I’ve foolishly agreed to play pedal-steel guitar in an improvised country-western band accompanying a very amateur theatrical production in a couple of weeks. I say foolishly because it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve played music for a live audience, and it’s been even longer since I played pedal-steel in front of anybody. (Oh wait! I’ve never done it at all! Yikes!)
Anyway, one of the songs we’ll be playing is Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man.”
When I heard the original as a kid I never paid much attention to it. Hearing it as a teenager in the 1960s was like having my teeth pulled. Hearing it during the 1970’s we’d just change the station so we didn’t have to listen to that kind of archaic sexist tripe. Same thing in the ’80s except we called it sexist enabling drivel. I don’t think I heard it once in the 1990s.
And if you’d asked me about it last week I’d have said it was just a bunch of repressed, plain-vanilla, knee-jerk, and ultimately and obviously insincere propaganda for monogamy.
Which, after all, it is. Almost. But.
Listening to it this afternoon as I was trying to work out fills I actually listened to the lyrics.
Sometimes its hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man[emphasis mine —fl]
That’s not coming out of brainwashed unconsciousness. More radically, it’s not coming out of some genetically predetermined “monogamous-by-nature“ inclination to fidelity women are supposed to have. (Loretta Lynn offered one far more pragmatic, and situational, critique of women’s fidelity in (Now I’ve Got) The Pill.)
Monogamy for people, not just women, doesn’t seem to be natural at all. It’s rather the opposite, and if you recall that we rarely require anthems, sermons, laws, or other exhortation to follow actual natural inclinations, that kind of makes sense. (It also explains the hint of resentment in lines like “And if you love him, aww, be proud of him / Cuz after all he’s just a man.”)
Anyway, while I still don’t like the (surface-level) sentiments expressed in the song, or the clamped-teeth Sunday-morning-vs.-Saturday-Night hypocrisy of the culture it emerged from, but as a reluctant-but-sincere monogamist I recognize and appreciate the way the song expresses not unconscious ease but considerable conscious effort.
Submitted by 1176 (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-30 17:53.
My favorite take on "Stand By Your Man" is from David Thomas (the musician from Pere Ubu).
So I prefer to hear the lyrics as "Stand By Earth Man".
[I think perhaps because of their contrived genteelity, inspired perhaps by a propensity for domestic and social violence, Country/Western culture used to produce music, and conversation, that was surprisingly nuanced. (You should hear how far our of their way hillbilly neighbors will go to shield a gay or lesbian couple that's not publically out, because if they were to *admit* what they *know* they'd have to act.) Nowadays the songs seem to confine themselves to bad puns and stale cliché without grasping the symbolism. Thanks, Shy. --fl]
Submitted by 1176 (not verified) on Tue, 2007-01-30 23:24.
Reluctant-but-sincere. What a fantastic way to put it!
I would love to be in a more open, exploritory relationship. I also think monogamy is entire unnatural. But then again, I also think relationships should not follow anybody's rules but the people in the relationship.
Unfortunately, I think there are very very few people who have the self-confidence, maturity, and open-mindedness to successfully live in any kind of deep, non-monogamous relationship.
I'll continue to live with my monogamous relationship, as it makes me happier than being without the man I love :)
[If there was social infrastructure for polyamory it might be a little easier... but chicken, meet egg. :-) Till then, yeah. I'll actually continue to advocate for such an infrastructure though I might be one of the last people to finally take advantage of it. Thank you, Dana. --fl]
Submitted by 1176 (not verified) on Wed, 2007-01-31 07:49.
we rarely require anthems, sermons, laws, or other exhortation to follow actual natural inclinations
I don't want to sound like a troll here, but that's just silly. Most of us have a natural inclination not to murder, or commit arson, for example (I hope), and yet we have laws exhorting us not to do those things. Some sermons exhort us to be nice to each other and to help the poor and downtrodden. Is this evidence that most or even all humans have a natural inclination toward murder, arson, and treating each other like crap?
[Point half taken, Sergei. I meant something more along the lines of *really* natural like not eating yellow snow or one's children. But yeah, there are plenty of exhortations not to do thing that only *some* people do naturally. Thanks. --fl]