Public Transportation and the Male Ego

I'm a guy. A pretty standard young male with all the pratfalls that are inherent in such a description: the messy apartment, living on 99 cent cans of generic brand beans, and not showering for days at a time. Well, maybe that one's just me.

My point is that I'm just as much your typical male as the next guy on the street. When it comes to public transportation habits, though, I'm vastly different.

For months now I've been noticing an odd habit shared amongst most males that ride on the green line. No it's not that guy who shrieks like a parrot every once and a while and it's not the habitual earwax spelunking that is undertaken. And no I'm also not talking about drunken meatheads going to Kenmore/Harvard Ave bars every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night; they've been around since the discovery of fire.

No, fellow riders, what I've been noticing is an exercise of the male ego.

I'm sure you've all noticed it before, or might perhaps be one yourself: an "unwilling seat-taker". Even I have fallen pray to the Dionysian lure of this habit. What does an unwilling seat-taker do, you might be asking? Well the answer is simple: he is unwilling to take a goddamn seat.

Sometimes, when a train is crowded and few seats open up it is understandable that a chivalrous man would prefer to surrender his comfort to a female, a child, or an elderly person. That's understandable and respectable. The unwilling seat-taker is the guy who refuses to take a seat even when the train yields ample seating for everyone. He will continue to stand uncomfortably even though he could sit down without compromising his gentlemanhood.

I've tried to analyze why some guys do this. I know its not that they prefer standing; after all, who prefers standing to sitting? No one. Its not for the exercise, because I probably burn just as many calories trying to comprehend how the Metro's writers have jobs.

I can only surmise that its for this reason: they think it makes them look weak and/or not a gentleman if they would rather sit than stand. It's the male ego coming into play again. In response to one of my posts earlier about "Chivalry on the T", one outraged reader commented that "I obviously wasn't raised corectly." I wondered why someone would be so angered by my post that they would make a personal attack on me. But I came to this conclusion:

Some males are so conditioned to surrender their own needs, wants, and desires to assist those that they feel are "weaker" or "less fortunate" than themselves that they are blind to the fact that sometimes they aren't helping anyone by being so chivalrous. Chivalry is a term implying the male's moral need to assist and be kind to a female because they are the "stronger" sex. It's a term that grew out of the middle-age's romanticized history and should not apply to our modern world where females are equal shareholders in the social stratum.

Men should act out of kindness and politeness; the earnest desire to help the people around them. They shouldn't act out of some macho preconceived notion that a man should never allow himself to sit even when there are plent of seats available. Common sense dictates that if there are 100 seats and 20 people, all 20 of those people could and should sit.

So I implore you, my fellow XY chromosomed compadres: take a seat. Make the world a happier place.