The 1940s - when men could be nice to women without having their heads bitten off.
It used to be that opening the door for a female was what any self-respecting (and woman-respecting) gentleman would naturally do. Not only would he do this, but it was required of him. If a man were to ignore this little piece of social protocol, people, especially "ladies", would think him rude, uncouth, and obnoxious. It was also quite common for anyone to simply open the door for anyone that was following him/her, whether or not the other person was male or female.
However, opening a door for a woman in this day and age, at least in New Zealand, tends to send mixed messages to women. Personally I quite often open doors for people who are behind me, whether or not they are female. Whenever I open it for a man, or a child, they will go through, and most of the time they will thank me. However with females, it quite often occurs that the woman will refuse to go through the door.
On Tuesday 1(yesterday), I was catching the elevator to my office, just as the door was closing, I saw a woman walking into the lobby, so I stuck my foot into the closing doors, which caused them to automatically reopen - one day this trick will clobber my foot, I'm sure; this is a lot easier than hunting for the open door button, which seems to be in a different location on every elevator, and I have failed to open the door by hunting for it in the past. This woman (probably about 40) was very grateful and said "thank-you" quite profusely when she entered, and when she left the elevator on her floor.
In contrast to this; about two weeks ago, I did the exact same thing at the same time of day in the same place, but with a different 40 something year old woman. This woman just stared at me as if I were committing some crime and did not enter the elevator. So I let the doors close. She then pressed the up button which caused the doors of the lift to open again, and then she entered. I thought she was being very, very immature.
The funny thing is I have only ever been thanked when I have held the lift open for a man, but women often don't say anything, and sometimes will refuse to enter at all. What can I say? Men are more respondent to kindness than women?
Of course, many women are probably thinking, "oh, he opened the door for me because I'm a woman. That means that he is obviously a male-chauvinist pig. How DARE he do that!!! I will refuse to enter through that door while he is holding it open."2 Well, at least that is all I can assume. She could have been thinking "Ha! I'm gonna waste his time by letting the doors close and then opening them again!! Haha, he will be annoyed!". But it is much more likely to be along the lines of the former example. Either way, it just seems like stupidity to me.
Victoria University - where you go to get your head bitten off by women if you happen to be a polite male.
When I was at University I ended up giving up on opening doors for white girls altogether. It was so common for me to receive a harsh word, or have them stop in their tracks, that I just found it wasn't worthwhile at all. I ended up opening doors for males, or for girls who were not white (e.g. Asians, Africans, Middle-Eastern, etc.) I found that opening the door for Africans and Polynesians usually got me a quite nice expression of gratitude, whereas Asians and Middle Easterners would tend to go through, sometimes with a smile or a "thank you", sometimes not. But never, except from a white girl, have I ever been treated like some kind of devil just because I held a door open for them.
These days, I tend to not worry about it anymore. If a white woman so chooses to be upset about me opening a door, I don't care. Let her think what she will. At least for everyone else, it is a sign of respect and kindness towards fellow humans.
3 comments (post comment):
Yup, I often have trouble deciding whether to hold a door open as well. If it's a normal door (not an elevator) I will generally hold it open for females but not for males as I think men might feel a bit emasculated if someone held the door open for them.
As for whether I will hold open elevator doors or not, I don't decide based off gender, rather in fact, I decide based on how far away the person is from the elevator doors; if they are close enough to see me I will hold them open. But if they are too far away to see me (or can't see me because I'm hiding) then I let the doors close.
And I notice you used the conventional grammar for quotation marks; it looked so right that I didn't think anything about it till I read the footnotes at the end of the post.
Well actually I have gone against convention, with most of my quotes. I only had a footnote where I followed convention (and that was consistent with my own rules anyway.)
Getting a negative reaction to holding a door open sounds curious to me.
I live in Finland (where most women are white Europeans), and like you, I often hold a door open for someone coming after me (if they aren't too far from the door) regardless of their gender. But I don't remember any hostility arising from this, ever.
Perhaps, then, it's a primarily an English-speaking/Commonwealth/NZ white women thingy? Or perhaps the way you've held the door open has just been particularly chauvinistic somehow. ;)
In any case, I agree that if someone gets angry with having a door opened for them, it's entirely *their* problem, not the opener's.
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