As found on the Huffington Post,
According to a new study, men feel less confident when helped by other men. Research out of Purdue University found that men who had the door held open for them by another man experienced lower self-esteem.
Psychologists Megan McCarty and Janice Kelly positioned a male researcher walking towards a set of double doors at a campus building. When a student approached the doors, the researcher either stepped ahead and opened the door for them, or fell into line with them and reached for the adjacent door so that the two doors opened at the same time. Inside the building, a female researcher approached the 196 subjects with a short questionnaire measuring their self-esteem.
Researchers found that male students who had just had the door opened for them felt less self-confident and had lower self-esteem. (Women were unaffected by the door-holding condition.)
...In a paper published in the December 2013 online issue of Social Influence, the researchers suggest that the gesture of opening a door for a man may unintentionally send the message that they are "inferior or too dependent," or feminized in some way.Are you kidding me? I...I just can't...WHAAAAAT?
How ridiculous that we have socialized the male ego with such fragility and extreme misogyny that they can't handle someone else opening the door for them? This is not only mindbogglingly absurd to me, but it also explains the whole dudes REFUSING to let me open a door for them phenomena that I've written about before. (Although the study doesn't technically specify if the same effect happens when a woman is the door opener, I feel like it would.)
Listen...here's the quick and dirty of this all: Be polite to other people. Accept other people's politeness. There is literally nothing implied about your manliness in a door opening interaction beyond the fact that I probably arrived at the door before you. Happily live and move on.
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By holding open a door for a man I'm essentially emasculating him? That's really sad.
ReplyDeleteDude- we are being too damn fragile to men. GET OVER IT!! I'm a romantic for sure, but being a single mom put my feminism in hyper drive. Now I've found and been dating a very romantic man with the biggest freaking ego I've ever come across. Wtf?!? He is trying to be 1940's old school and that just isn't how I role. If I want to carry the groceries- don't take them out of my hands and say no. I am a fully capable woman who owns all the tools, builds furniture, I drive and work on my own diesel truck, and grow my own food. I want him to be romantic, but don't take away my independence at the same time. The worst part is when he asks me what is wrong and I start to tell him- INSTANT bruised ego and all hell breaks loose. Now I'm forming a resentment that my feelings aren't a valid subject of discussion (regardless of him asking me to share them), because he cannot bear to hear that his chest puffing, bold, save-the-damsel routine is not only NOT working, but it's actually doing major damage to my self confidence.
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