Chivalry is Not Dead

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Oh, for crying out loud. I'm glad the boys (probably) won't read what's here, or they will probably feel guilty that they started this whole thing.

Anyway, I think they just did a good thing, no more and no less. Chivalry is not, imo, the right word because it implies a degree of reasoning (i.e. I will stand up and free the seat for the old woman because she needs to sit more than I do), and in the situation I think the boys just acted partially on instinct. I don't know how much importance the gender issue played for them, although I suppose they do wanted to protect the girls.

 

Why did they not just jump to the side and drag the girls with them? That way, they probably wouldn't have been hit, at least not straight on.

 

i think that it is instict for a male to protect a female (in most species of mammals)

for example, if i was walking toward a woman on the pavement, i will walk on the roadside when we pass eachother.

 

Bahir, if you don't understand, nobody will be able to tell you. However, there was clearly not enough time, even as it was one of the girls did not get pushed fast enough.

Rally: I had no direction in mind for this thread. I thought it would be interesting to put something heroic up and see where the thread goes.

 

In real life, I've got people preeching from both sides. Some of my best friends are always going on about how 'true chivary is dead' - an often lecture (used in the widest of senses) I get when I tell them to take off their shoes when they complain about sore feet after wearing high heels during a night in town. Yet on the other side, in university quite a few of my classmates are extreme feminists, who hate the idea of any thing like this. Quite an interesting contrast - I guess that's the difference between architecture and political sceince students.

On the whole though, I tend to agree with Rally. If someone is less able to stand than me, I'll give up my seat. I'm just as likely to hold the door open for a male as a female. As far as I'm concerned, both are just as able - neither should be recieving any special treatment, nor should either be desciminated against.

I know, personally, if someone was constantly going out of their way to hold a door open to me, getting out of their seat so I could sit and so on, I would feel slightly insulted. Even if it was in the best of intentions, I would get the feeling that they believed I was less able so needed help in such things.

 

I definitely agree with you guys that what the boys did was heroic. For it to have it's basis in the survival of the species does not diminish its worth, quite the opposite, if you ask me. The boys did their duty, did exactly as they should in a life and death situation. Fullfilling your duty to a worthy cause is very honorable.

And I just happen to think that the cause of saving the girls lives had even more worth, since girls have more worth than boys. Human females and males are equal in all important respects. Men just have the qualities that make them expendable in the worst case scenario. Giving a seat to a woman in a bus isn't exactly a worst case scenario.

This could be an interesting topic to be discussed as a different subject completely...