigo Girls sing “Tangled Up in Blue” — and I had never had any objection to Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” — they had me. That is totally a song from one woman to/about another woman, something I had not realized until I heard them sing it.
I’m wondering if you are wondering men-oh-pause. ;)
Entering. Entering men-oh-pause. Geeze.
YES to your whole post. And, this song gets a lot of play around my house. It’s by Christine Lavin, but let’s face it, Julia Murney’s delivery makes this the best version.
I just got my 14 year old daughter into Christine Lavin!
YAY!! I used to see her pretty much monthly at a little club in NYC. She is so awesome.
I have to admit I bought one of her albums for me, but my daughter uses music from our shared Family iTunes account and I was startled when she started telling me how much she adores this whole album – especially Fly on a Plane and Shopping Cart of Love. She’s now starting to try to get her friends to listen to it…
Uh, my husband agrees with me that men are cancelled for the foreseeable future, in music and otherwise.
I do the same thing with love songs and imagine that it’s from a parent to a child. They are way less cheesy/dumb that way.
The new album by The Chicks, particularly Julianna Calm Down, has been on heavy rotation for me lately. Also I was watching some of Melissa Etheridge’s concerts that she was doing on YouTube earlier this spring/summer and that got me back into her music.
Amanda Shires’ song Break Out the Champagne (“let’s go on with the sh*t show”) comes right after Julianna Calm Down on my walk playlist right now, then some Dar Williams, Pink, Ani Difranco, Robyn, Dessa (check out Fire Drills!) and more.
I should sign up for spotify!
Anyway, YES to songs by women, about women.
I’m feeling this when it comes to novels, articles and comedy. It’s nothing against men, I”m just exhausted of their voice being the dominant one. I know their opinions and I don’t need to hear them over and over anymore. There’s never any real surprises in their work for the most part.
Same. A couple of years ago I decided I’d had enough of reading books written by men. I mean some books by men are great, but I grew tired of most books by men not having any kind of even remotely reasonable handle on how women think/act/behave. And have also lost my taste for books about men in midlife crises or man-children. Have been trying to read mostly books by women and even if I don’t love all of them at least I don’t usually dislike them for writing about women in a way that is disconnected from my reality or for addressing once again the middle-aged professor who has grown tired of his wife and has a fling with his grad student or similar.
Love you Swistle. I have been doing this with books. Of the hundreds of books I’ve read over the last few years only a handful have been by men and even then usually just co-written. I read mostly YA and I am basically never feeling a male protagonist.
I have a month every year (March) when I listen to almost exclusively female artists, just to give myself a mental break.
Not a “song to women” category, but: one of my favorite breakup songs is the Corrs’ “I Never Loved You Anyway.” I remember when I first heard it, I was so very tired of the sad-and-sorrowful female singing of breakups genre. The Corrs’ singer conveys such joy in her freedom and recognition of the guy’s failings.
One of my favorites in that category is “Hell No” by Ingrid Michaelson. So cheerful!
This is very ’90s of me, but angry 90s songs by women help me so much in dealing with my personal 40+ years of dealing with male bullsh!t.
Sh!tlist – LZ
Violet – Hole
You Oughta Know – Alanis Morrisette
Vow – Garbage
Just a Girl – No Doubt
F#ck and Run – Liz Phair
Oh yes, Alanis has a new album too that I also love! I have listened to Ablaze so many times and I don’t even have kids.
I also came here to recommend Gaslighter by The Chicks. It is not a country album, if country is not your particular flavor.
Jolene!
https://www.cracked.com/article_28635_dolly-partons-jolene-works-as-stealth-lesbian-love-song.html
I haven’t read the comments, but: in Me and Bobby McGee the title character changes genders depending who is singing it. Everyone should just sub out “they” and not worry about it.
Also: You might not want to read it NOW, but LATER when things are LESS STRESSFUL: “Lock In” is a really interesting example of this. The main character has a could-be-gender-neutral name (Chris, I think?) and pronouns are never used. There are two versions of the audio book, one narrated each by a man and a woman. It was super interesting to see what everyone assumed when my book club read it last year (pre-pandemic).
Fiona Apple’s latest album “Fetch the Boltcutters” fits so well into this category.