Ritual

(Album: Downset. - 1994)

Do you know what it is like to run?
Do you know what it is like to live in fear?
Do you know what it is like to run?
Do you know what it is like to live in fear?

'Cause she knows what it's like to run
She knows what it's like to live in fear
Because she knows what it's like to run

Rape ritual
How can I stand in silence while you are raping my sister?
Ritual
I said I'll throw you in the wind because I ain't with that

Say what have we done to mother, sister, daughter, lover?
Beat them down to submission, into that corner of constant fear
Humanity reduced to a sexual commodity
Objectification
Pretty faces, molded imagery

Damn they drop the dirty mack demands
She's more than booty to me
Bypass her sexuality
Tradition
Your sexism is what you want me to learn
Surrender
Gender hatred, fade it to kill it, compassion returns

One out of three and they say my sisters are free
Incarcerated by hatred, propagated misogyny
Continual ritual victimizing my sister
Physical rape is psychological murder

Ritual
How can I stand in silence while you are raping my sister?
Ritual
I said I'll throw you in the wind because I ain't with that

Ritual
How can I stand in silence while you are tearing?
Rape ritual

Jenny, ho, slut, trick, bitch, buddy
Terms that burn in our popular brutality
That media camera's at you, trying to show you what's up
Illusion magazine fantasy got you fiending to bust a nut

Body identity suffocates in her nudity, she's dying inside
Fashions asking won't let her be
Strip her to flesh
For apathetic male ego
You bet the 'set ain't down with your wack
Rape ritual

We got to meet this hate with love
We got to meet this hatred with love
Why do we fall for it, fuel it
Sexual violence

Equality?

Please, so-called alternative movement
Statistics never confess her wounded aloneness
Internal inferno locked away calm diminishment
Sharon stone, you ain't all of that
Madonna, you ain't all of that

Sell you shallow shock value charade is wack
Sister, put a fist in what's expected of you
Deny, defy, reject false definition of you too
There's no excuse for this brutality or this lack of humanity

Rape ritual
How can I stand in silence while you are raping my sister?
Ritual
I said I'll throw you in the wind because I ain't with that

Ritual
How can I stand in silence while you are tearing?
Rape ritual

I say that I'll throw you into the wind
Say that I throw you're misogynistic violence into the wind
I say your traditions mean nothing to me