Line #8 DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale/Music


1	* [[http://www.popmatters.com/column/139375-fit-to-be-tied-countrys-angry-women/ An article here]] notes the popularity of "revenge songs" in country music, where after a bad breakup or catching the boyfriend cheating, the singer kidnaps, [[BoundAndGagged ties and gags]], or even flat-out ''murders'' the guy, with the actions often PlayedForLaughs. Chances are if a male singer made a video where he tied up and gagged an ex-girlfriend or attempted to kill her, he would be justifiably condemned by the public.
2	* "Strong Enough" by Music/SherylCrow is [[PoesLaw possibly]] a {{Deconstruction}}. The woman openly flaunts that she's [[CuteAndPsycho unstable and possibly violent]] but asks the guy she's addressing is he's "man enough" to put up with her outbursts. Whether [[NightmareFetishist she expects him to hit her back]] is debatable.
3	* The music video for Music/{{Maroon 5}}'s [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g6g2mvItp4 "Misery"]] is a perfect example of this. [[MisaimedFandom This actually goes against the lyrics of the song]], which are definitely not about a healthy relationship, as well as [[WordOfGod the words of Adam Levine himself]]:
4	-->"'Misery' is about the desperation of wanting someone really badly in your life but having it be very difficult. Kind of what all the songs I write are about. I'm not treading on new ground, but I think a lot of people – including myself – deal with that all the time. Relationships are difficult, and it's good therapy to write about them." [[http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=19678 (source)]]
5	* When Music/FlorenceAndTheMachine's "Kiss With A Fist" came out, a number of critics condemned it for its RomanticizedAbuse overtones -- fair enough, except that they all seemed to see the female singer as the poor, innocent victim, despite the fact that she's clearly giving as good as she gets (she hits him, slaps him, sets fire to his bed, breaks his jaw...).
6	* Music/CarrieUnderwood's "Before He Cheats" is all about a woman destroying her boyfriend's car because of the cheating he ''might'' be doing. The video might reveal that it turns out she was right in her unconfirmed suspicions, but if all you've listened to is the song, that's not clear ''at all.''''' And there's no way she would be able to get away with it with [[TheUnfairSex the genders reversed]]. Let's see: "I dug my key into the side/Of her pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive/Carved my name into her leather seat/I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights/Slashed a hole in all 4 tires/And maybe next time she'll think before she cheats". Um, yeah. Changing four pronouns changes the connotations quite a bit.
7	* The video for the Music/VanessaCarlton song "Pretty Baby" has a TwistEnding where it turns out that the singer has her boyfriend BoundAndGagged in a locked room after catching him talking to another girl earlier in the song.
8	* The video for Music/ChristinaAguilera's "Can't Hold Us Down" has a street full of women ganging up on all the men and spraying them with a fire hose. Why? Because one guy grabbed Christina's ass as she walked by.
9	* The Music/{{Rihanna}} song "Man Down" off her Loud Album - about a woman killing a man with a gun - was met with a backlash from the male audience. At the same time, the female audience defended the song and celebrated it. This was especially the case, because of the attack music star Music/ChrisBrown, inflicted on her in real life still being on woman's minds. The song was a huge hit. In the music video the woman kills the man after he rapes her. It's hard to imagine a man killing his female rapist being as highly regarded.
10	* In what is supposed to be comedic (presumably) but comes off as just seriously ''disturbing'' is the music video for "I Pray for You" by Jaron and the Long Road to Love. The song itself is about the narrator grumbling about an ex-girlfriend who has treated him badly and praying all sorts of horrible things happen to her. But the video is just ''sadistic.'' The video starts with the man walking into the house, where his girlfriend throws several vases at his head and a hot cup of coffee in his face. The next scene has the man tied up in a bathtub full of water while his girlfriend teasingly dangles a hairdryer over him! The man gives her a teddy bear. She cuddles it close and then kicks him in the crotch. She then proceeds to try and smother him ''with the teddy bear.''Later, she lays a trip-wire of dental floss that makes him fall down the stairs. And when he tries to leave, she runs over his car with a monster truck. And this is played as ''funny.'' If the gender roles were reversed, this would probably be the music video to a tragic song about the horrors of domestic violence.
11	* "You Don't Love Me Anymore" by Music/WeirdAlYankovic describes a man's girlfriend, among other things, disconnecting the brakes in his car, leaving poisonous snakes in his underwear drawer, slamming his face into a barbecue grill, pushing him down an elevator shaft, threatening him with a knife, setting his house on fire, telling all her friends that he's the Antichrist, leaving him for dead in a ditch, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking shaving off his eyebrows]]. Imagine if the song was sung from a female perspective.
12	%%* PlayedForLaughs in the ''Music/{{Vocaloid}}'' video "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DffvrqrSuo4 I Don't Care Who, Somebody Go Out With Me!]]"
13	* Music/TaylorSwift's song "Stay Stay Stay" features the singer throwing her phone across the room at her boyfriend. The boyfriend [[PlayedForLaughs played it for laughs]] by coming back with a football helmet. A song with the roles reversed would not take this so lightheartedly.
14	** Another Taylor Swift exemple: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ORhEE9VVg&ab_channel=TaylorSwiftVEVO Blank Space]]" features a woman throwing a vase at her boyfriend, destroying his clothes, his car, dropping his cellphone in the water. She also destroys his portrait violently with scissors, even assaulting him physically at some point. After all the abuse, the man leaves and is replaced by another one, implying it's going to start all over again. Let's also note that the song includes the lyrics "Boys only want love if it's torture." While the video is AdamWesting for Taylor's image as a woman who keeps scaring off her men, if the genders were reversed, there would have been an uproar after the song came out.
15	* Read the lyrics to "Please Don't Leave Me" by {{Music/Pink}}. Now, imagine the reaction if that song were sung by a man. And her latest, "True Love" where she sings about wanting to put her hands around a guy's neck at the same time she allegedly wants to hug him. Somehow, this song is seen as empowering, even though [[MisaimedFandom it's pretty clearly not supposed to represent an entirely healthy relationship]]. [[note]]In fact, she and her husband have been in marriage counseling, and nearly got divorced.[[/note]] If a guy were singing those lyrics...yeah. Most male covers keep the lyrics as-is but Halfway To Hollywood genderflipped half of the lyrics. Thus we get like "Sometimes I hate every stupid word you say/Sometimes you wanna slap me in my whole face" and "At the same time, I wanna hug you/You wanna wrap your hands around my neck/I'm an asshole but I love you". It comes off as a DomesticAbuse victim self-victim blaming themselves.
16	* Music/TheSundays' "I Kicked a Boy".
17	* In the video for Music/JohnLegend's "Ordinary People" this trope is gratifyingly averted. Yes, there is the bit where the man hits the woman, but then you have the couple in which it is the ''woman'' who strikes first, and in ''neither'' case is it considered funny, or appropriate, or anything other than tragic that things have come to the point of violence.
18	* In the [[https://vimeo.com/161304462 controversial video]] for 'Fuiste Mía', the singer (Gerardo Ortiz) finds out his girlfriend (wife?) is cheating on him with another guy. He promptly shoots the guy in the forehead. Then, he puts the girl inside the trunk of a car and puts the car on fire. Ortiz was strongly criticized and even sued because of his "violence toward women" in the video, to the point he had to pull out the video from the social networks. No one complained about him shooting the guy in the song. Even Ortiz himself only apologized regarding the attack toward women.
19	** That, and the fact that if it had been a woman who had killed her lover with fire, no one had said a thing.
20	* The video to Music/LilyAllen's "Smile" features her paying a group of thugs to beat up her ex and ransack his apartment. They even scratch all the records he uses at his job as a DJ, and they stuff his clothes in the toilet in anticipation of the LaxativePrank that Lily plays on him. Throughout the video, Lily pretends to comfort him, then laughs at his suffering when he turns away. If the genders were flipped, Lily's sociopathy would be far less likely to be portrayed {{comedic\|Sociopathy}}ally.
21	* The music video to Music/{{Lit}}'s Music/{{Miserable}} has the last seventeen percent of the video dedicated to the giant woman gleefully hunting down and devouring every member of the all male band. The whole thing focuses heavily on each man's terrified reaction and begging for their lives before she inevitably makes a meal of them. By the end of the video not a single member of the band survives. What makes it worse is that [[KarmaHoudini the woman doesn't receive any comeuppance and sonters off at the end scot free.]] It might not be as bad as some other examples on this list, but try imagining a girl group ''ever'' having a music video where they all die like that.
22	* Averted by [[Music/{{Aviators}} Aviators']] song "I Could Believe You (feat. [[Music/WoodenToaster Glaze]])". The song is sung from a man's perspective, as he is haunted by the ghost of his abusive girlfriend. The subject is portrayed seriously and unironically.
23	* Music/GirlsAloud's video "The Show" features the girls running a beauty parlour with male clients. They intentionally play pranks on the men; Nicola uses fake tan to write insulting messages on their backs, Sarah gives them all bad haircuts, Nadine plays with them under the pretence of giving facials, and Cheryl is the worst of all - intentionally making body waxing as painful as possible (never mind the serious damage doing it wrong could cause). Imagine this video being filmed with men doing this to a group of girls and trying to play it for comedy.
24	* A tamer example is B*Witched's video for "C'est La Vie". The girls are all romantically pursuing a boy. They tie him up with a lasso, drag him around the field, plant him with kisses, and spray him with a hose. Would a BoyBand have gotten away with a video featuring them giving a girl BlackComedyRape?
25	* Exaggerated in the music video for Otoboke Beavers' [[https://youtu.be/wyHYb7LdrF0 "Ikezu (Mean)"]], which is 19 seconds of a girl slugging her boyfriend unconscious while yelling at him for not telling her when he was coming home the previous night, all PlayedForLaughs.
26	* The video for Stevie Ray Vaughan's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2ou-WIxfLY "Cold Shot"]] features his long-suffering wife/girlfriend repeatedly going ballistic and putting him the hospital over his love of guitars and guitar-picking. The violence is definitely PlayedForLaughs, complete with [[Film/TheThreeStooges Three Stooges]]-style dummy shots as she tosses him around.
27	* "In Hell I'll Be in Good Company" by the Dead South is a perfect example of the double-standard in question. The singer described how he put up with years of abuse from his violent and emotionally unstable wife. She eventually got to the point where she stabbed him multiple times in an attempt to kill him; he killed her instead out of self-defense. The song continues to reveal that even though he killed her ''in self defense'' he's sitting on death row awaiting execution for her "murder."
28	* In the Persuaders’ 1971 hit “Thin Line Between Love and Hate”(later covered and GenderFlipped by Music/{{Eurythmics}}’s Annie Lennox), a man brags about coming home at 5 am and his wife/girlfriend hanging up his coat and hat, sweetly asking if he’s hungry, and not saying a word about where he’s been. In the next verse, we find that he’s laying in a hospital bed, “bandaged from foot to head.” He doesn’t give specifics, but laments that “I didn’t think my woman could do something like this to me” and warns “Sometimes actions speak louder than words.”
29	* Music/RodStewart song "Maggie May" is based on the musician's RealLife experience. He got abused by an older woman as a teenager, and he has said it was a traumatic experience. He wrote the song as self-therapy.

Context DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale / Music