The Kinks have been one of my favorite rock bands for many years. I have written about them for Counter-Currents on three occasions, most recently in my review of their great 1969 album Arthur. I also included their 1978 reggae number “Black Messiah” as one of the “Four Classic Rock Songs for the Dissident Right.” Their most famous song, however, is one I would never include on such a list, and in fact, I have always wondered about its lasting appeal in rock circles. Of course, I am talking about their evergreen 1970 hit “Lola.”
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16 comments
“How would you react, dear heterosexual reader, if a single and innocent version of yourself met a transvestite in a romantic setting under false pretenses and then discovered the truth the hard way?”
Every time I watch Trainspotting I am surprised that Begby doesn’t kick the living shit out of the tranny he is fumbling around with in the back of the car. I guess embarrassment and supreme disgust prevented him from acting out in his usual psychopathic way.
Oh, darn, I kind of bit on this one didn’t I? I need to keep from commenting.
I remember that back in those days, male bisexuality among rock stars was a bit chic. I always thought that “Lola” was rather sweet, and well done musically. As for the gender-bending stuff, that was hardly a big deal before it turned into yet another big orthodoxy, merely questioning it became a Narrative Violation that risked a “point-and-shriek” tantrum, and so forth.
Anyway, a harsher take by Peter and the Test Tube Babies on the same subject matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4UP3seNnA4
With all due respect to Mr. Quinn:
Van Halen’s You Really Got Me > The Kinks’ You Really Got Me
They’re just as good IMO. But the Kinks’ version of Stop Your Sobbing beats the Pretenders’.
I was going to give commenting on this a pass because Lola is probably in a nursing home or dead by now, given the window to discuss this music closed decades ago, but then Spencer decides to reveal himself as a contentious know-nothing throwing the usual rightwing hissy fit. Final paragraph states: “Can either of these songwriters imagine a world in which over 20% of our population consists of medically-altered, reproductively sterile, gender non-conforming androgynes? Because that’s where we’re headed.”
No Spence. That’s where you are now. That’s where the developed world was over half a decade ago. 20% of women in the USA of child-bearing age (inb4 “just the USA? wotabout other countries?” Other countries aren’t as good at large surveys or record keeping as Uncle Sam), are voluntarily sterile. Percentage of women of 15-49 who have undergone female sterilization: Hispanic, 19.2%, Non-Hispanic White, 18.1%, Non-Hispanic Black, 22.9%. And that’s just the women. Source: NCHS, National Survey of Family Growth, 2015-2017. That excludes the more ‘soft’ forms of contraceptives like implantable long-acting hormone therapies, and of course all vascetomies.
That sort of outweights the 0.52% of 18+ adults who identify transgender, doesn’t it? [Williams Law Institute, June 2022]. Don’t it? Huh? Maybe? What is math? What even is data? Who knows man, these records are degenerate though.
But because the Right-wing are only concerned about angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin type nonsense about “gnostic heresies” and not actual concrete happenings, they don’t even bother to look up the data or even consider that voluntary sterilisation might even be a thing in modern society outside of “degeneracy.” Why do they even let you have internet connections in your nursing home? You’re a menace to civil society.
You had a point until you accused Quinn of being a “menace to civil society.” If you believe this of someone who is anti-trans but does good work for the cause, it suggests that you care more about trans issues than anything else. That makes it hard to take you seriously.
He is a menace because he is trying to stir up religious hatred against transgenders based on a strawman argument. He also borderline advocates for violent abuse based on the ‘gay panic’ defense.
“. . .met a transvestite in a romantic setting under false pretenses and then discovered the truth the hard way? . . . Or would you get out of there as soon as possible and start throwing punches if he/she/they gave you a hard time?”
Policymakers are starting to notice and criminalise this commonly used pretext for assault, GBH and / or murder:
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/minnesota-bans-gay-and-trans-panic
There’s really no need to murder the beasts anyway, since they quite conveniently commit suicide in fairly disproportionate numbers.
What exactly is his strawman argument? That there are men in dresses with fake lady parts tricking heterosexual men into sleeping with them? There sure seems to be a lot of videos out here of transexuals bragging about that very thing. I see a new one at least once a week. There is a big difference between rednecks going out gaybashing for sport(which is so rare these days it hardly ever happens or else we all would be hearing about it ad nauseam in every mainstream outlet) and men justifiably kicking the ass of a ladyboy who tried to pull a fast one on them. I do not advocate violence against anyone but I can fully understand why it happens because it is immoral, inconsiderate and dishonest. The overwhelming majority of violence perpetrated against transexuals is drug or prostitution related.
Did you by any chance consider that a very high number of those women who are as you put it “voluntarily sterile” are women who have already had children? My wife and I have two beautiful young girls but due to her repeated cases of post pre-eclampsia we decided to become “voluntarily sterile” due to the immense stress on my wife’s body. She fucking almost died the second time. Being “voluntarily sterile” doesn’t necessarily include being gender non-conforming androgynes and you know it.
Like Alex Graham said, it is hard to take you seriously when it seems that you are in no position of real experience to weigh in on things such as being in a functional heterosexual relationship that involves child rearing. Until you get a girlfriend and start working on procreation, perhaps you should let the grown ups handle this one. I’m sorry but your snark is too much for me to hold my tongue on such a personal issue.
Watch those goalposts move, from hard data about population fertility to a pack of unwarranted, unfounded, speculative and hysterical assumptions and moral browbeating about how YOU should do YOUR PART, double underline all caps. Remind me, in what serious forum do you attack people for Not Having Trad Gf? Is this how they do things at statista.com? Also, you know doubleplus nothing about my life? Go seethe somewhere else.
“I wonder if Ray Davies still “always want[s] it to be that way” regarding Lola.”
Google?
“Expressing his support for transgender rights, Sir Ray said: “The album, Lola Versus Powerman, is a celebration of artistic freedom (including my own) and the right for anyone to be gender free if one wishes.”
https://inews.co.uk/culture/music/the-kinks-sir-ray-davies-lola-west-end-musical-444810
” . . . speaking to Q in 2016, Davies revealed that it wasn’t about his manager and was about an experience that he’d had. Davies noted: “The song came out of an experience in a club in Paris. I was dancing with this beautiful blonde, then we went out into the daylight and I saw her stubble. So I drew on that but coloured it in, made it more interesting lyrically.”
“‘Lola’ was a love song, and the person they fall in love with is a transvestite,” Davies clarified the meaning behind the song and explained that it was written out of “admiration more than anything else.”
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-kinks-lola-transgender-woman-banned-radio/
“What other contemporaneous major act sang about anything remotely similar to “Lola”? ”
Remotely similar? Well, there’s The Who’s 1966 single, “I’m a Boy” of which AI says:
“The song was originally intended to be part of a rock opera called “Quads,” set in a future where parents can choose the sex of their children. The song’s lyrics explore themes of identity, gender, and societal expectations.” More to the point, 4 girls are ordered but one boy is delivered by mistake, but raised as a girl:
My name is Bill, and I’m a head case
They practice making up on my face
Yeah, I feel lucky if I get trousers to wear
Spend evenings taking hairpins from my hair
So we’ve got the transvestite theme, though involuntary and resisted.
Then in 1967, we have Pink Floyd’s first single, “Arnold Layne.” Wikipedia says:
“The song is about a man whose strange hobby is stealing women’s lingerie from washing lines. According to Roger Waters, “Arnold Layne” was actually based on a real person: “Both my mother and Syd’s mother had students as lodgers because there was a girls’ college up the road so there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and ‘Arnold’ or whoever he was, had bits off our washing lines.”
Written by Syd Barrett, who indeed became a head case. Of course it’s not clear if Arnold wears the clothing, or merely collects it.
All three bands are British, which may explain this trope.
“So we’ve got the transvestite theme, though involuntary and resisted.” Not sure this one would qualify as similar, but “remotely similar,” OK.
I stand corrected on Arnold Layne. I listened the pipers at the gates of dawn once in college, disliked it, and have had a blind (deaf?) spot for Barrett era Floyd ever since. Thanks for that.
“All three bands are British, which may explain this trope.” I counted 2 above. Is there another?
[The] top “LGBTQ” pop songs of all time… following 1955’s “Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard (which had all its gay content scrubbed before it hit the radio…
—
Scrubbed because it wasn’t quite time in 1955,
Could that lovely record mark the date when the camel’s nose first slipped under Whitey’s tent? Perhaps, but probably earlier. Popular music has been a primary tool used to flip traditional values upside down in Judaized America. Can we not do better?
“Call of the Blood by Dresden (band); songs by Joseph Pryce” at cosmotheistchurch.org was a good start. Making LQBT freaks ineligible for National Alliance membership was a good second step. Our members like it that way.
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