I’m going to step into a minefield here, but as usual I don’t really give a fuck.

This is a good example of taking something out of its cultural context.

The song does sound rape-y today – to us. And I agree with Amanda that any reason a woman says no is a good reason.

However, it was widely understood at the time the song was released (as a commenter also points out) that the woman in the piece was saying “no” but meaning yes.

Again – please read this carefully (and before you comment, read it again) – this song existed in a completely different cultural context, where many of our assumptions were not present, and where many completely different ones were present.

Here’s how we hear the song today: the woman is about to be raped, OMG!

Here’s how people in 1943 (accurately) heard and understood the song: the woman really, really wants to fuck and is looking for every excuse imaginable to do so without social penalty. Yep, even the part about, “Hey, what’s in this drink?” At the time, being “drunk” (aka “not really drunk”) was seen as valid excuse for all sorts of allegedly licentious behavior on the part of a woman, and women were permitted socially to use that as a reason for why they’d “fallen.”

If you listen to the original and how it is sung this is completely, completely clear. It would take a damn idiot to think anything else. But alas, there are many of those around.

I am surprised when even “educated” people like Amanda Marcotte cannot accurately evaluate historical context and understand how much that can change over time.

Again, I am not endorsing the song. Speaking as a person today, I listen to this song and cringe. But then I recognize that I am a creature of my time, so of course I do. Decent people today if there is even a hint of reluctance stop immediately. But again – understand just how much cultural context has changed.

Can people not step outside of themselves for one moment in time? Is that just not possible? I guess not.

If people like Marcotte and 90% of the commenters cannot do this, what fucking good is all this education I’ve been told is paramount? For most people, it appears to not do even one little bit of good.

It’d be interesting to come back to earth in 50 million years after humans are long extinct and life in all its diversity has had some chance to recover.

What would be here then? Would cats and dogs, being so widespread now, evolve into myriad forms on every continent to fill ecological niches where we’ve caused animals to go extinct?

Would avians one again evolve fill ecological niches as they did after the dinosaur extinction 65 million years ago?

Maybe oxygen would increase greatly  due to lack of human influence and we’d have dragonflies with meter-long wingspans once more.

I could not agree more with Daisy here. This often bothers me, that we hold people who lived 50, 100, 200 years ago to the same standards we hold people to today – despite the fact that they grew up in vastly different social milieus.

I think a lot of you young folks have NO IDEA what we grew up with in the past, especially if we came from the Midwest or South.  I imagine those of you growing up with highly educated parents or on the coasts, didn’t have to deal with backward rednecks (I am a redneck myself, so I am permitted to use this word), but I did, and John Lennon did.  We were products of our place and time.  If you do not understand the influence of socialization on humans and culture, your radicalism and organizing efforts will suffer, so please get a clue.

As most of you already know, I also grew up a redneck, doing redneck things – fishing, hunting, roaming around with BB guns and regular guns. I am in many ways still a redneck and a Southerner and always will be one, no matter my political beliefs, my support of feminism, etc.

A person can do one of two things with their past: pretend it doesn’t exist, and suffer from that mental denial as the past never really goes away – not really – or they can interrogate it and integrate the best parts of it into life and attempt to eliminate the most negative bits.

Saying that someone who lived in 1700 anywhere in Europe was racist? Good job, fucking genius, as nearly anyone alive in Europe then was racist. Congratulations on your insight.

That said, it doesn’t invalidate their contributions, their thoughts or their existence. Obviously. Applying social standards and the trends of today to someone born long ago is historical obliviousness.

Mainly I just can’t take these leftist “purity balls” were you demonstrate you are into all the latest chic radicalism while willfully ignoring anything that will actually progress the world.

Activism as performance art and cliquish glee club is some bullshit, is all I’m saying.