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Baby It's Cold Outside: A Guide To Wholesome Flirting?
Malcolm and Simone discuss the classic Christmas song "Baby It's Cold Outside" and how it demonstrates wholesome flirting using plausible deniability. This allows romantic interest to be signaled while preserving both parties' ability to save face if unrequited.
They contrast it to more recent "slutty Christmas" songs conveying entitlement and transactional attitudes. The importance of picking up on social cues is highlighted - autistically interpreting the song as nonconsensual misses the contextual flirting.
The breakdown of traditional dating rituals due to liability risks and progressive social norms is explored. However, Simone pushes back against solely blaming women or feminism. The root cause is dominance hierarchies enforced by bureaucratic power structures that hurt both genders.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] for our Christmas episode right now.
Simone Collins: Baby, It's Cold Outside is a guide to dating. It's what flirting used to look like.
And what makes this song even more wholesome is that it was written in 1944 by Frank Loesser who was. So saying it with his wife, Lynn so like, this is something also that like, this is demonstrative by the kind of interplay that led a husband and wife to get married. Like this is the kind of behavior that leads to lasting.
Long term pair bonded relationships
Malcolm Collins: it's very interesting if you contrast it with other songs that are, that are Christmassy. Like the the two songs that both have the same theme of I'm a big slut. So
Simone Collins: last Christmas I gave you my heart and the very next day you gave it away. And Ariana Grande is singing, you know. I don't want to give it all away if you won't be here next year.
Malcolm Collins: But it's important to remember that the enemy isn't women. It's the cultural group that has enforced these norms that have made it impossible to date women.
Would you like [00:01:00] to know more?
Simone Collins: Did you
Malcolm Collins: read that loud enough for me to use it in the
Simone Collins: recording? I can read the thing. Their Troublesome Crush by Zan West. In this queer polyamorous male female romance novella, two metamors realize they have crushes on each other while planning their shared partner's birthday party together.
Ernest, a Jewish autistic demiromantic queer fat trans man submissive, and Nora, a Jewish disabled queer fat femme cis woman switch. Have to contend, with an age gap, a desire not to mess up their lovely polyamorous dynamic as metamores, the fact that Ernest has never been attracted to a cis person before, and the reality that they are romantically attracted to each other all while planning their dominant partner's birthday party and trying to do a really good job.
Malcolm Collins: So it looks like from the cover, the woman is much older than the man, obese and with a cane. So
Simone Collins: yeah, the [00:02:00] cover is, I mean, I would say the cover is well done in that it seems to be fairly accurate. We have the two overweight people dressed in classic, I don't know, progressive style standing in front of what I believe is a cupcake counter looking extremely awkward and unattractive.
Oh my gosh. Well,
Malcolm Collins: here's a reddit thread that really got me when I read it because it aligns with so much of what we've been talking about on the channel. Yeah
Simone Collins: Oh, the 20 year old dating one?
Malcolm Collins: My 20 year old son doesn't date. His friends don't date. My friend's kids don't date. What's going on? When I was in my late teens and early twenties, life for my friends and me revolved around meeting girls.
My son and his friends, who
Published on 2 years ago