Holding the door, against better judgment

Kirk Ericson | Nov 24, 20220

I opened the entrance door to a restaurant for a woman the other day, which sparked a frayed memory of a time that’s no more.

From the early 1970s, when the women’s liberation movement took root, to the mid-1990s, it was possible to hear the following from a woman if a man opened a door for her: “Would you hold the door open if I was a man?” Sometimes the statement was punctuated with the phrase “you male chauvinist pig,” a saying that’s also become a relic.

Not all women reacted that way, but enough did to make many men hesitant. I had a woman go off on me once, and once was plenty. That one incident made me stop opening doors for women of a certain age. I’d do it for men and I’d let women do it for me, but women were off-limits, unless they were older than 70 years. That was my age limit, for no reason I can recall.

That was my state of mind about women, men and doors in 1989 when I had an elevator encounter with Betty Friedan, one of the titans of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1963, she published “The Feminine Mystique,” a bestseller that fire-hosed the restrictions placed on generations of women. She was a co-founder of the National Organization for Women.

Friedan was a potent force.

I worked for Gannett News Service in Virginia in 1989, and one day as I approached the bank of elevators that led to the newsroom, there was Friedan, standing alone talking to a security guard. I stood nearby and heard her say she was meeting the news service’s executive editor. That woman’s office was on my floor, so it piped up.

“I’ll show you to her office,” I offered.

Friedan eyed me from head to toe — from a dirty tennis shoe to uncombed hair.

“You work here?” she asked. I detected skepticism.

“I do,” I said.

She looked at the guard, who shrugged. She gave me another long, hard look before we ended up in front of the closed elevator doors.

“You’re Betty Freidan, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s an honor to meet you.”

She said nothing.

The elevator opened and we entered, the only riders. I made a comment about how hot it had been and she moved closer to the corner. It was a dusty ride, that ride.

The doors opened on my floor and I exited first. The office of the woman she was meeting was to the left — it was in a suite entered through a swanky glass door. When I was 10 steps from the door and while she kept a healthy distance behind me, I was preoccupied with the dynamics of the upcoming door. I knew it opened inward, so I figured I’d stand to the side and push the door open, creating enough room for Friedan to pass under my arm. Friedan was short.

Yes. I was planning to open the door for Betty Friedan, one of the handful of humans among the 5 billion people in the world in 1989 who were most responsible for discouraging such an act. She was about 70, near as I could tell, and that was my rule.

I opened the door for Betty Friedan.

Her face registered a fresh degree of apprehension, which then sparked this thought: This is Betty Friedan, Kirk. You absolutely cannot open the door for

Betty Friedan.

But that thought came too late. She was inches from passing through the door. The next moment, my body — kind of involuntarily — moved through the door too, brushing her aside.

I cleared the entrance, leaving her to stop the closing door with her extended arm. She passed through the door and backed away, eyes fixed on me.

“Second door on the left,” I said.

Betty Friedan died in 2006 at age 85, so she wasn’t 70 years old when I met her.

If I’d only known.