#MeToo-ing Melissa

I can attest that the current sociopolitical, grammatical changes being wrought by the younger generations are having the desired effect.  Even as an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy senior, I find I have become sensitive to words, ideas, images in a way I have never been before.
For example, I was recently dancing my ass off to Melissa Etheridge, that rockin' sockin' beat beauty.  And the lyrics of one song, an older one titled "You Must Be Crazy For Me" really pulled me up short.  Here are the lyrics:
'Cause when I kissed you last night
In my own backyard
You ran so fast
And you fought so hard
You must be crazy for me.
So, let's take a moment to look at those words.
"When I kissed you last night in my own backyard."  So Melissa kissed the Love Object (hereafter referred to as LO).  LO did not kiss Melissa, but was kissed, and it was in Melissa's backyard, so Melissa had what we might call the home court advantage.
"You ran so fast and you fought so hard."
So LO ran and fought.  It's troubling that the running comes first, and then the fighting.  I know, I know, poetic license, a need for the lyrics to scan and all that.  But still, it's rather a disturbing image if taken at face value.  LO ran and then fought, so we have to assume Melissa ran after LO and LO tried to fight her off.  And all this time, Melissa is assuming that LO is actually being a tease, being coy, asking for it, saying "yes" by saying "no".  It crossed my mind that Melissa might have been mocking or exposing the thinking of all those men and, so it seems, women who through the centuries have been using this twisted logic: If she (or he) fights, she (or he) really wants it.
It was not very long ago that lyrics like that would have seemed no more than something to sing to the rockin' sockin' tune and beat.  But now my ears have become so sensitized, I can't help but see through the convention to the ickiness beneath.
I'm actually seeing and hearing all sorts of songs, movies, pictures differently these days.  I watched  Disney's animated "Peter Pan" not too long ago.  It was the favorite movie of my childhood, one I watched over and over again, dreaming of flying, of escaping, of not growing old.  This time, however, when it go to the number "What Makes the Red Man Red?" I was shocked, embarrassed, and ashamed, ashamed for my country's history and ashamed of myself for having taken so long to recognize the egregious and insulting stereotyping of Native Americans, those peoples killed off by the millions by the conquering Europeans.
I also recently re-watched "Gone With the Wind", another favorite movie.  It sickened me to see Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes moping about because he has to work instead of going to bbq's and picnics, mourning for the good old days when the work was done by unpaid slave labor.  The word slave isn't uttered in that movie even once.  It's disgusting.
I wonder if there will ever be any real healing in this country until someone with a very big spotlight and microphone, such as the President or someone of that stature, finally says publicly that this country was founded on genocide and slavery, and that both are utterly wrong, indefensible.  I don't know if racism can ever truly be eradicated in this country until it is pulled up by the roots, which means acknowledging both its history and its ghastliness.  That's not reparations enough, but it seems like a good place, maybe the only place, to start.
And I will admit, as cantankerous as I can sometimes be about "they" having been co-opted and turned into a singular pronoun, I do very much appreciate that the young 'uns are doing their best to wake up the old 'uns like me so that we finally recognize for ourselves how unfair and out of balance this county is and has been from the first.