I'm annoyed with myself for not speaking up when being patronised. How would you respond?

[Lifeissweet]

I consider myself to be a fairly able kind of person. I do all the DIY in this house (in the last week I have put up a shelf, pulled out a kitchen cupboard, skimmed part of a wall and changed a fuse all without the help of a MAN.

I am also pretty able with technical things - I am the one who mends the computers and tvs around here. I like to know how things work and enjoy taking things apart and putting them back together again.

So - to being patronised: I asked a female friend to come and help me jump start my car in a pub car park this morning. She has jump leads because her last car had a terrible battery. I have had cause to jump start this car a few times recently.

So, bonnets up, leads attached and then it began - man peers out of pub window with undisguised amused look on his face. 'Are you all right, love? Need a hand?'

'No' I said 'We're fine thanks'.

Got into my car. Engine started and we left both ticking over for a few minutes. We were just about to turn of friend's engine, when man from window comes out.

'Oh no, no - stop the engine, quick before you kill yourselves!' He then proceeded to take the clamps off and return three of them back to EXACTLY where I had had them (only after I pointed out to him where the positive point was on friend's battery because he couldn't see which was which) and looked at the clamp I had attached to the chassis and said 'Oh dearie me. You don't want to do that!'.

I said (meekly and without conviction) that I knew it could be attached to the negative point on the battery, but it makes less of a spark if you Earth it using the chassis where I had it. 'Oh no, no...' says the man before attaching it to the negative point and creating sparks (grrr)

Then he took over, asking friend to start her engine and then me to start mine before taking the leads off, looking triumphant and saying 'There you go. All sorted.'

Of course, we'd already charged my battery enough the start the engine before he came to 'help'

I thanked him because, obviously it was kind of him to help. It just irritated me that he had seen two young(ish) women and automatically assumed we'd need help even when we said we didn't. I think that if we'd been big hairy men he would have left us to it.

And then I went and said exactly nothing to stand up for us or challenge this - just meekly let him take control and thanked him for rescuing us like a good little damsel in distress.

How should I have dealt with this? I am kicking myself for not saying more forcefully that, actually, we were fine and knew what we were doing thank you very much, despite being 'only' women.

Well my 1st thought is I suppose you could have made one man very happy thinking he was doing a good deed for the day! My dad always said if only you could have your second thoughts 1st - here's my second thought -One of you could have held him down and the other could have attached the jump leads to his testicles! :o

There is nothing that you could have done. It's just one of those crappy damned if you do, damned if you don't situations: you either end up looking like a complete bitch or a damsel in distress.

So, don't beat yourself up about it. Even if you'd said you were a qualified car mechanic he would have still taken over.

I think it is really hard to go against our feminine oppression programming and hurt a man's ego be 'not nice' or 'not prioritise someone else feeling good'. He is a sexist prick. You have no duty to protect his feeling when he is acting on his sexist prickery.

But I know exactly what you mean. I hate it when I am simultaneously stumped by someone's sexism/racism/ablism when they are being 'helpful' and being guided by my oppressive programming - to smile, say thank you and flatter a helpful man at the same time. Its paralysing.

I recently was 'helped' by a man who took me through a complicated station (rather than just told me the direction) he said "anyone would think it was designed by Stevie Wonder" I was so shocked, but I just smiled nicely.

I'm trying to learn to be like ssome of my feminist friends I admire. Istead of being confrontational, my mate just has the poise to say something like " thanks for the offer of help but we don't need it just because we are women" then cooly freeze them out.

The trick is, instead of beating yourself up for what you didn't do in the moment, you have to prepare yourself- train up- for future incidents by challenging people every time they say something laced with erroneous lazy prejudice. Once that level of being 'straight. Up' has been really internalised, you'll never have to feel like that again!

I'm getting better, but it is still very difficult with the inlaws!

I know it is hard to do but the first thing to do in a situation like this is firmly tell the man to leave your things alone.

You have to firmly say - 'stop touching my car and my jump leads'. You just tell the person to stop it with your stuff already. You don't even have to get into the fact that the man is patronising you, etc - you just tell him to put your possessions down and leave you alone. You are polite but firm and a bit incredulous that someone thinks it is ok to come and interfere with your private property like this.

If you get 'just trying to help love' type comments back, you just say 'thank you but no - I do this all the time and prefer to do it my way. Stop touching my property now'.

You have to firmly redraw the boundary line that has been crossed.

Wel you said no and he ignored it. So that's the first thing to note - that this is absolutely his fault.

Agree with Beachcomber's advice. Just talk about what he's actually doing and tell him to stop it.

But you may have been right to acquiesce because men like this are quite likely to up the aggression if you stand up to them.

Yes unfortunately some men can react to the redrawing of a boundary by becoming aggressive. One's safety is paramount.

Beachcomber - you are absolutely right. That level of assertiveness is exactly what we should be after, and although men can try to dominate with violence or the threat of violence, I think it is really important for women to aim for that level of assertiveness and confidence about our own boundaries - and not assume they will turn violent ( unless you sense something in your gut that tells you to be wary).

Men have just got away with it for so long and have had stupid 'Nuts' adverts saying 'women, don't expect any help on a Wednesday' to reinforce that shite, I think drawing clear boundaries sets them straight.

I think it helps to practice this stuff though - since our programming is pretty entrenched.

Don't be annoyed with yourself, be annoyed with him. You did what seemed right at the time and got out of the situation. But good idea to ask for advice about what to do next time.

I'm impressed you know how to jump start a car - I would have no idea. But that's because I don't drive (for medical reasons), not because I'm a woman.

Stuff like this is really annoying. I find it hard to "stand up for myself" when confronted with (for want of a better word) "alpha" type men. I just don't know what to say, how to react. There is often the underlying sense that they might be aggressive if you don't do / say what is expected and that makes me so uncomfortable. I get very flustered.

Once you realise the threat is generally real, then it should be easier to stop blaming ourselves.

There are a fair amount of men who are prepared to be extremely aggressive to women if we aren't suitably submissive.

I think don't beat yourself up about not reacting as you would have liked, not being able to say what you wanted. Stuff like this is really hard but I think with practice and age we can get better at it! I suspect this is why many of these types of men target their "help" or "banter" or whatever it might be at younger women and girls, often, because they know they are less likely to be told to piss off.

This reminds me of when I was teaching DS how to ride a bike in country lane by house. We were doing fine, had our own system and taking it slow.

Then this man in a car actually stopped to tell DS how to ride bike " No, you don't do it like that, you do it like........"

I said, it's fine, he's got it, we're just taking it slow. So off nosy man went, only to stop further down the road. He actually turned his car around and came all the way back to get out of his car and try to help us again!!

I seriously can't imagine someone doing that to a man teaching his son how to drive.

To an extent I've seen women do the same thing to men where children are concerned. I have a friend who is a SAHD and he is, of course, perfectly capable of looking after his little daughter. When he came out with me and a few female friends to soft play a couple of the women took over from him right from the off, and I could see he was a bit put out though later he said it was also nice to have the help. They were unnecessarily aggressive about it at times, insisting that should try to get his daughter to eat some of the food on the table and advising him that she would be picky if he wasn't more insistent. They would never do that to me.

While I agree there is a degree of aggressive sexism involved I think it's also a case of the sexes seeing certain things as their "domain" and using them to show off their competence to the opposite sex. It's sort of a display of ability in a way. When either men or women do it, it isn't right, I agree. Over time hopefully when there are less gendered roles this sort of thing will become less prevalent.

Just to add, thinking about it the situation the OP described was a bit different than mine as the man was a stranger and there was an added element of danger that wasn't present with my friend. I think women would be less likely to walk up to a man like that (although I have seen dads being patronised by women in public).