It’s still rape if the woman is pressuring and/or drugging the man.
Ah, the time-honored debate tactic of “Hey, look over there!”
I agree. I honestly don’t know how people take offense so easily nowadays.
There’s a difference between “taking offense” and pointing out that some stuff we’ve always found acceptable maybe needs revisiting. I don’t think this song is about date rape – I agree that it’s coy and flirty and wholly consensual. I don’t think it needs to be banned or revised or tarred and feathered. But I do think that having a conversation about it has some value. The fact is, then and now, a lot of women protest actual unwanted advances in exactly the same manner, and a lot of men did and do continue to pressure because they assume she’s being coy and really does want it. Pointing that out is not a bad thing.
Whenever the topic of “OMG PC HAS GONE TOO FAR EVERYTHING OFFENDS YOU WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS PANTIES BUNCH BLAH BLAH” comes up, I always want to know – is there anything that does offend you? Any joke or term or phrase at all that you can see is legitimately hurtful or offensive or damaging to someone? Because for anything you can think of that you wish wasn’t normalized or are grateful has been made unacceptable, there’s someone out there who thinks (or at one time would have thought) that you’re a whiny pussy who just can’t take a joke.
If your think tank publishes its policy briefs in electronic format, would you mind providing the links? Thanks in advance.
Offhand, not really.
I would point out that a good lesson is to actually say “No” instead of “Tee-hee, what would my aunt say? Here, refill my drink while I have a smoke…”
As pointed out, she never actually says that she wants to go.
Either you have no imagination, or are totally insensitive and have no empathy. And are living under a rock.
And you need to lighten up.
Yes, that would be great, and it’s through conversations like this one about changing social conventions that women have started to feel confident that they can do that without ending up accused of being a prude, a tease, or a bitch. It’s a sad truth that a lot of women are terrified at the thought of not being seen as “nice”.
Which really has nothing much to do with the song. I mean, I can pretend it’s about the man desperately trying to save the woman’s life as she wanders outside of Ice Station Zebra and in fact freezes to deaths but… that’s not what it’s about.
It is, in fact, about two people mutually and consensually flirting on a winter’s night. Which is a healthy, fun and harmless thing for two adults to do. True in 1944 and true in 2016.
Really?
You are honestly a-ok with all racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes? You don’t see how a joke about, for example, Mexicans being lazy can have a real-world impact on the lives of actual humans? Are you okay with jokes about gay men all being pedophiles, even if the perpetuation of that stereotype cost actual men jobs working with children or even the right to see their own children? You’d think it was okay if you saw this ad on a billboard?
You (meaning the generic “you”, as in “we” or “anybody”) can’t have it both ways. If there is an environment in which it not socially OK for women to opt in for sexual behavior, the only avenue by which they can nevertheless opt in for sexual behavior is going to resemble one in which they have no choice in the matter.
And if you do a wink-and-nod to that and say that, well, THAT’S perfectly fine, we are all savvy to the subtext and we’re hip to the game, you’re endorsing the grey area in which it is not always clear, either to observers or participants, whether you’ve got something cute or something genuinely coercive going on.
I agree.
I agree. It’s actually a fairly progressive song for it’s time.
The point is, taken out of historical context, the song is jarring today, and that makes some people (especially some people who have experienced date rape) uncomfortable. You can’t just say “get over it” or “that’s not what the song means” because we’re listening to it in 2016 context, not 1944 context.
Personally, I like the song. I get the context. I sing along when it comes on. I see the substitution of PC lyrics as being tongue-in-cheek. But I also have a bit of sympathy for people who don’t think it’s that cute: the song doesn’t come with a sociological treatise on the cultural revolution of attitudes toward of non-marital sex and female empowerment in the World War II era.
He’ll never get it.
He doesn’t even get that I’m not offended by the song at all. I just don’t like it, think it’s coy and stupid, and think it sends a bad message.
Your linked add, though. Now *that *offends me!
But the thing is, everything happening in the song is innocent today, just as it was in 1944. People flirt. Women act coy, not because they’re afraid but because they’re having fun with it. This is okay. This is stuff that many healthy adults do as part of the mating game.
If someone gets offended by the end of Revenge of the Nerds where the guy tricks the cheerleader into having sex with him because he’s wearing a helmet and she thinks it’s her boyfriend then fine. That was, in fact, rape. And someone can defend the movie as a whole by saying “Yeah, but at the time no one really cared” and placing it in a cultural context but you can’t defend the act itself. But there is no malicious act occurring in this song. It’s a song about flirting. So when someone tries to shoehorn “But in TODAY’S parlance, that’s date rape…” they’re just wrong. They’re taking two people mutually flirting and trying to slam it for something it never was and still isn’t today. In today’s context, it’s STILL two people flirting.
The song is neither charming nor offensive, in my opinion. It hasn’t aged well, and there’s nothing wrong with pointing that out by modernizing the lyrics.
Perhaps even more pertinently, she’s a woman in 1936, when staying overnight with a man you weren’t married to was still kind of scandalous.
There’s therefore a feminist subtext to the song, if you want; the woman clearly WANTS to stay and have sex, but she is worried largely about the social opprobrium she’ll get. Some of her lines include:
My sister will be suspicious
My brother will be there at the door
My maiden aunt’s mind is vicious
…
There’s bound to be talk tomorrow
At least there’ll be plenty implied
She’s not worried about the guy. She wants him. But she lives in a time and place when women aren’t allowed to make that decision. The song, coyly, is admitting to the listener, in lyrics safe for the time, that women DO want sex, that they want to stay overnight and have fun with men.
Not a single person here is saying that the song is not about two people flirting. Nobody is saying that it is about rape. Everyone agrees that it is a song about two adults who want to have sex with each other. All that’s being said is that coyly declining sex that you want as part of flirting can (and has) led to confusion in situations when a woman is actually declining sex that she does not want, and that acknowledging that kinda dangerous undertone is how society stops normalizing things that are kinda dangerous.
The title of the thread asks if it’s “date rapey” :rolleyes:
You know what ELSE happens when two people coyly flirt? They have fun. Surprisingly, that’s actually the usual result.
So, again, if you want to talk about the dangers of flirting, maybe pick a song that actually portrays the dangers of flirting instead of one that portrays two people having a pleasant evening and going on about how it normalizes danger.