It’s time to bring an end to the Rape Anthem Masquerading As Christmas Carol
Hi there! Former English nerd/teacher here. Also a big fan of jazz of the 30s and 40s.
So. Here’s the thing. Given a cursory glance and applying today’s worldview to the song, yes, you’re right, it absolutely *sounds* like a rape anthem.
BUT! Let’s look closer!
“Hey what’s in this drink” was a stock joke at the time, and the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.
See, this woman is staying late, unchaperoned, at a dude’s house. In the 1940’s, that’s the kind of thing Good Girls aren’t supposed to do — and she wants people to think she’s a good girl. The woman in the song says outright, multiple times, that what other people will think of her staying is what she’s really concerned about: “the neighbors might think,” “my maiden aunt’s mind is vicious,” “there’s bound to be talk tomorrow.” But she’s having a really good time, and she wants to stay, and so she is excusing her uncharacteristically bold behavior (either to the guy or to herself) by blaming it on the drink — unaware that the drink is actually really weak, maybe not even alcoholic at all. That’s the joke. That is the standard joke that’s going on when a woman in media from the early-to-mid 20th century says “hey, what’s in this drink?” It is not a joke about how she’s drunk and about to be raped. It’s a joke about how she’s perfectly sober and about to have awesome consensual sex and use the drink for plausible deniability because she’s living in a society where women aren’t supposed to have sexual agency.
Basically, the song only makes sense in the context of a society in which women are expected to reject men’s advances whether they actually want to or not, and therefore it’s normal and expected for a lady’s gentleman companion to pressure her despite her protests, because he knows she would have to say that whether or not she meant it, and if she really wants to stay she won’t be able to justify doing so unless he offers her an excuse other than “I’m staying because I want to.” (That’s the main theme of the man’s lines in the song, suggesting excuses she can use when people ask later why she spent the night at his house: it was so cold out, there were no cabs available, he simply insisted because he was concerned about my safety in such awful weather, it was perfectly innocent and definitely not about sex at all!) In this particular case, he’s pretty clearly right, because the woman has a voice, and she’s using it to give all the culturally-understood signals that she actually does want to stay but can’t say so. She states explicitly that she’s resisting because she’s supposed to, not because she wants to: “I ought to say no no no…” She states explicitly that she’s just putting up a token resistance so she’ll be able to claim later that she did what’s expected of a decent woman in this situation: “at least I’m gonna say that I tried.” And at the end of the song they’re singing together, in harmony, because they’re both on the same page and they have been all along.
So it’s not actually a song about rape – in fact it’s a song about a woman finding a way to exercise sexual agency in a patriarchal society designed to stop her from doing so. But it’s also, at the same time, one of the best illustrations of rape culture that pop culture has ever produced. It’s a song about a society where women aren’t allowed to say yes…which happens to mean it’s also a society where women don’t have a clear and unambiguous way to say no.
so slavery is a valid solution to you but I’m the bad guy.
cool
There’s also a side helping of “we can use immigration to keep the plebs wages low and keep our corporate overlords happy”.
The Roman Empire failed, anon.
The problem has never been that citizens are unwilling to do unpleasant jobs. The problem is that corporations want to avoid paying decent wages or giving any kind of benefits, and citizens know their rights but people who are here illegally can’t complain when you pay them fifty cents an hour for 12 hours shifts and infect them with various things for the lulz.
The internet has a really bad habit of pushing people they don’t like to breaking point, and then absolving themselves of guilt by saying “oh, they brought it on themselves, so it was justified”.
Users: Hey could you please do something about the porn spam that’s been taking over our posts, the actual Nazis and pedophiles roaming freely, and the literal fucking CHILD PORN EPIDEMIC???
Tumblr: Lmao look at these cutesy messages that pop up when an error happens 😄😄😄 also we’re going to be deleting some blogs at random because fuck you
App stores: Um yeah so you’ve got a lot of fucking spam and pedos on your site and you didn’t really do anything about it so we don’t want host your app any more
Tumblr: … did we mention the Russian hackers made us do it?
…if you have had ANY unprotected physical contact with a bat: You need to go get rabies shots or catch the bat (if you can safely do so) so it can be tested for rabies.
In the US bats are the most likely animal to give you rabies. A rabid bat will mindlessly bite anything it touches and their teeth are so small that many people will not notice the bites. Unless you have had a clear view of the bat the entire time and are 100000% sure it didn’t even nick you with its teeth then you should get the shots.
…if there is a bat in your house: If you did not see the bat enter and have not been observing it the entire time it was in your house you may have to go get rabies shots or catch the bat (again, only if you can do so without exposing yourself to further risk) so it can be tested.
This is especially true if you wake up and a bat is in your room (it could have bitten you while you were asleep) or if the bat has been in a room with a child or incapacitated adult (who may not be able to tell you they were bitten or notice it).
There was a tragic case of a boy who woke up with a bat in his room, shooed it out without touching it, and thought nothing of it. Later he died of rabies because the bat had bitten him in his sleep without him knowing.
RABIES IS INCURABLE ONCE YOU SHOW SYMPTOMS. If there is ever ANY question whether you may have been exposed to a rabid animal you need to go get the rabies vaccine IMMEDIATELY before the virus is able to spread inside your body.
The rabies vaccine is no longer painful stomach shots, it is now a series of normal shots in the arm over the course of several days. There is no reason to put this off if there is ANY chance you could have been exposed. Rabies is not something to mess around with. Once you show symptoms you are pretty much guaranteed an awful death within days.
Bringing this back because a kid in Florida recently died because his parents didn’t know this information and waited to take him to the hospital.
Bats are wonderful bug-eating friends and important parts of our ecosystems but they are not for touching. Stay safe!
Unfortunately bringing this post around again due to another tragic and entirely preventable rabies death in the US.
The man never even knew he had been bitten; at first everyone (doctor included) thought his stiff and achy neck was due to a pulled muscle until the worse symptoms started to show up. His wife said they would wake up with bats walking on their bed and that they regularly removed the bats from their home with their bare hands.
Always seek medical attention for any possible unprotected contact with a bat. Rabies is 99.99% fatal once you show symptoms. It is not worth the risk.
Also Nipah virus, another deadly disease, is ALSO caused by bats
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