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post by LaShawn Barber today got me thinking. The post in mention talks about her being a “traditional woman” who would love to be married and taking care of her husband and (in the words of Dr. Laura) being her kids’ mom, but at the moment can’t. Some of the response posts got me thinking again about my school’s newspaper article a while back and a night I experienced not too long ago.
About two years ago, my school newspaper, The Spokesman, ran an article on how chivalry is dead. Men on the campus no longer held doors for girls or gave up their seats on crowded shuttles. Some girls were upset over it and some guys were either like “anytime I do that, they give me a mean look” or “tough cookies, get over it.” If I never had read the article I would have never known it was happening on my campus. There have only been rare (and I do mean rare) occasions when a guy on my Alma Mata’s campus wouldn’t hold the door for me. I would usually follow this with a thank you and if there happened to be another set of doors, hold them for him. This usually got me a chuckle from said guy or a “no, no,” and another door being held for me. Even off campus, when I am at the mall or wherever there is a high volume of traffic, if there is a man in front of me (besides my boyfriend), he is more than likely to hold the door for me. The shuttle is trickier, however, since as the years went by, the less I got on them. Most times I got on it, there were ample seats available, so there was no need for seats being given up. I do remember one time after the article came out, however, one guy did give me his seat on one of my school’s crowded shuttles. I thanked him and accepted his offer.
A semester or two ago, my sorority had a forum on “manners”. The presentation included the usual table manners and manners when doing certain other things. Somehow it got into the manners between the opposite sex, like chivalry, who pays for dinner, yatta yatta… Imagine my shock when my sorors were all around me, bemoaning the fact that things are not like they used to be. I wanted to stand up and say (being that my line name is “Amplifier” I probably would have said this very loudly), “Well, that’s feminism for you.” One of my sisters talked about how she thought that men who held doors wanted something and that she always had to nag her boyfriend to do something for her. The power of please goes a long way, ladies. Oh, I’ve nagged to my boyfriend before (many, many times -_-), but then I told myself one day, “You know what? I am his girlfriend, not his mother.” Once you realize that (“I am his wife, not his mother” for the marrieds out there), things get much better and easier. It was amazing to sit there in that room, with all these people and be (seemingly) the only one who wasn’t being treated or treating others like a feminist.
Chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just playing hide and seek.
