Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me what to say.

for fun, media 1 Minute

You don’t own me

Don’t try to change me in any way

You don’t own me

Don’t tie me down, ’cause I’d never stay

(Link in case the box doesn’t work)

To all of my sisters, all across the globe, you don’t owe anyone anything, no one owns you.

He certainly does not own you.

The year 2022, we will earn that respect with our own hands.

I invite all of you to dance with me, down the street, while I enjoy the surprise pickachu face of males drooling on themselves in confusion…….

…….no permission required, no approval needed.

To all of my sisters, everywhere, steal every second of peace, love and joy for yourself.

Jayne (free and UNowned, since 1972😋💙)

Published by radfemspiraling

Published

11 thoughts on “Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t tell me what to say.”

  1. RadFem, on reflection I can see that my snarky comments about Guns n’ Roses could be taken as me slagging off your taste in music. That was absolutely not my intention so I’m really sorry. At the risk of taking over YOUR blog, I’ve just posted several comments over on the GoGo’s thread, some suggestions of female or female led bands that I used to listen to back in the day. This is me trying to make amends! There’s probably more but these are the main ones I could remember.

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    1. I didn’t take it as slagging off my taste in music, and even if I thought that’s what it was(which I didn’t), I don’t offend easily. Never apologize to me for a differing opinion.

      Talk all you want, you aren’t taking over anything. I am always happy to hear the thoughts of other women.

      I was off to bed, I have an 18 year old dog, he has an early (for me) vet appointment. Wanted to check, real quick, I had a low key insult on YouTube, and I wanted to do a quick check, make sure I didn’t have a dick pissing everywhere over here. Because they do that. Shocking, I know.

      Thank you for answering all of my questions about the UK, you explained perfectly, and today, I learned something! I will have to catch up on comments, tomorrow afternoon, I hope to talk with you more then.

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  2. Forgot to say, no, don’t know that Guns n’ Roses song. Don’t like ’em. Crap voice, crap songs, crap style, crap everything. I do love noisy rock music. It is my first love and, yes, most of my bands are male or male dominated. But there are many of those bands I just cannot stand. G n’ R being one. As for forgiving yourself, absolutely. Of course. I still love Jimi Hendrix singing Hey Joe. I don’t hear the lyrics cos I’m listening to his voice and the guitar but, yes, I know what the song is saying. But I still love it. So, quite a long path ahead of me, I would say.

    That G n’ R song sounds fucking appalling. Reminds me of the 1960’s Tom Jones song ‘Delilah’. Hideous. He didn’t write it, he just recorded it, but jfc, you don’t need much of a brain. ‘Forgive me Delilah, I just couldn’t take anymore’

    Oh, fuck off, you dickwad!

    Sorry, RadFem, still in a strop over the Eazy lyrics. Still cannot believe how much they undermined the fucking song with his nonsense.

    And, as a rock music fan, I am hardened to this shit (see above comment re Hey Joe).

    I think I will go and listen to some Poly Styrene. That’ll calm down my bad mood. I will take my bad mood off your lovely blog!

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  3. Those Eazy lyrics are appalling and I don’t want to address them except to say that someone didn’t have their eye on the fucking ball. Did they read the original lyrics, ffs? Did they understand what the fucking song is even about?

    FFS, people!! Get a fucking grip!! I mean, FFS!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Sorry, but this has really boiled my piss! I mean, REALLY!!

    Sorry, RadFem. Still smarting from this hideous discovery. I still love the advert and have much to say about it but … to your UK questions.

    OK, the United Kingdom consists of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Ireland is in two parts. The smaller part consists of six counties (not exactly like a US state but sort of) and they are part of the UK. The larger part of Ireland is called Eire or The Republic of Ireland and does not have any political affiliation with the UK. There is a complicated history to all of this which I have no intention of trying to explain and don’t quite understand all the nuances myself. I adore Irish people from all parts of the country. I grew up surrounded by Irish people, a lot of them leave and move to Britain.

    OK, Britain. This is England, Wales and Scotland. Essentially. Properly known as Great Britain. You are correct, Americans have a weird habit of assuming that Britain (or even the UK) is just all called England. Doesn’t go down too well, tbh!!

    There are also various islands. Orkney, Shetland, Inner and Outer Hebrides, Skye. These are all islands, all part of Scotland. The Isle of Wight is part of England. There are the Scilly Isles and the Channel Isles but, do you know what, let’s just keep this simple. Not as in YOU are simple, just as in, history does my head in so let’s keep the story short!!

    So the short version would be:
    UK = England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland – separate countries but politically connected
    Great Britain = England, Scotland, Wales – ditto

    Eire (Republic of Ireland) = completely separate

    So UK and Great Britain (or Britain) are not interchangeable terms but I suspect in America they kind of are because, er, Americans kind of … well, let’s just say many of them haven’t quite got to grips with UK history. Which is fair enough. Have I got to grips with the history of my own country? Hah!

    You are quite right, the 4 parts of the UK are all separate countries. Small countries. I believe California is bigger than the whole of Britain. Scotland has it’s own separate parliament although some stuff still has to go through Westminster. Don’t ask me to explain! I can’t get my head around all the nuances of that. Wales also has a separate government although I believe with fewer powers than Scotland. Don’t quote me on that! I might be wrong. Northern Ireland also has its own government. So some stuff is controlled from Westminster and some is done independently in each country.

    UK history is a pain. There’s just too much of it. 2, 000 years. I can’t keep up. History is not my superpower! You probably noticed!

    Americans probably don’t talk about Wales much as there was less immigration from Wales to the US. Loads of Scottish people went over and, of course, tons of English people. Plus Irish, as you said. But not so many Welsh, I don’t think, so I think that’s where that is coming from.

    Interesting that your heritage is German. Pennysylvania Deustch. Yes, indeed. I don’t think people realise how many Germans emigrated to the US and how much of German culture influenced US culture. It really gets overlooked. Everyone knows about the Irish, Italians, Scottish etc. Germans, not so much.

    Here ends my (not very good) history lesson. Hope it helped.

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  4. Great post. Loved it. However, possible slight derail coming up!

    This is a great song and all the better for being a song from the 1960’s. Fantastic.

    BUT … my preferred version is from 2015 by Grace with G Eazy. It was used in the 2015 christmas tv advert for House of Fraser and it blew my tiny mind. It was very controversial. Lots of people hated it because, apparently, it wasn’t ‘Christmassy’ enough. Which a) was kind of the fucking point and b) pay attention to the actual advert, people. Right at the end there, on the back of her leather biker jacket, as she’s about to roar off on her Norton motorbike, it says ‘Your Christmas Your Rules’.

    They very quickly started showing a much truncated version. No idea if that’s because of the backlash but it really annoyed me. Maybe it was just normal tv ad practice; short version saves money. It was a shame, though.

    Sorry, RadFem, but I haven’t watched that advert in years and your post reminded me so I dashed off to have a look. I still adore it. Forever my fave christmas advert. It rocks.

    As you were!

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    1. You can’t derail, don’t worry about that. I like running a space where women can talk about whatever they want and I don’t even need to be here for it. There’s no spaces for women, only, I try my best to provide that here.

      That version, by Grace with G Easy, comes up a LOT when You Don’t Own Me is searched, and I initially ignored it, but I went back and listened to it on your recommendation.

      And I liked it. I think that I understand the point of it, but I think at one point, he referred to her as a “ho”, and whenever I hear that, my brain kind of says “check, please”, lol.

      I like Grace, and she has a good voice. I get why he is there, but as usual, he didn’t really add anything important, for me.

      Now I must look up House of Frazer, I have no idea what that is.

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      1. Ah, OK. Didn’t hear that ‘ho’ bit. So that’s a bugger. Really can’t be doing with that. Hip hop / rap not my thing, generally, so I’m not good at picking up on all the vocalisation.

        I do love this version because it has more bite in the vocals than Lesley Gore’s version – although we absolutely need her version, too, being the 1960’s and all. Plus LG wrote it, didn’t she? I think that’s right. But I like the way Grace spits out her lines in this version. That said, I don’t like watching the Grace / Eazy official video. Don’t like it at all. Tried to watch it, managed 90 seconds, had to check out.

        House of Fraser is a chain of department stores in the UK. Every year the big department stores do massive, expensive christmas adverts which I usually ignore and always dislike if I see them. They tend to be quite mushy and sentimental. I get why they do that, I just don’t like it. They all compete with each other and the ads are very popular. It’s really a thing. This ad from 2015 just blew all that apart. I love dance and the choreography in this is fab, the dancers are ace, the concept I just love and the editing. OMG, the editing is to die for.

        The penultimate shot shows her wearing stupid sky high stilettos so I don’t like that at all. Just stupid. And she’s going to be on a motorbike, ffs! But apart from that (and now this ‘ho’ thing) I do still love it.

        Also, this version introduced me to the Lesley Gore version. I’d never heard of it. So, although LG’s version is a little bit too well-behaved for me, I’m really glad I know about it. And she sings her lyrics really clearly. No way you could miss her message. She has something to say and she’s bloody well going to say it. Go, Lesley!

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      3. You are in the UK? Can I ask you a question?

        What qualifies as Great Britain? Or Britain? Are the terms, UK, and Great Britain, interchangeable?

        I have met quite a few women from the UK, and they are always kind of shocked that I understand that the UK is the 4 parts (do you call them states? Or countries? And how come no one ever talks about Wales? If I was going to leave out one fourth, it wouldn’t be Wales (apologies to Ireland).) Apparently, a lot of Americans refer to all of the UK as England and they don’t understand the 4 parts. (Our education system is terrible, I hope that our general ignorance can be overlooked, a little bit, this country has developed a rabid hatred of education, for some odd reason.)

        I live in the state of South Carolina, just a few hours from the port that received a lot of Scottish and Irish prisoners, way back in the day, so we have a lot of people of Scottish and Irish descent. I have always loved Scottish history, and the Scottish descendants here have always had a sense of their own history, and they shared it with festivals and whatnot. But that was before covid. I really miss those festivals. (I am almost completely of German descent, just as a matter of my own history. I know that a lot of people from outside of the states don’t really understand why people in the states are interested in their “descent”, but that’s what kind of happens when everyone came from somewhere else.)

        Please ignore all that, if you don’t want to answer, lol. I so love my sisters in the UK, all of them, so many of you are just so terfy, it’s impossible not to love that.

        Ok, so I watched that house of Frazer advert, and I can see why you like it. I really like her dress, in the very beginning. And you know, that advert left the “ho” part in, lol. And that thing happening at that big dinner table, like, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, people.

        Anyway, two parts of his nonsense stuck out to me, the “ho” thing, and then, at some point, when she says “you don’t own me” he says something like “yeah, you never met someone like me, tho” or something like that(that part is not in the advert), insinuating that we would be ok being “owned” by the “right guy”.

        Like, no. Nope.

        I am 49. I spent years loving and laughing at a song (you might know it) called “I used to love her (but I had to kill her)” by Guns and Roses, back in my much younger days. The music is good, and it’s catchy, and “she bitched so much, it drove me nuts, she’s buried right in my backyard.”

        In retrospect, I can’t believe that I unironically and willfully played drums on that song, backing the male that sang it, and all the other males in the band. I must have been a “cool girl”, although I don’t remember it that way. I have forgiven my 21 year old self, though, just like I forgive all internalized misogyny. Not our fault.

        So I have come to loathe any woman hating I hear in music. It went right past me, for so many years, and now, it sticks out so far that I just cannot and will not ignore it. Every woman is in a different place, I don’t judge any of us, that’s just where I am.

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