[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

If you have been blissfully ignorant of the term “benevolent sexism,” it’s been central to feminist theory since the late 1990s. People usually think of sexism in the “hostile” sense – overtly negative actions and attitudes directed toward women (or toward men, for that matter, but few academics seem to take anti-male sexism seriously). But in their influential 1996 paper “The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and Benevolent Sexism,” psychologists Peter Glick at Lawrence University and Susan T. Fiske at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst presented the theory that there exists a subtler, deceptively positive version.

They define benevolent sexism as “a set of interrelated attitudes toward women that are sexist in terms of viewing women stereotypically and in restricted roles but that are subjectively positive in feeling tone (for the perceiver) and also tend to elicit behaviors typically categorized as prosocial (e.g., helping) or intimacy-seeking (e.g., self-disclosure).”

In less academic language, what this means is that a benevolently sexist gesture such as helping a woman change a flat tire is not, as one might expect, the opposite of the hostile sort such as beating a woman for removing her hijab; instead, the two exist on the same spectrum of sexist behavior and stem from the same impulse, according to Glick and Fiske: a desire to dominate women.

In a 2011 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology called “Yet Another Dark Side of Chivalry: Benevolent Sexism Undermines and Hostile Sexism Motivates Collective Action for Social Change,” J.C. Becker and S.C. Wright argued that because hostile sexism tends to be aggressive and overt, it is easier to recognize it as wrong or offensive and to inspire people to come together to push back against it. Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is damaging because it seems innocuous and thus leads to a decrease in collective action while reinforcing social norms and stereotypes.

Benevolent sexism (I’m so tempted to abbreviate it as B.S.) is thus actually considered even more harmful than the hostile kind because it supposedly flatters a woman into embracing her inferior position in a gender-unequal society, thus undermining the feminist revolution. The hostile sort at least engenders resistance from women.

Psychology professors Stephen Franzoi and Debra Oswald co-wrote a 2012 study titled “Experiencing Sexism and Young Women’s Body Esteem,” about how young women’s body esteem is affected by both hostile and “benevolent” sexism from family members and everyday experiences. The Marquette University study explains that benevolent sexism is so “deeply ingrained in American culture that women experience it daily but may not even realize it.” [Emphasis added] Such behavior “restricts what the woman can and cannot do by setting up rewards and punishments” for her behavior, Oswald writes.

For example, if a father believes that women should stick to a proper feminine role in society, he tends to encourage his daughter to perpetuate that social conformity by, say, complimenting her on a traditional feminine appearance with makeup and a certain style of dress. The researchers reported that the female survey subjects who had higher body esteem were more likely to have fathers who practiced benevolent sexism. The researchers found this “disconcerting” and insist that “it highlights the insidious nature of benevolent sexism.” (It’s unclear whether the solution Franzoi and Oswald are suggesting is for men to stop complimenting women on their appearance, or for women to start dressing like men.)

If you have been under the impression that poor body esteem was a serious problem for women and especially young girls today, you may be wondering how something that elevates that esteem can be considered bad. Well, academics like Franzoi and Oswald worry that when women feel good about themselves, it “decreas[es] efforts to change the social structure that promotes benevolent sexism and male dominance.”

In other words, benevolent sexism is bad because it makes women feel good about themselves and thus perpetuates benevolent sexism. And that’s bad because if women feel good about themselves, they can’t be manipulated into tearing down the patriarchy. So the researchers claim that this type of sexism “undermines the long-term esteem of women because it binds them to gender-specific roles… Sexism has evolved into a system where women are rewarded for engaging in the traditional feminine role” and punished for engaging “in nontraditional roles that may challenge the traditional gender relations and power balance.”

The study didn’t address whether engaging in nontraditional roles actually makes the majority of women any happier or more fulfilled. Nor did it address whether the feminist imperative to “challenge traditional gender relations and power balance” has improved relations between men and women.

It doesn’t take a study to see that gender relations today, at least among young people, are characterized mostly by anger, confusion and bitterness. Men today feel they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t: if they behave like gentlemen, they’re bashed as insidious sexists; if they refrain from acting like gentlemen in order to avoid offending women, they’re castigated for, well, not being gentlemen. The net effect of the theory of benevolent sexism is to frustrate and anger men, sow suspicion and resentment in women, and drive an even larger wedge between the two.

To begin chipping away at that wedge, we must acknowledge that radical feminism’s assault on the nuclear family and on the very definitions of masculine and feminine themselves has poisoned relations between the sexes and made women and men unhappier. We must also ask ourselves what kind of society we want: one in which men are held to a nobler standard of behavior, and in which men and women embrace our complementary differences with mutual respect, or what we have now: an uncivil war in which young men and women drift farther and farther apart as mistrustful antagonists.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior