I don't think I've ever heard the Manilow version. I'll look it up. Thanks for the tip!

A lot of them don't though. Many of them express this kind of impotent rage at women for ruining masculinity or manliness and so on and etc.

Men's Right's Advocates. Don't be fooled by the moniker — they mostly think women, and especially feminists, are out there, making movies with female protagonists and using Hollywood to demasculinize them.

I consider myself a pretty far left feminist as well, but I'm also involved in cultural analysis and criticism (both academically and as a writer). I don't think we do ourselves any favors when we shy away from a nuanced discussion that can acknowledge both that 1 — a song like this was not written about rape and…

I'm confused by your line 'I'm assuming you're an intelligent man'.

Hey man, he's just expressing his manly thoughts through his manly words. Everyone knows grammar is a chick thing.

"they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena…

"I should say no no no, dear. At least I'm gonna say that I tried.' She does have a lot to lose, culturally, which is exactly what I've argued, quite at length in this thread, which is different than what she wants to do. When she protests, it's about how other people will talk about her, not about her own desires.

Wonder away. I can ask you the same — why can you not imagine a situation in the time in which this song was written where the lyrics that were perfectly innocuous at the time have a different implication in a contemporary setting.

I didn't ask you to shut up. I asked you not to assume I was a troll.

Again:

That hussy!

I made several points about it, including that the song being from the 1940s means the line that most people have trouble with 'say, what's in this drink' had a different meaning and connotation when the song was written than it does now. Then I went on to point that its a phrase common in the time that meant not that…

Where did I say date rape didn't exist? I said that the social expectations of the time where very different, and that her protests in the song weren't about what she wanted, but about how other people would look at her. And that the overall analysis of the song doesn't support the date rape interpretation.

I did admit that. I also said there's a difference between saying 'this sounds like x' and saying 'this was written about x', especially when you take context into account.

It has to do with her attitude and her interpretation of what I said. I didn't accuse her of trolling, I said she was treating me like I was a troll.

Where did I say otherwise?

A lot of date rape today is not taken seriously either. We just went through an entire election season where that loomed over everything. While true, that doesn't mean this is what the song is about.

Thanks for linking my article!