![]() It wasn’t until after the 1960s women’s movement that a conversation spread about consent in a situation like the one described in the song. While two grand juries didn’t indict the men, the case and protests against the rape of black women helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement. In fact, the year “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was composed, in 1944, the NAACP sent Rosa Parks to help 24-year-old Alabaman Recy Taylor speak out about being gang-raped by six white men on her way home from church. “Interracial rape was a ubiquitous form of terrorism in the South,” says Devlin. There was no way for women to win,” she says.įor women of color, consent was even further from view. “If a women tried to bring this into court, the court would say, ‘What were you doing alone with him?’ They would blame her. In the early 20th century, states raised that age the first known use of the term “jailbait” was in 1927.įor a woman, being alone with a man, especially if there was flirtation going on, could be considered consent, Devlin says. Freedman, professor of History at Stanford University and author of Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation and Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. ![]() “In the 18th and 19th century, if you were over 10, you were considered legally capable of consenting or withholding consent to sexual relations,” says Estelle B. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, there were efforts to raise the legal age of consent to protect the growing number of young women moving to cities to take factory jobs. Not being able to say yes is as much as a problem as having to say no.” The Evolution of Consentīut just because a woman would have a reason to demure despite her wishes, that doesn’t mean the situation in the song is obviously a harmless one.Ĭomplicating analysis of the lyrics is the fact that the concept of “consent” has evolved over time. “The culture refused to acknowledge women’s right to say yes or no. “That song comes from an era when women were just expected to say no, no matter what they wanted,” echoes Bailey. The song is an important historical document because it does represent these constant negotiations. “Men were expected to push, and women were expected to make sure men didn’t cross the line, which was entirely up to the women because if line was crossed, and they did have sex, she was ruined. “It was a weird contradictory time, just a lot of hypocrisy,” says Devlin. One result of that situation is the dynamic on display in the song, in which the woman sings that she “ought to say ‘no'” and mentions how the neighbors will gossip if she doesn’t leave. ![]() Stern’s book The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women details how the federal government incarcerated thousands of women suspected of being promiscuous, in a misguided effort to safeguard troops from sexually transmitted diseases.Īs such, women had incentive to hide their sexual desires. Women could even be arrested and imprisoned. Women who got pregnant could be kicked out of their homes and out of college pregnant high-schoolers could be sent to homes for unwed mothers, forced to give their babies up for adoption, and to undergo a rehabilitation program before they could go back to school, according to Rachel Devlin, author of Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture and a professor of History at Rutgers University. Abortion was criminalized, and contraception was illegal in most states. Her personal reputation and her family’s reputation was on the line. But for women who were caught doing so, the consequences could be steep.
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