Read on Twitter
The Baby It’s Cold Outside takes are doing the rounds again, so this might be a good time to remember that the author is dead and has been for a while now. As I remind my students, and myself, regularly: intention and effect are two different things. 1/
The song may well have been written by a happy couple joking about getting guests to leave at the end of the night. It may well have been written in a context that required women to demure even when they really *did* want to stay the night 2/
I’d argue that it has coercive vibes (“Think of my lifelong sorrow / If you caught pneumonia and died”), even if we take that intention at face value. I can imagine that the song may have been uncomfortable or even triggering for survivors even at the time it was written 3/
But also: contexts change over time. Hearing this song out of context on the radio or while you’re out shopping is very different from being at a party & knowing the people who wrote it. 1944 is not 2020, in a lot of ways 4/
I remember reading during my MA (& I’m sorry I can’t remember who wrote this now!) that one of the shifts of the sexual revolution in the ‘60s was a movement from women needing freedom to say “yes” to women needing freedom to say “no” to sex 5/
Rape culture has operated since time immemorial, but its tactics shift over time and as cultures change. Misogyny is the constant, even tho it manifests in different ways 6/
So if you like the song, that’s fine — but at a minimum acknowledge that a) not all readers experience texts the same way and b) its “original intentions” are kind of irrelevant to how it’s received today /end
