Revisiting the Idea of Men Holding Doors for Women

An evolved perspective on an old feminist pet peeve

As promised, I am revisiting occasional posts from my recently-imported old feminist blog from 2009 - 2012 and updating them with my current perspective and analysis of the topic of the post. The topic of this one, however, ended up sending me on quite a regional-difference tangent, so let’s consider this Part Three of the What I Learned Series. You can also read Part One here, Part Two here, and the Prequel here.

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I was back home in Minneapolis visiting friends and family after being in Fredericksburg, Virginia for just under a year. I was out with one of my best friends, Nick, and we were headed to one of our favorite old dive bars in South Minneapolis. Nick started to pull open the door as he reached the entrance first. Close behind him, I instinctively stood aside, waiting for him to open it fully so that I could walk in ahead of him. Instead, we awkwardly bumped into each other as we tried to get in the doorway at the same time. He was not, it turned out, intending to open the door for me, as I’d so embarrassingly presumed.

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I’ve always had a fraught relationship with having doors held open for me. On the one hand, it’s obviously a thoughtful thing to do, especially when I am carrying things that make opening a door for myself difficult. Even when I’m not carrying something, it’s always nice when the person immediately in front of me doesn’t let the door slam in my face, regardless.

On the other hand, it often needlessly prolongs the experience of walking into, say, a gas station where multiple people enter and exit simultaneously and continuously and just need to get in or out without worrying about performing an antiquated social etiquette dance, and is done mostly for show or out of habit rather than need or sincere kindness. It often involves something additionally awkward such as the door-opener incorrectly judging how far away the person is for whom they feel socially obligated to open the door, and that person noticing and then feeling obligated to even more awkwardly run-walk to relieve the door-opener of their generous duties, performed just for them (see above). Then I have to worry about whether my required (and of course happily provided) “thank you” will sound sincere enough or forced, because I’ve been overthinking that since I pulled out of my driveway to get there.

In a post on my old blog lamenting this very practice, I gave another example of this type of “chivalrous” behavior sometimes being more inconveniencing than kind:

About a year ago, I was in the elevator after getting off work, headed out and to the bus stop. The elevator was jam-packed at 5:00, as you can imagine, and I got in on the top floor with my mostly-female coworkers, so we stood in the back. This means that there were another 16 floors to stop at and let more people on. Once we reached the bottom level, the two or three men lining the front stayed put, looking nervously behind them at all the women, apparently completely physically unable to exit the elevator before all of us women, who were crammed in like sardines behind them. What was the result of this misplaced courtesy? The fucking elevator doors started to close, and there was mass confusion in the elevator, as all of us were wondering why in the hell these men would not just get off of the damn thing so we could all board our collective busses and get the hell out of there.

It seemed over the top and not worth the effort to appear gentlemanly simply for the sake of it — just ensure that the person behind you is not going to have to do too much extra work, regardless of their gender, and we’ll all be better off, right? Do the thing that gets everyone off the elevator and closer to home, not the thing that keeps them stuck in there for no reason. Don’t bring a party of 16 men and women to a restaurant and tell the server, who has a whole system when it comes to taking orders, that “the ladies will order first.”¹ Just keep it easy for people. Sometimes that means making sure you hold a door open for them. Sometimes it means not worrying about polite gestures and instead prioritizing social efficiency on crowded elevators during Elevator Rush Hour.

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See, I can't handle social norms like this. All I think about is whether or not these men who hold doors or let me exit first think that I expect them to do so, or whether or not I am displaying an appropriate amount of gratitude for their "kindness," or whether they may actually resent the fact that they've been taught to hold doors open for women and wish that I hadn't been walking behind them so that they didn't have to think about it.

One thing I didn’t realize before about the door-opening thing then is that, excluding special circumstances or the rare older Southern transplant, well, Minnesotans typically just do it wrong. For whatever reason it just seems like something that confuses everyone, because we’re collectively an overly-polite and awkward people in general. There, the way you open doors for people is to open it, walk all the way through it, and hold it open behind you while looking over your shoulder, waiting for the person to grab hold of it and finish the job themselves.

Upon moving to Virginia, I learned what “opening a door for someone” actually meant:

You open it all the way and then stand aside, holding it wide open for the next person (or people) to walk through it without needing to touch it at all. Like in the comic at the top of this essay.

Duh.

Of course this was very weird at first, but also funny as hell that Minnesotans and Virginians open doors for each other so differently. Of course people where I’m at in Virginia hold the door back like I’m describing people do in Minnesota, and I’m sure they do it everywhere else when it makes sense to do so, but otherwise down here that seems to be more of a casual same-gender thing. Minnesota just really doesn’t do it the traditional way with anywhere near the same frequency as Virginia, at least in my normie urban experience. They don’t do much of anything in the traditional way that Virginia does that I thought so antiquated at the time. At least not in my usual social circles.

And that's the thing about so-called chivalrous behavior like door-holding, or even the expectation that men pay on dates, although men buying stuff for women has implications beyond chivalry. Maybe it's just the demographic of fellow broke-ass hipster folks with whom I tend to surround myself, but I've luckily never really had to deal with the awkwardness of men insisting on paying for things for me simply because they're men. Usually in my dating life, it worked out like: we split it, or whoever had more money would pay.

I was more salty about it back then, in 2011, at what, 27 or 28? I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way things operate(d) when I was a young adult in the Twin Cities hanging out with mostly non-traditional young people like myself; in fact, there was really no other sensible way to go about things in that position. If you were like us then, you probably didn’t have a lot of money, so if a man in my social class was expected to pay for fancy dates, let alone all of them, instead of usually splitting the bill and/or having more low-key date nights, no one would be dating until or unless they had a good job, probably well into their 30s because we’re “elder” Millennials and it took a lot of us awhile to get moving, okay?

I always did feel weird about men paying for me on a first date² or elsewhere as a habit, though: the first time I let a guy I didn’t know buy me a beer was shortly after I turned 21, at a local rock show in tiny dive bar. I didn’t really know the protocol, and I was there as a photographer and came by myself, not with a friend or group, so no one was next to me in that moment to poke me and tell me I was doing it wrong. I cheerfully and naively accepted the beer and thanked the guy for it, then wandered off to find people I knew, not thinking much else of it.

Dude ended up following me around all night, hammered, eventually bit me for some nonsensical reason that I no longer remember, and wouldn’t leave me alone until the band I was taking pictures for brought me into the green room to hide from him after their set. I decided I wouldn’t be allowing strange men to buy me beer ever again.

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When I ran into Nick at the bar door as we were both trying to walk in at the same time, I had grown so accustomed to my new Southern female experience of having every door held open for me by a man wherever I went that even after such a short time, decades of ingrained social habits and expectations had seemingly completely disappeared from my lizard brain. No muscle memory to guide me to stand behind him like a normal Minnesotan in Minneapolis and grab the door for myself not even a year after moving; just me there, bumping smack into him like an idiot, having already completely absorbed the idea of needing never open another door in the presence of a man ever again, like a princess.

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Later, in that same bar, it was my turn to get us a round, so I left the table Nick and I were sitting at and went up to the bar. I sat on a barstool as I waited to get the bartender’s attention, and a random man immediately sat down next to me.

“Heyy. How you doin.”

Goddamnit, I thought. Apparently I had also completely forgotten how random men act toward women in Minneapolis when we go out in public. I had grown accustomed not only to doors being held open for me practically everywhere I went in Virginia, but also a general population of men who didn’t approach me creepily at bars when I was alone, follow me for blocks, or act in any way that wasn’t simply polite, helpful, or friendly if they approached me at all.

In fact, despite my prior decision not to let men buy me beer at bars, I had acquiesced eventually in Virginia, having had so many fellow bar patrons of the male persuasion randomly buy me a drink and then leave me alone on their own accord, always buying me the beer after learning that I was dating/engaged/married and not going to be an option. This is usually mentioned immediately, an ingrained habit of so many of us women in these situations to deter any interest or prevent leading him on (or taking advantage of him for free drinks, which is not something I think is nice do to people and do not engage in the intentional practice of, myself). Sometimes they would simply sit next to me and have a friendly chat with absolutely zero expectations. Sometimes it was the old guy already sitting next to me having a conversation and he was just being appreciative of the friendly banter. It was — is, on the rare occasion I’m at a bar now — very nice.

I had forgotten about Minneapolis Men.

Like riding a bike (and apparently unlike opening doors), instinct kicked in and I went through my stock spiel, something about having a boyfriend, just getting a beer, thanks anyway, smile, look away.

“I don’t see him, though.”

A common response.

I point to my friend across the room sitting at our table, thankful that he is a large man in this moment that I can pretend I am dating. Random Dude immediately loses interest and leaves me alone. I am grateful when the beers arrive, and I return to the table with them.

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One may be tempted to conclude from these experiences that I think that men are simply better in Virginia, or that Southern men are generally kinder toward women than Northern men are. I don’t know if that’s true, as I’ve never dated any men here except for the one I acquired in Minnesota (born and raised) and married after we moved down here together. I think the ways in which men treat women in Minnesota versus Virginia, or the North and South more broadly, depends on a number of factors and there are pros and cons everywhere. I’m sure it the same in the reverse.

I will say that I no longer think of this door-opening human custom as the same bitterly misogynistic drama playing out time and again that I once thought:

Men holding doors open for me makes me irrationally angry. It's not because I hate the implication that I can't -- or shouldn't -- open the damn thing myself (although that is irritating), but rather because it makes me feel incredibly awkward. It's not even that I'm mad at the guy himself. There just comes a point when chivalrous behaviors like holding open doors and letting women exit elevators first stops being courteous and starts being a senseless and completely ass-backwards tradition that people insist on holding onto for reasons no one can convincingly explain.

I don’t really think any man who’s opened a door for me ever did so because he thought I was incapable of it, and it’s kinda weird that I ever did think that, honestly. I am now better able to feel the kindness of the gesture of someone taking the time and effort to hold open a door for me — all the way, letting me walk through it first — than I was before. Especially if it’s a man (I mean, it almost always is a man, but sometimes we women do it for each other, too). Because now that I don’t feel like I have to wear my (largely ineffective) man-repelling psychological armor constantly in public anymore, I am better able to trust gestures of kindness for what they are, rather than for what I fear their benefactor may expect. I can appreciate a feeling of protected femininity — however frivolous or materially meaningless having a door held for me might be — without feeling like I must protect myself from what they might want from me in return.

I can’t talk about the experience of men opening doors for women without mentioning the reverse, of course: while it’s not constant, some of the men here — especially the further south you get — will do absolutely anything to avoid allowing a woman to open a door for him. It’s absolutely comical the way those ones will awkwardly dance around to grab the door from you to avoid allowing a woman to do such a thing for him. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised to have the periodic opportunity to open a door for a man and have him be pleasantly surprised and thank me, so maybe we’re getting a little less weird, slowly but surely. In Minnesota, I think it’s a lot less likely that you’re going to find a man who cares that much if a woman opens a door for him — but then again, remember how Minnesotans open doors for each other. All genders do it that way for each other everywhere. So who knows. I’m just saying, the ingrained liberal and conservative mentalities of the North and South, respectively, are super apparent in this little social custom.

Of course, I still try my best to wait in my car until every visible man or woman has already entered the gas station before I get out and run to the door and let myself in, always desperate to avoid potential awkward doorway interactions. But these days, since those whole-door-opening Virginia gentlemen come out of absolutely nowhere sometimes, I can at least sincerely appreciate them when they do happen.

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1. I’ll definitely be writing about my experiences as a server at some point in the future.

2. It’s of course different when you’re in an established relationship. People have all sorts of arrangements based on their jobs and everything else in their lives.