Here’s the thing about defending “Baby It’s Cold Outside” as “of its time”:
A few years ago, I unwittingly befriended a rapist. I met him through an online roleplaying group, and while we all knew he was dealing with “legal trouble,” he intentionally fed us information in a trickle so that we wouldn’t reject him. Even when he left the group to begin serving his sentence, very few people knew the full extent of what he’d done.
The day I realized he was a rapist was the day he told me about the statement he entered for his plea bargain. He told me that he’d been forced to enter the statement, “She said no.” He clarified: “I wanted to say, ‘She said no in a way that encouraged me to think she meant yes,’ but they wouldn’t let me.”
Gosh. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
That man raped two women honestly believing that “they said no in such a way as to indicate that they meant yes.” And every time I have to read yet another piece of shitty apologia for “Baby It’s Cold Outside”, I hear it in his voice: “Her words say no, but other signs show that she’s really saying yes.”
Most of these defenses are careful to note that the song was “feminist in its time,” and I can accept that. But the argument they use to justify this progressive reading – and often, by extension, the continued airplay of the song – is the same argument that a convicted rapist I knew used to justify the rapes of two separate women. Worse, this song and that argument continue to circulate regularly in mainstream media channels, where he and other rapists can encounter and be validated by them. That, I cannot accept.
Here’s the thing: If the best defense you can mount for something is that it was progressive “in its time,” then maybe we ought to let it slip forgotten into the past where it belongs.
It’s barely December and I’m already seeing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” defenses on my dash, so I’m bringing this post back with a ~*fun*~ addition!
So fun fact: Literally within days of my posting this last year, I got a direct message from a person who was also a member of this RP group. They criticized me for betraying the confidence of the man in this post because, among other flimsy excuses, I “couldn’t know what really happened.”
Which cracked me up, because the entire point of this post is that he told me what really happened. He told me – and his lawyer! – that she said no. It’s just that to him, “She said no in a way that encouraged me to think she meant yes.”
The idea that men will admit to rape if you just don’t call it rape gets passed around a lot, but I am a living, breathing witness to it happening. And I got to hear him admit it using the exact same language I hear other people use to defend “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
So yeah, let me amend my original ending: If the best defense you can mount for something is identical to the language a rapist would use to defend his actions while admitting his guilt, then maybe just don’t.
I think the grossest thing is that someone added a reaction gif of Shia Labeouf applauding to the post defending the song, and that’s the version of the post I keep seeing reblogged. Actual sexual assault victim Shia Labeouf.
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