Dear Editor,
As a transgender queer, I am offended on several levels by your recent article “Where Have the Gentlemen Gone?” I am choosing not to even identify my own gender in this response because I feel both men and women have been equally insulted in this outdated, sexist, gender-biased piece.
- Open your own damn doors. You know women won the vote, right? Standing outside a drug store and waiting for a man to open a door for you isn’t even something women in Victorian times did. It is polite for a person of any gender to hold open a door for another person of any gender simply so it doesn’t slam in their face. Period.
- It’s surprising the writer even uses the dreaded “F” word in the paragraph about profanity. Bad language isn’t reserved for one gender or another, it’s more likely to be personality based. If a person doesn’t like being around another person who cusses a lot, they should stay the fuck away from them regardless of what’s between their legs.
- Pick up your own tab. Don’t expect a man to do it unless he happens to want to. Women pay for men’s meals sometimes too! There shouldn’t be expectations about finances related to gender.
- You can’t open a car door because you have tits? Most women probably don’t think twice about opening a car door much less stand around waiting for a man to come along and do it. Double standards are lame.
- Why are women allowed to wear hats in public but not men, even during the national anthem? Removing hats is a polite gesture and is completely a personal choice based on fashion far more than gender. In modern times, people of any gender wearing baseball or other hats in public is not a big deal, in case your writer didn’t get the memo.
- This is the 21st century, not a 1950s Broadway musical, so walking on the curb side of the street probably isn’t something anyone under 40 has even heard of.
- Helping with coats? Really? Why is this writer trying to perpetuate myths that women are the fairer or weaker sex when they are certainly not? How about whoever gets to the closet first hands out coats regardless of which restroom they use?
There’s nothing wrong about a man acting with chivalry around a woman; in past generations this was the norm. But it shouldn’t be an expectation based on gender. If it's sexist to tell a woman to act like a lady, is it sexist to tell a man to act like a gentleman? People should have manners regardless of their sex. We need to work toward a more gender-neutral society. In modern times it wouldn’t be impressive for a man to throw his coat in the mud for you, it would just be dumb. And you forgot about a man pulling out a chair for woman in a restaurant! Don’t see that one much anymore, either. Not that anyone’s looking.
Hoping you don’t publish such gender-biased trash in the future.
Sincerely,
V. Malone
