Morris-ey,

Interesting that we both claim that folk songs reflect their times and draw opposite conclusions about their sexism.

I'd argue that community standards and cultural institutions were, objectively, more sexist then than now, also more racist, more overtly anti-semitic, etc. These attitudes and this morality weren't just different in those respects, they were worse. We may feel we can't judge people who adhered to their community's standards--though there were always those who opposed them--but we certainly can judge those standards themselves.

The US Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson, mandating Jim Crow laws, was more racist than Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned them. The US was less sexist and racist after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed than when only men could holld property unrestrictedly, and human beings were among that property. In the 19th Century, American women could not vote; in 2016 Hillary Clinton won a popular majority in the presidential election. In popular fiction, greasy Jewish userers are no longer slotted as comic or villanous characters, as they were in the fiction of Anthony Trollope and Arnold Bennett. etc.

I agree, if you feel uncomfortable singing a sexist song, don't. And if you feel uncomfortable listening to one, walk out.