Prostitute in Distress

Quick Disclaimer: I'm talking specifically about sexually frustrated, self-proclaimed nice guys who are angry at women.

Is the damsel in distress actually just a glorified prostitute? This morning I was contemplating Heartless Bitch's piece on nice guys and the nice guy relationship with sex. It seems a lot of these nice guys are sexually frustrated. The most absurd element of the frustrated nice guy situation for me is that it doesn't seem very "nice" to help a girl out and expect some kind of romance in return.

"However can I repay you for saving my life?" "Well, I can think of a few things we could-" "Oh I'm not interested in you like that. Here's some cookies, let's just be friends."

Well doesn't that just bite? If you're a nice guy, probably. While these boys not unlike many girls have bought into the fairy tale concept of love they got confused about why women fall in love. It is suddenly shocking when in real life they find their troubled little lady, swoop in to comfort or teach her and she runs the other way. But, it isn't the ni

ce guys that should be insulted it's us, the ladies, who ought to cry out with indignation. We're accused of wanting bad relationships, even jerks because we're not buying into this concept of a relationship. This concept that says that kind acts deserve to be repaid with sex or marriage. It's freaky when you think about it and so wrong. It's wrong because sex shouldn't be about paying up. It shouldn't be about giving Mr. Chivalrous Savior Guy what you owe him.

It's no wonder that so many women are sexually unresponsive and unsatisfied. How much pleasure can we take in doing what at some point became our duty. The prince wakes Sleeping Beauty up and when he wants her to "thank" him, she's supposed to be excited about it? Yikes.

Furthermore, the problem with Knights in Shining Armor is that they project needs onto the object(s) of their affections. Because they're looking for someone to save, they often go around rescuing cute girls that don't need rescuing. They would like to believe the tender, fragile (hot) souls they are pursuing are not independent people who can want them or not, but women who need them. Thus enter the frustrating rejections. It is not the nice guys who ought to be frustrated though, because what woman wants to be a fixer-upper or a project to be worked on? Otherwise, they find themselves in a relationship acting like a doormat, when it ends they feel cheated because they devoted time and energy to someone only to see her run the other way. The entire time, he is trying to fix, to save, and to help that which doesn't need fixing or saving. While he thinks himself noble for putting his lady up high on a pedestal, she's still reeling from falling off it.

Of course, it's insulting to be the object of a nice guys' affections because they so often want you to be his "good girl" counterpart. Ever notice how those nice guys like to think you're a shy, timid thing? As if it isn't bad enough to be a person in need of a man, now you're a his counterpart. The only one who needs saving is the poor schmuck who goes around trying to find timid little girls to play the part of his girlfriend. He already has an idea of what girlfriends do, he's not trying to find an autonomous person, he's just casting you in a role.
What woman hasn't dealt with this? It sucks to be infantalized by a peer and plenty of my male peers have done it to me, all of them were the nicest guys. I would need a notebook and one would gallop in with one in hand the next day, I would be interested in a book or CD and a nice guy would show up and lay it at my feet-- a humble token of his affection.

I've found these guys everywhere. They sit and stare me down in class every day post-rejection and I'm never sure if he thinks I'm feeling guilty or lucky to be in his spotlight. They'll infringe on my privacy and offer to do things like pay for me when I don't actually know who they are. Yet, they always want a prostitute to their good will. They don't pay because it's nice, they pay to impress and if I have boyfriend they assume he's somehow worse because I chose him. Yeah, nice guys are just too good for the rest of us, they don't get rejected because they go around asking women to repay their supposed kindness in sexual favors, they get rejected because they're just too damn good. It has nothing to do with a girl simply not choosing him as her sexual partner, it's because she wants to be treated like shit. He doesn't "finish last" because she's looking for a good guy who isn't a martyr for her affections, it's because he's not rich or handsome enough. It's because every girl is a prostitute and somehow he paid and was so nice he let her walk away without putting out. He will make any number of excuses and explain the reason for his pain any manner of ways just so long as he avoids responsibility for it. Of course, that's easy when every girl is a prostitute waiting to pay up on her debt to men.

Just a Door

So it turns out that when a woman goes around opening doors for men she gets a lot of blank stares and stuck at the door. Guys won't go through the doors I am nobly opening for them.
Now, a lot of the guys I open doors for are international students from Hong Kong and Japan, so maybe there's a cultural thing going. Even the American guys seem to be uncomfortable, a guy in D&G glasses just stopped and stared blankly for a moment before he figured out what I was doing and murmured "Oh, sorry." and went through. Strangers don't tend to fight it, but the guys I know will just stand there and argue with me about it until I prod them through.

When I read up on chivalry more than a month ago, I saw a lot of people of the opinion that it was rude for women to reject men's acts of "respect" when it comes to chivalry. The door came up a lot. More than once I read girls who were mad at the kind of women who glare or yell at guys for opening their doors. While I have never witnessed this kind of woman, I began to wonder why men insist on respecting women in a way that a good number of us find insulting. Well, it turns out that the noble and respectful men of the world don't like having doors opened for them. While the guys I know who didn't pay much attention to who opened what in the past didn't seem to notice or care, the most chivalrous men were indignant and argumentative. Gentlemen, calm down it's just a door, right?

So the point is, it should go both ways, if a guy doesn't want me to question him when he goes to the trouble to open a door for me then he can just walk through the damn thing when I do the same to him.

So I murdered chivalry

Awhile back I had a philosophy class that didn't have enough seats on the first day. Twenty minutes into the class a boy with buzzed hair and a striped polo raised his hand. "Oh no, I didn't have a question about the syllabus," he said to the teacher and turned to the girl sitting on the floor, "I was just wondering if you wanted my seat."
She awkwardly shook her head and our teacher exclaimed, "Chivalry is not dead!"

These kinds of things make me want to conduct an experiment-- start opening doors for boys, giving them my seat on the bus, and throwing my coat on puddles for them. I could document the reactions. (Starting Monday, maybe I will start subtly integrating reverse-chivalry into my routine.)

Should I have felt relief that the guy in my philosophy class was looking out for the girl or should I be annoyed that he interrupted class because he didn't know if a girl could sit with all the other boys on the floor? She wasn't wearing crutches or anything, she was just a pretty blond. Should she have felt flattered? Should society commend or condemn this behavior?

There are ways to be respectful that aren't so deeply rooted in Christian traditions and make more sense. There are ways to be respectful that don't assume gender roles. We should replace chivalry with something that goes both ways, men and women should be held to an equal standard. I can open doors, I can sit where boys sit, I can stand on a bus. Unless I'm expected to do the same for another girl or for a guy (like help with a heavy load), then why should men do it for me? If a girl makes more money than her boyfriend should she expect him to pay for every dinner? I just don't feel that the only alternative to chivalry is disrespect or that the two are mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, there are many who disagree. They are misty-eyed about the days of knights and I've even heard people refer to it as a time when people married for love, not money. Fortunately, these kinds of claims can and do earn the response I'm looking for. I feel like this nostalgia ignores and confuses historical facts, women benefited from chivalry because it was meant to help the weak. I don't intend to be weak so I don't know why I should desire to be treated as such. So instead of trying to act like people in the Dark Ages, why don't we try to act like people in the 21st century?

Now my question is how are men and women supposed to treat each other in a post-feminist society? The answer is simple reciprocity. Just treat me as an equal and don't assume strict gender roles, I'll manage carrying my own books, standing on busses, opening doors, voting, and going to work whether or not a guy can respect that. I'm not mad when others try to do those things for me, but I like, no, LOVE when they think through all of this and stop assuming they know what's good for me, that I might be more thankful when a guy respects my independence and lets me take him out from time to time.