Why I'll keep opening the door for women - Sexism is civilised – whatever the Society for the Psychology of Women might think, says Stephen Bayley.
I always hold the door open for women. But, then, I always hold the door open for men, too. For this small act of graciousness, the peer-reviewed, humourless, bad-tempered, lunatic fringe of feminism – in the form of the Society for the Psychology of Women – now accuses me of "benevolent sexism".
Being, as they insist, a knuckle-dragging male gorilla, I took it to be simple good manners. Thank God I have been corrected before I went too far. Just imagine – I could have ended-up smiling at girls. I was going to write "pretty girls", but it would have been dangerously self-incriminating too early in the piece.
While writing that first paragraph, I said a sly, manipulative "thank you" to a male colleague for the espresso he so kindly put on my desk. I expect he will soon be tempted to raise his game and accuse me of chauvinistic bullying in the workplace. Sisters, believe me, we must be alert and vigilant!
I always hold the door open for women. But, then, I always hold the door open for men, too. For this small act of graciousness, the peer-reviewed, humourless, bad-tempered, lunatic fringe of feminism – in the form of the Society for the Psychology of Women – now accuses me of "benevolent sexism".
Being, as they insist, a knuckle-dragging male gorilla, I took it to be simple good manners. Thank God I have been corrected before I went too far. Just imagine – I could have ended-up smiling at girls. I was going to write "pretty girls", but it would have been dangerously self-incriminating too early in the piece.
While writing that first paragraph, I said a sly, manipulative "thank you" to a male colleague for the espresso he so kindly put on my desk. I expect he will soon be tempted to raise his game and accuse me of chauvinistic bullying in the workplace. Sisters, believe me, we must be alert and vigilant!
It's an incautious man who makes the case for sexism
In the summer of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's discontent, it's an incautious man who makes the case for sexism. But my roiling cauldron of ungovernable hormones encourages recklessness, so here goes. Sexism is a mark of civilisation, as is all behaviour based on perceptions and intelligently adapted to different circumstances. Life is about gradients – the ascending, sometimes meandering, paths between different values. Vice/virtue, young/old and male/female are simply the most obvious.
Manners are the device we use to negotiate these sometimes tricky and precipitous social slopes. It's a contract based on respect, an unforced standard of conduct intended to enhance another's self-esteem. This is why, when body-checked on the elevator at Piccadilly Circus this morning, I didn't kick the obstructive old boy in the ankle and say: "Get out of my way, you economically insignificant, ugly, feeble-minded crumbling old dotard."
I wonder what goes on in the firmly closed minds behind the bitterly closed doors of the Society for the Psychology of Women. I imagine the stern researchers responsible for coming up with the idea of "benevolent sexism" are charged with scrutinising global media for occult offences against the pure, uncontaminated cause of feminism. Enraged to madness by pervasive images of elegance and notions of courtesy, they remove themselves to the Ops Room to plan a world drained of enchantment and refinement. Fortunately, you can recognise leading Society members quite easily: most have suffered maxillofacial trauma, broken teeth and soft tissue injuries when liberated males, sensitised to the charge of "benevolent sexism", have preferred to let heavy swing doors thud into their faces.
It's true, of course, that new technology has tended to confuse the old contract. Somehow, doors are often involved. That business of opening the car door is made nonsensical when you have a remote blipper to do the central locking. In public buildings, automatic doors remove the need for the farcical theatrics of after-you-no-after-you. Meanwhile, sat-nav has freed women from the irksome, debasing, sexualised chore of map-reading, during which Ordnance Survey sheets were routinely covered by floods of tears.
The victories and liberations of classic feminism have, deservedly, become well-established. I don't think anyone argues about opportunities (equal), ceilings (glass), careers (open to talent), pay (rational) and housework (shared). Advanced males have for 30 years been extremely self-conscious about all of this, and of practising conventional politeness – or, indeed, any sort of conventional gender-based behaviour – lest they be accused of jungle-based stereotyping.
We know all of this. Very glad it happened. And this gives the survival (or revival) of good manners an added force. For my part, I have never met anyone who plays rugby, or been to either a football match or a stag do. And I much prefer that my wife (who is a woman) lets me do the shopping and cooking. Yet I still want to do that courtly thing with doors and compliment women on their appearance. Mind you, I compliment men, too.
This is why the absurdly negativist ideas of the Society for the Psychology of Women are so ugly and wrong. They seek to forbid charm, subtlety and nuance in human behaviour. Still, we must not attribute to malice what can readily be explained by stupidity. Do they have a copy of Doris Langley Moore's The Technique of the Love Affair (1928) in the society's library? Do they know that the ultimate in female packaging, the bra, was the work of a woman and peace activist called Mary Phelps Jacob? Or that it was another woman who told us blondes have more fun? I take my hat off to them, sexists one and all. Except that, being a truly advanced male, I don't own a hat. ( telegraph.co.uk )
Manners are the device we use to negotiate these sometimes tricky and precipitous social slopes. It's a contract based on respect, an unforced standard of conduct intended to enhance another's self-esteem. This is why, when body-checked on the elevator at Piccadilly Circus this morning, I didn't kick the obstructive old boy in the ankle and say: "Get out of my way, you economically insignificant, ugly, feeble-minded crumbling old dotard."
I wonder what goes on in the firmly closed minds behind the bitterly closed doors of the Society for the Psychology of Women. I imagine the stern researchers responsible for coming up with the idea of "benevolent sexism" are charged with scrutinising global media for occult offences against the pure, uncontaminated cause of feminism. Enraged to madness by pervasive images of elegance and notions of courtesy, they remove themselves to the Ops Room to plan a world drained of enchantment and refinement. Fortunately, you can recognise leading Society members quite easily: most have suffered maxillofacial trauma, broken teeth and soft tissue injuries when liberated males, sensitised to the charge of "benevolent sexism", have preferred to let heavy swing doors thud into their faces.
It's true, of course, that new technology has tended to confuse the old contract. Somehow, doors are often involved. That business of opening the car door is made nonsensical when you have a remote blipper to do the central locking. In public buildings, automatic doors remove the need for the farcical theatrics of after-you-no-after-you. Meanwhile, sat-nav has freed women from the irksome, debasing, sexualised chore of map-reading, during which Ordnance Survey sheets were routinely covered by floods of tears.
The victories and liberations of classic feminism have, deservedly, become well-established. I don't think anyone argues about opportunities (equal), ceilings (glass), careers (open to talent), pay (rational) and housework (shared). Advanced males have for 30 years been extremely self-conscious about all of this, and of practising conventional politeness – or, indeed, any sort of conventional gender-based behaviour – lest they be accused of jungle-based stereotyping.
We know all of this. Very glad it happened. And this gives the survival (or revival) of good manners an added force. For my part, I have never met anyone who plays rugby, or been to either a football match or a stag do. And I much prefer that my wife (who is a woman) lets me do the shopping and cooking. Yet I still want to do that courtly thing with doors and compliment women on their appearance. Mind you, I compliment men, too.
This is why the absurdly negativist ideas of the Society for the Psychology of Women are so ugly and wrong. They seek to forbid charm, subtlety and nuance in human behaviour. Still, we must not attribute to malice what can readily be explained by stupidity. Do they have a copy of Doris Langley Moore's The Technique of the Love Affair (1928) in the society's library? Do they know that the ultimate in female packaging, the bra, was the work of a woman and peace activist called Mary Phelps Jacob? Or that it was another woman who told us blondes have more fun? I take my hat off to them, sexists one and all. Except that, being a truly advanced male, I don't own a hat. ( telegraph.co.uk )
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