I fear you may take my answer to be flippant, but I assure you that it is not. My own practice is to open any door for anyone who might need the door opened. I open doors for people who are going to ride in my car; I open the door to my own office when I am about to go in and have a chat with a student; I open the door for people I have never met when I get to the door first. This plainly has nothing to dowith sexism, since I take the politness of such gestures to apply to any and all, regardless of gender or circumstance. So it looks to me that practicing this minor bit of politesse is your answer: just be polite and open doors for anyone whenever it is feasible (without making a scene, of course!) to do so.

First a disclaimer--I don't speak for feminists in this response. But something in the question piqued me a bit, but then there is also something I wanted to pursue a bit. I think that talk about "men in general" and "women in general" is already likely to deal in the sorts of stereotypes that philosophers should try to avoid. I don't disagree that there are "behaviors and traits" worthy of criticism or blame, but the generality that these may be associated with "men in general" strikes me as prejudice--or at least a likely source of such. It is simply too easy to go from "men in general" to the presumption that the next man I might meet may be assumed to be guilty before I have any evidence of such guilt. This is how prejudice works. To pursue another line, however, I would recommend the work of feminist philosopher Claudia Card to the questioner. Much of Card's work has been focused on the nature and effects of victimization. It is to her (in modern times) that we owe the notion of the...

I think it depends on what precisely you mean by "feminist," but by most understandings of this term, I think there are a number of male feminist philosophers, and certainly an even greater number of male philosophers who are generally very sympathetic to and agree with feminist philosophy, even if they do not count feminist philosophy as one of their research specialties. From an armchair sociological perspective, I'm inclined to think that actually most male philosophers agree with much of feminism--including some who are nonetheless still capable of very un-feminist behaviors at times. Alas, it is one thing to recognize the value of a certain philosophical point of view, and quite another to live up to the demands of that point of view!

I just answered a question very like this one. It isn't sexual harassment to express interest in a woman in a social circumstance, at least in the first instance. There are lots of ways of doing this that are rude, crude, and stupid, of course. But it is only "harassment" if it continues after a clear expression of non-interest has been conveyed by her. If I go up to a woman in a bar and express sexual interest, it is not harassment, even if I am clumsy about it. That would make me a loser, maybe, but nothing in feminism (or in the legal concept of harassment) makes it harassment in the first instance. If I continue after she has told me to take a long walk off a short pier, well, then, it starts at that point to become harassment, and yes, women (and men) have a right not to be pestered and...well, harassed!

As I understand it, the issue at stake here is that people (and not just women) want to be able to regard their workplace as just that--a workplace. The minute someone in that place begins to give sexual attention to someone else in that workplace, the environment is changed--and changed in a way that makes the workplace no longer an entirely comfortable place to work. There are obviously degrees of sexual harassment, and I frankly don't think that giving unwanted sexual attention (that is in no way coersive) on a date could count--either ethically or legally--as harassment. But it is different in a workplace. If you find someone's sexual interest or expressions thereof unwanted on a date, you can always refuse to go out on another date with that person. But if you have to deal with this at a workplace, your only option is to try to find another job--which these days can be a major problem, and which a good worked should not have to feel that he or she has to do, to avoid someone acting in...

Surely anything that promotes sexism is, to the degree and for that reason, a bad thing. Truth is, the popular media and advertising reinforce all kinds of biases and prejudices (against older people, against people who do not fit social standards of beauty or attractiveness, against poor people, against people of color--by inadequate representation, and so on and so on). The media make money from doing so, because people have the interests they have--and these interests are often sexist and biased in all of the relevant ways. So you want to ban all of the ways in which the media promote or reinforce such wrongs? Well...you will have a lot of censorship to do! On the other hand, as Pogge suggests, surely there are more important concerns (in regard to sexism specifically, and in regard to making the world a better place more generally) than becoming overly concerned that Page 3 shows the breasts of young women. Before you get too far gone in moral indignation about this issue, it...