On Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Bill Silvers wrote:

> Your points about Mr. Lowe's taking the woman's side (or at least in
> pointing out the folly of the man's POV) are good ones. I didn't mean to
> say that I thought he was a misogynist for covering "Born A Woman," but
> I'll just say that pretty much every time I've ever rocked out to it
> I've cringed a little while hearing lines like "When you're born a
> woman, you're born to be hurt, you're born to be stepped on, lied to,
> cheated on and treated like dirt" and of course the outro chorus "born
> to be hurt...born to be hurt." That's not necessarily because there's
> anything about Nick's delivery or anything else that leads me to believe
> that he feels that way himself. I suspect that if I heard *any* male
> singer delivering those lyrics, I'd get the same cringe. And maybe it's
> just me - wouldn't pretend otherwise. And hey, it's still a kick-ass
> cover. Um, OK, you know what I mean by that, right?

I always took this song's message to be similar to that of John Lennon's
"Woman is the N***** of the World" (asterisks used to evade spam/obscenity
filters)--in neither case is the artist implying that he thinks such is
the state of affairs *and he agrees that that is right*--he's more saying,
essentially, "being a woman sure is hard, thanks to us men." Not exactly
XTC's "Church of Women," but a similar idea.