Respect or Sexism?

Okay, so I feel like maybe I should call him out on this but don’t want to go in rage-a-blazin with only my self-righteous entitled impulse where he has a long thought out and heavily favored by his fanbase idea-stream.
The other night, I was at a house show and an artist for whom I have a mad amount of respect for (as an artist) and a decent amount of respect for (as a person, don’t really know him that well), prefaced one of his songs by saying the following:
“After years of making mistakes, I finally realized a tough lesson, that all girls—all girls—want to be treated like a princess.”

Those were his words, and as I heard them, I couldn’t help but think about all the many feminist blogs I’ve been reading these past couple months. I’m still new at this whole thinking-outside-my-male-dominated-inequal-culture mindset, but I knew something felt off. Looking around the room, I saw the mostly conservative Christian male members of the audience nodding vigorously in that “oh you know it brother, amen” kinda way you get used to if you grow up around that sorta thing. I also saw, though, a large amount of the females in the crowd looking down or away or really sad as he went on.

Now, I know enough about this singer to grasp at his best intentions, but if what he meant was to show these women respect than I’m pretty sure he missed it. “All girls” is troubling both as a generalization and how it’s usually not a good idea to use to the word with the more young connotation in an effort to sound wise and learned in how to respect said group.

The whole conversation sounded more like he was talking to the guys about having finally figured out the real secret to those mysterious females, as if once you know this one trick then it’s all easy street from here on out. But that’s not how real people work, is it?

And here’s why: people are never that simple. The idea that all females want to be treated like a some unspecific fairy tale ideal of an outdated patriarchal(remember he didn’t say queens but princesses), monarchical (you didn’t earn respect, you were born into it), and at very least vague (are we talking Princess Peach or Princess Mononoke or Princess Diana here) construct just was not in any way settling for me.

He proceeded to break into a very catchy, grooving, well-performed, obviously talent-laden rendition of a song about wanting to express affection for a female he liked (and referred to as baby, but maybe that’s just a pet-peeve of mine). However, he wasn’t sure if he should maybe just keep it to himself out of fear of “respecting her”. How it came across was more like out of fear of tainting her pure and delicate sensibilities. This honestly sounds more like the fundamentalist bearing that all males are sex-crazed maniacs and all females are pure and clean-minded prudes.

Does he actually think all the things that he conveyed with his speech and song? I doubt it, but perhaps that’s just another reason we need to think more about what we’re really saying about gender-identity, sexual identity, sex, love, relationships, and humanity in general with our songs, poems, and speeches.

After all, I don’t think all guys or all girls ALL necessarily want to be treated a certain way, but I’d bet that treating every single human being like a human being is a great place to start. That’s respect.