There is an enormous social pressure, especially on women, and especially on mothers, to be the one who keeps the peace — to absorb the rudeness, to swallow the unfairness, to move three rows back rather than make everyone late, to be reasonable and accommodating and easy, because a woman who insists on fair treatment is so quickly relabeled as difficult, hysterical, entitled, the very thing the woman in my seat had accused me of being before I had said ten words.

So we learn to calculate the cost of standing up for ourselves, and we learn that the cost is usually higher than the injury, and we learn to just take the injury.

And the people who benefit from that arrangement learn it too, faster than we do.

They learn that a polite woman can be imposed upon, that a tired mother can be moved, that a well-raised child can be told to keep her mouth shut, and that none of them will make it cost anything, because they have all been trained since birth to prioritize everyone’s comfort over their own dignity.

That is what I meant by permission.

Not that we say yes.