John Lennon Meant Well With This 1972 Song, but Should He Really Have Written It?
On their 1972 album Some Time In New York City, John Lennon and Yoko Ono featured a controversial song with an overall well-meaning message. However, as well-intentioned as it may have been, the song “Woman Is The [Redacted] Of The World” may not have been the radically supportive statement that Lennon and Ono were hoping for.
According to the 2016 book Public Interests: Media Advocacy And Struggles Over U.S. Television by Allison Perlman, Ono initially uttered the phrase in a 1969 interview with Nova magazine. The phrase has been partially attributed to Zora Neal Hurston’s book Their Eyes Were Watching God, in which one of its characters relays a similar statement.
Additionally, Lennon stated in a 1972 television interview that James Connolly, an Irish revolutionary, was also an inspiration, specifically via his quote, “the female worker is the slave of the slave.” The song was apparently meant to express that “women were the most oppressed group in the world and within oppressed groups themselves, women are the most mistreated and relegated to the lowest status rung,” according to Perlman.
Source: Lauren Boisvert/American Songwriter
