itt blogs instruct you how to be a man

ha, so what goole said

yes but upthread people were scoffing at things like "walk on the side closest to traffic" which is kind of o_O

oh ok. i have no problem with that stuff

I think it's a lot easier to dismiss this kind of crap as mostly harmless or inconsequential if you've never been on the receiving end of advice like this.

I mean, I recently, as in the last six months, heard a judge scold a male attorney for arguing with his female opposing counsel because "She's to pretty to argue with." So these stereotypes exist, and are harmful, and while we can be all "LOL joeks" about them, there is a sincere audience for this and pretty much anything that reinforces this thinking is bad. Even if there are women who like to be picked up and twirled around or some of these things boil down to "don't be a dick."

Like, this kind of thinking isn't constrained to relationships. You get this idea beat into your head hat underneath it all, every woman wants to be treated like a very dumb child and that bleeds out into the workplace and then I, who have worked hard to cultivate relationships with people who see me as an individual with valuable opinions, get ignored at work because whatever I'm saying, I really just want a man to step in and relieve me of the burden of thinking so much.

tl;dr: this is not theoretical and the real life results of this shit is damaging.

xpost

i think part of my problem with the blogxamples upthread is the italic font makes them much more glurgey and self-important than need be

nah i think most of us on this thread totally agree with that Jenny. the only humour is in how egregious and o_O this shit is.

oh god yeah del i was gonna say before the fonts on all of these drip with evil

I agree with that, Jenny; in fact, IMO the real definition of being a gentleman is "treat a woman the way she wants to be treated".

However, there are certain things I do which I will maintain until the day I die which are wholly innocuous such as holding doors open for people (not just women) which I do because I was taught it was the polite thing to do; encountering a thread where that type of behavior is lumped in with "pat her on the head and treat her like a child and maybe she'll fuck you" dismissals basically just makes me think most of my peer group is fucking rude. I guess if you want me to let a door close on you so you can prove that you can open it, knock yourself out (not on the door) but my default reaction is going to always be "I am going to take 3 seconds to hold this door for the next person" and there isn't anything nefarious behind it.

yes but upthread people were scoffing at things like "walk on the side closest to traffic" which is kind of o_O

strangely, when my grandmother instructed me in this piece of etiquette she explained the reasoning for it like so: when people used to empty chamber pots out of second story windows, the person closest to the street was the one more likely to be rained on with excreta :(

the physics of that explanation elude me tbh

i've heard that too.

Dan i hold doors open for people and offer my seat on the bus to somebody who looks like they need it and whatever else but that's not done on a gender basis either

Trace Tudor houses used to have upper floors that overhung the lower so whoever was furthest from the road was sheltered to an extent

definitely never let a woman defecate on your pumpkins

now you tell me

well i guess the assumption would be that the chamber pots contents were flung towards the street? idk, my nan was big on manners but not so big on physics xp

Tracer, in medieval cities, the building walls on the ground story had to be set back a certain amount to leave room for traffic, but in the absence of sensible building codes, people would overhang their second stories out over the street to gain more floor-space...sometimes leading to second-story windows that were so close to their across-the-street neighbors that people could pass things from hand to hand. Presumably these structures or types of structures persisted for a while until they burned down in some great fire or other and were rebuilt along saner lines as cities got better at that kind of thing.

So in this explanation, the person walking on the inside is actually UNDER the overhang and therefore sheltered from waste from above.

xxxp Oh DAMN. What I get for being tl;dr

Oh yeah, my father-in-law who is huge on the PROPER ETIQUETTE OF ALL THINGS ALWAYS, constantly chides me on visits if I walk on the non-street side of my wife.

I feel you, Dan, and agree but (oh god I'm sorry to go here) given the ~context~ in which that type of suggestion is presented, I don't feel too compelled to rescue the bits that could, if de-gendered and pulled out of context, serve as helpful hints for being a good person.

I mean, advice on how to be friendly that doesn't require the reader to separate what's solid from what's sexist bullshit exists.

the proper technique is to carve the punklin FIRST

btw Jenny you are one of my favorite posters

i almost can't believe you're a woman, tbh!

(ok sorry)

detailed advice about opening doors for women: http://artofmanliness.com/2011/06/08/opening-door-for-woman/

includes this little tidbit:

There are some women who are offended by it because they think it implies the inferior status of women–that women are too weak to open doors for themselves. Kate thinks that if you’re dating a woman who takes umbrage at having the door opened for her, that’s a red flag, because it signals that she does not understand that a woman can be smart and independent while still being playful about gender roles.

original emphasis btw

i heard that it was so that the person walking on the street side would shield his companion from stuff kicked up by cars and carriages

I feel you, Dan, and agree but (oh god I'm sorry to go here) given the ~context~ in which that type of suggestion is presented, I don't feel too compelled to rescue the bits that could, if de-gendered and pulled out of context, serve as helpful hints for being a good person.

The whole thing is crowdsourced, right? I think the context is all over the place tbh.

I mean, despite appearances I'm not overly interested in defending these things (lol), it's just that the mocking seems to go beyond actual batshit things to stuff that I'm pretty sure most people on this thread do all the time.

^^ oops i forgot blockquotes are all italicized. the word playful was italicized in the original quote

xps

i heard that it was so that the person walking on the street side would shield his companion from stuff kicked up by cars and carriages

The proverbial splash of the puddle, as it were.

With double doors, open the first, but not the second. When there is a door, and then an entryway airlock area, and then another door, open the outside door, allow the woman to step inside the airlock, and then for the second door, do as indicated above and simply help the woman open the door as she .... (continues)

lol gbx.

Also taken to gendered extremes, even casual kindness gets ridic and counterproductive, ie being the lone woman standing in the back of a crowded elevator only to have the men climb on top of each other like lemmings to clear a path so I can exit first. Like, my fragile ladymind can handle the crushing humiliation of getting off an elevator last.

I also think, again in a work context, casting these politenesses as things men must do for women carries an undercurrent of women being delicate needing a certain amount of coddling and gentle treatment that only men can provide. As a woman working in a very manly area of law, that kind of attitude is poisonous and also makes me want to strangle people.

Note: I am not playful about gender roles.

How To Apologize LIKE A MAN

I mean, despite appearances I'm not overly interested in defending these things (lol), it's just that the mocking seems to go beyond actual batshit things to stuff that I'm pretty sure most people on this thread do all the time.

― low-rent black gangster nicknamed Bootsy (DJP), Thursday, June 9, 2011 1:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont walk on the street side when i walk with my gf tho! and (no offense) i would probably roll my eyes at any guy who insisted on doing so

i know a single woman who wears a wedding ring just to eliminate like 80% of this crap

Note: I am not playful about gender roles.

red flag; you have been cited for lack of playfulness

jenny otm

the apology thing seems pretty otm imo

it's not about "insisting"! it's about "offering"

lol my wife would really hate this conversation as it's basically telling her she is a bad woman for being Southern

no one thinks yr wife is bad, just that shes attached to behaviors rooted in anachronistic & outmoded concepts of gender that contribute to discrimination against women

idk tracer i just fail to see what makes an apology "manly"?

well yeah me neither

artofhumanness.com - not taken

With revolving doors, reach out and slow it down so that she can step in. This rule is especially true for older revolving doors that lack the auto-revolving feature that many modern revolving doors have.

iirc debrett's says a man should go in first to push the door, but make a complete revolution so that the lady can exit first. that's pretty stupid, but not as stupid as trying to slow the door down, because if someone is coming the other way - something which is a major feature of revolving doors - they'll get stuck while mr art-of-manliness is dicking around.

With revolving doors, reach out and slow it down so that she can step in. This rule is especially true for older revolving doors that lack the auto-revolving feature that many modern revolving doors have.

what in the hell

"risk breaking your damn fingers and grind the flow of people to a halt, because a woman is around"

yes see, this makes no sense ergo I get mocking it

i don't understand opening a door for a woman after she's already started to open it herself!

xxxxp Actually, chamber pots were usually taken to public privies and dumped.

Jenny so otm