In her book Body Politics, Nancy Henley notes that when a man walks a woman home, gives up his seat, or moves furniture for a woman, he is actually creating a "protection racket" to prevent women from realizing they're fully capable of coping with their environment without male intervention. Likewise, shaking a woman's hand is "a masculine ritual of recognition and affirmation [that] serves to perpetuate male clubbiness and exclude women from the club."

Nevertheless, "guilty men" who are aware of the disadvantageous position they put women in are not much better than "macho pigs," the other of the two categories into which Henley says all men can be divided. Guilty men, "who know and hate that women have been oppressed for centuries," are "no fun at all, because guilt causes low self-esteem and general wimpiness. Guilt makes men clutch their heads and mutter, then fall asleep with their clothes on."

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