Gentlewomen, stop your engines

To be a gentleman was a distinguished title. A gentleman shows restraint, he's refined, he does not resort to violence. The power of the gentleman comes from his restraint, and the fact that he can afford to show restraint; it comes from the things he could do but chooses not to. Men are presumed to be non-gentlemen by default.

Women are supposed to be all nice all the time, so they've never had access to this power; there is no such word as gentlewoman. Niceness is apparently only a virtue when it's backed by the potential for not being nice.

This is related to one of my main problems with redemption; namely, that it glorifies someone who did something bad first, and then stopped, more than it does someone who never did the bad thing to begin with.