Posted on 12/14/2012 5:29:50 AM PST by Kaslin
Chivalry is back in the news. The always-alert Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute draws our attention to an item in the Psychology of Women Quarterly. A new study on what the authors are pleased to call "benevolent sexism" (which, as Murray translates, seems to mean gentlemanly behavior) found that both women and men are happier when men behave like gentlemen.
This being a sociological publication, though, the findings are not written in English, but rather in academic argot. It's full of sentences like this: "A structural equation model revealed that benevolent sexism was positively associated with diffuse system justification within a sample of 274 college women and 111 college men."
If you spend more than $100,000 on an undergraduate and graduate education in women's studies, you can learn to be this impenetrable, too.
The authors of the study were quick to warn readers about what they'd discovered. "Our findings reinforce the dangerous nature of benevolent sexism and emphasize the need for interventions to reduce its prevalence." Right. Though it seems to increase the life satisfaction of both sexes, it must still be eradicated.
When feminists set out to remake the sexes back in the 1970s, they seemed to choose all the wrong traits to emulate and/or eliminate. Women were encouraged to match the promiscuity, aggressiveness, and irresponsibility of men. In other words, women were to model themselves on the worst men. Meanwhile, the best traits of traditional men -- specifically their most chivalrous and protective impulses -- were to be maligned, mocked, and resented.
Still dancing on Mitt Romney's political grave, feminist writer Gina Barreca told the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten that Romney would be a "terrible, terrible date." (Leave it to a feminist who wants women to be taken seriously to evaluate a presidential candidate as a potential date.) Why? Because he'd be chivalrous. "Chivalry is the opposite of good manners. It's infantilizing. It's contempt masquerading as politeness. The chivalrous guy is establishing roles; he is the protector, you are Limoges. Your job is to let him be masterful. In my experience, when you are standing on a pedestal, there's not much room to move around. That's by design."
Emily Esfahani Smith isn't buying the chivalry as disguised power grab line. Writing in the Atlantic, she notes (as Rich Lowry has highlighted) the contrast between the Titanic and the Costa Concordia -- two sinkings 100 years apart. Three quarters of the women on the Titanic survived, while three quarters of the men died. In 1912, men would have been ashamed of themselves if they failed to protect women -- even at the cost of their lives. Was that just "contempt masquerading as politeness"? On the Costa Concordia, early in 2012, men shoved women aside to get into the lifeboats. Oh well, at least the women had more room to move around than on that darn pedestal.
Smith reminds us that chivalry arose in response to the violence and barbarism of the Middle Ages. "It cautioned men to temper their aggression, deploying it only in appropriate circumstances -- like to protect the physically weak and defenseless members of society." Obviously many men failed to fulfill the ideal. We've always had boorish behavior. But wasn't it preferable to label boorish behavior as such, rather than celebrate it as a victory for sexual equality?
The chivalric code persists to this day, despite the best efforts of the feminists. When a shooter opened fire at an Aurora, Colo. movie theater, no fewer than three young men protected their girlfriends from bullets with their own bodies -- and died in the process.
Smith includes an anecdote that sums up the case for chivalry. Samuel Proctor, pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, tipped his hat to a lady. She was offended and demanded, "What is that supposed to mean?"
He replied: "Madame, by tipping my hat I was telling you several things. That I would not harm you in any way. That if someone came into this elevator and threatened you, I would defend you. That if you fell ill, I would tend to you and if necessary carry you to safety. I was telling you that even though I am a man and physically stronger than you, I will treat you with both respect and solicitude. But frankly, Madame, it would have taken too much time to tell you all of that; so, instead, I just tipped my hat."
That image tell us where the old hags come from...they don’t start old.
Ordinarily, I would agree.
But there is more at stake here than societal manners.
The leftists are “fundamentally transforming” this country into a Soviet-style state.
I will not be friendly or polite to tyrants. I will not make it easy for them. I will not make their lives comfortable. I will not make their days happy and joyful as they are ruining my life and my country.
They are the ones, not us, that declared “war” with the “culture war.” Eff them. And Eff smiling while they kick my teeth in. I won’t be sucker-punched and walk away smiling in order not to create a scene.
But they’re not happy and joyful when you are polite and kind. They are upset, as you observed. It’s like praying for an atheist, right in front of him ... it’s infuriating to him, while I have done the right thing.
My wife and I do the same, hold the door for someone who is following close behind. Taught son and daughter to do the same.
My daughter got in front of an elderly man and opened the door for him. He thanked her politley and went into the store. I saw tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.
In my opinion, life is too hard to waste a moment’s thought on making “statements” with general social interaction. Just do the right thing and move on. Other people’s response is Not My Problem.
FP—love your story.
See if the manager still has the store video of that encounter. It would look great on Youtube.
It was training and it is a habit with me as well.
But now I see those same 1960’s radicals who said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30” with their gray hair and leftist bumper stickers all over their Subaru’s and Prius’s who, now that they are old and gray, want to be treated with respect, want to have their wise counsel govern our lives.
They are still 1960’s radical leftists. They wanted power and control back then. They wanted it as they went through their careers. And now they want it now that they are the ‘older generation.’
Well, I 1960’s radicals turn my stomach.
And I enjoy flipping off gray-haired men and women driving down the road with leftist bumper stickers all over their cars.
I do it to honor Dennis Hopper (who came to abandon his early, radical ways), just as he did in Easy Rider. When I do it, I think, “Eff you, tyrant.”
My son opens doors for me, at stores sometimes he ends up holding the door for the many who follow. I stand and wait, and when there is a break he joins me. The thing that really stands out is how many young men do not know that it is their responsibiltiy to take over the door holding for their companions.
Women, I’m really sorry you’re not men, but I sure hope someday you learn to deal with it.
http://home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/ejoke/j2.html
Years ago when my 16-year-old was about 8 or 9, we made a very rare trip to the mall. On the way in, I turned around to see why he wasn’t at my side and saw that he was holding the door for a group of teenagers that included about 5 girls and 5 boys.
The girls squealed with delight at the cute little boy holding the door for them when one of them swatted the teenage boy next to her, saying, “How come YOU never hold the door for me?”
That said, I’ve taught my boys to say this if they ever encounter a “Why are you doing THAT?”-type of feminazi:
“Ma’am, I am not holding the door for you because you are a lady, I am holding it for you because I am a gentleman.”
That usually shuts ‘em up.
Regards,
Just wait when they get older, they wished someone opens the door for them, because they can’t do it themselves
All you rude men should be ashamed of yourselves. Regardless whether or not they’re Obama supporters, idiots, or whatnot, you should hold the door open for them.
I read a comment at a very young age: “I’m not holding the door because you’re a lady, but because I’m a gentleman.” I practice it to this day even if it’s someone I don’t like.
By lowering yourselves to their level, they win, and you lose. You lose a part of manliness that is being a gentleman, and you further help coarsen our society. They win. Don’t play their game. Open the damned door, and say good morning. Smile too. Making the country a better place begins in YOUR life, in YOUR heart. Politics be damned. BE A GENTLEMAN.
All my life, I’ve opened doors for ladies, stood aside to allow a lady to enter a room before me, and done everything I could to defer, as a gentleman, to the opposite sex.
It’s how I was raised. I have never, in my entire life, had a woman protest for being treated well in my presence and it really wouldn’t matter to me if that ever happened.
Psychologists abhor the idea that there is a biological life to humans beyond armchair intellectualism. As such, they equate biological programming with “social contrivances”, created as intellectual oppression of one group against another.
For this reason, for example, they reject monogamous marriage as a social contrivance, artificial, unnatural and deceitful, despite its profound and obvious biological advantages to men, women, and especially their offspring, far beyond just animal reproduction.
So it should be no surprise that they also reject chivalry, neglecting the basic biological fact that women are more important than men, biologically, that beyond men’s role in creating genetic diversity, their essential purpose is to protect and assist, as well as provide for women and their offspring.
Other than that, women’s role in reproduction and child rearing is so important that men perform many other roles, because they are available to do so. Yet priority is always to women.
The “pedestal”, as it were, is a “safe nest”, and men are only free to do other things when this is assured, otherwise they are in error. Many men have a strong natural response when they perceive that women and children are at risk, either from an acute danger or a chronic one, the lack of prosperity.
And imagining it all as a social contrivance changes nothing, even if changes are forced they do not last, and accomplish no good ends. So they are frivolous and harmful.
You forgot making sammiches.
I am with the Reverend Proctor. I don’t have a hat to tip, but I am polite. I open the door for my wife, and for women in general; if I am on the subway, if a woman or older gentleman is standing, I offer my seat. I frequently allow them to go first even in checkout lines. I offer to carry things for women or otherwise be helpful - even total strangers.
I really don’t care what the womyn think. I’m better than they are and I know it; they probably know it, too. Ladies, on the other hand, know it is their due.
I suppose this will get me arrested someday.
People analyze everything way too much and act like civilized human beings too little nowadays! Both sexes!
Being old and gray, but fantastically active and wise male, I am very often rewarded with a door opened or held open by a much younger female.
I smile and say “why thankyou” and pass through. Both our days are made more pleasant.
Consider, too, how they reap in another way.
Marlo Thomas, who as a little girl helped her dad, Danny Thomas, make a fool of himself weekly in Make Room for Daddy. She grew up to be a brassy, unpleasant feminist screedist and perpetual demonstratrix -- both a political demonstratrix, and a living example of the worst that feminazism has to offer.
Now she's old and barren, and married to Phil Donahue (she married him at age 43 -- ooops, honey, I shriveled the kids).
What goes around .....
For people I’m with or I know, sure. Strangers, SOL. If you look like a liberal zombie, I’ll make the effort to be rude.
I was raised to hold doors, etc. But, the leftists have their war that they’re conducting and I’m not going to to play nice anymore while they do it. If/when the time comes that “things” are escalated, I’m ready.
(Re-)elections have consequences; I’m doing my part to “take my ball(s) and leave”. I don’t care anymore; stay away from me.
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