Why SUSU should never, ever ban Robin Thicke and his Blurred Lines

Student unions up and down the country have been falling over themselves to ban Robin Thicke’s chart topper Blurred Lines. My question… why exactly?

It seems most of you share my (liberal?) view when it comes to the supposedly controversial song, as in a recent Tab survey 62.57% of you said it shouldn’t be banned, with only just over 30% finding it offensive. Critics of the song, which features lyrics such as “I know you want it” and “must wanna get nasty” claim it objectifies women and glamorises rape, as apparently consent isn’t implied in the song.

It’s political correctness gone amok, saying this song is glorifying rape. With the outage caused country-wide by this song, you’d expect something a lot worse than what it actually is. Blurred Lines is clearly written about a girl being a bit of a tease in a nightclub, or playing hard to get to seduce her man, in this instance Thicke, not a vulnerable, non-consenting woman who is being preyed on. If nothing else, Thicke wrote the song about his wife. His wife?! I’m pretty sure if he was the misogynistic pig he’s made out to be, there would be no wife, let alone a song written about her.

It’s made out that Blurred Lines is this massive objectifying monster of a song, but to be honest, I’m more concerned about songs like the one my fellow bus rider kindly shared with everyone else through his speakers, in which the rapper claimed he was going to “pound this bitch in the ass till she bleeds.” Now that is a song that objectifies women and could be argued to glorify rape… Thicke claiming she’s the “hottest bitch in this place” seems pretty mild in comparison. Sad but true, sex is what sells in our modern world, and if an artist wants to get anywhere in our charts it’s gotta be all about the grinding, thrusting, whips and handcuffs – just look at Rihanna. If we were to ban every single song about getting hot and heavy from our student unions, it would be a very, very quiet night out. We’d be limited to, what, a bit of S Club 7? Or Miley Cyrus? Oh no, wait…

I believe myself to be a feminist through and through. I think women deserve equal pay and legal rights, but I personally don’t think one song is going to undo all the good work feminists have done over the years. I mean, it’s a song, at the end of the day! Not a legal document, or something massively significant to the future of women, but a source of entertainment made in a world dominated by all things sexual, kinky and dirty. But everyone deserves freedom of speech and opinions, and banning any song from student unions denies people that right. You’d really, really hope that by the time we’d got to uni, we’d be well-balanced human beings able to, y’know, form our own opinions and stuff rather than just being taken in by the media? Listening to one four minute, twenty two second song in the student union after a few drinks on a Friday night is not going to turn a respectable university student into a woman hating misogynist, in the same way that listening to Rihanna’s S and M isn’t going to send the female population of the University of Southampton rushing down to Ann Summers to buy chains and whips to use on their unsuspecting boyfriends. And, well, when you think about some of the mentally scarring images that can be seen with just a few clicks of a mouse, is Blurred Lines really such a big deal? Perspective. We all need to get some!

SUSU’s Surge Radio have taken the decision not to ban Blurred Lines, because if they did, they’d also have to ban so many other songs, such as Talk Dirty by Jason Derulo (“Her pussy so good I bought her a pet”) and Candy Shop by 50 Cent (“Give it to me baby, nice and slow/Climb on top, ride like you in the rodeo”). Sex is part of our culture, and unfortunately, I think it’s here for the long haul. So, while I’m not suggesting we all twerk Miley Cyrus style whenever Blurred Lines comes on (*shudder*) I don’t think it warrants banning in the slightest. If nothing else, it’s a good track! There’s a reason why it was at number one for twelve weeks, and somehow I don’t think it’s because the country is made up of misogynistic woman-haters…