You Men Out There chords by Peggy Seeger

SimplifiedG · Gm · C · Em · D …

Verse 1
G 
You men out there,
you've shown real strength
Gm 
listening to me go on at length about
G 
women  this and women
that, almost as if the other half, well, 48%,
of the human race wasn't worth
the time and space they occupy.
Stop surreptitiously checking your watches,
hands instinctively covering crotches,
C 
inspecting your nails
and rearranging your shoes.
G 
It's understandable.
You're confused.
And your father's father,
his dad's dad,
and his pop's papa,
and all the lads,
and the uncles,
sons, and brothers too.
They probably felt
the same as you. Confused.
But from where we're at,
here's how it looks.
Em 
D 
Long before the time of books,
G 
women were magic,
women were mystery.
Way before the start of history,
D 
Em 
before space travel and megacities,
G 
females were heading
planning committees.
Women searched the fields and hedges,
hunting flowers,
herbs and sedges,
roots for soups, leaves for healing,
plants to enhance loving feelings.
Wise women, now called witches,
and powerful women,
now called bitches,
managed life and death and birth,
cared and shared with planet Earth.
When the Golden Age came to a stop,
there were the men up on top.
I guess it starts with lust and love,
where a man spends
a lot of time up above.
But somehow women got redefined
and got accustomed to
tagging behind,
got used to living by manners
and graces
and being judged by our figures and
faces.
And before long you were peeling our bananas,
C 
opening doors  for us
G 
and moving our pianos.
Then you got busy.
You had a ball making,
breaking and rearranging it all.
The Taj Mahal, the game of chess,
safety pins, the printing press,
chemotherapy, burglar alarms,
money, ice cream,
nuclear arms,
x -rays, battery farms,
wired bras, designer cars,
opera houses, disco bars,
income tax,
revolving doors, glass ceilings,
wars and wars,
Mozart, Lenin,
Picasso, Descartes,
charting the stars,
transplanting hearts.
We all admit that you've done wonders,
and if at times they seem
like blunders
and look like a recipe for global death,
women everywhere will have to accept
that we didn't stop you
or slap your hand
Bb 
as we traveled the road to no
G 
man's land.
Still, you're up there in the driver's seat,
and we're down here with
a balance sheet.
We're answering a question you
didn't ask.
F 
We want to go forward into a
G 
past
where humans were part of a natural whole,
where we didn't hunt, exploit,
or control every plant
and animal species,
where we didn't
cover the world
with feces of one sort or another.
As for the vote,
F 
well it's not the answer to
a woman's prayer,
G 
but it's a start,
and it's kind of fair,
and as women living in the world of man,
we have to use every tool we can.
So, forward to the fought and won for the battles
we're winning one by one.
Informative action,
and I do believe in what we women are going to receive,
and what we women,
if we want, can take.
52 % of the cake, 52 % of control.
G 
F 
And in terms of democracy's rigmarole,
G 
that's only one person, one vote.
You men out there,
it's a time of change, of redirection,
and it does feel strange.
Am 
It'll get less so hour by hour.
But remember,
it isn't easy relinquishing power.
We know.