Would you tell?
Posted on July 15th, 2011
Yesterday I took Pea out for pizza at a local franchise. I like the people who work there and the food is OK, but I looked around and thought, this is probably the last time I can stand to bring her here. It’s going downhill fast. No one cleaned tables, dishes were piled up, and things were quite literally held together with duct tape in places.
And then, halfway through our meal, a rap song came on. Because Pea was busy devouring huge quantities of pizza (and not talking), I paid attention to the lyrics and realized it was about rough sex. And it was graphic. And from a male point of view.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I like sex just fine. I like men. I don’t mind sex being evoked in music. Graphically. Not my cup of tea, but whatever.
Except. But. There’s one problem.
The rough part.
In my adult life, I’ve talked to dozens (a lot of dozens) of women (and men) who have been raped. I’ve had to write and talk about their trauma. Graphically. In a fair number of these cases, the other party would (did) characterize it as consensual rough sex.
[Long rant about the fallacy of fake rape allegations omitted for sanity's sake. Short version: women don't make those stories up.]
[Long rant about the widespread cultural acceptance of victimization of women in the media omitted for sanity's sake. Short version: society thinks it's OK to degrade women. It's not.]
So this isn’t the kind of thing I want my four-year-old listening to over lunch, even if she is busy devouring pepperoni pizza. The kid is a sponge.
I did what any mom in 2011 would do. I tweeted the parent franchise about it. They asked which location; I told them.
Immediately I felt guilty. Really, really guilty. And…WTF? I shouldn’t have had to listen to the song (my kid certainly shouldn’t), and what if there were a rape victim in the restaurant (who could have been retraumatized)? It was totally inappropriate – and yet I still feel bad for tattling on employees of a restaurant I wouldn’t be willing to go back to, anyway.
And that’s the part I don’t get.
Different circumstances (certainly not of a nature of rape or abuse), but about a month ago I visited one of my favorite food carts and found it closed, over an hour after the usual opening time. I tweeted a bit of frustration and the owner of the cart came back with “There’s nobody there?!?!”. I later found out that my tweet was the final straw in repeated problems with the employee who was supposed to have opened the cart.
The employee was fired. Because I tweeted.
Honestly I felt a little guilt, although I can rationally see how the owner likely handled it appropriately.
I would have done the same thing. And then I would have felt similarly guilty about it. But know that many, many women out there thank you for saying something, because so many people don’t then think those kind of depictions are ok for family(ish?) places.
I probably would have done the same thing. A song like that doesn’t need to be played in a public place anyways, especially with kids there. But I too usually feel guilty for “tattling”. Just remember that you did the right thing for your child and everything will be fine.
Ugh…
So I was talking to a clerk in a court that I’m particularly close with. When you practice for 5+ years in the town tht you live in (a small-ish New Hampshire Town), you get to know people. She saw me through both of my pregnancies and sees my children and I around town, in the grocery store etc. She told me a story today about how one day she was listening to a Kid Rock song on the radio with her four year old in the car and she realized that the song may not be completely kosher. And then her son asked her “Mommy, what is a whore?” and at that point, she said, she turned on NPR or a country music station for the next 15 years whenever they were in the car…
Same thing…I would have done the same thing in your shoes.