I was in the car with my siblings and stepmom, on our way back home after a long day in the car to watch my sister play basketball and pick them up from their school, 3 hours away. That means I was in the car for 6 hours, which also means we listened to a lot of music. At one point, I heard a country song come on the radio that I could tell had a strong feminist message to it. That song was also being sung by a man.
Lyrics to "Female" by Keith Urban:
"When you hear somebody say somebody hits like a girl
How does that hit you?
Is that such a bad thing?
When you hear a song that they play saying you run the world
Do you believe it?
Will you live to see it?
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover
Healer, broken halo, mother
Nature, fire, suit of armor
Soul survivor, holy water
Secret-keeper, fortune teller
Virgin Mary, scarlet letter
Technicolor, river wild
Baby girl, woman child
Female
When somebody laughs and implies that she asked for it
Just 'cause she was wearin' a skirt
Oh, is that how that works?
When somebody talks about how it was Adam first
Does that make Eve second best
Or did He save the best for last?
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover
Healer, broken halo, mother
Nature, fire, suit of armor
Soul survivor, holy water
Secret-keeper, fortune teller
Virgin Mary, scarlet letter
Technicolor, river wild
Baby girl, woman child
Female
Yeah, female
She's the heart of life
She's the dreamer's dream
She's the hands of time
She's the queen of kings
Sister, shoulder, daughter, lover
Healer, broken halo, mother
Nature, fire, suit of armor
Soul survivor, holy water
Secret-keeper, fortune teller
Virgin Mary, scarlet letter
Technicolor, river wild
Baby girl, woman child
Female
Mhm, female"
I was quite surprised because I have never heard a country song with such an evident social justice message to it. It's not super complicated, or angry like the songs from the Bikini Girls were. It's really just posing questions, making you think, making people think about how we treat woman today.
When I mentioned that song to some fellow feminists and when I looked it up online, I got a rather negative response. People are hating the song because it is sung by a man and they feel that women should be telling their own story, just like LGBTQ+ people should be telling theirs, or black people should tell theirs and so on. I've never thought that way. To me, I think that the more people who care about the situation and use their platform to advocate, the better. I believe that if a man wants to stand up and say that women should be treated equal to him and the other men in the world, then we should be grateful. We (women) aren't treated equally in many instances, that is something that many people agree on. That, to me, also means that there are going to be people (the same people who treat us as less than) who aren't going to listen to us advocating for ourselves. Those people are more likely to listen to a man advocating for us. I'm not saying that we stop advocating for ourselves. I am saying that we should be appreciative of all who advocate on our behalf.
Just like, as a white person, I will continue to push acceptance on the people that I know who are racist, because they aren't going to listen to the black people. As a straight person, I will advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, because homophobes and transphobes aren't going to listen to them. As a Christian, I will continue to advocate for tolerance and acceptance of people of different religions because there are many people who look at others who practice different religions as less than and they aren't going to listen to them.
Thank you, Keith Urban, for using your platform to advocate for feminism in a way that you thought could be effective. Thank you for not demeaning us while doing it.
