Should Men Hold Doors open for Women?
Once again, it is the topic I gave least space to that seems to have attracted most intense interest here and elsewhere – the custom of men opening doors for, and giving up their seats to women.
I am told : ‘When you give up a seat for a woman, then what you are saying to her is that she is a flake who needs coddling. Do not pretend that you are doing anything else than demeaning her, because you are not. It is an insult. If you can't see that, you are stupid.’
Well, I may be stupid. Others can judge that. But here is why I think this opinion is mistaken. Chivalry, or gentlemanliness, has been the unintended victim of the militant feminist revolution. The sexual revolutionaries thought that, if they destroyed what they thought were the rules of ‘patriarchy, and the ‘stifling’ moral codes of Christianity, they would begin a Brave New World in which the sexes were entirely equal and dealt with each other on equal terms.
But it was not so. My fellow York graduate Linda Grant (with whom I shall be discussing the issue in Bristol on May 19th) writes in the Guardian today of how, in the early years of this great enlightenment, she was variously mauled, molested and date-raped (her term) during the 1970s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...e-of-the-1970s
Well, this is disgusting to me. But I happen to think that the older morality was a far better protection against it than anything we now have. The truth is that the demolition of the old relationship could only be replaced by elaborate codes (such as the Antioch College one I discussed here (
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co....pe-of-rea.html)
in one of my doomed attempts to hold a rational debate about the issue of rape, which I no longer discuss because nobody listens to a word you say).
It can also only be replaced by the criminal law, which, where you have a presumption of innocence, is incredibly hard to employ when there are only two witnesses to an event, and they conflict.
Neither arrangement is perfect. The old system of lifelong marriage, and sexual activity outside marriage much frowned on, unquestionably has its drawbacks. Who could deny it? But I am not a utopian. I think women have paid a very high price for their supposed ‘liberation’ from marriage . This seems to me to have been an enslavement to commerce, toil and the state, not to mention to plastic surgery and the cosmetics industry.
As for opening doors, giving up seats and all the other things which I try to do as a matter of course , and curse myself when I fail to do so, these are much more about what I regard as the principles of chivalry , which are:
Give way to, and be generous to those who you have the power to hurt, shove aside or belittle. In any contest of equals, in a doorway, in a narrow corridor, on a road, or for any other thing, be the one who gives way, as an acknowledgement that your neighbour is at least as valuable as you.
Stand up to those who have the power or ability to hurt you. This is the corollary of the above, and part of it. The one who holds open the door is, I suspect, more likely to be the person who comes to the aid of the threatened victim. This is not because he (or she) is a better person, but because he or she has trained himself or herself to be concerned with the lives of others.
The giving up of seats the opening of doors, the friendly greeting to strangers, are all constant reminders to yourself that we are all fellow-passengers on the journey to the grave, none superior to the other. Anyone can reject these offers if he or she wishes.
