Poll: Is treating women in Gentlemanly way Sexist?

[Auron225]

Its interesting - discrimination generally implies something negative but we're talking about treating females differently by way of being more polite than usual. So what you're essentially asking is; Is it still discrimination if the difference is positive rather than negative? If it is, should the group in question be annoyed/offended at getting special treatment?

Logically, its other guys that should be annoyed at it rather than girls. Isn't it closer to discrimination for them since they are the ones being deprived?

As for my general opinion; I can see why it's called discrimination and people should just be nice to everyone regardless of gender but there are so many goals in life more worthy of your attention than abolishing this type of discrimination. Such as bog-standard racism/sexism - they're still around to an extent.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Does the concept of treating someone different because of their gender sound sexist?

 

[katsumoto03]

Don't be a gentleman towards women. Be a gentleman towards everyone.

I wonder, to this day, why people don't get this.

Katsumoto03 is exactly right. So is sky14kemea.

Scenario 2: I am walking up the hallway, carrying a box that I appear to be managing quite fine on my own (keeping a brisk pace, no struggling, etc.). A man stops me in the hall and says, "You're a woman, that's too heavy for you, let me take that," and he proceeds to try to take the box out of my hands without my permission. I proceed to hug the box to myself (he's trying to take something from me without asking), and say, "Excuse me, I've got it," and push past him and move away as quickly as possible. The man mutters, "I was just being a gentleman! *****." ((NOTE: this scenario pretty much has happened to me IRL))

This happened to me repeatedly. Since I'm timid, this included several cases where I just was too polite to object too much.
End result? The guy actually demanded that I'd have a coffee with him. Since he helped me, and deserved a reward, in his eyes. When I denied, I was called an ungrateful *****.

On a task I needed no help with to begin with. The entire objection to "gentlemanly" behavior is situations like this. They happen pretty often.

If you're just a nice person in general (which, yes, means holding a door open to an elderly guy as well), and ask if your help is needed in lifting cases, then nobody will mind you helping.

There are many simple-minded douchebags who know that women respond well to kindness (slowly learning that nice guys do not, in fact, finish last) but don't quite grasp how it works.

Their goal is to get laid, not to be kind. And while kindness can lead to that, it's a longer process than most douchebags realize, and they try to rush things.

 

[Fatboy_41]

Sexism is defined as prejudicial behaviour based on someone's gender.

"Prejudicial" is defined as "Harmful to someone of something".

If someone can argue that being gentlemanly towards women can be harmful to them, then I will gladly listen to that argument. Until then, I will continue to uphold my chivalry and hold open doors, pull out chairs or buy drinks for women around me. If you want to call me sexist for these actions, that's fine. Just so long as you expect certain reactions in return.

Oh, and no, this behaviour does not extend to all women. Those that have given me cause to view them with contempt can open their own damn doors.

 

[tensorproduct]

Here's my point, in a nutshell:
spoiler=I can prove damn near anything
If:
100% of people that (ate tomatoes) prior to 1890 [are dead]
99% of people that (ate tomatoes) prior to 1910 [are dead]
95% of people that [ate tomatoes) prior 1930 [are dea]
etc...

Based on that example, I can infer that tomatoes are poisonous. I can alter the variables within each set of brackets, and define different parameters, but the fact remains that I have demonstrated that a bias can be created relatively easily.

So:
If I say hello to 100 women and some number of them greet me in return, I can state that that percentage of women are LIKELY to return a social greeting.
If I then greet 100 men, and some number return the greeting, I can then state that that percentage of men are LIKELY to return a social greeting.
If I compare those 2 percentages, I can then outline the differences in the percentage of women and men that are LIKELY to return a social greeting.

That's not sexist, that's statistics. Capthcha= Easy as cake, which it really is.

Aerodynamic, if you don't mind I'll try to explain this to you in a different way.

If we take the experiment above. With sample sizes of 100 over two populations that yield X and Y positive responses each, we then assume that this means that X% of one populations will yield a positive outcome and Y% of the other.

N.B. This is not how this works! This neglects everything about bias, sampling and confidence levels that elevates statistics to a useful tool. If you ignore these things you cannot claim that you have made an argument based on statistics. I cannot overstate how wrong this is.

Let's say for the sake of argument that we don't know anything that might let us make a statistically reasonable claim from this data. So, X% and Y% of each population is expected to yield a positive result.

Now, we want to use that data to construct a framework for social interaction. If we decide that we will use membership of one of these populations will be the basis for whether or not we continue to provide the stimulus with the expected result.

The standard by which we could say that this framework fails, is when we provide the wrong social to queue to an individual and we are perceived as rude** (otherwise, why would you construct the framework at all). If Y% of men were expected to return a greeting, then this is the percentage to whom we will have been rude by basing our framework solely on gender "statistics".

So, how long can we go without being rude? After one encounter with a man, there is a Y% chance that we have been rude. After two encounters (assuming independence of trials, which is another bad assumption) there is a (1 - (1-Y%)*(1-Y%)) chance, after three: (1 - (1-Y)^3).

This probability of having been rude to at least one man out of any N men you meet is (1 - (1-Y/100)^N). This approaches 100% as the sample size N increases. If we want to see how many men you could interact it with and be 95% sure that you haven't been rude to anybody, we need to rearrange this a little (95% is a bit arbitrary, but it's the arbitrary level that everyone uses).

We get N = log(0.05) / log ((1-Y)/100). And if we plug in some numbers we can see how many men we would have to meet before we can be fairly sure that we have been rude to at least one, based on the varying values of Y.

Y -------- N
50 - - - - 4.3
40 - - - - 5.9
30 - - - - 8.4
20 - - - - 13.4
10 - - - - 28.4

So, even at a very generous value for Y, you don't have to interact with more than thirty men before you can be reasonably certain that you you're social framework has broken down.

This got pretty lengthy, but I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. The point is that statistics and probability aren't simple things to apply, and the way you tried to apply them in your earlier post was wrong on several levels.


**This brings up a point that I forgot to make about insurance companies above. Insurance companies offset all the individuals who vary from the mean against each other. Unless you want to claim that each person that you are rude to is offset by a certain number of people to whom you have been polite, this is another important difference.

 

[TriGGeR_HaPPy]

Nope.

Because I act like a gentleman towards everyone.

Pretty much this. Offering my jacket if someone I'm hanging out with is cold, or walking a bit ahead at times to open the door for others... That kind of stuff I do for everyone.

If you're doing that for just one gender of people purely because they're of that gender, then yes, that's sexist. Note that I still don't care (a bit more kindness in the world is usually not such a bad thing), I merely wish that more people would do this stuff for everyone, not just for people they want to impress.

 

[Jonatron]

Treating women differently is sexism, even if it is benign. Just as giving a black guy the job not for his qualifications but because you need to make the numbers look better is racial discrimination.

For this being a gentleman though, we're not machines. We all have preferences and biases that affect our behavior, so accept that you're going to treat women differently to an extent. So long as that doesn't screw her over in the workplace compared to a guy doing the same quality of work and doesn't make her uncomfortable who gives a damn?

 

[DanielDeFig]

Technically, yes. Because you are treating a person differently based purely on their gender. but it's usually not a bad kind of sexism (as long as the intent isn't "bad").

I still try to be somewhat of a gentleman, because i like being nice to ppl, and for some reason I think being nice to females is more important (which, when you think about it, doesn't seem very fair. Are men worth less? No!).

The important thing to keep in mind if yo want to be a gentle man, is to treat women differently, but not inequally. In today' age of reason and equality (understood and desired by a lot of people,but not acted upon by nearly enough people), we simply can't treat others as anything else as equals. However, this does not mean that you can't treat others as equals even if you treat them differently.

In fact, in some cases, it's required. You need to treat a handicapped person differently, if you are to have any hope of treating them as equals: Helping a wheelchaired person find an alternative route up the stairs. Help a blind person read an important message if there is no braille version. Always speak directly towards a person who is hard to hearing, to help them lip-read or simply hear what you are saying. Treating people like this differently, in order to make sure they have equal opportunities in their lives, is vital if you are truly to treat people as equals.

Gender is enough of a difference to warrant treating each other differently sometimes, but unfortunately not as often as what is neccecary to qualify as being a gentleman. You don't need to do most things that are considered gentlemanly in order to treat women as equals. However, for most gentlemanly acts: as long as the intent is benign, then gentlemanly acts that are not necessary tend to be harmless enough to not count towards treating women inequally(in my opinion, at least).

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Is being attracted to a woman and doing nice things specifically for that woman sexist? Is it sexist of me to pay super special attention to, say, my completely metaphorical and only-for-example wife? The person (I assume) I love and hold dear more than any single thing in the entire world? ...is it sexist for a father to want to protect their daughter from harm?

I dream of a gender neutral world. A world in which no sexuality or gender is assumed until the individual discovers it for themselves. A world in which everyone is equal because of the fact that everyone is different. If sexism is viewing the world like everybody is an individual to be treated different from each and every other person on the planet, with dignity and respect and humbleness? ...then yeah sure, I'm a sexist.

 

[BrassButtons]

Is being attracted to a woman and doing nice things specifically for that woman sexist? Is it sexist of me to pay super special attention to, say, my completely metaphorical and only-for-example wife? The person (I assume) I love and hold dear more than any single thing in the entire world? ...is it sexist for a father to want to protect their daughter from harm?

None of those are sexist, because they involve treating a specific person differently based on that person's attributes/relationship to you, rather than treating anyone of a specific gender a certain way purely because of gender. Note that treating people differently based solely on gender isn't sexist if gender is actually relevant (so a gynecologist isn't being sexist by refusing to take male patients).

If sexism is viewing the world like everybody is an individual

No, sexism is viewing everyone as a gender first, and a person second.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I guess if you look at my service record women will come out on top of people I have helped, however that's because in most cases it has been due tasks that required physical strength.

I hold the door for everyone and help people who need it no matter their sex, gender, political, skin colour, or religiuous affiliation. Hell, I've even helped Australian politicians.

Also as Movie Bob said (lightly paraphrased): We don't just overcome millenia of descrimination in decades.

 

[Aerodyamic]

That part there in BOLD, that is exactly what I have been arguing against. The science of statistics does not support such an inference. I gave you an example of how such inferences would not be reasonable to make about all people you meet. If you do not understand statistics well enough to grasp this, you should stop making points that rely upon it.

Then why would the basic principles of math that have been taught, starting in elementary school for some 60 + years, support exactly what I'm saying?

No matter how much time you've spent in your other post, you will have to accept, for the purposes of my examples, my math is complex enough for laypeople, and will in fact create a generally accurate acceptable data.

You're assuming that for something as broad as my defined "polite socials action" and "positive social response", we need to be defining the nature of theose datum by actual action, not generically. We don't; we need to express the results as an apporoximate percentags of people, over a small, empirically observed sample size, that respond in a positive manner manner to a certain stimuli.

None of this has ever been about the kind of accuracy you seem to think is relevant, and never needed to be.

 

[Samantha Burt]

correct hate isnt mentioned, and it can be used in favor, but notice against, as in AGAINST>meaning not it favor.wonder why someone would go in favor against someone? could include hate, i suppose. whatevs, i overlooked in favor of. i was wrong. i was wrong on that. but, hey had fun mucking it out, so im satisfied ;p peace

Well... thanks for at least accepting the definition I cited in the end.

That was quite funny to watch. Seeing you steamroll mercilessly through the thread with utter confidence and stumbling as soon as someone agrees with you. Makes one wonder about your personal motivations.

 

[tensorproduct]

That part there in BOLD, that is exactly what I have been arguing against. The science of statistics does not support such an inference. I gave you an example of how such inferences would not be reasonable to make about all people you meet. If you do not understand statistics well enough to grasp this, you should stop making points that rely upon it.

Then why would the basic principles of math that have been taught, starting in elementary school for some 60 + years, support exactly what I'm saying?

No matter how much time you've spent in your other post, you will have to accept, for the purposes of my examples, my math is complex enough for laypeople, and will in fact create a generally accurate acceptable data.

I must accept no such thing. Statistics is a good deal more complicated than that. Elementary school maths is simply not equipped to cover this sort of thing, just as it's not sufficient to deal with serious problems in engineering, physics, or chemistry. Why do you think that people can spend there whole lives studying these fields, if it was possible to infer everything from some basic arithmetic?

If you refuse to consider that the maths required is more difficult and subtle than you have been taught, then so be it. I can't make you learn, and I abhor such willful ignorance (which is certainly not gentlemanly).

The last thing I will say is what I've said before: your argument is not one based on, nor supported by statistics, no matter how much you would like it to be.

 

[UltraXan]

I honestly don't see why it should matter, if you're being nice, you're being nice. No need for anyone to get pissed by thinking "YOU DON'T THINK I CAN HANDLE MYSELF?! >:[ "

I'd put more thought into this post, but I'm using an internet connection which regularly filters out the escapist...

 

[Naeras]

Why not just be a gentleman to everyone that deserve your gentlemanlyness? All problems solved!

 

[swearnotbythemoon]

Being a gentleman is based on (here's a word you don't hear often)kindness and respect. It's not only polite not to let the door you just went through slam in someone's face, it's kind to hold it open for them. It's polite and kind for the woman to offer to pay her share of a date - it's a gentleman who has asked her to go to a movie or dinner with him and would kindly and respectfully refuse her offer, because the point was that he wanted to spend the evening in her company.
Where is this trend toward androgen-like behavior headed? We are male and female, not just one sex, and the traditional roles are becoming so vague and blurred. I'm not saying that women aren't capable of attaining male careers, but women should act feminine and men should act masculine. Generally, men are naturally built stronger and women, like it or not, unless they train for it, are the weaker sex physically. It's just how we are. Yes, you can choose to deviate from our prescribed and natural roles - but personally, I like being a girl - I like being feminine, and I like men who treat me with kindness and respect. I like gentle men.

 

[Phasmal]

Where is this trend toward androgen-like behavior headed? We are male and female, not just one sex, and the traditional roles are becoming so vague and blurred. I'm not saying that women aren't capable of attaining male careers, but women should act feminine and men should act masculine. Generally, men are naturally built stronger and women, like it or not, unless they train for it, are the weaker sex physically. It's just how we are. Yes, you can choose to deviate from our prescribed and natural roles - but personally, I like being a girl - I like being feminine, and I like men who treat me with kindness and respect. I like gentle men.

Bleh. I think it's less of adrogen-like behaviour and more not defining people by their sex. I mean, its alright for you if you like acting feminine, I do too occasionally (I'm female), but most of the time my behaviour seems `male`. I didn't choose it, just how I am.

As for gentlemenlyness, just be polite to everyone. That's generally what I try to do.
Besides, I will think more of a guy who is nice to everyone than a guy who is just nice to women.