London – One column I slightly regret having written was about the proper way to behave in an office lift.
It appeared six years ago, and it has caused me minor embarrassment almost every working day since.
In it, I raised the question of whether a gentleman should let the ladies out of the lift first.
The answer I suggested was: ‘In principle, yes, but not if it means holding everyone up with a whole lot of awkward squashing past.’
Although I stand by that advice, my problem is that having set myself up as something of an authority on elevator etiquette, I’ve felt my fellow lift occupants have been observing my behaviour ever since, to see how I conform to my own rule.
This is ridiculous, I know, since I don’t suppose many of the 2,000-odd people who use our office lifts read that column in 2009 – and most of those who did have almost certainly forgotten every word of it (as I wish I had).
But before it appeared, I used to apply my rule naturally, judging by instinct whether allowing women out first would cause too much squeezing and squashing. These days, I’m absurdly self-conscious about it.
I often find myself having to suppress the urge to deliver a long and pompous speech: ‘In other circumstances, madam, I would certainly extend you the courtesy due to your sex by allowing you to leave the lift before me.
‘However, since we are packed in so tightly today, and since affording you precedence would worsen the crush and hold everyone up, I hope you will understand that I’m thinking only of your comfort when, on this occasion, I go first.’
But, of course, I’d sound like a major prat if I said anything like that. So instead I risk making a minor prat of myself by leaving the lift sideways or backwards, in the hope that this will signal my respect for the opposite sex.
This week, I discover that all my agonising is the least of my worries. For if an American study is to be believed, my efforts to please women by being courteous to them insult and degrade them instead.
Apparently, we men who hold doors open for women, offer them our jackets when it’s cold, refuse to split the restaurant bill or believe we should make sacrifices to provide for our other halves are guilty of the crime of ‘benevolent sexism’.
This, find the researchers, can be as dangerous as ‘hostile sexism’ (wolf-whistling, banning women from sports clubs etc) – and perhaps even more so, since it is more ‘insidious’ and harder to spot. Professor Judith Hall, of Northeastern University in Boston, says: ‘Benevolent sexism is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing that perpetuates support for gender inequality among women. These supposed gestures of good faith may entice women to accept the status quo in society because sexism literally looks welcoming, appealing and harmless.’
Nor does she let her own sex off the hook, suggesting that if women expect to be shown the sort of courtesies I was brought up to believe were de rigueur – or, perish the thought, if they’re deluded into deriving pleasure from them – they risk colluding in the oppression of the sisterhood.
Oh, Lord, I fear that traditional ideas about how to treat women have been so deeply ingrained in me since my childhood that the professor will find me quite beyond redemption.
Holding open doors, standing up when a woman enters the room, doffing my hat, paying the restaurant bill… all have become almost neuroses with me. (OK, now that Emma ‘Hogwarts’ Watson has made it clear that she reserves the right to pay for her male companions, I will allow her to buy me dinner. In other cases, I shall continue to assume that the onus is on me.)
Indeed, younger readers may think me barking mad, but I also feel deeply uncomfortable walking along the pavement with a woman unless I’m on the side nearer the road - the ‘carriage side’, where I’m the one who risks getting splashed with all that mud and horse manure thrown up by passing phaetons and Hansom cabs.
On a similarly anachronistic note, I just can’t sleep unless I’m on the side of the bed that leaves my sword-arm free to fight off intruders.
Since I’m right-handed, this means the left-hand side of the bed, seen from the point of view of someone lying in it, facing the foot-end. In these, and 100 other little ways, I fear that Professor Hall will find me guilty of ‘perpetuating support for gender inequality among women’. (A brief digression: I wish people would stop saying ‘gender’ when they mean ‘sex’ - but I guess that, like the fight to stop them pronouncing lingerie as ‘long-jeray’, that battle is lost.)
Mind you, I’m well aware that the professor is not alone in her views. On the odd occasion, women have given me filthy looks when I’ve opened doors for them or offered them my seat on a train.
All I can say is that I mean absolutely no disrespect to their sex - quite the contrary, in fact - while in my experience, most appear to appreciate such little courtesies.
Indeed, it has often occurred to me that life would be simpler if we had some way of identifying which women are pleased by gestures of deference, and which are insulted.
For example, at Holy Communion in Roman Catholic churches, members of the congregation who want a blessing instead of the bread and wine cross their arms against their chests to let the priest know their wishes.
If only militant feminists could devise a similar signal to indicate that they don’t want the door held open for them, then old-fashioned people like me could march on ahead of them to avoid giving unintended offence.
It would be a great pity, surely, to deny all women such politeness - and all men the pleasure of extending it - simply to please the grievance-hungry minority who have convinced themselves they don’t like it.
But then, if you ask me, we should accept any kind of benevolence on offer in these times when it seems in increasingly short supply.
Indeed, I reckon Professor Hall has got it all wrong when she condemns benevolent sexism as anti-egalitarian. For one of its greatest appeals is that it recognises no gradations of hierarchy or class.
Speaking for myself, I would let a woman out of the lift first whether she were an office cleaner or an American professor, a work-experience trainee or the eminent head of our legal department.
All right, every time we Sir Walter Raleighs of the modern age lay our cloaks over a puddle for the Queen Elizabeths in our lives, we tacitly suggest that men and women are different.
But I’ll let Professor Hall in on a little secret: we are different, madam. If we weren’t, neither you nor I would exist. Is there really so much harm in celebrating our differences - instead of sucking half the joy out of life by treating every lass like a lad?
Daily Mail