Dedicated Scumbags and Eternal Bitches

The term ‘ladies and gentlemen’ is now officially defunct, because both ladylike women and gentlemanly men are now characters from the grave.

A ladylike woman was one who had class, style, and grace. A gentlemanly man was above all, courteous, dignified, and broadminded. What’s common to both of these descriptions is that they’re entirely dependent on people agreeing to what those adjectives mean; and that, above all, is the reason for this double homicide.

There will always be men who know and respect what it means to possess a penis. “I’m not talking about the guy that fucked you and left,” said Chris Rock in Bigger and Blacker, more than a decade ago. “Fuck him, okay?” Men of that kind know that it’s not about opening doors and carrying women across puddles. It’s about loving women, and not just the horizontal kind. By the same token, there will always be women who were born to be ladies; stylish in the absence of money, classy simply because they respect themselves, and graceful because they know that their beauty is meant for the world, and not for the mirror. On the other side, however, are the dedicated scumbags and the eternal bitches, people as certain of their self serving beliefs, although for different reasons. These sorts of people, though, will never need to be told who they are. They’re the extreme cases, people who figure out their own realities, who stick to their own moral codes regardless (or perhaps because of) what life does to them.

The vast majority of people, on the other hand, are people who are still figuring out what their life is all about, people as yet unready to claim a niche and stick to it. People who are still growing, yet required to act grown up, are more reactionary than principled - cannon fodder on the battlefield of opinion, also known as the media. Advertisers routinely take advantage of this; almost every single ad on TV these days attempts to define what it means to be a man or a woman. Men, for example, have metallic square phones (which is why they get condoms when there’s no change), value cars over their wives and newborn children (a la the SX4 Diesel), and thanks to the likes of John Abrahams and Shahid Kapoor, don’t sweat or have dark skin. Women fare only slightly better. Their concerns in life seem to be pimples, their hair, and their cell phones, with a little bit of space left over for competing to see who’s got the hotter boyfriend. While ads are a small enough part of everyday life and not to be taken too literally, they’re still very relevant to social beliefs - both a description and a projection of the kind of people we are.

At the end of the day, though, it’s not about public opinion or what the TV tells us to believe. It’s more about things that are talked about in public spaces, and values that we share as a people. Chivalry is dead, but only the kind of chivalry that treats women like beautifully fragile possessions. Ladies are history too, but only the kind of ladies that need gentlemen to survive. What we’re seeing these days is a redefinition of masculine and feminine roles - and the only thing for sure is that nobody’s sure what makes a gentleman, and what isn’t proper for a lady.

In all this uncertainty, though, a few things become rock solid. Men and women are fundamentally different - in their biology, in the kind of wiring in their brains, in the ways their bodies evolve in their lifetimes, in the roles that society will expect them to play. There are some traits that are masculine and some that are feminine - and oddly, it’s impossible to find a man with only masculine ones, or a woman with exclusively feminine ones. The ancient idea of gentility, that a man had a responsibility to protect and care for (and therefore some rights over) the weaker woman, emerged from centuries of living in a world where physical strength was the defining characteristic - and men in this respect are fundamentally stronger. These days, the threats that people and families face are more abstract; and in this, it’s more likely that on average, women are the fundamentally stronger ones - mostly because women’s brains are wired way better for dealing with lots of different kinds of information at the same time.

While the world makes up its mind on the new age lady and gentleman, there are some questions that are fairly relevant. Is mutual respect on the cards? How about accepting that men are superior in some spheres, and women in others? What about the joy a man feels when he knows he’s taking care of his wife and kids? Will something allow for that honest display of concern, or will it be gunned down in the name of women’s rights? Where will we draw the line on feminine assertiveness? Should the men of this century pay the price for the heavy handedness of long dead patriarchs, and accept as ornamental a position as women were relegated to? Is feminism really a drive for sexual equality, or should it be balanced out by a new age chauvinism?

If personal opinions count for anything, here’re this writers’ two bits. The only gentleman that’s dead, and the only chivalry that’s faded, is the one that existed to be talked about. Men who behave lovingly toward women will do so whether there’s a social advantage to it or not; and women who honestly respect themselves will always have men to love them. Which is what it was always all about.

Trifeck