One of the best things to happen to cable television in recent history is "American Movie Classics" where you can sit back on a day off and watch old movies, without commercial interruptions, for 24 hours if you can handle it. Now the same station has started "Romance Classics" and is touting it as "television for women." It's just old romantic movies where men in suits and ties open doors for women in pretty dresses. Women can't seem to get enough of it and aren't afraid to admit anymore that they wish some of that old fashioned behavior still existed. But in this day and age, there is no such thing as chivalry, and to some degree, the finer details of gender etiquette have all but disappeared.

       In ancient days chivalry was standard etiquette -- in fact it was a code that distinguished gentility from peasantry. Knights in medieval times were held to a code of behavior toward women that was as good as law. The code included acts as of tremendous bravery as well as simple acts of courtesy. Over the centuries, as times changed, so did the standards of etiquette expected of men while in the company of "a lady." And now this etiquette has almost completely disappeared. Why? Are we such a crude society now that we don't care about manners? Or are the gender roles so confused that we just don't know who should go through a door first, or pay a dinner bill? I think it has even more to do with the implied message involved.

       Let's face it. Did knights go out and "slay dragons" so women could live without the fear of being incinerated by fire-breathing monsters, or did the knight expect to gain something from the act? Perhaps he expected to gain a wife, or someone to weep over him if he died in a joust? Did all the men in Casablanca stand when Ingrid Bergman entered a room because they respected her, or were they just trying to impress her, or her husband, or Rick? Did the man in the 50's movie who opened the car door for the woman with the corsage, expect to gain something? He probably thought if he played his cards right, she'd marry him. If we're true romantics we believe that all these kind of behaviors are performed purely out of fine manners and respect for female-kind. Perhaps in those days, the gender roles were more clearly established.

       As we approach the year 2000, women and men share responsibilities in and out of the home, making the playing field a little more level. There is nothing to be gained nowadays by opening a door for a woman, or assisting her out of a car. It's highly unlikely that such an act will lead to marriage, or even sex. When women demanded equal rights in the 1970's, they also asked men to stop all the fuss. Women are the ones that said they didn't want men to open doors for them because they were perfectly capable of opening doors for themselves. Women are the ones that said they wanted to split the restaurant bill, or even pay it in full. After all they had jobs and could manage quite well. It is women who wanted to put aside the behaviors that emphasized the differences between men and women because they wanted to stand on more equal ground. If a woman is a corporate executive and walks into a meeting room full of male subordinates, should the men stand? She is the one in the position of power and to stand would simply be to emphasize the difference in gender. Wouldn't that be insulting? When women said, "stop it," men listened, and stopped. It became too confusing to figure out if opening a door was an insult or a courtesy. Is opening a door an implication that the male is dominant and the woman submissive? Paying a restaurant tab might be making a statement that the woman can't afford it, or even worse, that she owes him something.

       Nowadays when a woman witnesses a man perform such courteous acts, she wonders why her own mate can't do the same. Women watch old movies longing for the days when they were treated like they were special. But I wonder, in those days, what did a woman have to give up to get such treatment? What were the expectations of her? We never really hear about that. There must have been a reason that women wanted it all to stop. This is what I think: women were expected to be good listeners; they were expected to be sweet and not to show that they knew too much. Worldly matters such as politics and war were for men to work out. It didn't matter how much a woman knew about the topic, it just wasn't very feminine to let on. She was also expected to cook, clean, and have babies. Since I didn't live in those days, I have no idea if this is how it really was or if this is what comes out of the movies. If movies are truly reflections of the era in which they were made, then it's probably safe to say that the values and expectations portrayed are accurate representations.

       When women demanded change, they were trying to break some ground, reverse roles, find a voice, and gain more equal footing. They were saying, we want what men have. We want to speak our minds, and we're tired of cooking, cleaning and raising babies. We want to have choices and we want to make our own decisions. We want to open our own doors.