where are the gentlemen?

It is very difficult to start this text as what I am about to write feels incoherent and not entirely my personal experience.
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8th of March, International Women’s Day, I wonder, what women like Theresa Malkiel, Luise Zietz, Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker, Sylvia Pankhurst, Alexandra Kollontai and Dolores Ibárruri would say about women today?.
 
I don’t like to call myself a feminist, I just think all extremes and labels are somehow wrong and let’s say too extreme! Hehehe!
 
The incoherence of my text is that I think women should have it all!
Be independent, successful and kick asses! But I would like to see more gentlemen that open the door for women, that pay the bill, not because a woman needs a man to support her financially, but just because HE invited her out!!, I want to see more men who cook for their women, hahaha I know, maybe too much to ask, but hey! I hate cooking and I want it all, so why not wish it for all my fellow women?. I want to see more men picking up women from home for a date and walk them back safe, I am lucky enough to enjoy many of these things but I see what the world around me is heading to.
 
None of these little details have anything to do with the ideals that the women I mention before fought for.
 
I think we have taken things way too far! (my feminist friends are going to kill me!) I support equal rights, strong independent women, #metoo campaigns and banning sexism… BUT we have definitely taken it too far! On this quest we are trying to become men, which obviously we are not, men don’t dare to be gallant, polite and provider (which by the way is their nature), men are intimidated by us (in the wrong way) and a Gentleman is nowadays a very rare specimen.

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Photo: Vivi Totoy

I wish I could see more women using their feminine power to get what they want without the need of comparing it with what men have, maybe we don’t want the same things!
We are just blindly competing instead of coexisting, co-working and helping each other grow with our own feminine and masculine assets.
 
At the end I think we are about to lose the battle, we now have the right to vote, to equal salary and to study, but we are giving away the right to be treated with gentlemen courtesy.

​-Jessica Meza ​

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