In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

24 thoughts on Against Liberation

  5. tinfoil hattie: They’re country songs.Just sayin’.  

    Yea, because rock (as well as pretty much every other kind of artistic expression) is never misogynistic. But then, I guess country music is just for those blue collar, rural hicks anyway.

  7. Download fail (for now–crummy Comcast), but I look forward to songs that would do Bob Roberts proud.

  9. Tinfoil, no one said you did. I certainly don’t care if you do or not. But dismissing country music like that is often shorthand for dismissing people who like it and identify with it. Much like when white people say, “Well no wonder it sucks. It is rap after all” would do the same. Time to get over yourself, I’m afraid.

  10. Jeff: “Don’t liberate me. Please dominate me.” Wow.  

    My thoughts exactly. My mouth was agape throughout the whole thing, but when I heard that, I nearly peed.

  11. I found a solution to this little feud. How about we agree that most music on the radio sucks. There, that includes rap and country. lol.

    In seriousness though, country music has always contained nationalistic, conservative values. Yes there are exceptions, and no doubt someone will snap back with a full list of them. But, especially if you look at the county billboards, whats popular on the radio, country music really is geared towards the rural poor/working class whites. That is the imagery Toby Keith and others are always trying to project: the rugged individual, the real Americans; scooping up horse shit and shooting pool. Country ladies aren’t much better, but instead of glorify traditional masculinity, they glorify femininity and sing about interpersonal relationship drama. If thats what you enjoy listening to then have fun.

    The point is, listening to these songs didn’t really surprise me. These singers were saying things that I still hear today. Like the one song by a man who sings that womens’ liberation makes him less free because now he has to drive the kids to school. Or the song where the guy is singing about how easy women have it, staying at home and only having to cook and clean. I think the songs are fascinating in how honestly they depict the angst and spite and to some degree jealousy the men felt towards women. I still pick up these same vibes from the conservative men that I speak to today.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruNrdmjcNTc

  12. One clarification.

    I know many people listen to country music. Urban, suburban or otherwise, and that people of various genders, race’s and so forth may enjoy it. My point was that country music is geared towards the self-image of the rugged rural individual. It seeks to provoke a sense of nostalgia, patriotism and glorification of country living.

  13. Don’t let those stereotypes hit you too hard on the ass haley.
    You do realize that women’s protest songs (protest songs by women, not about them by men) started to hit the main stream in large part thanks to country right? Or that the biggest uproar over music in recent years was thanks to 3 (top 40, mainstream) female country singers who called out Bush?

    Look I’m not even that huge a fan of country but saying that [X] genre of music is 95% [Y], about any genre of music is just stupid.

  14. haley:
    In seriousness though, country music has always contained nationalistic, conservative values. Yes there are exceptions, and no doubt someone will snap back with a full list of them. But, especially if you look at the county billboards, whats popular on the radio, country music really isgeared towards the rural poor/working class whites. That is the imagery Toby Keith and others are always trying to project: the rugged individual, the real Americans; scooping up horse shit and shooting pool. Country ladies aren’t much better,but instead of glorify traditional masculinity, they glorify femininity and sing about interpersonal relationship drama.If thats what you enjoy listening to then have fun.

    So…you only listen to music whose politics you agree with? As someone who lives in a very rural area, I do have a certain fondness for country music, though I prefer ‘old’ country music and I agree that radio music mostly isn’t good.

    Those ‘protest’ songs, besides being politically atrocious, are just not pleasing to the ear. Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, etc., probably aren’t the most politically conscious, but their music has more legitimacy than those ‘protest’ songs — and more legitimacy, too, than most of what is played on ‘country’ radio today.

    And at least some country musicians like successful women!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2x0fMszj58
    (I post that song at least partly tongue-in-cheek. And also, I prefer Willie Nelson’s version; it has more jump to it. Alas, there are no good recordings of Nelson’s renditions on YouTube.)

    My point was that country music is geared towards the self-image of the rugged rural individual. It seeks to provoke a sense of nostalgia, patriotism and glorification of country living.

    The irony being that most country music today is not very rural in its sound or origin.

  15. I have to side with groggette on this one. Yes, many of us have been guilty of making some kind of “Hurr hurr, what do you expect when you listen to [genre I don’t like]?” jokes, but generalizing about any music just begs for its devotees to come up with valid counter-examples.

    By the way, Haley, given how much of the country still lives in the country, calling country music nostalgic just because it glorifies country living isn’t super accurate. I ran up against a similar misconception recently when a therapist was waxing all poetic about how people used to use candles and live by the seasons–which is, in fact, exactly how much of my family still lives. I have a feeling you mean more the mythology of the gold rush/Wyatt Earp/John Wayne West, which certainly gets referenced in contemporary country still, but “country living” is alive and well.

  17. But, especially if you look at the county billboards, whats popular on the radio, country music really is geared towards the rural poor/working class whites.

    Actually, it’s geared to white rural/suburban people of all income levels. The notion that wealthy people living in McMansions aren’t the ones snapping up country albums is wrong.

    Country is openly and aggressively more conservative as a genre, in no small part because people who reject conservatism but embrace the potential in the music are often smacked down. A lot of country musicians are liberal, but if they address politics in their music at all, those songs often get banned from country radio.

  18. By the way, Haley, given how much of the country still lives in the country, calling country music nostalgic just because it glorifies country living isn’t super accurate.

    This is unfair. Most fans of country aren’t actually living small town rural lives, though many often convince themselves they are. On the contrary, I’ve found that country western is just as wildly popular in white-dominated suburbia as it ever was in the actually rural town I grew up in. Haley gets some stuff wrong, but it is true to a lot of country western trades in nostalgia for a lifestyle that maybe never existed to the extent that it’s glorified in country western. Most men in cowboy hats =/ cowboys.

  19. “Feminists don’t have a sense of humor
    Feminists just want to be alone
    Feminists spread vicious lies and rumor
    They have a tumor on their funnybone”

    – Nellie McKay (not a country singer)

  20. Amanda, what I was trying to get across is that equating nostalgia and country living, without specifying a mythological country lifestyle, is inaccurate; I don’t think you and I disagree on the kind of mythology a lot of country music (not to mention literature and cinema about the American west in particular) perpetuates.

  21. Lol, I just turned on CMT to watch the top 20 songs/videos to confirm I haven’t lost my mind. So yeah, the whole idea that country music glorifies country life is sort of ridiculous. That’s a minor stand in country music. Other than the focus on the military and military families, country is nearly indistinguishable from pop in content these days. Love, sex, cars, breaking up, and alcohol. Sexist, definitely. Heterosexist, no question.

    The differences are arrangement like the ubitutious inclusion of a single fiddle/violin not its reflectiveness of the kyriarchy.

    Also consider one of the first songs to advocate marriage equality was a country song: We Shall Be Free.

  22. I mean no ill-will, my writing is such that I could make a love-letter sound hostile.

    I guess my perspective was formed by my experience as a youth growing up in a country town of 800 people. I know that country music was above all else, what my parents and fellow towns people most identified with. Which doesn’t surprise me. I think it is a fair statement to say that country music is meant to appeal to the idea of rural living, just like rap music appeals to Urban living. The genres are very different and for sociological reasons. Both may sing about love, war, drugs, the first kiss, everday life, but rap is going to provide one perspective of everyday life and appeal to one group, just as country will provide another. I don’t think that is an unfair observation.

    I know there are people living Chicago who listen to country. Or people who have never stepped foot on a farm who identify with the music. I know many of the Country Stars are millionaires and probably don’t shovel horse poop. I get it.

    But I think it would difficult to honestly say that Country music doesn’t seek to provoke imagery of Americana and patriotism. Utah Phillips was a country singer and he sang about really progressive things. I don’t hear much progressive ideas coming from the top-10 country charts. That doesn’t surprise me considering the target audience that most country music is written for.

    Yes, the same thing can be said to much extent about rap and rock on the radio. The artists who get air-time are usually not the ones trying to challenge the status quo. At least these day, the late 60’s and early 70’s had a much more radical culture. So if you are just seeking to listen to music for entertainment, ok. But the point of this blog post was that those songs HAD political and social messages/commentary. Which is why I made a political/social response to them.

    We shouldn’t become defensive in being honest about demographic differences, even if those differences sometime align with stereotypes. There are strong political and social differences between groups in rural and suburban areas versus those in Urban areas. You can see those differences reflected in the area’s elections, schools, stores, transit, art and yes music.

    Thats a more coherent summery of what I was saying.People may still disagree, but hopefully I didn’t sound so hostel this time.

  23. Hi haley- Sounds like you and I probably had similar youths in some ways. (I don’t actually know the population where I grew up, since it wasn’t incorporated and sprawled a lot–my folks have since relocated to a town of 360.)

    I don’t disagree with any of what you posted the second time around–as I said in my reply to Amanda, I only took issue with the idea that country living = nostalgia. And that was itself for very personal reasons–I get really irritated when folks of my demographic now think things like homemade preserves and candles are trendy, for instance.

  24. It may just be that I don’t listen to much currently popular music, but I do think country is more topical than most genres. Pop songs are often about heartbreak, but country is more likely to get down to the specifics of divorce, custody, child support, etc. So it doesn’t surprise me that country has songs talking about the women’s movement specifically.

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