You’re walking around campus on a bitterly cold day with your new boyfriend. You shiver as the conversation jumps around about your career goals. After noticing that you are cold your boyfriend offers you his jacket.
Now I have a question for you: are his actions chivalry, oppression, or thirst? As times progress the answer to this question is becoming foggier each day, possibly even having a different answer from each woman. While 20 years ago these gestures were normal and interpreted as a sign of respect, today we are seeing them less frequently and viewing them in a different light.
Chivalry is not dead, it’s just on life support. A victim of changing times, changing expectations and most of all a change in the definition of what it means to be a women. Gone are the times when women were expected to stay home and have babies while serving their husband.
So if women no longer need men to support them financially, then they most definitely do not need them to open doors. Women are constantly on edge fearing a return to the times of the past and shouting oppression at every man who tries to show a simple act of respect or amount it all up to thirst.
While there are those nasty men who act like pigs, most of them are not. Just like our grandmas tell us to look for a man who displays chivalry, they are taught these acts of kindness by their mothers and grandmothers too.
As young boys, they watch their father’s open doors for their mothers and these mothers hold their sons to the same expectations of respect. That respect is then translated into their everyday lives and create the men we have today who still say ladies first.
The definition of a relationship is changing too and that also feeds into our misinterpretation of chivalry.
Instead of looking for a husband who opens doors and protects a women from oncoming cars, women are basing the quality of a relationship on other things. Women now look for men who express their respect in different ways, men who respect a women’s dreams and aspirations of who she is and who she wants to become.
My question is, why can’t we have both? It would feel great to be with a man who pushes his significant other to better herself, in whichever ways she wants to while still displaying that old fashioned chivalry that our grandmothers adore.
It is possible for a man to give his jacket to a women on a cold day while still lifting her up and allowing her to chase whatever dreams she so desires. For this to work though, women need to stop being so accusatory and instead strive to reach their personal goals while still demanding respect from the men around them.