Do women have agency in sustaining 'benevolent sexism' if they are accepting and appreciative

[Zorra]

102. Well, when a man opens a door for me with that "here ya go little lady" smile, I

know that he most likely has no clue that it is a sexist gesture.

I do not start screaming at him that he is being sexist. That just plain old would not be constructive. So I sigh, and accept the gesture, knowing that he would not understand, and might become confused or angry, if I gave him a public lecture on benevolent sexism.

This is why some DU women bring these concerns up on DU, because we figure that the majority of men here are intelligent and aware enough to understand what we are trying to express about subtle, insidious sexist actions such as acts of benevolent sexism. We figure that the majority of men here will get it. We figure if we get enough intelligent, aware men to understand our concerns, that someday the planetary gender glass ceiling may finally crack.

There is really no sense ripping ass on someone who is only acting out of an enculturated belief that their gesture is one of respect, and they have no clue that they are being sexist when they open a door for a woman out of a long standing cultural more that has been stuck in our collective culture consciousness since someone decided that women were "ladies",or whatever, and were too fragile to do anything for themselves, or needed to be rendered powerless, sometime in the past. I don't have time to go into any historical shit right now.

Men open doors for me quite often, so naturally, I do kind of expect it ~ simply because it happens all the time. It happened already today, at the Post Office.

I would consider myself to be flat out stupid if I did not expect it, because it's definitely going to happen. I just can't bring myself to rip someone's face off because of it.

Now, yes, of course, there are some women out there who accept the myth that they are inferior, and accept being treated like they are helpless wimps and second class citizens because "that's just the way things are", and these women totally annoy the heck out of me.

These women generally have agency in every form of sexism directed toward women.