The Stupidity Of Benevolent Sexism

Last week I had the great displeasure of conversing with someone who defended benevolent sexism, the practice of elevating one gender over the other in a way that is viewed as kind or "positive"--like saying that men should hold doors open for women but not vice versa, or that women deserve lifeboats more than men do.  Instead of maliciously putting one gender down (which is hostile sexism), it gratuitously lifts one gender up over the other in a supposedly well-meaning way.  The fine specimen of a fallacious person that I was talking to didn't understand just why it is stupid to assume something about a person just because that person is a man or a woman, to pressure people into conformity with unbiblical gender roles, and to encourage people to treat the other gender in a preferential (and thus sexist) way.

I was told that, for instance, men should hold doors open for women.  Now, what's wrong with this?  Nothing--if and only if the practice extends both ways irrespective of gender.  Likewise, there is nothing wrong with wives submitting to husbands, but both husbands and wives should submit to each other (Ephesians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5), so it is not wives submitting to husbands that is itself problematic, but describing this submission as unilateral and gender-based is nonsense.  While ideas like the belief that men should open doors for women are often cloaked in an allegedly benevolent guise, they are, at their cores, very sexist.  Though the person I talked to admitted that men and women are equal in value, she insisted on a concept that ultimately means, stripped of misguiding language, that men should treat women with a certain kindness not expected/encouraged to be bestowed in return by women.

People who are benevolently sexist are saying, in effect, that men and women are equal but should be treated as if they are not.  Yet if we are equal in value then it is inherently unjust to treat one gender preferentially or with greater respect on any matter, since beings of identical metaphysical value can only deserve the same treatment.  Benevolent sexists who affirm the equality of men and women can at best live in a way that contradicts their professed beliefs of the theological/metaphysical equality of men and women.

My life is not worth less than a woman's just because I am a male, and thus it is, on the Christian worldview, morally wrong to demand that I do something that disregards my equal status with women.  I have no obligation to give up my spot on a lifeboat to a woman just because she is a woman, or to give my seat to a woman just because she is a woman, or to open the door for a woman just because she is a woman.  Both hostile and benevolent sexism are utterly incompatible with Christian ethics and rationality on every level.  The problem, of course, is that people who continually defend benevolent sexism are not rational.

Is it really that difficult to decipher the Biblical position on this matter in itself?  Not at all, yet sometimes stupid ideas are preserved for long periods of time by stupid people.  When a person persists in an error after it has been identified, brought to his or her attention, and refuted, that person has forfeited the right to legitimately be called a rational person (and in some cases a righteous person as well).

Logic, people.  It is helpful.