Lifestyle Can a Woman Be Chivalrous? Sure, but Guys Are Going to Hate It.

Here is what happens if you are a 20-something woman and you offer an able-bodied man under 70 years of age your seat on the subway. First he’ll take one earbud out, smile wanly at you, and be like: “Sorry, what?” “Do you want to sit down?” you ask again, Genteel as Fuck. He’ll glance quickly around the subway car, trying to figure out if he is on some new hidden camera MTV show called Emasculating Men on Public Transit. Finally, he’ll quizzically shake his head, no, thanks. In a handful of cases, however -- in my case, specifically, it was one 40-something in a fedora on the Q train and one slim and acne-riddled college-age boy on the G -- he will straight-up glare at you in a way that’s not just hostile but also mildly paranoid: my balls are too majestic and girthy for sitting. Who told you my balls weren’t majestic? Was it Steve? Was it fuckin’ Steve?! The interaction doesn’t end there. Responding to these glares as myself (“I am so sorry, I’m a journalist -- or, haha, not like a journalist, an Internet writer, but not like a blogger, I mean, for money, and I have to pretend to like -- oh this is your stop? OK, haha, bye.”) would obviously ruin the whole point of the experiment. So I actually had to devote as much energy to channeling the “man” part as I did the “gentle” part, just to be able to respond with the appropriately glassy and neutral face of someone who’s unthinkingly adhering to social mores. Over the course of the 13 subway rides I took during my week of chivalry, not a single guy accepted the seat I offered him, not even the one clinging to the pole on a brutally unsteady uptown 6 while simultaneously attempting to read and highlight passages in Infinite Jest. Perhaps we accept the seat we think we deserve. First: The Code It wasn’t until the 20th century that chivalry started resembling what it is today: holding doors, walking on the curb side of the road, lending out your coat, and making women feel ambivalent. I consider myself a feminist, and at the same time I’ll judge a guy if he doesn’t pay on a first date. I get the cognitive dissonance there, but ideologies and rituals clash peacefully all the time, like not believing in God but still celebrating Christmas. A fun urban legend dreamed up by men’s rights activists is that “these days,” when you hold the door for a woman, “she’ll scream at you,” because “feminism.” Actually, women generally equate those gestures with the basic unisex etiquette you’d hope for from the human race in general. Women unthinkingly hold doors for people all the time; we’re not monsters. (But I’ll cop to a Larry David-esque elevator-holding technique: I flail weakly for the closing doors just for show, then, as they close in the person’s face, I shrug helplessly like “Forget it, Jake, it’s elevators.”) The chivalric code I was adhering to was genteel but pretty moderate -- the sort of behavior you’d imagine at a Vassar-Yale mixer in a J.D. Salinger book. I didn’t really think one week of it would be that different from my usual routine. My First Day as a Gentleman On my first day as a gentleman, it rained. I accompanied my boyfriend to his car to get his overnight bag and held an umbrella over him as we walked down the street. Greg is 6’3” and the spokes kept jabbing him in the forehead. He tried to grab the umbrella from me, but I wouldn’t let him. For my past assignments, Greg has been a very good sport, even a co-conspirator. He’s let me write about his balls in national magazines. One time he even okayed having sex to a Disney soundtrack (with just the right amount of foot-dragging; if he’d been too okay with it I’d have called social services). It felt unnatural keeping my new ghost dick from him. He hauled his bag of stuff out of the car. “Hey, let me carry that,” I offered. He seemed a little surprised but gave me the bag. It was my first true act of chivalry, and I felt... honestly, kind of emasculated, in a weird Victor/Victoria sort of way! If I were a dude, I’d want my persona to combine the courtly graces of Sir Lancelot with the crass, alpha-male sexuality of Stanley Kowalski, and that seems harder than I thought. Unfortunately, Stanley wouldn’t have smoldered quite as much if he held the door for people.

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Speaking of which -- here’s a thing! Do you know how many strangers will squeeze through a door you’re holding open for the person you’re courting and force you to stand there continuing to hold it like an asshole? The answer is All The Strangers. I’m surprised I’m not still holding a door somewhere. I’ve obviously experienced this in my life before, but since my door-holding increased exponentially this week, this also jumped to scale. If able-bodied men between 18 and 50 get stuck playing doorman for a crushing stream of thoughtless humanity as often as I did, when you add it all up, that HAS to add up to the same time commitment required to complete a two-year masters program. In conclusion, doorstops.

Interlude: You’re All a Bunch of Thoughtless Bastards On the bright side, holding doors until I withered and turned 90 and died gave me ample time to reflect. Men in New York aren’t gentlemen -- at least, not by the standards I was adhering to. Greg is a gentleman, constantly taking bags from me or opening doors for me without a thought, but we’re in a relationship. Outside of that, zero men offered me their seat on the subway. For that, you must be very young, very old, or pregnant. The latter is my only current option but then I’d have to raise it and everything. It’s a shopworn Sex and the City cliché, but it’s true. A few Summers ago, I had to drag a wing chair from Chelsea to the East Village. I’d waddle a block or two, stop for breath, and start again. Guys breezed by me, empty-handed but for iced coffee or iPhones. At one point, like, 12 loud college bros in tank tops on their way to an Avicii concert or whatever the fuck, broke formation and went around me like I was a memorial statue. I’d hoped I would be able to offer my services to a grateful dude-in-distress trying to lug a credenza down Berry Street, but no such luck -- it’s not really Craigslist furniture season. I’m kind of glad. If you remember how Buffalo Bill snatched Brooke Smith in Silence of the Lambs, you get why.

Dining: A Minefield for the Modern Gentleman Later that week, Greg and I had the diplomatic (read: lazy) conversation about where to go for dinner that any long-term couple in New York has had 27,351,351 times: “Where do you want to go?” “I don’t know. Mexican?” “Ehhhhh, I just had it, where else?” “Check Seamless?” “Ehhhhhhhhhh.” At this point I remember that as a gentleman, I have to make executive decisions. Making food-related decisions normally whips me into such a panic that I once ordered a sandwich with one slice of toasted bread and one slice of untoasted bread, like a girl in a shitty indie movie. I pick the restaurant -- it’s a spot we go to all the time, and he’s fine with it. It has a two-hour wait, so I have to pick a bar. Still, no reaction. I wondered if maybe I call the shots more often than I think. The first glimmer of any response to my newfound decision-making is when I order his drink. He seems to like it. Then again, there’s something Mad Men-era heteronormative about “getting your man a stiff drink.”

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He doesn’t question it when I pay the bill, because we’ve been dating long enough that we’re constantly trying to get the other one to pay. Romance! At the restaurant, I pull Greg’s chair back for him. "Uh, thanks.” He is weirded out. A waiter comes by and I barrel ahead with the whole order. As soon as I get to the “And he’ll have the--” part, I finally see a flicker of annoyance. “What the fuck?” “You love chorizo! I just wanted to see if I could guess what you’d order!” “You ordered it.” He gets up. I get up. He goes to the bathroom. I sit down. He returns from the bathroom. I stand up and pull his chair back. Now he is very annoyed and about to say something but I immediately derail the conversation by bringing up Anthony Bourdain, which always works. Finally, the check comes and I grab it. “This is for an article, isn’t it.” I knew the very first meal together would blow my cover. Under normal circumstances, asking me to throw in an extra $20 for dinner is like storming Normandy. “Noooooo.” “Come on, you’re such a bad actress.” Little does he know, I prove him wrong by not looking like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” when I pay the whole check.

The Gentleman Cracks After five days of decision-making, carrying bags, standing in the rain, jacket-lending (it only fit over his shoulder), standing and sitting at restaurants so often I should really have a Jen Selter ass now, holding the door for what I vengefully began thinking of as the Human Centipede, AND feeling guilty that I couldn’t discuss it with him, I finally cracked.

Sarah Anderson/Thrillist