Even in a world as impolite as ours matters of etiquette still have the power to move. Take the story of New Yorker Darren Sherman, whose disastrous date with a secretary named Joanne has sparked debate in the American media.
The pair, who met through a dating website, went for dinner in June. At the end of the meal Joanne offered to go Dutch, but Darren declined. Some days later, however, he changed his mind — and left a series of voicemails saying that he did now want Joanne to pay her way because she hadn’t been in touch after the date. One of his messages said: “Do the right thing. The next time you go dating, be careful, don’t lead guys on, which is what you did to me. Fifty dollars — please put it in the mail and we’re done . . .”
Oh dear. As Joanne said in an e-mail reply: “There is not a quid pro quo for eating and drinking on a date.” Nevertheless, Darren contacted the restaurant where the date happened to ask that they charge Joanne for half of the bill. The restaurant’s manager told The Washington Post they were not sympathetic to his request.
His behaviour has, unsurprisingly, been subject to some censure. It was incredibly ungallant, after all. It should be a given that a man should offer to pay the bill on the first date, and if his offer is accepted this honourable behaviour should be no more than that — and certainly not linked to expectations of anything in return.
Many of us, though, are confused about matters of etiquette. As a commentator and so-called specialist on manners I am frequently asked by men: “Should I hold a door open for a woman?” Initially, I didn’t stop to think: why is this question being asked again and again? What anxiety and uncertainty lies behind it? Eventually, though, I decided to investigate. What I quickly discovered is that the holding-the-door-open question is just the tip of a decidedly fraught social iceberg.
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From casual social contact with women to dating and romance, men find themselves pulled in two directions. Men aren’t sure how to be gallant without it being interpreted as sexist or patronising. And it’s not just men over 45 (more likely to have been brought up with fixed ideas about the proper way to treat a lady) who are worried. Thirtysomethings and even twentysomethings are confused as well.
Of course, all this proves that men do care about manners. We can dare to move just a little (but only a little, of course) beyond the stereotype of the spitting, interrupting slob, who doesn’t know how to blow his nose nicely or how to tuck his shirt in and who, at night, turns into a drunken sub-human, braying and puking round the streets of places such as Prague where he’s gone for his mate’s stag party.
In the past it was all so much easier. Men and women knew where they stood. In the 1950s, when Cecil Beaton dined with Prince and Princess Paul of Yugoslavia at Broadstairs, the Princess rose at one point during dinner but the two men carried on talking. She said, “But I am standing”, whereupon her husband leapt to his feet, saying, “I do beg your pardon, madam”. Even as late as the 1980s, a gracious young wife, when telling the story of how her handbag fell out of the window of a hotel at Assisi, quite unselfconsciously remarked to me: “So, of course, my poor husband had to go and fetch it.”
Today we know at once that all this is absurd. Apart from anything else, too much chivalrous courtesy towards women often conceals contempt for them. This truth was revealed in 1937 when my grandmother became the first woman magistrate on the Plymouth bench. In the courthouse, she found doors literally slammed in her face. The male response to the outrage of her presence on an equal footing was to pretend that she just wasn’t there.
But look what happens today if a man takes the opposite approach and treats a woman as a complete equal. Back in March, Jack Straw, as Foreign Secretary, accepted Condoleezza Rice’s offer of the only bed on board Air Force Two. And what did everybody say? That’s right: how ungallant to leave a woman to sleep on the floor! So let’s try gallantry again. You might be surprised to learn women are quite keen on it. The novelist Sarah Long, as good a feminist and independent career woman as any I know, remarks: “After a certain age, it’s the only thing left. A woman might make a half-hearted attempt to pay on a first date, but she’d be furious if it was accepted.”
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And what about Norah Vincent, the New York lesbian who disguised herself as a man to better understand things from the other side and whose book about her experiences, Self-Made Man, was published last year? What was her big discovery when she went out dating as a man? It was that women want men to take the initiative, pay for everything, hold the door open. As she puts it: “Women don’t want soft, vulnerable men.”
But still and still . . . returning to that question: “Should I hold the door open for a woman?” Contradictory expectations mean that many men don’t know whether they are coming or going. One thirtysomething I spoke to complained: “One minute you have to be strong and protective, the next she wants you to be modern and show your feelings.”
Let me try to offer some viable advice. Modern manners are fraught with uncertain travail. The manners that apply exclusively to men (almost entirely to do with their relationship with women) are no exception. But come on: be a man. Face up to it. It’ll be good for you.
In the first place, let’s make two simple categories: first, in the personal sphere, manners for dating, romance, relationships with women in general; second, manners for the workplace. If you remember nothing else, just grasp that you must behave entirely differently depending on which category applies.
In the workplace, banish all thoughts of glorious chivalry. Men must treat women absolutely as equals. That is why Jack Straw was right to accept Dr Rice’s offer of that bed. If he had refused on the grounds that she was a helpless woman who couldn’t cope with sleeping on the floor he would not have been treating her as a capable professional making her own decisions.
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All this should be straightforward and becomes complicated only when a female colleague chooses to take some ordinary courtesy — for instance, offering to make her a cup of coffee or attempting to help her to move heavy furniture — as a sign of male condescension. If this happens a lot, maybe with a particular person, then frank discussions might ensue in which we can hope that the polite man’s point of view will prevail over the hair-splitting political correctness of the woman. On the other hand, friendly touching of women (as with President Bush’s inept attempts to massage the shoulders of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel) is not on. There is still a feeling, perhaps always will be, that women need to be protected from what could become aggressive male sexuality.
Outside the office, it’s a different story. Yes, let’s have gallantry by the gallon. Don’t be a dreary New Man, worthily eating oatmeal from a healthfood shop and painstakingly dividing up the household chores. He died out years ago from lack of interest. Just not sexy. Men and women may be equal, but they are not the same. Somehow a dash of gallantry shows this. That’s why women like it.
Another thing — a little glamorous chivalry is definitely preferable to the ghastly consumerist ruthlessness and rudeness of modern dating. Do you really want to be like one man I heard of, who, ten minutes into a blind date, got to his feet, announced to the stunned woman, “This isn’t for me”, and then flounced out of the bar? Modern gallantry must be true gallantry. That’s what’s modern about it. There must not be a price to pay, as there always was for the woman in the old days. So yes, don’t let anything stand in your way — hold the door open for a woman.
Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners is published by Fourth Estate at £10. Available from Times BooksFirst for £9 on 0870 1608080