the forms of respecting the "weaker sex" that social custom keeps as treasures might be called the "repecting ploy". the apparent function of the ploy is to proclaim the moral superiority of women by giving them benefits once reserved for royalty: giving up one's seat, opening doors, pulling out chairs, and rising when a woman enters the room. the poly's hiden intention, however, is quite different. over the centuries such pleasant things have tendered women, kept them in their "higher" place, and maintained the convenient (for men) social fiction that females cannot perform real labor, and so need not be paid adequately for the labor they do perform. if the "little woman" cannot open a door for herself, it's certainly not necessary to make her salary more than 60percent of a man's.


the effect of the respecting ploy was not, of course, always obvious. in the days when the ploy was used most widely, the females to whom these social courtesies were extended did not, in fact, know how to work: as the daughters of wealth, their function was to manage the fortunes their husbands earned. women who worked were by definition members of the "lower" ranks, moral as well as social. it is not an accident that the expression "working girl", which today means a professional prostitute, recently meant any women with a job.


ploy （挫敌的）策略，手段，为占优势而采取的方法

apparent 表面的

proclaim 宣告，宣布，声明

reserved for royalty 专用于皇族的

intention 意图，目的

tender 使娇弱

fiction 假设，不符合实际的东西

courtesy 礼貌，殷勤

moral 道德的，品德的

prostitute 妓女