Parton’s first hit with RCA, 1968’s “Just Because I’m a Woman,” illuminated the sexual double standards that encouraged men to be playboys but morally incriminated the women who slept with them. The song follows a traditional country-guitar strum, but the ideas Parton pushed through Nashville in the lyrics were as revolutionary as the feminist publications coming out of academia and radical small presses. Responding to a disappointed partner’s admonishment, the song describes “slut shaming” long before that was a term: “Yes I’ve made mistakes, but listen and understand / My mistakes are no
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