That's it, I'm going to find out if there's a study on this, and if not, I'll make my own, goddamnit! We need this data, lol.
I actually open the door for a lot more people now, too. Especially in those situations where, while I may have made it safely to the gas station door without anyone nearby outside (lol), someone is about to exit as I'm about to enter, so I just open the door, walk backwards with it, and hold it for them as they leave. The same thing happens when I leave maybe 85% of the time, so it is just natural now.
Now you're making me wonder if my charm and genteel ways are just because I'm southern, and had I been born elsewhere I could be an asocial weirdo perplexed by the women I constantly make uncomfortable and eventually begin to resent.
I'm only half kidding. A mark of my perspective is I've never understood or felt kinship with the angry incel types. Even if I've had my own rather fallow periods and I may be sympathetic to certain points they raise or which undergird their position, I've never related to or felt in tune with them - mainly because their barely concealed resentment and anger against women repulsed me, as a matter of style and because it seemed substantively unwarranted and mistaken.
Interacting with women was fun and invigorating. Their approach to basically anything was inscrutable, if not incomprehensible to my simple teenage brain. But they felt the same urge we did to find a way to come together and celebrate. I couldn't manifest it consistently then, but they could find us charming, or more! To deny that reality or not be able to see it, or be so jaded that despite it you concluded that domain of human existence was not worth it, or even that it was the source of our problems - nope, not so, and objective unreasonable (weird, if not outright disordered) to argue so.
Did I only think that because I grew up a Cajun and was raised on principles of etiquette, honor, and decorum in sufficient amounts to display, even at that age and despite all other outward appearances, enough slow, Southern charm to not make an ass of myself around women every time, and every now and then even have one respond positively to me and engage with me? If I'd come up a Minnesota dude instead, would I have had enough bad experiences, or would my interactions with women have been bad enough, to never learn/discover the joys and delight of that aspect of human existence, and instead to find incel-style resentment accurate and appealing?
A scary thought. For me and my self-conception, and for any poor dudes who did grow up like that and for whom, today, that was the case.
I think we need a nationwide door opening study!!!
I'm a door holder...yes there have been many awkward moments, but I've never once thought about stopping. I don't know what that says about me.
That's it, I'm going to find out if there's a study on this, and if not, I'll make my own, goddamnit! We need this data, lol.
I actually open the door for a lot more people now, too. Especially in those situations where, while I may have made it safely to the gas station door without anyone nearby outside (lol), someone is about to exit as I'm about to enter, so I just open the door, walk backwards with it, and hold it for them as they leave. The same thing happens when I leave maybe 85% of the time, so it is just natural now.
This taught me a lot about Minnesota
Only good things, I'm sure 🤭
Ok, then I’ll never do it again (we men are simple rule-following creatures, you see).
Now you're making me wonder if my charm and genteel ways are just because I'm southern, and had I been born elsewhere I could be an asocial weirdo perplexed by the women I constantly make uncomfortable and eventually begin to resent.
I'm only half kidding. A mark of my perspective is I've never understood or felt kinship with the angry incel types. Even if I've had my own rather fallow periods and I may be sympathetic to certain points they raise or which undergird their position, I've never related to or felt in tune with them - mainly because their barely concealed resentment and anger against women repulsed me, as a matter of style and because it seemed substantively unwarranted and mistaken.
Interacting with women was fun and invigorating. Their approach to basically anything was inscrutable, if not incomprehensible to my simple teenage brain. But they felt the same urge we did to find a way to come together and celebrate. I couldn't manifest it consistently then, but they could find us charming, or more! To deny that reality or not be able to see it, or be so jaded that despite it you concluded that domain of human existence was not worth it, or even that it was the source of our problems - nope, not so, and objective unreasonable (weird, if not outright disordered) to argue so.
Did I only think that because I grew up a Cajun and was raised on principles of etiquette, honor, and decorum in sufficient amounts to display, even at that age and despite all other outward appearances, enough slow, Southern charm to not make an ass of myself around women every time, and every now and then even have one respond positively to me and engage with me? If I'd come up a Minnesota dude instead, would I have had enough bad experiences, or would my interactions with women have been bad enough, to never learn/discover the joys and delight of that aspect of human existence, and instead to find incel-style resentment accurate and appealing?
A scary thought. For me and my self-conception, and for any poor dudes who did grow up like that and for whom, today, that was the case.