Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, and since then, I have been thinking about her personality – how it was formed in a nicer more gentler time (pre-computers) vs. now with people being split based on their opinions. Opinions that have made a sharp and very extreme change since COVID. Dolly helped people feel calm from what I can see. She refused to talk politics – which was one of the three things you should never discuss in company. I have been looking for a copy of her memoir from 1994 – which she wrote and I hope will be republished. I’d rather read her own words. I am not too fascinated with her costumes or her singing, but I think she was a wonderful writer, a great human being and she represents the end of old country. This is what I miss the most about country music – which you can’t find any country radio station willing to play. A time when these men and women had to hawk their wares at town festivals, drive around the country pushing their 45’s to disc jockeys and hoping to get on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. This was long before TV contests and Youtube. It was a time when these people grew up dirt poor and you could feel it in their music. They were not entitled but appreciative of their Appalachian heritage. Dolly was around for all of them, Patsy, Loretta, Tammi, Roy and Buck, Johnny and June, all the Carter sisters, Hank and George, so many legends with some leaving us much too soon.

Here is her take on being a woman from 1968.

Just Because I’m a Woman

I can see you’re disappointed
By the way you look at me

And I’m sorry that I’m not the woman
You thought I’d be
Yes I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman
So when you look at me
Don’t feel sorry for yourself

Just think of all the shame
You might have brought somebody else
Just let me tell you this
Then we’ll both know where we stand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman
Now a man will take a good girl
And he’ll ruin her reputation

But when he wants to marry
Well that’s a different situation
He’ll just walk off and leave her
To do the best she can
While he looks for an angel
To wear his wedding band
Now I know that I’m no angel
If that’s what you thought you’d found

I was just the victim of a man that let me down
Yes, I’ve made my mistakes
But listen and understand
My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman
No my mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I’m a woman

When I listen to these lyrics, I hear a woman scorned by the misogyny of our society. While this was written in 1968, women are still being held to a double standard. We see this with the Epstein files, that the victims are fighting to release. All those men who got away – so far – with taking advantage of young girls, young women. On the streets they are called “johns” and on the streets, it is the women behind bars, not the men who pay for them.

The misogyny is also seen by men who want to dress up as women – not for entertainment at an underground scene, but in front of children. Men who choose to take advantage of the role of women. Who are forcing us to create new rules, new laws, to actually explain biology and to write a definition for a woman. Men who have all the power they want but this wasn’t good enough, they had to take advantage of us in a new way. Walking in locker rooms, bathrooms, showing up to compete on girls sports teams – taking away their scholarships and awards, being sentenced to women’s prisons so they can rape and impregnate women, and even Daughters of the American Revolution. A new way to subjugate women to their way of thinking. Infiltrate and destroy, while NOW, MS., liberal women in general stay quiet and utter no words. One minute they are putting pink hats on in celebration of womanhood and now they are speechless. Is this what they wanted all along? Did they ever really care about women or was it communism – treating everyone the same because, in their eyes, we are all the same.

Back in 1968, women who were working faced sexual harassment and abuse. They were held back from promotions by men. Now, we hold ourselves back. At work and by staying silent. Men continue to have the upper hand over women, in new and more entitled ways. Women are still making mistakes, and they always will, but men will always persevere and win – as long as women and society sit idly by and allow this to happen.