Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Yes, women and children first is sexist.
The thing is chivalry is not just opening doors for women. It's the expectation in society that men should open doors for women (based on them being weaker and less capable)...and that is sexist. If you use chivalry to mean courteous, and do not discriminate based on gender, then that's fine, but it's not really what chivalry means.
Being told by society that people have to look out for you because you can't look out for yourself is infantilising.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Probably, though that's not what I said.
If we are going off on that tangent though, I would say it is sexist of you to expect it, because, once again, you are disregarding the circumstances, i.e. that women are taught not to speak up about their wishes as well as that women have good reasons to not be frank or confrontational with men.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Yes, that is exactly what I said here:
Chivalry as a concept is sexist, and there are many men that are sexist that are chivalrous. But being courteous to people is not sexist itself, it doesn't exist in a vacuum though.
Maybe to rephrase that, I think we should never teach our kids that men should hold open doors for women, we should teach them that people should open doors for people cause it's a nice thing to do.
Is Chivalry sexist? Yeah it is. Why because the mentality that lead to specified gender roles that have come with Chivalry contributed to a lot of the gender issues we are currently dealing with. Women are to be coveted and treated like objects for men to take and men are to be the heads protectors, essentially guard dogs, to women. It's a system that has lead to a lot of stress on both genders. More so for women I will say.
If you're going to do something nice for someone like hold the door you should do it for everyone. If you would offer your seat to a woman you should do it for everyone.
Now that being said pretending that men and women are the exact same isn't helpful either. Now I'm not talking in a sense women are inferior to men as a gender. I'm saying biological things like a woman is more likely to be weaker than a man on average. Flip side women are more often more flexible. Women deal with biological issues that I as a man will never have to and vice versa. As well as cultural things, women are perceived to be easier targets and therefore are often attacked more than a man.
So I might be more inclined to ask a female friend if they want walked to their car late at night than I am a male friend. Now I would still base this on the individual person but I still understand that there is a difference between a man and woman in this situation most of the time.
What I'm saying is that we are all people. We should all treat each other as people first but understand we are different and be okay with that. I do not feel Chivalry as it has become does that. It puts our genders first and sometimes as the most important thing while seeing us as people second.
__________________ sig by Rao Kal El
Last edited by Newjak on Jun 12th, 2015 at 07:51 PM