Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

The Tories’ poisonous culture wars

issue 28 January 2023

Aretha Franklin’s 1967 hit ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’ should be removed from the music streaming network Spotify because it perpetuates anti-trans stereotypes, according to a whole bunch of alphabet people with too much time on their hands.

The spearhead of this attack on the Queen of Soul’s famous hit is a Norwegian group called the Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance (TCMA), who you may not have heard of but with whom I’m sure you’d get on just fine. There is no such thing as a ‘natural woman’, you see. Quite why they picked this particular song is moot because almost every pop song ever released similarly perpetuates anti-trans stereotypes, apart from maybe ‘Festering Pus’ by Rancid Hell Spawn. It is a peculiar hill upon which to make a stand, but then the alphabet people were never known for their logic. Do the TCMA and others therefore believe that a man who transitions to being a female can never feel like a ‘natural woman’? In which case, isn’t that a bit of a giveaway?

More pertinently, there is the authorship of the song.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in