I smiled at a woman. This means I'm a sexist
An American academic study has found that men who display a friendly or chivalrous attitude to women are 'benevolently sexist'. This is a new low for feminism, says Martin Daubney
So it’s official: holding a door open for a woman is as sexist as shouting obscenities at her.
Oh, and smiling at a woman while playing a game means you’re a sexist pig, too.
Yes, seriously.
“Smiling at women: sexist!” might sound like a knowing parody, a Brass Eye-style critique of modern feminism, but if you’re gullible enough to believe the findings of a preposterous new study, it’s actually being spoken as truth.
Two publicity-seeking psychologists (one of whom is a PhD student) at Northeastern University, Boston, found that a friendly or chivalrous attitude can “mask chauvinistic and patronising views” because men see females as weak creatures in need of their protection.
If you feel the urge to pour a large gin – even before lunch – I’m with you, but bear with me – it gets better.
In the study, 27 mixed-sex pairs of American students were observed as they played a trivia game. You read that right. Nobody had non-consensual sex, was bashed on the head or drugged. Not a single peanut was thrown. Nobody even raised their voices. The couples played a game, chatted, and smiled. That’s it.
Yet the men were being scrutinised through the jaundiced lens of feminist “science” for subtle sexist traits.
Think about that: how 54 American undergraduates interacted while playing a game allows us to condemn 50 per cent of humanity as secret sexists (tellingly, the women do not appear to have been scrutinised for any negative behavior).
The study also reintroduces a terrible anti-man term, first coined a few years ago, to give it a pseudo-scientific veneer - “benevolent sexism” - which is part of modern feminism’s bloated body of proof that sexism is absolutely everywhere – even in a game.
But proving all men are sexists isn’t trivial – it’s big business these days, and these studies make big headlines, which is precisely why they get research grants in the first place.
Apparently, men who displayed “benevolent sexism” while playing a trivia game were considered more approachable, warmer, friendlier and more likely to smile.
So, boiled down, this study concluded thus: the nice guys are actually the most sexist guys.
The researchers went on to warn that this “benevolent sexism” was harder to spot than the hostile version.
Here, at last, I agree with them. For only a fool would claim it’s easier to detect sexism in a smile than, say, it is to spot sexism when a builder wags his penis from a van window.
Warning: the following quote may bring you out in hives.
The report’s male co-author, PhD student Jin Goh, actually said: "While many people are sensitive to sexist verbal offences, they may not readily associate sexism with warmth and friendliness.
“Unless sexism is understood as having both hostile and benevolent properties, the insidious nature of benevolent sexism will continue to be one of the driving forces behind gender inequality in our society."
Translation: if you’re friendly towards a single woman you’re suppressing all of them.
Wielding terrible metaphor, Prof Judith Hall, the other co-author added: "Benevolent sexism is like a wolf in sheep's clothing that perpetuates support for gender inequality among women at an interpersonal level.
"These supposed gestures of good faith may entice women to accept the status quo in society because sexism literally looks welcoming, appealing, and harmless."
As a passionate writer on men’s issues, I’m often dismayed at surveys and quotes like this that deliberately set out to prove men are maliciously toxic.
And I’ve written before on how chivalry is dead – and modern feminism is directly to blame.
This time, though, I’m actually laughing. Maniacally, almost. The Chinese water torture methods used by femi-scientists can get you like that.
The biggest insult to all our intelligence is that this misandric cod-science is even given the time of day.
Studies like these are actually deeply un-scientific, in that they deliberately set out to “prove” what they decided in the first place – in this case the notion that deep, unjust misogyny is everywhere, even in games.
Such rabble-rousing rhetoric is blatantly anti-man, but studies like these go further. They actively betray and damage feminism, too, by making men at best switch off and disengage with it altogether, and at worst become actively hostile towards it.
This is petrol for a Men’s Rights Activist’s bonfire. Why go there, unless the goal is to deliberately enflame men – whom you can then dismiss as hostile and sexist. Round and round we go.
In short, what makes some men sexist are endless studies that tell us we’re sexist. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – and it has to stop. Now. This, surely, is Peak Feminism. We can’t go any further than saying smiles are sexist. Can we?
I’ll be damned if some hokum student study is going to make me change the habits of a lifetime. Listen to this study and we all – men and women – lose.
We should defy its poisonous message with continued, and indeed heightened, chivalrous acts of random kindness towards women – and men.
If the recipients of this sudden and unexpected outbreak of chivalry don’t like it, well, I’ll think them rather rude. But I promise you this: I’ll soon get over it – and so should they.
fiz copy paste com partes eu achei mais marcantes...
