Posted by Mariajag on April 11, 1999 at 03:10:49:
In Reply to: Christ, Mick, and Women posted by The Storm on April 10, 1999 at 16:02:22:
: Now, on the issue of Mick's misogyny: I remember asking in the fall of '97 on this (actually, the other) board why women still liked the Stones even though the lyrics were misogynous. It was a completely different cast of women characters in those days, but the answer basically boiled down to this: "When women hear 'Under My Thumb' or some such song, we just put ourselves into Mick's role and imagine the lyric as '...the guy who once had me down.'" In other words, they simply role-reverse and use Mick's expression of his occasional hostility to women as a way to relieve their own occasional hostility to men.
This kind of role reversal has never even occurred to me. I think that for the most part, especially now in the 90's, Mick's mysogenistic lyrics simply appeal to their male fans. I think that when these songs were released, most female fans were willing to overlook these lyrics because he had also written many great gender-neutral songs and, quite simply, because of his enormous sex appeal. Had he been less sexy, I sincerely think his female fans would have been much less forgiving.
By gender neutral, as opposed to male-orientated, what I'm getting at is this. PIB is one of my all-time favorite Stones songs, and it is gender neutral. Flip the Switch is obviously male orientated, and IMO, it is completely forgettable.