Feminist Looking Glass

ABC News has an article titled “Chivalry Lives! Arizona Teacher Requires Boys to Have Old-Fashioned Manners in Class.”  It is about a male Arizona high school Latin teacher who has instituted a policy in his classes that “all of the boys in class would be expected to act like gentlemen around the girls.”  Among his rules (which vary according to the class) are that boys hold open the door for the girls, boys are not allowed to sit at their desks until the girls have been seated first, and boys stand when a girl enters the room or stands during class (to “show respect”) and that, if a girl stands during class, the boys must stand with her “to show respect.”

(From ABC News)

I know that many women like the idea of “chivalry” and, predictably, the article says that the girls have come to like the idea and so have at least some of the parents.  However, I find these classroom rules incredibly sexist and condescending.

In fact, the only thing I like about what is going on in those Arizona classes is this.  The teacher says that some of his female students in one class have taken to reversing the roles: “Several instances have occurred in which the girls hold the door for the boys and offer to seat them.  This can get a bit interesting, as the boys do not generally enjoy being treated in such a way.”  Short of protesting against the policy in the first place, those actions by the girls seem like the reasonable way to ridicule these misguided rules of “chivalry.”

NOW’s response to this has been strange, to say the least.  This is what the ABC News article says about how NOW responded:

But Erin Matson, acting vice president of the National Organization for Women, said she wonders if singling out the boys for good manners is the way to go, even though she called the idea of old-fashioned manners “adorable.”

“We see it as teaching kids to treat people differently because they’re girls,” Matson said, though quickly adding. “I don’t want to seem like an angry raging feminist.”

“I’m sure some of the boys and teachers in the school wouldn’t mind the door being held open for them too,” she said, calling for “etiquette for all, just across the board.”

NOW should do far better than that.  Old-fashioned manners are “adorable”?  “I don’t want to seem like an angry raging feminist”?  Don’t just “wonder” if the policy is the “way to go.”  It is not.  Please try again, NOW.

Filed under: Education, Stereotyping Tagged: | Chivalry, Erin Matson, Etiquette, National Organization for Women