Yesterday evening, I stuck around after school was over to go to the annual school carnival. My school is really small (175 students total) and we're all friends, so everyone had a great time hanging out, dancing, etc. Afterwards, my female friend and I, as well as two of our male friends stayed to help clean up. We were all four sitting on a bench watching the cleanup process, waiting for an opportunity to offer our assistance or for someone to approach us asking for help. It wasn't long before a 20-something man came up to us and looked to one of my male friends.
"What kind of gentleman are you?" he said. "Come on, help out."
My male friend left with the guy and they went to lift some boxes full of electrical cables into the custodial closet. Not long after, a woman approached us and addressed our remaining male friend: "Young man, I need you to do some heavy lifting over there for me." He left to help load some folding tables into the back of a car. I turned to my female friend and briefly complained that we were just as capable of doing that, but I promptly shrugged it off as it wasn't a huge deal.
We went around offering to help people with things like lifting the tables, lugging heavy boxes back into the classrooms, etc. We got turned down every time. Finally, we decided to just pick up one of the relatively heavy metal lunch tables that some people were moving back to the lunch area. We each got an end of the table and started carrying it back to the area with ease. Seconds into transporting it, three guys came rushing up to us, frantically telling us to let them help, because it was so heavy. I smiled at them politely (it was nice of them to offer, but we were seriously doing just fine) and told them that we had it under control. They shook their heads and took the table from us, at first letting us help and then saying, "Just let go, we'll do it for you" as they carried the table at the same clip and with as much ease as we'd been carrying it before.
As we stood there and watched the boys do our job, the woman from earlier approached us, watching them with a sort of fond smile, and said, "Isn't it great having boys around to do the hard stuff?"
...Huh? Am I wrong to be a little annoyed at this? We weren't struggling with the table at all -- in fact, I was proud of what a good job we were doing! If we were boys, would the guys who took our table from us have offered to help at all? And if so, would they have accepted our refusal? What are your guys' thoughts?
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Similar thing used to happen when I was in elementary school. I went to a pretty conservative, religious private school where the culture was strictly gendered. Whenever the teachers needed help moving/carrying anything they always asked, "Can I get some big strong boys to help me?" It annoyed me that they always asked for boys, so always raised my hand, but (unsurprisingly) was never picked.
Other than straight up telling the people trying to "help" that you are perfectly capable of carrying whatever it is you are carrying, I don't know what else you can do. There is a chance that the guys offering help would have offered assistance to a pair of guys carrying the tables, but it's not terribly likely.
Ugh. I loathe that.
My dad's a construction worker, and when I was little, I was ALWAYS on the jobsite, lifting heavy tools (for a four year old, a power tool was heavy! same as a two-by-four at age eight). Because of that, I'm pretty muscular. I constantly surprise boys by being able to life the same things they can.
Why is it such a surprise, though? Am I suddenly unable to lift things because I have ovaries? I know that, biologically, it's harder for females to gain upper body strength, but it's not THAT much harder.
The response I always use is:
"Just because I look pretty doesn't mean I can't work hard." And I show them my hands (they're callused, with chipped nails and gnarly knuckles). Even if your hands aren't as gross as mine, the response with a simple smile works well. They get flustered and try to back out of sexism by just spewing more of it. And you can just smile and be calm.
I'm moving out of my dorm for the summer and I spent all day today carrying 8 heavy boxes and a mini-fridge down five flights of stairs. I'm quite petite so people usually assume I'm totally incapable of lifting anything. It was nice for a change to just do it all on my own without people rushing to my aid. Only a few people offered to help, and I just told them I was doing fine on my own.
All in all, I think it's fine for people to offer to help anybody, but it becomes insulting when they insist on helping you even after you refused their offer.
You know, it's one thing to help out because someone is a nice and helpful person, and another issue entirely when one helps out based on a desire to be chivarous. In the end, it does nothing but further reinforces gender roles and the idea that women cannot survive without men's help.
That said, I think it's also important to recognize that sometimes, because of physical differences, a "young man's" help is important.
I remember being at a feminist conference a few years ago in Detroit. While I was standing in the large conference room having a conversation with another attendee, an elderly approached me and said, "Marc, I don't been to stereotype, but could you help me carry the table?"
I saw nothing wrong with this and in fact appreciated the fact she recognized that her actions might be miscontrued as gendering, and gladly helped out. In the end, it all depends on the context and situation.
In your case, however, it sounds like good, old-fashioned "Shit, genle women are doing men's work - MUST RESCUE OR WORLD WILL END" mentality to me.
Marc
No. I think it's a stupid assumption that men are stronger than women. I work at a pet boutique and the other day we got a shipment that included a 33 lb bag of dog food. It's a small store and woman owned and dominated. Not counting the owner, there are 8 staff members and only 2 are men. When this bag came in it was me and another female employee. One of the men had left not long before (when I came in). I went to lift the big bag and the other girl was like "it's too bad [boy employee] is gone." But then she stopped and was like, "well, actually, he's kind of skinny, I don't know if he could lift that." To which I replied "yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm stronger than he is" and we had a good laugh about it.
The moral of the story being that it was immediate instinct to think heavy lifting = man work but then when you look at each person, how much you can lift isn't about gender, it's about strength.
I mean, even when I'm working with one of the guys and we get a shipment, I just go and get boxes, no thought to letting him get the heavy stuff or anything. I grab whatever's next on the stack of what came in. And sometimes it takes two of us to move stuff. Dog stuff can be fucking heavy.
Good to hear that chivalry is still alive.
Celebrate!
Celebrate being treated like you are incapable of lifting things for yourself?
Now, it's one thing to offer to help regardless of the person's gender -- that's manners. To single out men as lifters and thus, women as incapable of lifting, is sexism.
I experienced the same crap in school. Up until halfway through high school, I had way more upper body strength than at least 3/4 of the boys in my class, and yet I would have to literally force teachers to allow me to help. Also, I am pretty good with technology and would often walk into a room and instantly troubleshoot alone in seconds what a group of boys had been commissioned by a teacher to fix. *sigh*
No offence is intended when a man offers to lift a heavy load.
In the same way, if a youth offers his seat to an older person, it would be pretty silly to take offence - it is possible that the older person runs 100 yards in 15 seconds and does skydiving in his or her spare time. If one is capable of doing the heavy lifting, then just do it.
"To single out men as lifters and thus, women as incapable of lifting, is sexism." Pretty tough statement, but wrong: on the whole/on average/overall, yes, men can lift heavier loads.
Average is such a narrow definition, though.
In my pervious job, there was only occasional heavy lifting, but, it was often done by a female collegue, rather than me. I'm dead skinny, and am incapable of lifting anything that heavy without doing myself an injury.
Everyone has their own individual set of abilities.
It is always welcome when someone is just being nice, but they women in the story were lifting the table just fine and wanted to help. They did not need the men to take it from them. AND then continued to pull it out of their hands when they resisted. I would have been pissed.
Pretty tough statement, but wrong: on the whole/on average/overall, yes, men can lift heavier loads.
FAIL. By assuming that women are across-the-board weaker physically, you contribute to the construction of woman as passive and incapable of doing for themselves when there's a man around to do it for them. That. Is. Textbook. Sexism. It is gender essentialism and it is not welcome in feminism, thanks very much anyway.
If the guys had offered to help these women because they were struggling with the load they were carrying, that would be awesome and helpful. However, they were having no problems and the guys decided for them that it was too heavy and literally pushed them out of the way. How is that anything but sexist?
Honestly, if you're the kind of person who claims traditional "chivalry" to be a good thing with a straight face, I question what the hell you're doing here at all.
Jadelyn,
Thanks for the reply (but I can do without being insulted, thank you).
Well, no, actually: on average, men can lift heavier weights than women. On average, they run faster and can hit a tennis ball harder. There is no shame in that at all. Averages do hide a lot though; yes, some women can lift heavier loads than some men. I don't have the figures, but they are not important.
Further, you are reading too much into things. Biological truths (heavier loads, etc.) do not lead to, err, gender essentialism.
And if I may add... boorishness (pushing someone away) is not to be confused with sexism.
Why are so many people eager to stamp a label of 'sexism' on any kind of loutish, impolite or uncouth behaviour?
Where, precisely, did I insult you? I called your argument a fail and questioned whether your views are compatible with this community. That's not an insult. Just because I didn't do it in simpering, appropriately feminine language is no reason to get all insulted.
I am not denying that on average men have an easier time developing upper-body strength than women. That's a biological truth, as you put it. However, to extrapolate from there that the default should be "make the men do it/don't allow the women to do it!" whenever a physically strenuous task comes up, disregarding the demonstrated capabilities of the people involved, crosses the line from biological truth to gender essentialism.
Why are so many people eager to stamp a label of 'sexism' on any kind of loutish, impolite or uncouth behaviour?
Perhaps because the loutish, impolite and uncouth behavior in question was purely gender-based in this case, making it...drumroll please...sexist! As I said, if they had offered their help because the poster and her friend were struggling with their load, that would have been a polite and helpful thing for them to do. However, they simple saw "woman carrying thing!" and immediately assumed they couldn't handle it, without any evidence to back up that assumption. That is sexism and gender essentialism. Period.
Not to mention, for all that you're decrying it as boorishness now, you certainly didn't seem to make that distinction with your initial "Yay chivalry!" post. You in essence said she should be glad that these boys were rude and pushed her aside as they did. How do you defend that?
Unrelated to "chivalry is awesome yay!" dude above, I've dealt with this before, too. I'm pretty physically strong...hell, I played rugby in high school. It's a violent and physically demanding sport. And yet when some friends of mine were building a freestanding garage on one friend's property recently, they asked for my boyfriend's and my help. We arrived and it was quickly clear that they meant they wanted his help climbing around in the rafters and nailing stuff, and my help making coffee and fetching tools for them. Mind you, my boyfriend is skinny and not at all muscular. In brute strength I've got him at least matched and often beat, not to mention I'm better with heights than he is and they were climbing on the roof of the building. Neither of us had any particularly relevant construction experience, either. (I mean, I'd have understood them preferring his help if he'd ever done that or anything like that before, but he hadn't.)
After about a half hour of my seething and his trying to deal with the heights thing, he finally just climbed down without asking the guys, came over to me and handed me the nailer and said, "You saw what we were doing. Take over for me, please?" And we spent the rest of the day with me on the roof with the guys and him playing toolmaid on the ground. And once the guys got used to it, they realized things weren't slowed in the slightest by the presence of a vagina on the roof with them.
Since then, that particular group of guys has learned not to underestimate me or treat me like their idea of a "typical" woman. But I had to fight for that recognition, and it pisses me off that it had to be like that. Why they couldn't just take me at my word when they described the job and I said I'd be better at it than my boyfriend? Possession of a penis does not grant you magical construction skills (or lifting skills, or whatever the hell else). Argh.
I'd be a LOT annoyed at that WTF is wrong with people?
My sister and a I have a culture jamming thing we do. When she needs something off of a high shelf, instead of asking me to reach it for her she picks me up and lifts me high enough to reach it and I get it for her. You should see some of the looks, priceless!