[Disclaimer: This post applies to a small subset of straight(ish) relationships. I recognize that it may not be applicable to most readers. It’s barely applicable to me, but it’s adjacent enough that I have strong opinions about it. Anyway, feel free to grab some popcorn or a cup of tea and enjoy the show.]
This video has been living rent-free in my head for a few days.
Go ahead and watch it. I’ll wait.
See what he did? How he acted? It’s got my whole dander up and my inner storm cloud rolling.
I was going to leave a comment on the post itself, but they’re having fun. I get it. People like daddies. They like to role play. They may even like to work out their daddy issues during said role play. I’m not going to kink shame.
And I love a southern gentleman. Someone who says, “Yes, ma’am.” Holds the door open or stands aside while I walk in first. Carries my stuff (extra points for this one, actually. I can trip over a speck of dust, so this is particularly helpful). Offers an elbow when we’re walking up stairs. I’m here for all these things.
But if you are a straight man who a) considers yourself a gentleman (southern or otherwise), and b) frequently laments that women no longer seem to be interested in that sort of thing – guys like this are the reason why. They remember they’re southern (and have all kinds of wild ideas about what that entails) but forget the gentleman part that is supposed to go along with it.
The man in this video may be southern, but he is not a gentleman. He seems to still want to go through the motions and be seen as one, though. He wants the credit without doing any of the work.
A true southern gentleman talks the talk and walks the walk.
He failed at both of these things.
First, a true southern gentleman would never, ever speak to a woman that way, like she is his ill-behaved child instead of a grown person and partner. The core motivation of true gentlemanly behavior is respect, not control. There was nothing respectful about his little speech. If a man I was dating talked to me like that, we would indeed be having a conversation about it, or I would be very pointedly opening my door again to get out and walk away.
Second, if he were truly a southern gentleman, she would not even have had the opportunity to open her own door, because he would have had the foresight to get there first. When that didn’t happen, his true colors came out pretty quickly, as he then proceeded to blame her for something he wanted but failed to accomplish.
Unacceptable.
I was raised to be a southern lady around true southern gentlemen. And I was taught that a southern lady does not wait out in the elements, sweating and sunburning, with her hair getting blown to kingdom come.
A southern lady does not wait for doors to be opened. Open doors wait for her. That’s what meeting the standard of southern gentleman looks like.
Certainly, there is room for grace. He may not always get to the door first, and she will open it herself. She will start up the stairs before he gets there. She may get so excited to see him that she rushes out the front door before he has a chance to come knock on it when he picks her up.
But as Footloose, my mom, and my memaw taught us, the correct response in that situation is “You look beautiful,” not “Have patience.”
The shriek I shrieked when he said that to her. Bold of him to stand that close, I’ll give him that.
Behavior like this is why the southern gentleman trope is one of my least favorite in fiction. It’s too easy for a man to act polite when his heart is really just a wasteland of misogynistic bullshit. And then people start thinking that’s the way it’s supposed to be in reality.
It is not.
Respect and kindness have to be at the core, or your “southern gentleman” persona is just a smokescreen for abuse.
M. Suzanne Terry 