An Ode to Chivalry,

"CHIVALRY AIN'T DEAD, Y'KNOW?" Oh really? Are you sure? 

Here's an idea; can we take chivalry and rebaptise it as human decency? 

The reason I have an issue with this idea of chivalry is three main things. Chivalry is about the way a man treats a woman, particularly a woman whom he is romantically interested in and to me that excludes too many people because if you're not romantically interested in the person or they don't fit into your ideas of a woman or how a woman should behave, chivalry can go out of the window. The other issue is why is it that men only have to behave this way to women, and not to other men? The last is that sometimes it can feel a little condescending and I don't have time for that.

I went on a date recently where someone was acting with this old fashion idea of chivalry and it was lovely. He opened doors for me, pulled my chair out from the table (which confused me because I didn't know that was what he was going to do, but it was also really sweet) and generally treated me like a lady. It was quite a novel experience. Now, he is the type that would behave like that towards another man, not because he's interested in them, but just because he's a really nice person. 

To me, opening a car door for someone, pulling out their chair for them, helping them carry their child's pushchair down the stairs to the Tube because otherwise, it's really not very accessible for them, they're the sort of things that should be done by everyone for everyone. In some cases, yes, it's better to offer the assistance and give the person the chance to decline, or even just signpost that you're doing something to be helpful 'Here, let me get that door for you' 'Do you need a hand?' and my favourite Irish expression of 'Will I help you with your pushchair?' I had someone grab hold of the front of the buggy of the child I was nannying and take off down the stairs at top speed. The assistance was appreciated except for the fact that I nearly lost my grip of the buggy and nearly fell more than once, and that was quite scary. A bit of warning would have been lovely.

It's not just women who need assistance, even though I did read an article recently that stated that the world is designed for men, and I believe it is true in a lot of instances. It might be to do with hidden disabilities, or it might not be, but sometimes men need help, and sometimes a little expression of human kindness or decency from a stranger is enough to remind us that we are connected in this world; you have to put a hell of a lot of effort into being alone. 

Last thing, and this is the controversial one, chivalry is from before the era of #thisgirlcan. In fact, it was far more #nowomancan. Women aren't going to dirty their pretty white gloves touching doors and now, we're more than capable of moving our own chairs. It might be a minority, but there are still people who insist on doing these things for us and calling us dear whilst thinking of us as delicate little flowers who mustn't do things for ourselves. It's outdated, but it happens. If you see a woman struggling to carry something heavy, there's nothing wrong with saying, 'That looks heavy, do you need any help?' but is it very condescending to say 'Oh you poor dear, let me take that from you.' because you think she can't do it. Yes, women these days do themselves an injury trying to do things they should ask for help with, but to assume you know better about what she can do is doing her a disservice, and then she'd prefer to have the injury than the help. 

TL;DR: Don't be an arsehole. Offer to help, and do it for everyone. Catch you later.

Why Do I Have To Write This,

Okay, first thing - I know I don't have to write the blog and I don't have to write about specific subjects, but my God this needs saying over and over and over again and I feel the need to say it. 

When I woke up this morning there was a really great post on my Facebook feed. It was about the way two women had supported each other when they were out at night and they felt they were in a dangerous situation.

I thought it was incredible that, despite being able to leave that situation sooner, the second woman stayed around long enough that she knew the first one, the one who wrote the post, was safe, too, because that is the world that we live in. Women need to be a community. Women need to have each other's backs. Now, that isn't to say that everybody else doesn't need that - different races, religions, sexualities, ages, and list goes on, suffer abuse or vulnerability simply because they left the house. Sometimes it happens before they leave the house. This story should be an inspirational look at community within a vulnerable group and in some ways be celebrated even though we should also be able to hold it up as an example and say that this is what society and rape culture pushes us to. 

Things went downhill really fast when I went on the fool's errand of looking at the comments section. In my total ignorance I was hoping for more similar stories, but what happened was idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, unfortunately, but that doesn't make them an easier cross to bear. 

The main issue seemed to be the idea that these two women have labeled the man who made them uncomfortable as dangerous. Maybe that's the word that the original poster used, I can't remember, but hell if that's the label in your mind then go with it, but I always think of it as that person is a risk. In your mind, you constantly do risk assessments, and where someone falls on that scale of risk assessment means a lot to you and really, unless you go out of your way to tell them where they sit, it shouldn't mean a whole lot to them for them to get offended by it. The only time it should mean a lot to them, is if they think their behavior is fine but they want to reassess so that they don't make the same error again and make someone else feel uncomfortable. This happens, but it's rare. 

So, we're risk-assessing and then we do this thing of either saying, green, everything's cool, or there's something we need to do about this situation to minimize or eliminate that risk. Either it's an amber situation, and you call someone and loudly tell them where you are, or you find someone to be your buddy, or it's a red situation, and you get the hell out of there by the nearest available safe route. You order an Angel Shot or Ask for Angela. You use the escape methods that society is oh so very slowly (painfully, painfully slowly) realizing the need for and you get out of that situation. The labeling of the other person is not what is important right then - the important thing is that YOU FEEL SAFE. And there are people that still don't get that. 

One of the comments and this really makes my blood boil, but one of the comments said, but he's not done anything. Oh, okay, so at one point am I allowed to feel unsafe? What point of him doing something is it acceptable for me to need help to get out of that situation? Is it when he puts his hands on me, whether he thinks it's friendly or not? Is it when he's following me, and I'm thinking, he's going to know where I live. He's going to realize I live alone. Or is it not until he's committed some sort of criminal activity and I'm suffering the consequences. I'm making this first person for a reason. This is always personal. 

How is it acceptable that even in a court of law, we can talk about the way we felt as part of a decision-making process in something as serious as Critical Incidents? We can talk about making a decision based on the information we had at the time, but we can't do that in day to day life? Yes, he's not done anything illegal yet, he's not physically put me in harm's way, but he's also not done anything to make me feel safe. Why should I implicitly trust this person when I feel unsafe and I know that it's likely that he could overpower me if he wanted to. The information I'm working off of might be vague, but whilst some commenters were crying, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO MISTRUST THIS MAN, part of me wanted to and did, and I'm not even sorry, scream back BUT I HAVE NO REASON TO TRUST HIM EITHER! There was a comparison to labeling your male family members as dangerous - SOMETIMES, THEY ARE. 

I'm lucky. The worst we have in my immediate family are some people that are really annoying, but some people are not so lucky. Whether that be the case or not, we should not be required to trust Joe Public because he's not done anything until the point he does. Feeling scared, or nervous or anxious is valid and if you see someone feeling like that you have a choice. I would hope that I try to always go the way of the second woman in this story and help that person to mitigate the risk that they feel, or would do something to make them feel safe. I would hope to always be that person, partly because people have done it for me, and I've seen situations where they haven't. Being overcautious is not a problem. If that's what we need to do to feel safe, why is it seen as one? 

Inequality,

After writing this I realised it was a lot more politically fuelled than I had intended. If that makes you not fancy reading it, that's absolutely fine. Also, if you disagree with me, I respect your right to do that, but this is an expreession of my opinion, not the start of an arguement. As with everything I write, it comes from my own perssonal experiences and I hope you can respect that.

I know that a while ago I promised not to talk about politics, but I kind of see this as an existential thing that permeates into people's every day lives, and therefore it also falls into politics, but is not distinctly political in nature, and that's why I'm going to allow myself to get away with it. It's also going to be mostly jovial in nature, so hopefully that will also rescue me a bit.

Here's a bit of background for you. I am not the sort of person who referrs to myself as a feminist, because I don't like some of the connotations of the word. Feminism has come to represent a wide spectrum of beliefs and I don't think it's right that some people are then seen as cherry picking which parts that they want to believe in. I prefer to say that I am an equalist. I believe that in their intrinsic value as people, men and women SHOULD be seen as equal, but that IS NOT currently the case. I also want to point out that I know that I probably have been influenced in this belief in the fact that I have grown up as a middle class (ish) Western family, and have been afforded many priviledges which others do not have. Now, the reason that I stress that is because it is my belief that it's not my place to steam roller over other cultures, so I'm not necessarily comfortable saying that we should radically overhaul the whole world to believe the same things that we do. 

Now this is a very serious topic that I'm writing about, but the reason I am writing about it is because yesterday really wound me up. Yesterday wound me up because the weather was beautiful when I woke up and so I decided it was time to break out the summer wardrobe and wore a beautiful clay playsuit that I don't think I have actually worn before now, despite having bought it last year. Now this would have been all grand had the weather stayed beautiful and marvellous and wonderful, but this is England; of course, it did not do that.

Not only will men never know the pain of trying to make a visit to the powder room in playsuit, which is basically just deciding you're going to get undressed, "powder your nose" and then redress yourself, they will never know the frustration of going out in a playsuit or a summer dress and then the weather changing and it suddenly being freezing and rainy. Not only are you inappropriately dressed for the weather and almost duty bound to get sick as a result, you look pretty ridiculous, too. 

On a more serious note for women, the fact that a nipple slip was the central focus for articles regarding a female celebrity heroically saving her child and her child's nanny from drowning is not only ludicrous, it's also offensive. If I was trying to save the life of my child, nay, any other human being, I would hope that the exposure of a nipple, or any other body part really, would be quite far down my list of priorities, because the heath and safety of those people (or animals, to be fair) would be the most important thing for me. There seems to be a completely inappropriate blurring of priorities happening in the media here, and it's difficult to accept really. 

Now I understand that for some people, it can seem like equality is something which has already happened in this country and the rest of the west, and there are women supporting this position as well as men, but there is still an intrinsic inequality that we are dealing with that is not just concerned with the pay gap. 

I get stared at when I do my make-up on the tube. I've had men feel that they can tell me that I look beautiful without make-up and I shouldn't wear it, which on the one hand is something I want to say thank you to, because the compliment is nice, but the issue there is why do they feel it's acceptable to comment? If I were wearing it for their approval, I would have put it on at home. I'm doing it on the tube becayse it fills up what is essentially dead time there, and because I want to wear it FOR MYSELF before I get to the place I am going to. I know there are big campaigns on the internet trying to get people to be nicer to each other, but I don't need you to make a decision as to whether I should wear make-up or not.

Similarly, I felt like arse when I was going to the doctors last week, and this guy decided he was going to compliment me on the way I looked. Now I was suffering from a pretty bad virus, and I wouldn't have been out of bed if I hadn't needed a note and antibiotics, so I told him to leave me alone. (By which I mean I croaked at him, because I was in too much pain to actually speak properly). Now you would expect that this man would have understood I was both ill and not interested, but instead of walking away and leaving me alone, he felt the need to follow me and pester as to why I told him to leave me alone when he complimented me. 

I have two objections to this - I am not a peice of art. I don't generally put that much effort in when I leave the house, and the only reason that this was an exception was because there was even less effort than normal I was visiting the doctors for Pete's sake. Point being, I am not there for you to admire/compliment/judge. Whether it is positive or negative, you might have an opinion, but that doesn't mean I want to hear it. The second objection I have is, once I have told you I am not interested in hearing your opinion, walk away. You have no business trying to force me to say thank you for your opinion. 

This is actually getting out quite a bit of my frustration with situations at the moment, so let's get into a little bit of the politics. Not the Junior Doctors contract though; I'm not touching that with a barge pole!!

During the budget, George Osbourne announced that there would be funding made available for schools to keep children in for longer hours. Now there are a lot of issues with this policy, like teachers having to work longer hours and plan more lessons and the fact that this will likely not be reflected in their pay, the fact that this time is supposedly being allocated for sports and arts activities, and also the fact that it is only available for 25% of schools. 

How does this come into equality, I'm sure some of you are asking. One of the big issues we have in trying to provide true equality for women is that there is no way to change our biology. If you want to have children, a woman has to carry that child. This is the same for hetrosexual couples, homosexual couples, single parents, children who are born to their natural families, adopted children, those born from IVF and from surrogacy. There is no way to avoid that a baby begins its life inside the body of a woman. Whilst it is true that there are millions of uncomplicated pregnancies where women are able to continue working into their third trimester, it is also true that you cannot know that you will have an uncomplicated pregnancy until you are into the pregnancy. 

Complications can be as simple (simple, but not insignificant might I add) as pelvic or back pain, or they can be aggrressive morning sickness that lasts throughout the whole nine months, they can be diabetes in pregnancy, they can be as serious as your body simply refusing to adapt to the pregnancy. All of these provide complications for women staying in work before the baby is even born and there is no way to plan for them. You also can't plan for early or late delivery, you can't plan for a complicated delivery, the damage that SVD (Spontaneous Vaginal Delivery for those not working in healthcare) can do to your body or how long it will take you to recover from this or the fatigue which can be associated with delivery. Legally women are required to take 2 weeks away from work following child birth, but you are entitled (in the UK at least) to up to a year of paid leave. 

If as a woman you are then the single or the primary parent to that child, getting back to full time work can be diffcult at best. Yes, the government offeres nursery vouchers to help with the cost of childcare, but before the budget this was only 15 hours. It has now been extended to 30, but full time work is normally considered between 35-40 hours. 30 hours a week free nursery also doesn't mean you are available to work for 30 hours. Even in a best case scenario where the nursery is within the same building or street as your workplace, you can't drop the child off and be at your desk within seconds of each other, so you would only be able to work around 25 hours a week. This doesn't improve much, if at all, when the child starts school because of factoring in travelling times. Children in school longer meands that single and primary parents are able to work longer, potentially even working full time hours. 

Now this might not mean a lot to some people, but it's not just an increase in your pay because you free to work more hours, but it's a reduction in childcare expenses (during term time) and a reduction in need for income support. It's also an increase in your employability. 

Personally I would rather have seen a review of the holidays that children get in school, because like the Victorian school times, the six weeks holidays hail back to the times when children of farmers had to be available to help bring in the harvest and hold no real necessity these days, but it's a start. The problem is that there are a lot of issues in education, and what is being addressed is either not a problem or not what, in my opinion, should be a priority. 

Rant over. Catch you tomorrow.