Do You Hold Your Doors? |Non-fiction|

As a little boy, I was always reminded, either at home, school, or at the playground, about the binary distinction between girls and boys. Boys don't play with dolls, girls don't play with toy cars; boys don't cry, girls do; boys are strong, and girls are weak. The problem with this here is that this kind of mentality traps young men and women into the cage of binary oppositions which forces them to act in concordance with societal norms. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to speculate about the problems of upbringing here (although these are serious issues nowadays), neither do I want to reinvent sex and gender. What really bothers me is the set of qualities that are assigned to the masculine gender to which all men, consciously or subconsciously, have to adhere.

The title for this article popped up in my head like popcorn while I was trying to be a good person by holding the door for a girl at the restaurant. She passed through me, silently, taking my act of benevolence for granted while grimacing I-am-the-queen-of-the-world face. Sometime after I met with my friend and told her the story. She said: "Well, you did what you should have". "Did I, really?" was my response.

Out of curiosity, I've questioned my female friends whether they would expect a man to open and hold a door for them in a public place. Nine out of ten agreed that they did expect a man to be a gentleman. Then I asked my guy friends whether they would hold the door in such a situation – all of them, in unison, agreed they would. Although it might sound that I have some problems with holding doors, but what I actually have a problem with is the concept which drives us, guys, to hold the doors for women. All of the participants (both male and female) admit that men holding the doors for women is derived from the perception of gender qualities in our minds. Simply put – men are stronger; thus, they have to hold the door. Well, let me ask this again: "do I really?" – because I don't feel the necessity to be a good man. I want to hold the door because I desire to be a better human being.

Even though this work has barely scratched the surface of the problem of rule assignment in our society, and it does not contain the viewpoint of women, it proposes to redefine our expectations of gender constructs in order for one to be not a decent man or woman, but a decent individual.