Friday, July 14, 2006

End of chivalry

THE age of chivalry among male motorists has been driven out by fear and political correctness, according to an undercover experiment involving a roadside damsel in distress.

Although we must regard this with the caveat that it is manufactured news (to gain publicity for a tyre company), lets assume it was basically valid. It shows us that what people 'claim' they will do is often driven more by the need to appear socially acceptable ("Yes of course I would help out a woman who needed her tyre changing!"), whereas what people actually DO is driven by other pragmatic concerns. In this case the men would have been well aware of the years and years of women shoving their 'independent' and 'empowered' attitudes down men's throats, so why should he stop (taking time out from his day - which may make him late for work) to help this empowered young potential ball-buster? They would also probably not have wanted to put themselves at risk of being seen by other drivers to be stopping and talking to a strange woman (in case they later had some false accusation leveled at them). And they probably also realised that the most thanks they would get for helping out would have been a fake smile.

Notice that they didn't repeat the experiment with the sexes reversed. This is because there wouldn't have been any media-friendly news story in it. I mean its not exactly news that women would not stop to help a man, they never have done and wouldn't do so today!

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