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Originally Posted by Pip
About the clothes as a reason for "chivalry", I've lived rough wilderness life in 14th century style dresses, I've carried a heavy standard in full ball gown regalia: high heel shoes, nylons, fluffy underskirt, gloves, silly hat. No problem. No problem at all. There are very few things I can do wearing trousers that I can't do in a dignified manner wearing a skirt. Like climb between rows of seats in lecture halls.  |
To be clear, I wasn't attempting to justify the different treatment so much as explain that there was something more to it than just what reproductive organs the relative people posessed.
The guy paying for the meal is a custom that is now more commonly a formal courtesy based on sex that should likely be abandoned, but it originated in an era when men worked and women generally didn't, and the women who did work made significantly less money than men. Men paying grew out of a difference in ability to pay that was sex linked--it was a product of a circumstance that was linked strognly to sex and thus became associated with sex, even when the circumstances changed.
This doesn't mean men should be expected to pay--that is a custom that should be abandoned in favor of something more equitable, or to truly reflect the origins of the practice, if one person, regardless of sex, is significantly more able to pay than the other, she should be the one to do so. I'm really fine with either arrangement.
My point was that there's something a little more complex going on here than women expecting to get pampered and protected simply because they're women--there is very often a practical history to a custom that may have been lost after the custom was established, and by looking at this, we can find a more equitable way of finding ways to offer each other courtesy.
I'd like to see it made functional. To use the overhead bin example for a moment, instead of framing it in terms of sex, frame the circumstances in a gender neutral manner. If a person is having difficulty loading a piece of luggage for whatever reason--strength, height, a disability, age--and you can be of help, the courteous thing to do is to help this person without stopping to evaluate your relative sexes, ages, and so forth, but that this is a person in need of help and you are capable of giving it.
Two of the factors, height and strength, are sex-linked traits, which would result in a disproportionate number of such incidents being men helping women, which was part of the sex linked norms I referred to earlier, but this would not mean that a man helping a woman meant that he was doing so because he was a man and she a woman, but because height or strength made it more difficult for her than for him. We should evaluate based on individual capabilities, not on superficial irrelevancies.
Obviously, there are going to be times when it goes the other way--Grace, being tall and unsusually strong for a woman has done this many times--and that's fine, it's a good thing, so long as she's mindful enough to think of doing this (most women in my experience aren't) and he's not the sort to get his feelings hurt by being helped.
Apply this general criterion, helping others who seem to need help because they need help and you can give it, and you get a sex-neutral form of courtesy, that, on occasion is going to produce the appearance of sex biased behavior.
Opening the door is something that is almost entirely free of sex-linked built in bias, so we should see roughly the same number of females and males doing this. Sadly, too many women expect to be the recipients of this type of courtesy without being willing to offer it back.
This morning I was going into my office, which is in a building without a handicapped door. Those doors are quite convenient for me--I hit a button with my thigh and the door opens. This building doesn't have this, so I have to approach, put down my briefcase and portable file, and pull open the door shortly before a couple of students, one of each sex, got there. I held the door for them, the gentleman said "Thank you," then propped it open while I retrived my things and went on in. I enjoyed the thank you. It's nice to feel useful like that.
Gilda