I just heard something on the radio that I feel compelled to write about.

I listen to BBC Radio 6 Music a lot when I’m at home, which I am this Labour Day. I try not to pay attention to the regular (bad) news announcements, but one particular item today was so heinous it stood out.

A judge found a 21-year-old young man guilty of sexually assaulting and then murdering his own sister. His sentence a jail term of 22 years.

It seems as obvious to me now as when I was a young girl that someone who does something like this is both mentally and emotionally seriously ill.

But here’s what I want – and need – to say. Directly after broadcasting this awful true story, the BBC, in its wisdom (NOT) and excruciating lack of sensitivity, played the Jimi Hendrix song, “Hey Joe.”

In case you don’t know, the song’s a story of a man who shoots his wife dead because she went with another man. The husband/killer then heads off to Mexico, so he can be free. There’s one point in the song where Hendrix announces, “I shot her!” and it sounds like a cry of exultation. “Justice has been done!” Or, more accurately, vengeance has been done. The score has been evened.

Really?

Years ago, on Facebook, I commented to a male musician friend that I thought songs like “Hey Joe” ought to be banned. I received a very long and very irate lecture from him in reply, which steamrollered over my contention that these kinds of songs are part of the problem of violence against women. Basically, he said, I overreacted.

It’s true that many people pay no attention to song lyrics, which explains why the Police song, “Every Breath You Take,” (about a stalker) gets played at weddings for the couples’ first dance.

But whether it’s “Hey Joe,” or Beatle Paul McCartney’s cutesy, nursery-rhymish “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” (about a boy bashing in his teacher’s head with a hammer to make sure she’s dead) these songs tacitly or overtly condone violence against women.

Their repetition can cause them to enter the subconscious mind of young people in particular, forming the view that this is the way life is.

As a former victim of domestic abuse, and of violence and rape at the hands of a complete stranger, I’d like to see songs that talk about attacking women as though it’s okay banned from public radio.

I believe that freedom of speech comes with responsibilities. If an artistic creation demeans or denigrates a sector of society, or makes light of treating them badly, that artistic creation is unworthy of wide circulation because it doesn’t serve humanity as a whole.

What do you think? I’d be interested to hear your point of view.

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash