Chivalry is dead? Perhaps — or it may just need resuscitation. I believe with every fibre in my body that men have a moral responsibility to protect woman. This responsibility extends to all women, not just the one’s you are closest to. I believe that if you are a man on a train and you see a woman sitting by herself, you have now undertaken a moral duty as an ethical citizen in our society to keep an eye on her, and ensure that she is not troubled or harassed by a potential assailant. If you see a woman walking by herself alone at night and there is little foot traffic present, then you once again have a moral duty to ensure that she makes it to her chosen destination safely. Or at least until she has traversed through the potentially precarious situation.
Now I know what you are thinking. You are worried that by doing this, you will appear in her current state of consciousness as the potential attacker that she needs to be careful of. If you sense as uneasiness in her demeanour, then simply ask her: “Would you like me to walk you to your car?” Or tell her: “I will be sitting over here, so if you at any stage you feel unsafe, please don’t hesitate to grab my attention.” If she says “no”, or “I’m all good thanks” — then let it go and move on, knowing that you did your part in trying to limit the amount of potential danger she may encounter. I also want you to remember that her initial reaction may seem indifferent to you at first, but once her brain has had time to process what has actually happened, I suspect she will feel a resounding sense of gratitude towards you — as long as you came across as truly genuine in your approach. Now I know that this seems like quite a strange thing to do or to start implementing in your life — but it is for exactly that reason, that I am writing this today.
We need to normalise this behaviour so that the people who do not do this become the minority. They become the outliers in our society — not the other way around. I was reading a study on violence and in this study, they asked both men and women the same question: “When was the last time you felt truly unsafe in your interactions with other humans?” I am paraphrasing there, but it was along those same lines. All the men typically answered: “about two years ago”, “umm a couple of years ago”, “around about a year ago”, or my personal favourite “I can’t even remember”. They then asked the women the same question. All the women typically answered: “yesterday”, “ah would have been last week”, “this morning on my way here”, “right now”.
There is a complete asymmetry when it comes to facing danger in our society relative to men and women. A 60kg male drug addict would pose little threat to an average man in our society. For starters, the chances of that drug addict even attempting an attack on a man compared to a woman is a rather trivial comparison. Furthermore, if they did choose to attack, the average man may suffer a bump or bruise in the alteration and be done with it. The average woman could end up severely injured, raped and even killed. Please do not read this as though I am throwing a metaphorical blanket over each and every dangerous encounter in our society. I completely understand that there are plenty of vulnerable men and a lot of competent women when it comes to handling violent situations. I am just saying that for most encounters, the example that I illustrated above is one that will ring true in many of your ears.
If you are a man reading this and feel extremely unsure about your own ability to handle yourself against a would be attacker, then I want you to put yourself in the shoes of a woman with your same skill set. Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to know that if any man attacked you, you are instantaneously at a considerable height, weight and strength disadvantage. Or better yet, picture that all men in our society are clones of Brock Lesnar. You would be absolutely terrified walking down the street to find a mentally unstable, 130kg, 6ft 3 Brock Lesnar — who finds you attractive, vulnerable or weak. This is a perpetual fear that so may women grapple with on a daily basis. This is a state of mind that very few men experience in their entire lifetimes, let alone every single day.
Here is the good news if you are one of these men. Your mere presence in the same domain as this potential attacker will be enough to deter him from carrying out the assault. Do you want to know why? Because men that attack women are complete and utter cowards. They are the weakest and most repugnant human beings that have been given life on this earth. We need to make a collective and conscious effort, to keep an eye out for and protect women that may be in potential harm. We need to step up and put our shoulder to the wheel on these matters. The cure to reprehensible men is respectable men. The antidote to craven men is courageous men. The remedy to toxic masculinity is strong masculinity. Our society needs men who carry themselves with integrity — men who hold strong moral values — and men who will always protect those who are most vulnerable.
Men should be the first to fight wars for their countries. Men should be the ones who drown at sea whilst the women and children take the remaining lifeboats. Men should take off their jacket’s and suffer being cold, whilst their lady absorbs the new found heat from a jacket that they didn’t bring themselves — even though you told them to grab a jacket before you left the house… Yes, I believe that men should take on all of these duties and more.
Women are responsible for the single most important assignment that has ever been given in the history of our species: Women give birth to all life. Every single man that has lived, is currently living, or will live — will do so after being pushed out of or removed from a woman’s body. Every new-born child then survives off food that is created for them inside of their mother’s bodies. Women are then the primary carer for all children that will one day grow up and help steer our societies into further generations of peace and prosperity. If women are responsible for all of that, then the least we can do as men, is be responsible for the protection of our women.
