Really?
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This will probably get me in trouble and I haven’t been following talk about the issue, but are there really feminist folks who think something’s wrong with a man opening a door for a woman?
Please, tell me you’re kidding.
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Just the strawfeminist, really.
Generally no, but even while I was at University of Alabama I even had women sometimes bitch about opening doors for them.(Mind you, only Ole Miss is more of a chauvanistic IMO.) Its like saying “sir” or “ma’m”. I was taught to do these things out of being respectful, but some people find it condesending or chauvanistic.
Context is everything. The man that constantly rushes ahead of every woman he’s with to open the door for her can come across as condescending. The man that opens the door for others simply because he got there first and regardless of gender, but is just as comfortable when a woman gets there first and opens the door does not.
It’s called feminism 101. Most young women grow out of that phase. My wife in now on her post doctorate in feminism. Mellower but just as fierce with major issues.
However after 28 years of marriage I still say “yes dear”. It is the key to marital bliss.
“However after 28 years of marriage I still say “yes dear”. It is the key to marital bliss.”
Crap! I am so argumentative, but you can’t argue with 28 years. I am still single so no worries now but I will take this advice into consideration. Let me guess… Saying this isn’t condesending or demeaning to your wife? Door open=Bad
Yes dear= Good
Oldmess,
I admit I was pretty chauvanistic entering college and a good women broke it from me, while context is important, respectfulness and a kindness are more important in my mind than wondering if I am encountering a regular girl or a radical feminist. Just sayin:)
There’s also a (dinosaur) breed of men who actually glare at women who don’t wait for them to catch up and open the door for them, or who vociferously object to women who get to the door first and hold it open for a man, as if that’s somehow emasculating.
There’s good manners, and then there’s weird macho shit.
I open the door for others, and let them open it for me. Good manners are always nice. But don’t you just hate it when you hold a door for somebody and they just breeze through without so much as a thanks?
Oh, and your new look is very nice.
Feminism has gone through many phases of thought. So there seems to be no one “feminism” but there does seem to be: 1st wave, second wave, third wave, sex-positive, radical, … and things like that.
It should not be surprising that one group of feminists will have differing thoughts about an issue from another group.
What does seem to be surprising is that the feminists don’t seem to like to discuss this in public. At least, “feminism 101″ doesn’t.
So yes, there are indeed feminists that don’t like doors opened, and there are indeed feminists that don’t mind that but think it is part of the patriarchy, and there are feminists that enjoy it, and there are women that are thoughtful, independent, take responsibility and will not call themselves feminists because they see a lot of their choices judged, disparaged, and otherwise restricted by some feminists.
One group of feminists demanded that pregnancy be treated as a disability (in terms of worker’s rights, and worker’s leave.) Another group of feminists is now offended that pregnancy was labeled a disability.
Other feminist leaders like Karen DeCrow and Daphne Patai have written about trends in feminism that they believe have led feminism awry. There are many many gigabytes of responses explaining why these ex-feminist leaders are just plain wrong and do not need to be listened to.
There are words that if you or I have used them are unacceptable. But certain feminists are proud to say they have reclaimed these words, like the word, “b*tch”. I am not sure anyone has really reclaimed the word b*tch, at least, 99.9999% of the times I hear it, it doesn’t sound to me like it’s been reclaimed. But it is good to know that one feminist can now call other women a b*tch and feel all nice about that.
The Feminism 101 site is there because feminists at Pandagon and their blog-circle do not like it when people come in and ask them questions. They like to talk amongst themselves, and they insist that to make the conversation and the women feel safe, they need to keep a firm hand on who can say what.
One of their methods for not discussing some issue is to claim that it is part of feminism 101, and to send the person away, often with the cry of “troll! misogynist! attack my minions!”
It’s apparently okay for these feminists sites to do this, though other “progressive”, “liberal” sites cannot, because otherwise those feminists will not feel safe, even on the intart00bs, and will not take part in the discussion and misogynists will just come in and ruin everything.
But yeah, be careful whom you open doors for.
There is a Feminism 101 site?
It’s just a term my wife has used for years to describe new converts who are over the top.
Try “BitchPhD” or “I blame the Patriarchy” for some good female perspective.
“Yes Dear” does work. It took me 10 years to figure it out. Most of the time the stuff you argue about is just crap. So giving up the fight at the beginning makes sense. Also if us male types win a fight we will lose in the long run.
It does not matter to me! If a man chooses to open a door, great and if he does not then I’m okay with that. I’m not bothered one way or the other.
O.T.> Oliver I have only recently discovered your blog and find the change great except for your picture. It sucks! I think it would make a great prison picture…Please consider another one.
Prison? What the heck?
Yes Dear” does work. It took me 10 years to figure it out. Most of the time the stuff you argue about is just crap. So giving up the fight at the beginning makes sense. Also if us male types win a fight we will lose in the long run.
That sounds wonderfully liberated!
Yes dear, works for me, too.
For some reason, my wife thinks I’m being sarcastic.
And I also say Yes, maam and no, maam. But I was raised that way by southerner parents.
I’m not trying to be naive or coy, but the whole femenism “how dare you open the door for me” thing has always seemed pretty damned ridiculous to me, along with the “bitch” reclamation and my other personal favorite – the “hooking up” thing. I suppose I was brought up under some pretty strange, socially democratic circumstances, but I was always under the impression that whoever gets to the door first holds it open for everyone else, “bitch” is a deragatory term for a human no matter who is using it, and running about screwing whoever you want whenever you want isn’t a sign of liberation – it’s a sign of being loose. Guys, girls, whatever – gender is completely irrelivant – this notion that holding the door for someone is an insult is ludicrous. The idea that someone could call me a bitch and mean it as a compliment shows how far society has fallen considering the number of words in the English language (or any other) they could use. And whether you’re male, female, or a hemaphrodite for all I care, sleeping around is not a sign of anything other than low self-esteem.
When I think of femenism, I think of the woman’s right to vote. I think of breaking those glass ceilings. I think of equal pay for equal work. I think of maternity leave to do something men can’t and couldn’t possibly handle if they could.
The last thing I think about is who the Hell is holding the door…
Hold the door, by all means! Pull out the chair if it makes you happy. I draw the line at jumping in front of me to open doors, ordering my food for me without discussing it first and a myriad of other things I think are rude to do regardless of gender.
I do use the word bitch on occasion, and it is rarely an insult so I guess the reclamation worked for me – and most of my friends (in our mid-30s to 40s). I wouldn’t say that to or about anyone I don’t know well because “bitch” seems to be to either be a state of being or pattern of behavior and in either case is usually cultivated but not apparent from a single meeting.
“Yes, dear” was a surefire way for my husband to start a fight, because it meant he had not heard what I was saying and just wanted to avoid the conversation. Set my teeth right on edge. Must be upbringing. Now, we found other alternatives to indicate that there were no objections to whatever the other person was saying, and 15 years later, we’re still coming up with new ones, so find whatever works for you and run with it.
As near as I can tell, feminism is much like religion in that everyone has the same basic idea of the really important historical stuff but the meaning going forward is subject to personal interpretation. That works for me, but I was raised a hippie liberal, so I’ve got a live and let live mentality anyway.