A handy tip from the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit. You can literally save seconds by not holding doors open for women.
What a ray of sunshine this fellow must be!
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That reminds me of a string of Kool-Ade ads from the 1980s. In these, people would be going about their ordinary business on a hot day and someone would remark upon their thirst.
That’s when a large, animated, walking talking jug of Kool-Ade would bust through a nearby wall and announce that the solution to their problem could be had for the low, low price of … well, whatever the heck Kool-Ade cost back in the 80s, which I’m guessing is a lot less than it costs now.
Another character I’ve seen who will routinely bust through a wall and then announce something is Marvel’s The Thing. The first live-action Fantastic Four film features an instance, in which he busts through a wall out of nowhere, announces “No, Vic, it’s clobbering time!”, and proceeds to punch supervillain Victor von Doom across the room. In fact it is this punch that initiates the film’s final fight.
Marvel’s stable has at least one more wall-buster: the Hulk, of course. But he doesn’t tend to announce anything right after doing so, preferring instead to be the strong, silent type during combat situations.
Bit of trivia.
At Jonestown, it was Flavor-Ade they drank, not Kool-Ade. So really we’re getting the saying wrong.
@Surplus – Nowadays, it’s the Kool Aid drinkers who burst into threads to announce that we’re all wrong.
Re: doors, I wonder if the OP gets angry when automatic doors hold themselves open for women?
@epitome
Hey you don’t have to feel bad about it! TBH I also have a history of anger problems; it took a lot of work to get that stuff under control. (And then I had to learn the ropes all over again when I started HRT, and started actually Feeling things that had been numbed out for 15+ years.)
Unlearning this stuff is hard, especially for people with a bunch of trauma. And being self-aware about it, and consistently doing better, counts for a lot more than being Pure and Innocent in my book.
This brings back memories of my dad, and a mannerism of his that used to drive me into a froth: whenever the family was passing through a door, he’d often grab me by the scruff of the neck and push me through ahead of him.
I finally figured out where it was coming from:
(1) Dad was an impatient man.
(2) I was, and remain, a chronic dawdlebug.
(3) Dad was a child of the Depression who’d had “Ladies first!” ingrained with the force of a geas—with the result that he couldn’t bring himself to enter a door until all the women and girls in the party had preceded him.
The guy smashing the door is former MMA fighter and UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson.
Were all his Rampages so poorly staged?
@Threp: It’s pro wrestling, or next of kin to it.
@Surplus:
Dude looks like a toddler having a shitfit in a playhouse. Not many pro wrestlers would stand for that back when I were paying attention to that world – they’ve a bit more self respect in their dramas 🙂
(Of course, the writers of said dramas don’t always agree!)
I live next door to a field of cows and their stares, against popular belief, are full of intent and seem rather thoughtful. It’s actually pretty unnerving! I think they must have been fed as young uns using a quad bike because they run over every time me and the husband pull up on the motorbike.
And on another note, it makes me sad that Karen has been nearly fully co-opted by the sexists. Even left wing young men seem to use it in a “aren’t middle age women awful” kind of way.
I mean, “holding the door open for women” isn’t really a thing, For normal humans, it’s “holding the door open for people“. If you go though a door that’s not automatic and that’s going to shut and there’s someone in a reasonable distance behind you, you hold it open. It’s really not a gendered thing, it’s just normal human politeness, at least everywhere I’ve lived.
@lolypop : not all middle aged women !
the “Karen” phenomen is basically trying to create a label for a form of unsufferable behavior, who largely was left alone beforehand. The bad thing is that generalities are made. The good thing is that that kind of bad behavior is now significantly more shameful, which is a condition for it to happen less often.
@Ohlmann
Oh yes I agree. I understand the context and I’m pleased there was a way to spotlight that behaviour (I spent a significant portion of my working life thus far in retail. I have been Karened multiple times and belittled. In my experience, men behaved this way less often but were significantly worse and more aggressive when they did). I also know lots of Terfy, upper/middle class white feminists have railed against “Karen” in an extremely un-self-aware and tone deaf way.
But I also think that misogynist men are gleeful about “Karen” and that it is uncomfortably loved by the worst people on the internet. It’s no ones fault outside of those circles and I’m not going to stop using the term but it still sucks.
I didn’t think of the misuse by misogynist, but it make complete sense.
And I also agree with the pattern of male karens to be less common but much worse. Part of it is that men are more trained toward upping aggressivity and intimidation when their approach fail, while women are more trained toward negociation or deescalation.
Applied to asshole, it mean assholish women aren’t less toxic per se, but they do it with less outbursts and more background radiations.
As a 61 year old cis/het woman, I’ve held doors for hundreds, if not thousands of people in my life. I’ve also had a probably equal number of doors held for me by all sorts of people.
So, I think it’s more of a “silly men who don’t know how polite society even works” thing than an “ungrateful bitches who barely know how doors even work” thing.
@sarah_kay_gee & @Hambeast – Yes, in my experience it’s pretty non-gendered.
I mean, I’m aware it used to be considered more of a men-to-women “chivalry” thing, along with stuff like giving up your seat on the bus, but that doesn’t mean it’s like that now.
It seems the MGTOW sorts have a narrow and static view of life, like, “Okay, I read this somewhere or saw it in a movie, must be 100% true all the time.”
@Cyborgette – Thanks and don’t worry about me! I’m not anxious about the door business. I was just thinking how it must have been hell for my parents & brother those times I smashed plates and cups, because it’s like threatening violence, and I think I need to be aware of that. But without letting guilt get in the way of actually doing better. If that makes any sense.
It is a tough process, though. I wasn’t smashing plates [note to PUAs: not meant in a sexual way!], but I did yell much too loudly yesterday when my mom startled me. She looked at me like, “What is wrong with you??” (I was anxious about something unrelated; shouldn’t have taken it out on her, but it’s sort of like a split-second reaction.) Anyway!
I’ll never forget getting locked in my flat because my girly hands and tiny irly brain just couldn’t figure out how to open that door/s, Seriously, what is wrong with these guys? I open doors for men, women and children all the time because it’s the polite thing to do. These asshats problably expect sex just because they open a door for a women.
@Cyborgette: I’ve known men like that. They loved punching holes in walls. One tried to punch a hole in a wall in my home which was over 100 yeas old. Unfortunately for him lath and plaster are much less forgiving than the usual dry wall one now finds in buildings. He broke his hand in a bunch of places and barely dented the wall. He was a truly terrifying man to be around. We had to rescue his wife one night when he was out because she was afraid he’d kill her.
Could MGTOW please live up to their name and go the hell away already? I’m disgusted by the fact they feel the need to spread their toxic beliefs to young men who have no real world experience with women.
I think in the future we could minimize misogyny by encouraging girls and boys to be friends instead of dividing them into boy/girl groups. It’s hard to understand each other when they’re separated from each other at all times. Maybe we wouldn’t end up with men who think women are a different species.
My main problem with the whole ’Karen’ thing is that it no longer refers to just a certain kind of rude behavior. Based on my own (very limited) observations on how it’s being used, it’s turned – or is turning – into shorthand for ‘OMG! That unattractive middle-aged woman thinks she’s PEOPLE, acting like she’s got the right to be heard when upset hurrhurrhurr!’ Or something along those lines, anyway. Even when said woman has a legitimate complaint she’s called a Karen for acting ‘uppity’ (for lack of a better term here) instead of accepting poor service as her lot in life.
Kinda like the way the term ‘Mary Sue’ morphed over the years from the ‘I’M the center of this story! It’s all about MEEEEEEEEEE!’ kind of story-breaking character to ‘I don’t like this female character; she doesn’t act like the man’s trophy the way she’s supposed to. MAAAARY SUUUEEEE!!!!!’’. One more way of being told to shut up. :/
@Redsilkphoenix
And then there’s the problem with the fact that some actual people are named Karen. As far as I’m concerned, this tactic was sexist and ageist from the get-go.
Wasn’t “Karen” invented by black people to highlight some white women’s entitlement?
@MV96 : I remember that. It don’t change the ageist/sexist opinion.