Country star Chris Janson has a song climbing the charts titled Drunk Girl, teaching that the difference between a man and a boy is that real men seek out sloppy drunk women in bars so they can take them safely into their beds:
Take a drunk girl home
Let her sleep all alone
Leave her keys on the counter your number by her phone
Pick up her life she threw on the floor
Leave the hall lights on walk out and lock the door
That’s how she knows the difference between a boy and man
Take a drunk girl home
Kathryn Schulz at The New Yorker wrote about the song in The Kavanaugh Hearing, Chris Janson’s “Drunk Girl,” and Country Music’s #MeToo Misfire. Schulz notes that Janson is promoting a message of feminist empowerment:
To its credit, the song gets one thing mostly right, which is the woman at the heart of it. She is an uncomfortable figure, but a real enough one, and Janson does her the rare courtesy of not chastising her for drinking. On the contrary, he makes it the man’s responsibility to behave appropriately…
…he implicitly endorses the Drunk Girl’s right to [drink with impunity] without devastating consequences.
But despite the fact that the song promotes feminist thought, the song is not intended as a feminist song. It is a chivalrous song. Not surprisingly, Schulz deeply resents the idea that men protecting women is noble. Hilariously, she can’t even bring herself to admit the issue:
A month ago, when I first heard “Drunk Girl,” I was struck by the contrast between its good intentions and its dazzling cluelessness. Much as the man in the song doesn’t deserve credit for not raping a woman, the man who sings it doesn’t deserve credit for his allegedly bold stand against rape. Now, though, because “Drunk Girl” criticizes exactly the kinds of acts that Kavanaugh stands accused of committing, it has become abruptly, improbably pointed. By articulating the unbelievably low bar to which men are held, it accidentally condemns the specific man who, according to multiple credible allegations, fails to pass even that miserable standard.
Schulz is pretending that the only two choices men have are between taking drunk girls home to have sex with them, and taking drunk girls home to protect them. But the inclination of the vast majority of men is to do neither. Most men understand that taking a drunk woman home invites being seen as a predator either way. Janson isn’t trying to get rapists to stop raping; he is trying to convince good men that they should take drunk women home as an act of chivalry, so that the drunk woman doesn’t wind up having sex she might later regret. Janson also wants men to leave a note with their name and number, so the woman can wake up the next morning and express what he foolishly expects will be her gratitude:
Took a drunk girl home
In the sober light of dawn
She left you a message she thanked you on the phone
Cause you picked up her life she threw on the floor
You left the hall lights on walked out and locked the door
That’s how she knows the difference between a boy and man
Take a drunk girl home
But Schulz can’t stand the idea of feeling grateful to Janson and his followers for their chivalry. She loves that the song tells men they have the obligation to facilitate feminist debauchery, to make sure it is safe and pleasurable. But the cost of simple gratitude is too much for her to bear. Luckily for her and feminists everywhere, chivalrous men are eager to facilitate feminism whether feminists are thankful or not. When clueless men follow the lesson of the song and find they trigger not gratitude but resentment* supporters of chivalry will respond that this only shows that we need even more chivalry, with even higher risks to well meaning men. In fact, the less thankful feminists are, the more eager chivalrous men will be to facilitate feminism. Everybody wins. Well, almost everybody.
*Ranging from being called a creep to being charged and convicted of rape. This is made worse because only the most socially clueless (creepy) men would actually take the message of the song seriously enough to act it out, and a jury of chivalrous men and feminist women will be eager to convict any man who is accused of harming a woman.
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