who killed chivalry?

      Siting on the train I often wonder about a lot of things, the most often prominent is about the seating situation. Conventional wisdom dictates that a young man such as myself should easily be able to get up and give my seat to one of the many females that I find standing over me looking down on me with absolute disdain. But it's difficult for me because of the problem I have of thinking way to much about things that I should not be thinking so much about, things that I should really do out of pure emotional motivation. It doesn't work that way for me however because I'm constantly plagued with the problem of over thinking every situation that I am in. Whether or not this is a futile attempt to make myself feel better about being to lazy to just lift my ass up and give my seat to a woman I'm not sure of but I seem to rationalize my own reasons in my head. 

       The most simple of these reasons being that I have no idea who this person is that I am so dutifully surrendering my comfort to. Granted we have the fact that I am young and male and probably in better physical condition but who is this anonymous lady anyway? What if this woman is the most despicable of human beings, a woman who by no means should be given anything at my expense. There is no way I can tell the character of the person who I am helping, should I just willingly help all who cross my path ignorant to whether or not they are deserving of my kindness? I suppose most would say that you should not be concerned with whether or not the person is deserving because if you do that then you would never do anything nice for anyone because you could never tell. If everyone thought that way then nothing nice would ever be done for anyone else. I sit here and I think about this, what if I am more deserving of the seat in every sense of the subject? Thus I am at in impasse because unless I spend my time trying to get to know the person that I am trying to help, a person who more often than not will not be willing to digress about their personal lives, then I will never know. Not to mention that I neither have the energy nor the desire to get to know every eligible candidate to receive my seat. 

     The more intellectual argument involves the state of the society that we currently reside in. In our American society women have rightly obtained a great deal of equality and opportunity, but still they insist on a double standard. I do not understand how a person could want to be treated equally and yet want to hold on to the remnants of an inherently unequal societal structure. To that end what do we want our society to transform into? A place where we have no real gender differences? Eventually if we continue along the path that we are on I strongly believe that men and women are going to be the exact same and there will be a complete devolution of the modern family. But in any case, why do women want to be treated like women and yet also treated like men? In past societies there was always a give and take when it came to gender roles, the woman was not always involved in decision making or considered as the head of anything but she was treated as precious. She was given honor and looked at as a work of art, something to be cherished, loved and respected. In that situation then rising to allow her to sit is a given because of the role that she plays in society. But now philosophically it seems almost unfair to treat a woman as special and yet give her all of the things that men have enjoyed. Is a man supposed to be treated specially?