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Despite having written a blog-post for publication a week ago following my triumphant evening at The Bowery Electric, I found myself so disturbed by the news last Friday that I couldn’t bring myself to put it out. It just felt out of place talking about my excitement about a successful night, while a despicable recording of the Republican presidential candidate was being played over and over on TV. I was disturbed, shocked, and triggered by the tape and like countless other women, I was forced to relive innumerable scenarios from my past in which I have been taken advantage of as a woman. In the manner the candidate described, and worse.

I wrote about this very subject on my current record, Didn’t You, My Dear?. It was an album of empowerment for me, a process of taking my creativity back, taking my body back, taking my mind back, taking my life back. The society that we live in has condoned this behavior towards women from time immemorial, and the attitudes are so deeply ingrained that it’s often hard to even recognize sexist thinking in our daily lives. It’s insidious! However, despite the turmoil of this last week I find it deeply heartening that the discussion is now front and center. The candidate’s misogynist, sexist comments and behavior are dehumanizing and unacceptable, no matter how you slice and dice it. Once you see it, it’s hard to unsee it.

We women are over half of the electorate here in the US, and I’ll be damned if that deplorable human being gets anywhere near the White House. l for one will be voting my ass off on November 8. We are better than this. We are stronger than this. We are smarter and more powerful than we’ve been led to believe. No one in the world has the right to treat us like this. Because we won’t allow them.

Finally, I’d like to share a lyric from a song on my latest album. With that, I rest my case.

WHO’S GONNA TELL THE WOLF SHE’S NOT A DOG

I used to do tricks 
I used to run after sticks
I used to play ball 
With all you pricks

I used to lay down and die

I used to call you master
My collar bore your name
You used to own my body 
You used to own my brain

I used to lay down and die

But oh who
Who’s gonna tell the wolf
She’s not a dog

I was so well trained
housebroken and tame
I’d even fetch my leash
So you’d parade me around the streets

I used to lay down and die

Oh who
Who’s gonna tell the wolf
She’s not a dog

But you always knew
Didn’t you my dear

I call no one master 
I wear my own name
I own my own body 
I own my own brain

I used to lay down and die

Who’s gonna tell the wolf
She’s not a dog