Blurred Lines = Rape Anthem

I know I'm not the first person to catch on to this, but how is it that Blurred Lines - a song which is essentially about a man wanting to have sex with women who he assumes want him - is such a popular track?

It might as well be the anthem of the rapist. In years to come I suspect it will be.

In fact, here's a link to an article where the lyrics are compared directly to the very powerful images from Project Unbreakable (a site where sexual assault victims write & hold up words their abusers used during their rape).

From the Mouths of Rapists: The Lyrics of Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’

What gets me about this is the unbelievable level of ignorance from the world in general.

Let's start with the writers. Do they really believe this abusive dross they are writing?  Does they really think it is appropriate to effectively boast that they like to have sex with women who seem unwilling but  actually want sex?

Then on to the producers. I know that in our corporate capitalist world there are no morals where making a profit is concerned, but pushing this onto radio & TV stations across the world when it is clearly pretty appalling content is despicable.

Thirdly, the radio stations themselves.  My workplace has a radio on quietly in the background, and in 1 day I heard the song play 4 times on one of our local stations, so I am quite sure it is being played at least as much on the national stations and broadcasting its horrific, not-even-morally-ambiguous message at anyone within hearing range of a radio, including an awful lot of impressionable youngster.

But the thing that annoys me the most - the people make me the angriest about this song's success - are the people who have bought it, who sing it without thinking about it, who bop away to it quite happily as they don't actually listen to what its about.  It is a case of brutal levels of ignorance giving appalling messages a platform.

I actually brought this up in my office full of women the other day, and of the 4 I managed to involve in conversation, 3 of them really liked it and none of them had any clue about the lyrics.  When I pointed out the lyrics and what it seems to be about, they were all horrified and asking how it gets on the radio. Because of people like you!!!

It makes me sad and angry that as a society we seem to actually encourage this behaviour and language, and yet when as a country we stood up to say NO to Simon Cowell and the X-Factor culture and made Killing in the Name Christmas No 1, many radio stations refused to play it as it had swearing in it.

So, that's  a public protest against domination of the music industry by Cowell land his cronies banned for swearing, but a sexually aggressive song passively promoting rape OK'ed by by society in general and played everywhere.

And I do mean everywhere. At this moment in time, its pretty much the biggest song in the world. It has been no 1 in over 40 countries and has been at no 1 in USA longer than any other song this year.

Isn't that sad?  Really, really sad?

I don't know if there's anything I can do about it other than help spread awareness, but I'm really pleased that not everyone in the world is just passively accepting this sexist bullshit. (see the link below)

Universities ban Blurred Lines on campuses around UK