Lady Gaga is to make a comeback with, no, not an ode to partying or a track with a guest spot by alleged child molester R Kelly, but a song about sexual assault and rape.
’Till It Happens To You, co-written by Diane Warren (who wrote some epic cry-a-sing-a-long bangers such as Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time, Ace Of Base’s Don’t Turn Around and Leann Rimes’ How Do I Live) has been knocking around as a demo for a while and properly leaked last night, but has since been removed from the internet, which means we can’t play it to you right now.
Needless to say, it’s upsetting, with lyrics like ‘This is no joke/ Till It happens to you, you don’t know how it feels/ how it feels/ Until it happens to you’, and will be used as a soundtrack for two projects.
The first is a PSA, directed by Twilight’s director Catherine Hardwicke, which will address campus rape and sexual assault. The second is a documentary, The Hunting Ground.
The full-length documentary will not only look at rape culture and rape and sex attacks on campus, but the ways in which such stories have effectively been covered up and permitted by campus authorities.
You see, a dangerous frat-boy culture has pervaded American campuses for years, propped up by the permissiveness of old-timey universities that seem to have a ‘let boys be boys’ mantra weaved into their very bricks. But for all of the gross and illegal things that have happened to America’s female students in the past, the tide is beginning to turn.
As well as lawsuits against the universities that failed to investigate rape allegations made against students, the US government has launched a wide-ranging federal inquiry into campus assault. More visually, art about campus rape culture has drawn attention to how ridiculous it is that women – and it is mostly women – have to deal with these sorts of obstacles to education.
Emma Sulkowicz spent over a year lugging the mattress she was raped on around Columbia University’s campus, hoping that she could stop when her college would kick her rapist out. The college didn’t and she recently took the mattress with her to her graduation.
Here’s hoping that the more prominent art made around this gross, ongoing phenomenon will force more authorities to take a long hard look at the grim stuff that happens – unchecked – in these supposedly prestigious halls of academia.
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A Third Of Female Students Have Been Sexually Harassed, So What’s Being Done About It?
Banter Is Just A Way Of Silencing Opponents Of Rape Culture On Campus
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.