In order to have a healthy, happy relationship, there needs to be equality in all aspects, including the chivalry.

Equality in the chivalry? If we have equality in the chivalry then it is no longer chivalry, it is simply ordinary politeness or thoughtfulness. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s keep our labels straight. The very point of chivalry is that it is the man’s way of showing respect for a woman by taking care of her physical safety, whether by fending off an attacker, or simply pulling out a chair. For a woman, the traditional way to repay chivalry is not by being chivalrous back, but to repay the man by being sweet or cooking some food for him. Chivalry is therefore an intrinsic part of traditional gender roles, and the concept is impossible to preserve it if you are for a society where men and women have exactly the same roles.

Does that mean that chivalry is dead in a society with gender equality? Not necessarily. If a society equates gender equality with gender sameness, then chivalry is indeed dead. Contemporary feminism usually claims that all differences between men and women are socially constructed, and that these difference need to be torn down. This ideology is completely incompatible with chivalry, however much young feminist women might want to combine the two concepts. If you are truly for gender sameness, then women do half of the dangerous jobs and take on as many physical risks as men, but this is routinely forgotten in our current gender discourse.

On the other hand, in a society where gender equality is a given, but where men and women are free to choose the livestyles and roles that they like, chivalry is still possible. Any couple that enjoys gender differences can preserve some differences in roles, and also acknowledge any innate differences that they feel are present. This means that some aspects of chivalry can exist, without being forced to accept the full package of past gender roles.  Traditional gender roles were strict, inflexible and unconsciously adopted. Consciously adopting some differences in roles in a romantic relationship is a whole different ballgame, but one that can be crucial for maintaining the spark and polarity needed in a successful long term relationship.

At the end of the day, if you want full equality between the sexes but want to retain some differences between yourself and your partner, then you can have the experience of chivalry to the extent that you are ready to accept those differences. However, if you want a gender equality that is based on gender sameness, then chivalry is out of the picture. Any young feminist who disagrees, is trying to have her cookie and eat it too.

Would it be OK to write “dimwitted females”? Or would that be oppressive and patriarchal?

“A lot of women took a you-can-have-it-all attitude and called that feminism, which it’s not. They confused feminism with you can have it all [...]“

If women and men alike were confined to strict roles in the past, the women’s movement has certainly taught women that they no longer need to stay attached to the traditional female gender role, but instead are free to make the choices they want. Now, teaching women about their choices and allowing women to be responsible for their own lives is a good thing. If feminism were content with transmitting that message, then the only problem at our hands would be the lack of a masculist movement that allows men the exact same freedom and liberation.

However, feminism hasn’t been content with liberating women; it’s gone way beyond supporting women in a healthy way. It’s told women that they can have anything, do anything and that any man would be lucky to have them. While aspiring to greatness and having goals in your life is one thing, programming women to believe that they are automatically princesses or queens is quite another one, and it leads to the kind of narcissism displayed in Sex and the City:

In the movie, Samantha tells her terrific boyfriend, who stood by her through breast cancer, that she’s dumping him because “I love you but I love myself more.”

When Gottlieb saw the movie, the audience cheered that moment — a reaction that left her baffled

What kind of world have we created when young women cheer at a woman who coldly dumps the man who’s stood by her during her cancer? It’s not that Samantha should be forced to stay together with anyone, but in the absence of pathological narcissism, most people wouldn’t consider that a happy scene that deserves cheering.

The “you-go-girl” culture has also led to double standards between the sexes. Mistakingly believing that only women were oppressed in the past while men were not, has served as the excuse for supporting almost anything that young women do, while similar behaviors from men would never be accepted. As Gottlieb says about the example from Sex and the City:

“Reverse the genders (she sticks by him through a gruelling bout of prostate cancer; he bails!), and I’m betting the entire audience would have booed and called the guy a total ass.”

The double standard is glaringly obvious.

The main message of Gottlieb is that this kind of immature feminism-a kind of feminism that I believe to be based on faulty premises-not only hurts men, but it can also hurt women in substantial ways. Believing that you are a queen who can have anything she wants makes it very hard to find a mate, or to settle down and start a family. Gottlieb even sent out a survey, to get a rough idea of how young women and men view relationships and settling down:

The majority of single women … said that getting 80 per cent of what they wanted in a mate would be ’settling.’ The majority of single men said finding a woman with 80 per cent of what they wanted would be ‘a catch.’

The men seem to be realists, while the women are living in some kind of fantasy land created by misguided feminism that teaches entitlement and narcissism, instead of achievement and welcoming love into your life. It’s one thing to demand to be treated well, and waiting to settle down until you find someone you truly care about, but it’s quite another one to believe that you are a princess who can and should have every little detail the way you want it.

Something that Gottlied does not address, but which I believe to be just as important as the delusions taught to young women, is that young men have been just as affected by contemporary feminism. Not through believing that they are kings or princes who have the right to whatever they want, but through being taught that being a man is something to be ashamed of, and that manhood is synonymous with oppression and violence.

Is this what the future will look like? Young women who believe that they are too good for almost all men, and young men who believe that they are intrinsically flawed. What kind of world are we creating?

Leading scholars concerned about today’s men and boys will convene at Wagner College on Staten Island on April 7, 2010, to plan for a new academic discipline at the university level: Male Studies. The event, sponsored by The On Step Institute, will be hosted by Professor Miles Groth, PhD, Editor, The international Journal of Men’s Health and Thymos: Journal of Boyhood Studies. it will lay out the groundwork for the First International Conference on Male Studies scheduled for October 2010.

I would love to go to the event on April 7, but since I’m going to the US this summer, I don’t really have time to make another trip. The October Conference sounds mighty interesting though.

So far so good. But what happens if liberated men continue to choose jobs that are dangerous, and liberated women choose to stay at home with the kids (part-time or full-time)? Does this mean that we’ve gotten nowhere in our struggle to help liberate the sexes?

The distinction that needs to be made here is that truly realizing what options you have, and what choices you actually make, are two completely different things. If I know that I as a man do not have more of a responsibility to be a police officer than a women has, then I have been liberated from my gender role, regardless of whether I choose to actually be a police officer or not. Similarly, a woman has been liberated from her traditional gender role if she knows that she has every option to prioritize her career-even if she then proceeds to focus most of her time on having a family.

In my opinion, the reason that we even focus on the actual choices of the sexes to determine whether we have reached some sort of gender equality, is due to the fact that mainstream feminism has repeatedly taught us that we aren’t equal until women work as much as men do outside the home. This narrow focus on making the sexes identical, has very little to do with gender liberation. Gender equality need not mean gender sameness, regardless of what we have been led to believe.

There is a lot of work still to be done for the men’s movement. Men are still committing suicide far too often, most of the homeless are men, boys are performing badly in school, men are removed from their children after divorces, etc etc. But as we are working to change the conditions for men, let us not make the mistake of telling men how to behave, or what kind of lifestyle is “approved”. Feminism has already walked down that path once, and it simply doesn’t work.

This is a summary of what actually took place:

Shortly after all passengers had sat down, having stowed their bags in the overhead lockers, a male steward asked Mr Fischer to change his seat.

Mr Fischer refused, explaining that his wife was pregnant, at which point the steward raised his voice, causing several passengers to turn round in alarm. He warned that the aircraft could not take off unless Mr Fischer obeyed.

Mr Fischer eventually moved seats but felt so humiliated by his treatment that he is taking the airline to court on the grounds of sex discrimination.

It’s kind of amazing that men have accepted this kind of sexism for years and years. As Mr Fischer points out, there is no real basis for having this policy in place:

‘This policy is branding all men as perverts for no reason. The policy and the treatment of male passengers is absolutely outrageous.

‘A plane is a public place  -  cabin crew regularly walk down the aisles and passengers are sat so close to each other. The risk of any abuse is virtually zero.

‘Furthermore statistically children are far more likely to be abused by a member of their family. Does that mean that BA are going to ban children sitting next to their own parents?’

In many ways, men are the last group in society that you are allowed to discriminate against. In light of this fact, Mr Fischer is a real hero for those of us who want gender equality to include men.

My take on these questions is that we don’t even need to know the answers to be able to raise a child, as long as we are open to whatever is emerging within the child. A young boy may behave like a typical boy, or he may behave nothing like a typical boy. The important task for us as adults is to accept the child, regardless of whether he or she fits into our preconceived notions of how they should behave. If a boy enjoys playing with a doll, do we have the guts to allow him to do so, or do we clearly demonstrate that this behavior is unwanted?

The important thing is that our openness needs to go both ways. Regardless of whether a young boy prefers playing with cars or dolls, the challenge for us is to support him in whatever is the organic development path for him. The same goes for girls of course. Staying open to the fact that each child is an individual, and not automatically a mirror image of what we expect a boy or girl to be, can be a real challenge.

All this said, research indicates that innate gender differences do exist, and that they do affect the behavior of young children. This has been shown several times in the past, and a fresh research report adds even more credibility to this body of knowledge. However, this knowledge about innate gender differences doesn’t really affect the principle I outline above. Treating each child as an individual is the best way to secure that the child gets the kind of socialization process that he or she needs. The end result will likely be that most boys play with cars, since there are genetic and hormonal drivers for this. However, some boys will prefer dolls most of the time, and some boys will want to play with dolls a smaller proportion of time. If we cannot accommodate the needs of these boys (or the girls that prefer playing with trucks), then what kind of people are we?

The ultimate answer to the nature vs nurture debate is as always that both matter. And the way to allow nature and nurture to combine in the most beneficial way for the child is to see the unique needs of each child.

However, we no longer live in historical times, we live in the present. A society’s progress or its safety is no longer determined by the size of the population, it has more to do with having a modern infrastructure, a high level of education and modern defense equipment. Therefore, there is no need to keep on valuing women’s lives higher than the lives of men, as the phrase “women and children first” suggests.

Yet, the belief that women are worth more than men is alive and thriving, something that we are regularly reminded of in case of an accident. About a year ago, US Airways Flight 1549 was forced to land in the Hudson River. Thanks to the skill and experience of the pilot, nobody died or sustained any serious injuries. However, leaving the plane was still a dangerous activity, since the plane was about to sink. So what was the organizing principle for getting out of the plane?

As the evacuation began, with the plane beginning to sink slowly into the water, it was women and children first, with the three flight stewards on board carrying out the evacuation drill. The pilot then walked the length of the plane to make sure everyone was off safely.

“I was saying “relax, relax, women and children first,” said passenger Jeff Kolodjay. “Then the plane was filling with water.”

It seems that we are slow to change some of the patterns in society that guide gender relations, especially the ones that are to men’s disadvantage. If the opposite were true, i.e. if the expression was “men and children first”, would it not have been repeatedly challenged by feminist writers and leading poiticians?

I think it’s high time that we change the phrase “women and children first” to “children first”, or perhaps “parents and children first”. This doesn’t mean that you cannot be a hero as a man, if that is what you want. It simply means that society is no longer demanding that you be a hero, in an era where the previous perks of being a man have been removed.

I could go on and list more gendered tasks that involve both pros and cons, but where feminism disregards half of the picture in order to uphold the illusion that only women are shortchanged by their gender role. However, I’d like to focus on one specific topic.

We often hear that men are the norm, and that this fact is at the epicenter of the oppression of women. Since men are the norm, women are perpetually regarded as the second sex, and so on. Now I’m not saying that this is completely wrong. There are always two sides to the coin, and feminists are generally good at latching onto one of the sides. As usual though, the other side is largely unexplored, and in much need of attention.

The key disadvantage of being the norm is that men are not encouraged to reflect on what it means to be a man, or what the male gender role means for men. In many ways women have an identity as women, and men have an identity as humans. This makes us men weak when trying to formulate why we don’t agree with society’s current analysis of gender roles. It also means that it’s taken several decades of intense feminism for men to start waking up and noticing that we are under attack. Men are simply not raised to articulate men’s issues or to form men’s organizations.

To understand this at an even deeper level we need to ask ourselves why men are the norm in the first place? Why not women, who give birth to the next generation, and whose lives have always been valued more highly than the lives of men? Men are the norm, since every successful society depends on the disposability of men. And one of the best ways to raise men to be disposable is to make the male norm so strong that it is simply “the human norm”.

The challenge that lies before men is thus one of becoming familiar with our own maleness and our own gender role. Are we automatically doing things for women, even if women have stopped doing certain things for us as a result of feminism? Are we OK with dying for our country, when our country silently condones misandry?

One of the best ways for men to break new ground and change the whole dynamic of the gender game is to simply refuse to be disposable, or at the very least: to demand significant compensation for being disposable, whether in your personal or your professional life.