I HAD, not for the first time, made myself unpopular at the dinner table.

We were only five minutes into the first course and I’d brought up sexism. It’s a dreadful habit. Somehow I can manage to keep my elbows off the table but not my opinions.

The chap next to me – randomly assigned seats at a work-related event – was affronted and went to great lengths to explain that he had three sons whom he taught strictly to be respectful towards women. Always pay for dates, always hold doors open. Even after some decades of marriage, he would never allow his wife to walk on the side of the pavement nearest the road.

This is his hat tip to equality and he seemed rather pleased.

You can’t compare this man to Donald J Trump, whose incendiary “locker room banter” and alleged sexual assaults of women are now well documented and commented upon, but you can compare him to those who were outraged by what Trump said.

Mitt Romney, former Republican presidential candidate, said Trump’s words, “demean our wives and daughters.” Senator Dan Sullivan said he was speaking out, “Inspired by my three wonderful teenage daughters and my…wife.” Senior Texas senator referred to “Our daughters, sisters and mothers.” “All women deserve to be treated with respect,” added Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah. Senator Michael Crapo said that women need “protecting” from treatment such as that meted out by Trump.

That “our” is men talking to men about women in possessive terms. It makes women a subject to discuss, rather than a group of active participants in what is an important conversation about us and our rights.

They use words such as “respect”, which comes with a double meaning – either that women are deserving of being treated with the courtesy due all humans or could imply the old fashioned, othering chivalry my friend at the dinner table was proud of.

While it’s heartening to hear all these right-wing Republican men speak out against their presidential candidate’s horrifying attitude to women, it would be far more satisfying to hear them speak about women as people. Just people, deserving of the same rights and safe passage through the world regardless of gender.

A certain section of men seem only able to relate to women as being somehow an extension of them - as these mothers, sisters and wives. Interestingly, you never hear them referring to women as friends.

What about those of us who don’t have any men in their lives? I have no husband, father or brother to be affronted on my behalf so what for me?

I moaned recently to a male friend that a waiter had been sexist towards my friends and I. His response was to tell me it is“anti-social to wear that stuff on your sleeve”.

I hear myself appealing to the fact he has a daughter and what if it was her? It’s an easy trap, that, and a lazy way to try to win someone round.

Michelle Obama said on Thursday in a speech at a campaign rally: “Too many are treating [Trump’s actions] as just another day’s headline, as if our outrage is overblown or unwarranted, as if this is normal, just politics as usual.”

My chum would presumably not call Mrs Obama anti-social - she’s the President’s wife, after all. She’s also a successful, intelligent, articulate person in her own right.

And how refreshing it would be to know men think of women in those terms. As people, just, and not an annexe of themselves.