Psychology of Women Quarterly brings an open door challenge:
…benevolent sexism is an ideology that perpetuates gender inequality. But despite its negative consequences, benevolent sexism is a prevalent ideology that some even find attractive…
Additionally, benevolent sexism was indirectly associated with life satisfaction for both women and men…
Thus, our findings reinforce the dangerous nature of benevolent sexism and emphasize the need for interventions to reduce its prevalence.
“Benevolent sexism,” also known as being a gentleman, includes all sorts of dangerous behaviors like opening doors, giving up your seat on a bus, or putting women and children in the lifeboats first. It treats men and women differently, asserting, even demonstrating, that men and women are different. Such sexism is a slap in the pudgy, frowning face of egalitarianism. It re-draws in black magic marker the boundaries feminists have been frantically attempting to erase for a century.
The fact that such acts make both women and men* happy is sufficient provocation to leftists that they will dream up all manner of “interventions” to keep you from doing them. We can’t have people being happy, now can we? In Moonbatistan we may not all be equally miserable, but at least we’ll all be miserable.
Which is what I don’t get about a number of men who (correctly) see feminism as a major source of dry rot in our teetering culture. Their response is, in essence, “Open your own damn door.” Why in the world would you do that? Here you have a simple act – pregnant with symbolism and yet functional at the same time – that makes everyone in the world happy except feminists. And you’re going to stop doing it?**
A man need not let the attitudes of women, and especially feminists, determine his behavior. So some cankled feminist reacts negatively to you holding the door for her. Who cares? Choose to do it anyway. Hold the door open until she either goes through it or goes away.***
If anyone in that transaction looks stupid, it’s not the one with a door in his hand. Rather, it’s the one who is trying desperately to convince herself that it’s your sexism that produces negative consequences in her life rather than her pride, her leftist idiocy, and her irrational stubbornness.
* for some unknown reason, the study does not seem to take into account the attitudes of transgenders, bi-genders, gynephilic MtF transsexuals, androgynes, and those who self-identify as rutabagas or hyperintelligent shades of the color blue. PWQ is certainly going to hear it from their readers now.
** Call me obsessive, but if I’m living in such a way that leftists are not dreaming up endless “interventions” for me, I’m not really living.
***Either choice results in her submission to you, for her possible reactions are limited by your purposeful action, which is why feminists hate it. If you’re not doing it to be a gentleman, at least do it as an act of cultural sabotage.
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