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Man, I leave for vacation for a week and find this thing had blown into a huge ragefest. I'll put these into a few concise and distinct points:
1.) I've been raised to treat everyone with respect and to be conscious of others. That said, when I was with my friends, the vast majority of which were males, we'd do "guy stuff": Watch football, do belching contests, gross out girls with worms, etc. When a woman/girl was in a room with us who we wanted to respect, we'd cease our belching contests and worm fights. Why? Because they didn't like it. I learned this sense of chivalry from experience as much as from parental guidance.
2.) When we're at work, some of us had our immature, sophomoric moments where we'd do stupid shit like belching. It was, in a sense, a bonding moment for us. There was one woman who liked to be "one of the guys" and join us in our belching. We thought nothing of it. On the other hand, other women we knew didn't appreciate our stupid shit we respected by not doing our stupid shit in their presence. In other words, we respected their wishes to not partake in immature shit that we, from time to time, enjoyed just for the hell of it. Besides that one woman, the line between the sophomoric people and the more polite people was clearly drawn between men and women, so I think people tend to be conditioned to think in that way.
3.) A lot of the "chivalry" I've been taught has been of the romantic aspects of it, which I am well aware the OP makes an exception to. If my girlfriend opened the car door for me when we were going out to eat, I'd feel a tad weird, simply because that's not the norm. It's as much an oddity to me as a 10-year-old who starts talking to me about my market portfolio and tax returns or an elderly man who tells me Lady Gaga makes his cock into a hammer. I don't find them odd because I'm ageist or sexist, it's because it's an unusual occurance.
4.) I've do not recall an occurrence in my lifetime where a guy was rude to me because I was just a guy, nor where a woman was rude to me because being polite should only be man-to-woman. I might have had cases like my aforementioned story where a woman overreacts to my polite gesture, but nobody has every told me to only help or respect women. The few times I've helped women "because they were women" was because they were wearing heels and was visibly "distressed" (i.e. was trying to avoid a puddle). Of course, I guess if that person were a cross dresser wearing heels I'd have done the same thing, so even that doesn't apply as strictly sexist. The only times I've been taught strict chivalry is when I am on a date. And I'll tell you: That was very helpful to my relationship with my girlfriend right now who appreciates that kind of chivalry, yet still sees me as an equal in the relationship, will pick up the check from time to time, and who believes in equality for everyone.
EDIT: I'd also like to add a 5th point: That many people find men who hit women particularly disturbing (moreso than other violence) because in many incidents of this nature that are domestic, the man in the relationship is using his own misogyny and sexism to cowardly inflict violence. They pick women who truly are physically and emotionally weaker than them in order to maintain this kind of violent power in order for them to feel good. In this sense, whenever I think of men hitting women, I think of this stereotypical scenario which is very often the case for domestic violence. Are there men in these types of situations with their female partners? And are there homosexual relationships that are equally abusive? Of course, but the typical scenario is between a man and a woman and has, in a way, become the image of domestic violence.
1.) I've been raised to treat everyone with respect and to be conscious of others. That said, when I was with my friends, the vast majority of which were males, we'd do "guy stuff": Watch football, do belching contests, gross out girls with worms, etc. When a woman/girl was in a room with us who we wanted to respect, we'd cease our belching contests and worm fights. Why? Because they didn't like it. I learned this sense of chivalry from experience as much as from parental guidance.
2.) When we're at work, some of us had our immature, sophomoric moments where we'd do stupid shit like belching. It was, in a sense, a bonding moment for us. There was one woman who liked to be "one of the guys" and join us in our belching. We thought nothing of it. On the other hand, other women we knew didn't appreciate our stupid shit we respected by not doing our stupid shit in their presence. In other words, we respected their wishes to not partake in immature shit that we, from time to time, enjoyed just for the hell of it. Besides that one woman, the line between the sophomoric people and the more polite people was clearly drawn between men and women, so I think people tend to be conditioned to think in that way.
3.) A lot of the "chivalry" I've been taught has been of the romantic aspects of it, which I am well aware the OP makes an exception to. If my girlfriend opened the car door for me when we were going out to eat, I'd feel a tad weird, simply because that's not the norm. It's as much an oddity to me as a 10-year-old who starts talking to me about my market portfolio and tax returns or an elderly man who tells me Lady Gaga makes his cock into a hammer. I don't find them odd because I'm ageist or sexist, it's because it's an unusual occurance.
4.) I've do not recall an occurrence in my lifetime where a guy was rude to me because I was just a guy, nor where a woman was rude to me because being polite should only be man-to-woman. I might have had cases like my aforementioned story where a woman overreacts to my polite gesture, but nobody has every told me to only help or respect women. The few times I've helped women "because they were women" was because they were wearing heels and was visibly "distressed" (i.e. was trying to avoid a puddle). Of course, I guess if that person were a cross dresser wearing heels I'd have done the same thing, so even that doesn't apply as strictly sexist. The only times I've been taught strict chivalry is when I am on a date. And I'll tell you: That was very helpful to my relationship with my girlfriend right now who appreciates that kind of chivalry, yet still sees me as an equal in the relationship, will pick up the check from time to time, and who believes in equality for everyone.
EDIT: I'd also like to add a 5th point: That many people find men who hit women particularly disturbing (moreso than other violence) because in many incidents of this nature that are domestic, the man in the relationship is using his own misogyny and sexism to cowardly inflict violence. They pick women who truly are physically and emotionally weaker than them in order to maintain this kind of violent power in order for them to feel good. In this sense, whenever I think of men hitting women, I think of this stereotypical scenario which is very often the case for domestic violence. Are there men in these types of situations with their female partners? And are there homosexual relationships that are equally abusive? Of course, but the typical scenario is between a man and a woman and has, in a way, become the image of domestic violence.
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