Rich,
I don't think your situation here is exactly what Colin describes-- you're not worried about any of the particular words, as many of us are regarding the word "gypsy," for instance. The question here is whether the phrase has an offensive meaning of "women are things," and if so, is that a good reason not to use it. Personally, I'd probably alter it or do a different singing square. I don't subscribe to the extreme position that you should never sing lyrics to a folk song unless you agree with those lyrics; that would make singing folk songs very difficult to do at all. That said, there are some times where the meanings of lyrics are offensive enough, without any redeeming qualities, that I leave a verse out or alter a few words in the singing sessions that I lead. There is nothing sacrosanct about a particular set of lyrics to a folk song; people have been changing them for whatever reason for generations, and will continue to do so. If future singers don't like my revisions, they can sing a different version, just like I sometimes prefer to ignore Victorian-era revisions to bawdier songs.
Here, I'd lean toward not using the lyrics for three reasons: 1) they imply that women are objects; 2) there's nothing redeeming or valuable about them, as they're the only things sung, with no context; and 3) similarly, they don't represent the meaning of the song, and when repeated on their own, sort of pervert that meaning (at least going by the lyrics Yoyo posted).
I also think there are good reasons to err on the side of inclusive language, particularly in our community. Contra dancing is overwhelmingly white, and for a long time, contra dance calling was dominated by men. The loudest voices on this forum are those of older white men. Contra dancers and particularly organizers are disproportionately white baby boomers. We're seeing the effects of that now; dance attendance has been dwindling as older dancers stop attending and aren't replaced by younger dancers. If we want our dance form to continue to thrive, when there's a question on which there's a generational divide (as you, in my view correctly, note here), I would err toward using the language less likely to turn off our younger generations, which are also our most diverse generations. This isn't an issue where changing the lyrics is going to bother people-- very few would know the original lyrics well enough to notice-- and certainly nobody would know if you selected a different singing square instead.
-Dave