# Dixie Chicks are now the Chicks **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 25, 2020, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023 "2020-06-25T18:16:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/41 "2020-06-26T19:33:08Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > She seemed to be missing the point that they’re the chicks and they’re calling themselves chicks and if it’s derogatory, they’re choosing to using the term against themselves. But, if “chicks” truly is a derogatory term (and I’m not convinced that it is), wouldn’t their using it to refer to themselves tend to legitimaize it and encourage others to use the term? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/42 "2020-06-26T20:37:19Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > You… do realize they are women, right? Is this like complaining that black people can use the N word? Like are people going up to the former members of N.W.A telling them how problematic their name is? Shouldn’t the same rule apply to people from Dixie saying that they are from Dixie? ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/43 "2020-06-26T20:42:05Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Like are people going up to the former members of N.W.A telling them how problematic their name is? N.W.A. is itself a euphemistic acronym. So no, I wouldn’t criticize them for that, any more than I would criticize a white person for saying “n-word”. > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Shouldn’t the same rule apply to people from Dixie saying that they are from Dixie? 👍 ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/44 "2020-06-26T21:23:25Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Shouldn’t the same rule apply to people from Dixie saying that they are from Dixie? Are you asserting that the Dixie Chicks changed their name due to pressure? Because it seems like to me they thought the name wasn’t appropriate anymore because it called to mind pre-slavery South in their minds and decided to change it themselves. I mean I live in the area which would be considered Dixie, and I’ve never heard anyone casually refer to it that way. I’ve heard The South or SEC County plenty though. ---
**Author:** ![ThisIsTheEnd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisistheend/32/4713_2.png) [@ThisIsTheEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisIsTheEnd)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/45 "2020-06-26T21:36:15Z")
They’re fucked. Chicks, nope, sexist Chick, nope, sexist Chic, already a band Chi, nope, cultural appropriation Ch, nope, too close to Christopher Columbus C, definitely not ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/46 "2020-06-26T21:45:45Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Of all the racist, oppressive, nasty things in this country that need to go, I personally don’t think the term “Dixie” is one of them. > > But it’s their band, not mine. They can name it whatever they want for whatever reasons they want. I’m sure they didn’t make this decision on a whim. > > I’d rather they go a little overboard trying to be thoughtful and compassionate, than go overboard trying to offend people like their political opponents do. I think part of it is due to the impression that Dixie calls into mind the antebellum South for a lot of people (including perhaps themselves) and that after their comments about W in the 2000s, they really don’t have a lot fans in the Southern country market. Not to mention that only one of them is from the former Confederacy anyways - Natalie Maines (from Texas). It’s not a bad way to rebrand to indicate that they are more pop than country now (as Taylor Swift did with the 1989 album). > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But, if “chicks” truly is a derogatory term (and I’m not convinced that it is), wouldn’t their using it to refer to themselves tend to legitimaize it and encourage others to use the term? Reclaiming a word used to demean has a long history, especially in music. Remember Meredith Brook’s famous song “Bitch”? ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/47 "2020-06-27T06:12:42Z")
just because they are women doesn’t mean they aren’t propagating the patriarchy that has controlled women since time immemorial. They are part of the problem, they need to be cancelled. They should give the rights to all their music away to black lesbian hip hop artists along with their millions of dollars, privileged white bitches, and also make sure they have abortions if they ever get pregnant with racist white babies. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/48 "2020-06-27T06:26:15Z")
If you had stopped about halfway through, you might have made the case that you were making a cogent argument. But then… wow. ---
**Author:** ![hostility](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hostility](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hostility)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/49 "2020-06-27T14:44:20Z")
Got it. Since I can’t actually refer to N.W.A. with the actual words, accordingly, since I’m not a C\*\*\*\* I will hereafter refer to these gals as The C. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/50 "2020-06-27T14:54:37Z")
Let’s welcome hostility to our community! ---
**Author:** ![hostility](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hostility](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hostility)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/51 "2020-06-27T15:16:05Z")
Well, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/52 "2020-06-27T15:18:13Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > "We’re not going to use the word in our name with racist connotations anymore! From now on, we’re only using the sexist word as the name of our band!’ It’s generally not considered sexist if women refer to themselves that way. It’s reclaiming the term. My response is the same as for Lady A. I’m fine with granting them this little fiction that they now actually care about the racist connotations. It’s better to encourage this sort of thing that discourage it. The more this happens, the more clear it is that our society won’t accept this glorification of the Confederacy and the racist attitudes that go along with it. Plus, hey, they were willing to go against the Iraqi War when few others in pop culture (let along Country Western culture) would, and I think they still deserve props for that. ---
**Author:** ![Dadtheinhaler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dadtheinhaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dadtheinhaler)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/53 "2020-06-27T16:25:37Z")
They could have changed it to Chicks with Dix then. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/54 "2020-06-27T19:47:03Z")
For a short time they went by Dixie Chicken after the song but they changed it because people thought it was food, not a band. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ea924/32.png) [@Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Conrad_Shadowdale)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/55 "2020-06-27T22:47:52Z")
There is a song, by Little Feat, called “Dixie Chicken,” and there is a bar in Texas named after it. The song is a great boogie-woogie song about a fella in Memphis and is an ode to a gal. Presumably, the DC’s were hatched in Dallas and named their band after one or the other. Dallas has a huge population of Texas A&M graduates and their original fan base was full of Aggies, so the name was good marketing. I have their original CD (remember those?) “Thank Heavens for Dale Evans.” ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/56 "2020-06-27T23:16:32Z")
> [@Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](#): > > There is a song, by Little Feat, called “Dixie Chicken,” and there is a bar in Texas named after it. The song is a great boogie-woogie song about a fella in Memphis and is an ode to a gal. > > Presumably, the DC’s were hatched in Dallas and named their band after one or the other. I’ve always heard that they were named after the song. It’s interesting to note that in the song the women – who apparently is extremely well known by the menfolk in the area – refers to herself as a “Tennessee Lamb”, and it is the male singer who she calls a “Dixie Chicken”. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/yaHEfJApEVM/maxresdefault.jpg "Dixie Chicken") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaHEfJApEVM) ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/57 "2020-06-28T00:55:36Z")
> [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](#): > > These are very strange and troubling times. Some people are going to go overboard in their attempts to not offend. I’ve got no real problem with that. Things will settle down. The Russian Revisionist History thing is getting harder and harder and harder to stomach. Do I detest the 400-year-long history of violent subjugation? I do. No arguments in there anywhere, no qualifiers. What a nightmare fucking mess. But- as we recently saw when an [Alaska school district went overboard banning books](https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/us/alaska-school-board-books-remove-vote-rescinded/index.html), one CAN get a bit heavy-handed. Richard Pryor used the “N” Word in the title of several LP’s of live shows. Are we to erase this body of work, destroy every single recording- and publicly shame anyone who might have one standing around on the shelf in amongst Mom and Dad’s LP collections? Mr. Pryor- a stunningly honest writer and performer without whom Chris Rock ( to mention but one ) would have zero career- should not have his words or titles censored. Or suppressed. Or burned. Or destroyed. And so on. Funny. Read - REALLY READ- the phrase **Zero Tolerance**. That’s some UnAmerican shit right there. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/58 "2020-06-28T02:27:48Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > But- as we recently saw when an [Alaska school district went overboard banning books](https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/us/alaska-school-board-books-remove-vote-rescinded/index.html), one CAN get a bit heavy-handed. The School District removing books from its high school circuulum is not the same thing as “banning books” - they weren’t even removed from the high school library! Hell, they even removed a Maya Angelou book because it was “anti-white”. It does not seem this had anything to do with trying not to be insensitive to black people. I mean, it appears you are the one wth the overreaction here. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/59 "2020-06-29T18:06:55Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Richard Pryor used the “N” Word in the title of several LP’s of live shows. Are we to erase this body of work, destroy every single recording- and publicly shame anyone who might have one standing around on the shelf in amongst Mom and Dad’s LP collections? > > Mr. Pryor- a stunningly honest writer and performer without whom Chris Rock ( to mention but one ) would have zero career- should not have his words or titles censored. Or suppressed. Or burned. Or destroyed. Well, no. Those are all things you are coming up with. What might happen is that, when discussed publicly, those titles might have that one word censored. When the specials are shown publicly, like on TV or streaming, they might wind up with that one word censored. And I can’t see why that’s a big deal, when people have no problem with that happening with words like “fuck,” “shit,” etc. No one ever says bleeping out “motherfucker” by Samuel Jackson is altering history. I also would foresee that there would also be versions that actually use the word, but would have disclaimers, like in those collections of _Tom and Jerry_ shorts. They could also offer different audio versions, allowing the owner/viewer to choose. Nothing will happen to that which is in people’s private collections–though people may decide not to prominently display them when company comes over. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023/60 "2020-06-29T18:29:16Z")
> [@Dadtheinhaler](#): > > They could have changed it to Chicks with Dix then. That’s may be the name of a male Dixie Chicks cover band (albeit spelled differently). Clever, but not as clever as the all-non-cismale Sisters of Mercy cover band called Misters of Circe. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dixie-chicks-are-now-the-chicks/913023.md?page=4)