The Age of Decorum is Over?

Today in the UK the Sunday Times celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Colour Supplement, which was sufficient for my mother to pause reflect on how life had changed for women over the last fifty years.

Surprise, surprise we began by discussing how men no longer open doors for women – well Ok occasionally an elderly gentlemen will charm me with a smile and a door held ajar as I pass by.

As neither my mother and I are members of the Harridan Tendency let alone that brand of ‘we’re all victims together feminism’ we accepted the necessary decline of what once passed as good manners in varying degrees although we reflected on it’s passing with perhaps a degree of sadness.

With both agreed (shock horror) that we liked having doors opened for us.

This prompted me to recall reading Stephen Bayley’s piece in the Telegraph not long ago:

‘I always hold the door open for women. But, then, I always hold the door open for men, too. For this small act of graciousness, the peer-reviewed, humourless, bad-tempered, lunatic fringe of feminism – in the form of the Society for the Psychology of Women – now accuses me of "benevolent sexism".

Being, as they insist, a knuckle-dragging male gorilla, I took it to be simple good manners. Thank God I have been corrected before I went too far. Just imagine – I could have ended-up smiling at girls. I was going to write "pretty girls", but it would have been dangerously self-incriminating too early in the piece.’

Since Cicero was prompted to exclaim O tempora o mores - Oh the times! Oh the customs! In response to the woeful decline in manner and gentility, we have to constantly remind ourselves of the progress we women have made. Men are less likely to open door for us, but we are more likely to be offered good jobs. Wife beating – at least in the Western world is now seen as unacceptable, hypocrisy is in retreat and even the most ill informed are encouraged to express their views. Witness some of the women you meet in cyberspace

Sadly however in our campaign for a better life for women we have also allowed the absurdly negativist ideas of the Society for the Psychology of Women to pervade our lives too much. The trick always was to create widely accepted change in society not to punch men on the nose. However as the Society for the Psychology of Women seek to forbid charm, subtlety and nuance it is all to easy to attribute their behavior to malice when it can be far more readily be explained by stupidity. Perhaps if they got out more, met a few men and allowed the odd elderly gentleman to open a door or two for them, they might find a sense of perspective?

Meanwhile it’s worth reflecting on what men get up to when they can no longer open doors for us: