I guess some guys may have been taught to open doors for women or whatever and haven’t given too much thought as to why?
What if some things where women come first serve as a good balance for the places where men come first? Like grammar rules and letterheads (because someone has to, for the sake of neatness and consistency and I don’t mind of it’s the boys).

Chivalry for the day to day is, indeed, dead. May it rest in eternal peace. If it’s being seen or defended, it is, as you say, a man claiming he’s trying to be nice with your own valiant hope that he’s like this to everyone. Society, however, will continue for some time to try and display it. Take yourself to Har.rods for a spot of shopping. On every door that enters the building is a Green Man, (green of suit, not skin.) to hold the door open for you. But always a man. Of course, he is there to open the door to all, but the statistics of those he acknowledges with the opening of the door to those he ignores to let themselves into the building, I’m confident would bring interesting results.
Essentially, the outside world is a minefield of the nice men trying to be nice without being condescending, women trying not to fly into a rage when being bought a soft pretzel by a male as a gesture to merely end their hunger because they had change and she only had a £20 and the prospect of everyone recogising when a woman is genuinely being patronised under the disguise of chivalry.
I think I’ll just stay in today.

Thank you! And yes, definitely. I usually want people to think about gender MORE but I think the best default approach is to treat everyone thoughtfully and respectfully until given a reason to do otherwise. Not that I always succeed, of course…

This is EXACTLY the sort of response I mean. Aghh!

I love Alice Duer Milelr’s poems, she seems to get to the heart of things very neatly, and some of them are really funny too.

It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all. We lives our lives in a sticky web of socialised stereotypes and power relations. Political consciousness and self-awareness can help us break free, but it’s a continual struggle which can be exhausting and even frightening.

I’m not really selling this very well, am I? But the REALLY GOOD BIT is that in fighting to free yourself you help to free others.

I love your ‘language-vomit’! ;-) Thank you for kind words and interesting thoughts – I think chivalry and courtly love were DEFINITELY a better deal for women back in the day, and it’d be a shrewd move to make use of it.

And thanks for putting the link in Miranda! If I’d remembered I would have added it meself.

Chivalry gets in the way of humans just treating each other well – and often it gets in the way of people treating each other WARMLY, too. When it’s all formalised it’s often counter-intuitive to people just getting along.

Also, I did actually have a guy cry at me recently because apparently explaining to him why rape jokes aren’t funny and suggesting he try talking to women like they are just people means *I* am horrible for ‘making him feel like a bad person’. And I didn’t give him medal for Not Being A Rapist, because apparently you’re supposed to get a prize for that! Feminists are just MEAN.

Totally hitting “like” symbolically on this comment.

The link may very possibly have been me editorially going “ALPHABET LINK!” as I think I decided your illustration of the lady on that post dovetailed very well with the comic by Kate Beaton! Plus I want new readers to see those posts :)