13 responses so far ↓

• 1 Johnny // Dec 10, 2006 at 9:44 pm

  I agree it is sometimes hard to be a good feminist and try to maneuver around social expectations. For example, I still refer to Jen as my wife. However, I don’t like doing it because it seems to enmeshed in gender roles. However if i say ‘my partner’ people give me a strange look and then when i say ‘my wife’ they give me an even stranger look, like, ‘why didn’t you just say that.’

  With all social norms someone should write a book entitled, “The pocket guide to practical feminism.”

• 2 John // Dec 10, 2006 at 10:43 pm

  I am still figuring this out as well. Where I really struggle is with homosociality. Male-male interactions often facilitate sexism and homophobia. As guys break down emotional barriers between each other, they also simultaneously assert their heterosexual selves, by objectifying women or denouncing gayness. Think of the classic scene from Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure, when, delighted that the other has not been killed, they hug. After a moment they jump back from each other and yell, Fag!

• 3 Miko // Dec 11, 2006 at 8:40 am

  Johnny–I’m still not at peace with my wifeness. Spouse works :-p Sometimes I still say partner. If I say “husband”, I feel like it means I should defer to him or something….

  John–I find this same issue comes up with…bisociality? When two hetero couples hang out, the women are assumed to talk to each other and the men to each other. Presumably about womanly or manly things, respectively. This makes me feel either left out of one conversation or trapped in a conversation that I don’t really want to be having. I find myself much more at ease with two couples: a (male) gay couple and a couple who each have a slight difficulty with the English language. With the first, I can be “one of the guys” without misogyny or gay bashing; with the second, the conversation involves all parties necessarily because otherwise, no party really gets understood…

• 4 Elise // Dec 11, 2006 at 9:48 am

  In November 2003, the Salt Lake Tribune published an editorial from a woman who was offended that no man had offered to give up his seat for her on a crowded TRAX rail car.

  A good friend of mine from BYU (later a U of U grad) wrote the following response, which was published in the SL Trib on November 12, 2003. Obviously he is a male-feminist just like John and others. His response to her complaint clearly expresses how I feel about this subject much better than I could ever express it myself:

  Chivalry is sexist

  Because she is a woman, Rebekah Wolf (Forum, Nov. 6) expects a man to volunteer his seat to her on TRAX. She laments that this “well-honored tradition” is disappearing and asks if gentlemen still exist. Rebekah, I am a gentleman who respects you because you are a person, but I will never give my seat to you because you are a woman. I will do that because you are human with a disability, a human with large sacks of groceries or a human of old age. Those individuals have problems with standing up in a TRAX train, but as a woman you do not.

  As a society, we must stop promoting the sexist traditions that imply women are weak and must be taken care of or protected by men. Every door that is opened by a man for a woman just because she is a woman closes another door to social equality. Chivalry is sexist because it advances ideas of male dominance and ideas that men are better than women. Men should treat women with civility, not chivalry.

  Jesse Michael Nix

  Salt Lake City

• 5 amelia // Dec 11, 2006 at 3:48 pm

  might i be very profound and say screw all the little twinges that happen when we are courteous in ways that have been in the past traditionally associated with chivalry? the point is that we should be civil and courteous and polite to anyone, regardless of their gender or sex. if that means a man opens my door or waits for me to sit or offers me his seat when i look overburdened or sick, then i’ll graciously accept his act of kindness. if someone is your husband or your wife, name them as such and reject the connotations attached to those terms in the past by refusing to enact them in your life. if you find that problematic because other people will attach those connotations, use the new terminology and shrug off the incipient awkwardness. if you want to converse across the homosocial and/or bisocial lines described above, do so and don’t let the twinge of weirdness inhibit your conversation. ghandi said we must be the change we hope to see in our world. this seems the only answer. the occasional awkwardnesses will not disappear, but your response to them can change.

• 6 nee // Dec 11, 2006 at 7:30 pm

  chivalrous
  1 : VALIANT
  2 : of, relating to, or characteristic of chivalry and knight-errantry
  3 a : marked by honor, generosity, and courtesy
  b : marked by gracious courtesy and high-minded consideration especially to women

  I’m a woman who tries to be chivalrous on a personal level (definition 1) and chivalrous (definition 3a) to others. I open doors for people carrying things and keep a hand back to hold it partway for anyone coming behind me to grab onto.

  As for definition 3b, I don’t mind it, no lie. I am a girl. I have estrogen or progesterone coursing through my body at different levels all month. They affect me at a cellular and emotional level (Thank you to Dr. Christiane Northrup for showing me how and why this is and that it is a beautiful thing.)

  In as much as I like acceptance in the workplace, being able to vote, the ability to go play soldier if I desire, and hang out with the guys (gay or straight), I also have a girlie side and it is nice to have that recognized with special attention. I like it if a guy opens my car door for me. Of course he knows I’m capable of doing it. I would absolutely give up my seat somewhere for someone clearly in need and I’ve got no problem accepting a seat if a male gets up for me just because he’s been raised to believe definition 3b is respectful. I think it’s a nice thing and he feels like he’s done a nice thing. We both win.

  Personally, I’m glad in a world where things have been fought for to equalize the genders in many regards, some people still recognize there are differences between the sexes and we’re each worthy of a little special treatment. We seem to be biologically geared to want to help each other in different ways, even if we’re capable of doing 100% of those things ourselves, I’m in favor of some “gracious courtesy and high-minded consideration”.

  If you ask most men who open doors and such, I doubt they would say they do it because women are weak idiots. And if you ask the woman who has been puking all day and is 3 months pregnant (but not showing) if she’d be offended that a guy gave up his seat on a train or bus, she’d probably be fine with it (and mighty thankful too).

  Another niblet of food for thought, while there are some women and men who get hung up on finding chivalrous actions offensive, I’ve never heard a man complain when a woman cooked him a nice dinner, even though he was capable of doing it himself. No one’s flipping out saying ‘don’t you dare cook me dinner, you’re reinforcing a stereotype and setting back the womens movement by decades!’

  Even though she worked all day too, somehow it’s okay that she wanted to do it and that he was grateful. It’s just dinner. Isn’t that what it all comes down to? The world is such an angry place these days. If men demand meals just because they’re men and women demand seats just because they’re women, that’s a problem. But when people are just being polite … can’t we just accept nice gestures in whatever form they come without reading more into it?

• 7 Miko // Dec 12, 2006 at 9:05 am

  nee: about cooking…

  I have to admit that, since I quit my job, I feel it’s my duty (as the non-working spouse) to cook dinner. But I know that my husband is a better cook than I am and, honestly, I’m vaguely concerned that, when I get a job again, he’ll assume that me cooking is now the norm. Not because I think my husband is a thoughtless chauvenist pig but because I’m scared that anyone with a penis has the capacity to be so. Despite both of his mothers’ wonderful jobs (thank you!) in raising him…

  And yes, we should all accept politeness when it is offered. But I for one don’t always know the intentions behind certain acts. Sometimes I’m more disposed to consider them polite and other times annoyingly sexist. Maybe it’s my mood; maybe it’s the vibe I get from the other person; maybe it’s a combination…

• 8 amelia // Dec 12, 2006 at 9:53 am

  you know, i in large part agree with nee. we should accept acts of courtesy and politeness without criticism being the dominant response. what i object to mostly in the code of chivalric behavior (and there is a code) is its rote nature. i don’t want someone to do something for me just because it’s what is expected (though i’ll certainly accept any act of courtesy graciously); i want them to do something nice for me based on consideration and their knowledge of me, whether that is extensive or only based on the 30 seconds of observation they’ve had. this is the same principle that informs my distaste for store-bought cards and hallmark holidays. obviously courtesy between strangers is different than courtesy between intimate friends and family, but often these things overlap. and i do think there is a need to examine the underlying assumptions upon which such gestures are built. for instance, asking for a woman’s hand in marriage is an old tradition that dates back to a time when a woman was literally the property of her father and then her husband. the asking was looking for a transition of property and the marriage was often accompanied by material property changing hands between the father and husband. i detest this tradition for that reason. but i also recognize that there’s a degree of courtesy involved–respect for the parents and their efforts in caring for the woman when she was a child. as such, i think the answer is not to jettison the tradition altogether but to reformulate it into an act that acknowledges the respect but rejects the property element of the tradition–something like a couple going together to each of their parents and seeking their blessing when they have decided to marry rather than the man seeking the woman’s father’s permission. there are ways to refigure convention in order to preserve the good and elminate the bad. women performing traditionally male gestures associated with chivalry (opening doors, offering seats, etc.) is one way of doing that.

• 9 Elise // Dec 12, 2006 at 10:29 am

  Amelia - that is very profound. You said “the point is that we should be civil and courteous and polite to anyone, regardless of their gender or sex,” and I absolutely agree.

  Nee - Thanks for your definition of chivalrous. They really expand the meaning of the word. I like every part of it except 3b. I suppose I do mind it a little - I want to be given high-minded consideration, but not just because I’m a woman. I like it when my husband opens the door and lets me go first, which he does because it is polite and shows he cares. I’ve seen him do the same for other women and other men alike.

  When I reflect on the wording of 3b, “marked by gracious courtesy and high-minded consideration especially to women,” I think of my grandma. When I was old enough to start dating, she advised me to never open a car door for myself - that it was a mark of character for my date to open my door. She said if he didn’t, I should wait outside the passenger side until he got out and came around to open it for me. This is the type of chivalry that I would find more humiliating than considerate. It is the type that I would like to see done away with in my own life. That is why I won’t stand there waiting for my door to be opened, and why I will open the door for my husband on occasion, also.

  I say “done away with in my own life” because I know there are many women who love that type of chivalry and many men who love giving it. For them, if it fosters a sense of honor, generosity, and courtesy, I think chivalry is a beautiful thing. But the women who to appreciate it shouldn’t expect it from every man. And the man who likes giving it shouldn’t expect every woman to appreciate it.

• 10 Miko // Dec 13, 2006 at 6:50 pm

  What do we think of the pick up lines?

• 11 Elise // Dec 14, 2006 at 9:31 am

  I got a kick out of the pick up lines! Thanks!

• 12 John White // Dec 14, 2006 at 1:41 pm

  Wait, where are the pickup lines? I missed that, somehow.

• 13 Miko // Dec 15, 2006 at 8:49 am

  yeah, the poem I linked to is about what pick up lines to use on a feminist

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