As a child, my mother always told me to be a gentlemen — hold the door open, pay the check on a date, be polite. She never told me make sure women stay barefoot and pregnant, or shove minorities to back of the bus, but according to feminist writer Scaachi Koul, this is the intention behind anyone who tries to act like a “gentlemen.”
The hit TV show Mad Men and it’s main character Don Draper has reignited “gentleman’s style” back into the culture: cigars, skinny ties, and a well-polished look.
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Koul reported for Buzzfeed about her experience at a “Gentleman’s Expo” she attended.
Between the scotch and beard oil was the underlining phantom of the patriarchy’s politics: racism, sexism, ableism — not a single person was checking their privilege!
“So on one hand The Gentlemen’s Expo is just a trade show filled with lifestyle products — moustache wax, face wash, e-cigarettes — targeting men,” Koul wrote. “But on the other hand, it also represents a certain amount of agreement among marketers about what man they believe men want to be most — a gentleman.”
According to the author being a gentleman is one step below being a Nazi sympathizer, it means to harken back to a time when “rich white men” really had a good thing going an women needed them. As oppose to now when feminist bash white men and then beg the same guilty men for donations. Yes, women have it much better now.
Koul wrote how the products gentleman care about “look more like they’d belong to your grandfather (if your grandfather were white and privileged and really gave a shit about his beard.)” She probably doesn’t complain when feminist-loving hipsters wear the same exact “shit” and grow out their beards.
All of the clothes, cigars, and accessories, Koul explained, are “accompanied by that socioeconomic baggage, gender inequality, the suggestion that things were better during an era when things were only better for an already privileged, protected class.”
Idolizing the style of the 1950’s is racist and sexist because some white men did very well and everyone else was suffering.
Koul explained that even the clothing of that time is oppressive or stupid. Men who wear bow ties to dinner are “idiots” and putting on a fedora is as hateful as lighting a cross on fire.
“Do you guys think it’s worse to wear a fedora or kill 15 people?” Koul yelled at two men wearing the hat.
What of all the black men and lesbians who can pull off a fedora and perfectly groomed suit?
Sometimes a hat is just a hat, and a feminist is just an idiot.
