I think this song is about the inexact nature of the emotional circumstances surrounding rape.
Date rape happens. Most girls who are raped, are raped by their boyfriends or a close male friend/relative. That's a lot of emotional conflict to deal with. It's not uncommon for such a girl to having warring emotions of affection and hate for her rapist, if she knew and loved him before. People can't always just make things simple and convert all their emotions straight to hate in such a situation.
And women's reputations are put on trial when they report rape -- to the police, sure, but also, when they report it to their family and friends. Rape is a weird problem; in even very liberal societies, people's general attitudes are reductionist, and we put blame on the female for being raped, rather than the male for raping. We go out of our way to justify why it was her fault, and not his, as method of comforting ourselves into believing that if we never act the way this girl did, we will never be raped -- and for some men, if a girl ever acts this way around us and we rape her, we have a built-in loophole ready.
People immediately forget that everybody has a complicated psyche, and can't abide by rape victims who are not visions of internal consistency. They can't have ever made any sort of mistake that can be held against them. As far as date rape goes, most of us are still paying dues to a boy's club, which is why songs like "Cry Wolf" are such a staple of female singer/songwriters' catalogs.
I think this song is about the inexact nature of the emotional circumstances surrounding rape.
Date rape happens. Most girls who are raped, are raped by their boyfriends or a close male friend/relative. That's a lot of emotional conflict to deal with. It's not uncommon for such a girl to having warring emotions of affection and hate for her rapist, if she knew and loved him before. People can't always just make things simple and convert all their emotions straight to hate in such a situation.
And women's reputations are put on trial when they report rape -- to the police, sure, but also, when they report it to their family and friends. Rape is a weird problem; in even very liberal societies, people's general attitudes are reductionist, and we put blame on the female for being raped, rather than the male for raping. We go out of our way to justify why it was her fault, and not his, as method of comforting ourselves into believing that if we never act the way this girl did, we will never be raped -- and for some men, if a girl ever acts this way around us and we rape her, we have a built-in loophole ready.
People immediately forget that everybody has a complicated psyche, and can't abide by rape victims who are not visions of internal consistency. They can't have ever made any sort of mistake that can be held against them. As far as date rape goes, most of us are still paying dues to a boy's club, which is why songs like "Cry Wolf" are such a staple of female singer/songwriters' catalogs.