Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Unzipping Tradition: Chivalry, Consent, and True Respect

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we dive into the intersection of respect, chivalry, and consent in our everyday interactions. We unpack how cultural expectations shape our understanding of respect, particularly through common gestures like holding doors open and using titles like "ma'am". We discuss the importance of honoring individual preferences when addressing others and explore how actions rooted in chivalry, while often intended as acts of kindness, can perpetuate power dynamics if they lack true mutual respect and consent.Our conversation examines the delicate balance between chivalry and genuine respect, highlighting how even polite actions can sometimes be tied to outdated gender norms or cultural expectations. As we continue to challenge these norms, we emphasize the need for mutual understanding and communication in all interactions. Ultimately, it’s about respecting personal boundaries, preferences, and choices—no matter how big or small the gesture, and no matter who the gesture is directed towards.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestionsIf you want to ask Dr Sue a sex question for the weekly Q&A you can submit it here: Ask a question

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. And before we get started, we've got some exciting news. Unzipping Taboos is now partnered with JackandJillAdult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with the code UNZIPPING20. Now that we've got the business out of the way, today we're going to be unzipping chivalry, respect, consent, and all the little pieces in between. But before we do, I'm here with Dr. Sue. Hey, Dr. Sue.

Hey, Charlie. How are you? A little angry, I think, going into this episode. Yeah. to be honest with you this one this one was one of my choices and yes so it's bringing up some things okay well let's uh let's get through the rest of the business so that we can we can bring those things out into the light would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about your background sure and i actually can i yes and here's where i'm not going to but i want why

I'm going to do something completely different. No, no, no, no. Yes. But I want to talk about what I realized about my intro that I had texted you when it was happening. I don't know if you remember. I mean, you should live and die by every one of my texts. But we had this constant thing where I really hate doing my intro.

And the reason I hate doing my intro is because I just kind of want to get to the meat of it, right? Like, the topic is so important to me that I want to talk about the topic. And then Charlie will politely yell at me offline that it's important that, you know, we we say who we are and we lay down the credentials and and I realized that a lot of it was because I don't want to say it's an ego thing I was in an hour meeting I told you about that I was in an hour meeting there was a panel of three people and it was a hard deadline hour and the first male presenter and I hundred percent think it was because he was male took 14 minutes to do

his intro the second male presenter took slightly less it was still double digits and then I don't know if they were rushing her because I don't see behind the scenes but the woman was like yeah yeah here's my credentials blah blah blah blah and done and so I was just like wow like I just became really super aware of one of the reasons why I don't do this is that I don't usually have space to do this so I am going to do an intro but I wanted to I was like my aha that was like my light bulb moment of like oh yeah like this is why i don't do it because i'd rather talk about the thing no surprise we didn't get through the whole agenda because we spent 28 minutes in freaking intros okay so with that out of the way i'm dr sue so i have and here he is taking up

another 15 minutes um so i have a phd in homosexuality and i've done the academic thing you know, like I've published, I've co-written textbooks, I teach in academia, undergraduate, graduate, all sorts of different places, because that's going to come up later today. And in addition to doing all like the academic stuff, I also am the lead consultant for Milstein Health Consulting. So I go out and I talk to folks all over the place about all sorts of health and sexuality topics. And because, you know, I have five free minutes in every day, folks submit their anonymous sex questions to me through my website and we'll include the link in the show description people submit anonymous sex questions then every Sunday at 9 p.m eastern I post it all over social

media and that is me which is actually I think the most detailed intro I've ever done and it didn't take 14 minutes not that I would know because I didn't start a timer but anyway that's me but I'm not the only one in this little crazy place right now So, for those of you who do and do not know Charlie, Charlie is our curious co-host who is always ready to unzip all those taboos about relationships and sex and all the in-between stuff. So, tell us a little bit about you, Charlie. And don't take 14 minutes. No, I'm kidding. I am Charlie.

I enjoy, as those of you who have listened to us for a minute now, you know that I enjoy challenging. social conditioning and social norms and expectations, and not just challenging them or challenging them and questioning them, especially when it is applied unequivocally to marginalized groups. And just asking why, because to me, and I've always grown up, I've always had this feeling, we're all human. So we all have capabilities and unique, unique pieces of ourselves that we bring to a life experience. So why am I why am I told as a woman that I can't, because blah, blah, blah. So I've always enjoyed challenging those kinds of things and having the conversations um trying to dig into the why to to have the understanding but

if I can't if we can't find a way to have that conversation then then we agree to disagree and go our separate ways but I have a general curiosity about um psychology and humans and and that's me yay so Dr. Sue yeah why why this episode

so this episode so I lived in the south for a bit I don't know why I thought that a New Yorker talking about sex would go over well in the south that's just a New Yorker someone from Brooklyn Yeah. Someone from Brooklyn talking about sex in the South. I have no idea why I thought that was a good idea. But I was recently talking to someone who said there is no failure. They're just learning sometimes in very interesting ways. And so one of the things I was running into was that I was being ma'am'd a lot. And I realize I am older than my students. So like I kind of got where they were coming from. But then I started realizing that ma'am wasn't so much about respect. It was more of a placeholder.

it was it was an um it was it was it literally had nothing to do out of a respect thing and so i was running into these situations where i was starting to challenge students especially the students i was working with because they were pre-health care stuff so pre-nursing pre-ot pre-pt pre-pre-pre-pre and so i wanted to get them in the habit of not making assumptions about gender and not getting into this like oh i see you as female i will call you ma'am when that may be really troublesome for some people. And so for me, I started really holding the line of don't call me ma'am. And you would have thought that I insulted their mothers. Like some of them had very strong reactions to that. And there were a couple of stories I'm sure will come out today

about the complete lack of like respect versus actual respect. But then it started happening again recently. And with some of it, it's with my students. I am out of the South now. I'm happily out of the south um but then we had an email recently we did to us as podcast hosts and for those of you who don't know the name of the show but you should because you clicked on it it's unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex with dr sue and charlie and the the person who sent the email wanted to bring on some guest speaker i'm sure he was working with some kind of blah blah blah and decided to cut off my title and i did not like that because and the conversations you and i were having was that he probably wouldn't have done

that had i been male had this been a a different doctor somebody and so that kind of medical doctor or oh yeah even though PhDs have been around longer than MDs um yeah so that that kind of brought all that right back up and we were I remember we responded to the email and we put Dr. Sue and Charlie and I bolded I want to like bold it underline put it in yellow put like a freaking emoji well initially you wanted the opening sentence to be put some respect on my name don't forget my title essentially something like that and then you reigned me in a little just a little bit and then we never heard from them again so on yeah and it was just a series of things that have been happening recently with friends that I know especially those who are still

my friends my female friends who are still in the dating world um where they're noticing a distinct lack of understanding with some of the men they're running into between the difference between chivalry and respect and it's not about the difference in kindness and being nice like I have that conversation with people all the time like they're not the same thing and chivalry and respect are not the same thing at least not for everybody and so that's how we got here really just a lot of things that pissed me off on on like a three that's why I feel like most of my life happens it's like things piss me off and then we do an episode I think that's an important uh distinction though chivalry does not equal automatically signs of respect

because the way i mean if we go back to the very basic beginning notion of this code of chivalry it was for knights in in medieval england to live by a code to protect the weak and women oh it's not redundant in that code i thought those were the same thing uh so so if we go back to that and then and then we bring ourselves today to today there's an inherent power dynamic built into that code there's strength and there's weakness and it's a perception in many in many ways it's a perception of strength and i made it you know all that all that stuff but then we come to modern day chivalry air quotes and this this this idea in society that if a man because chivalry when we talk about chivalry it's always

centered around acts men perform for women or to women and perform being the keyword um and and it's taught in a way that like if you do this you are showing respect but what gets left out of that is so much of what we've talked about talked about up to this episode is consent and receiving the feedback and information from the other person that you're engaging with, with this code of chivalry. And so often, Dr. Sue, I, I'm not sure I have an idea, but I'm not sure about your whole experience. But oftentimes what I have experienced, is if I don't accept the act of chivalry, the holding the door open or what have you, if I'm just not, if I'm just in my head, it has nothing to do with the person offering.

I just don't want to engage with it. I just want to be in my own little self bubbles. But if I say no, or if I say no, thank you. Even if I say no, thank you with a smile to do all the things to make sure i'm not engaging with someone who's potentially dangerous then i get called you ungrateful ungrateful bitch or whatever so then that that's not centered around protecting me respecting me it's centered around a your need for acknowledgement of an act of what you deem as kindness and what i might deem in that moment as intrusive yeah that's i'd like to say i didn't get called a bitch but i did by this person who was trying to be so polite to me it happened a few there's one i want to tell him specifically there was a

a student who was in uniform because we had students in uniform on the campus that i was on waiting at the elevator he had been there but you know it was one of these slow ass elevators he had been there for god knows how long could have been an hour the way the elevator was down in that building um i walked up behind him he didn't see me at first then he saw me turn around you know did his double takes saw me behind him elevator opened he held the door for me and i said no thanks i'm good and he's like no i insist and i'm like no thanks i'm good the fact that you are insisting on applying respect in a way that works for you and i have just said like you said no i just said no and i had said thanks and so i decided to do a little standoff and see what

happened first if he would give in or if his little brain would explode um and he just kind of kept looking at me and i looked at my watch i'm like buddy i don't got to be anywhere for an hour do you really want to wait this out um and so finally he he and i wasn't trying to upset him but it was it was one of those i was having a day and i was just tired i was tired of the fake respect because i saw that a lot and i think we i may actually forget the difference between nice and kind because that had started that day for me um he finally went on the elevator i was very proud of him i got on after him and he never made eye contact um but it was this idea of i i did the thing okay and i am saying no thank you and i was i was polite um but it's it's what you were saying

It's the I want to be rewarded. I want to be acknowledged that I did the right thing. But it's right. It's the question is, is who's it right by? And I want to say this because I do have friends who very much appreciate when their partners open doors for them or. Right. Yeah. I have a female friend. We were walking and her partner was actually with us. It was like five or six of us and we were walking. We got to a door and she stopped and I almost rammed into the back of her because she stopped and like, what the fuck are you doing? She's like, well, I'm waiting for him to open the door. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. But it was important to her. It was important to her that they do that and that I almost run into her apparently. So we're not saying it's wrong for anyone who likes those things. You like someone to open the door for you, that's great.

If you like to open the door and like the appreciation you get, that's fine. We're not saying that the behavior is wrong. We're saying that the behavior becomes performative or it becomes not about respect. Or I shouldn't say we. I'm kind of speaking for me, but I think you're right on the same page. um what we're saying is that it's not about respect when you refuse to when the person refuses to allow you to do it and you get angry because at that point it's not about respect you have i have just said no you offered i said no you getting angry at me shows that you didn't

this isn't about respect anymore it's about power and it's about the it's about the performance piece it's about yeah and i i want to i want to reiterate that that i'm not we're not saying that there's anything wrong with opening doors for people but the piece that is missing in modern society is hearing the other side and the consent the consent to it and i know that that may i i appreciate that that might feel like a buzzword to many but this is the basis of so many of our conversations is that consent is in it's not just an explicit no and it's not just the absence of a yes they're all not always about sex right right it's about personal space it's about i just need to be in my feels in my day and i didn't want to engage i didn't want to people and now you were

forcing me if you if you don't hear me say no thank you or you take offense to the no thank you first of all I don't know you so there's no way that this can be personal my ears there's no way that this can be personal it is just very much about listening to each other and respecting each other the respect comes with honoring what the other person in the transaction in the interaction in the socialization honoring their boundaries and their wishes and knowing that you did what was right for you and what's even better to level up is to respect what they say and hear what they say that's it that's it this whole episode right there yeah we're done we're done for those of you who think that we're blowing this out of proportion i want to give you another story from the south

not on campus this time I was at a medical building I don't know why I just flagged on the word building I was in a medical building waiting for the elevator there was a man in front of me held the elevator door I said no thank you and he got angry he's like no I'm holding the door and I'm like no you're not for me or not and he was like you know I don't remember what he said because I was like in the middle of being late for an appointment because I couldn't find parking um but it was just one of these moments i'm like no and he like stared at me like i had bitch slapped his mother and then got in the elevator and so for those of you who don't think this is about safety and consent would you if you if you were in my shoes would you have gotten in

that elevator with this person who was staring at you like he wanted to hurt you i wound up taking the stairs which was actually faster than the elevator um but it's a site like you don't i think people aren't getting what it means and especially if you've never felt unsafe in a situation because of your gender or your size i think it's really easy to be like oh you know it was just it was just they were offended because they wanted to do the right thing but again i come back to the right thing by whom because it was the right by who by whom god english songs but what it comes back to is that if it was the right thing by me why are you now mean mugging me why are you making me feel threatened i should have gotten on the elevator and just stared at him um but it just

wasn't wasn't the headspace for that um but but if it's supposed to be being right by me then why are you now treating me like like i have done something to you like i have i am less than like i deserve this anger for laying down a boundary because that's what it is i'm pretty sure this guy had never really had to deal with people laying down boundaries yeah so if you don't get that this is about consent i want you to imagine that situation and what and and how how that's not kind of about consent and boundaries yeah i think another piece of this too is i can imagine some listeners especially those who grew up in the south with this kind of code of men have these actions that they need to perform in society and it's not because they don't think women can

although um dot dot dot um but that there's this social conditioning as our listeners know i love to point to but this social conditioning that it seems those of us who didn't grow up with that or grew up with appreciate it if you want to appreciate it say no thank you if you want if you don't want to engage with it that we're we're meant to come to their side of the table and have some understanding at which I take issue with because the assumption that I don't understand the cultural nuances of this country and the social expectations and ideas and conditionings of the different parts of this country that's that's a big assumption on many people's parts but where in there is there space for me to say I just didn't grow up that way and

it makes me uncomfortable yeah and that's got to be okay too yeah like it is okay if that was how you grew up and those are the things that you hold dear to your character all we're asking is leave room for the conversation and the other person or people in that equation when that interaction is happening and acknowledge it and don't take it personally because especially if strangers they don't know who the fuck you are yeah like you're not the center of their universe yep has nothing to do with you not until you dig in well then maybe the other person Dr. Sue will dig in and then it just becomes a power of will right and depending on how much time I have I may I want to take it back to my students specifically especially those who were going into the health

care industry now i understand that life is very different from when i left the south now and um some states are trying to go back in time and say that there are only two genders which we know there are not because those are socially constructed uh part of the reason i wanted my students to stop using ma'am was to get them out of the habit because there are some people who don't like that term because they weren't raised in that kind of culture and environment um or because they find the term offensive or because they feel it's a very ages term the number of women I hear say don't call me ma'am I'm not that old like there's a lot of baggage that comes with that word and so for me it was about breaking down that barrier

and getting them to see that a lot of times it had nothing to do with respect like I said before it was a filler word I got a ma'am sandwich I got ma'am'd five times in four sentences because I was counting oh that that's not about because it opened and closed one sentence and then opened the next one that's not about respect that had nothing to do that was a placeholder i had so what happened what would happen if you did use ma'am and i had it in my syllabus like don't call me ma'am um if if you did call me ma'am here's here's the terrible thing that would happen i would say hey do me a favor don't use that term oh my god i know dr sue i know did you fall over are you okay i should have warned you sorry i i gotta i gotta re-evaluate my

principles now yeah that was the whole thing I would simply say hey do me a favor don't use that term and then as we get on the semester they would get better at it and it was interesting because someone would be like man oh kidding I was gonna say and then they come up with like a random m word it was kind of funny after a while but that was that was that was the end all be all of it was hey do me a favor don't use that term for me it's not appropriate I had a student who was so bothered so bothered and it was a I don't know if it I'm guessing it it was it was on evaluations and it was when it was still written so i'm guessing it was a woman just from the the curly frilliness of the writing the legibility yes so obviously not pre-med um not that we're

into gender stereotypes or anything this student was so bothered so we do evaluations like what week 11 or 12 in the semester so all of three months of me just going hey that's you know Let's just not use that term in here. Like, you can call me doctor, professor. Hey, you works really well. Like, I had one student who kept calling me your highness, which I just thought was hysterical. um this student was so bothered by my saying please don't use ma'am that in my evaluation my official evaluation they wrote that i refused to respect them because i would not i would not understanding that they were raised in a culture that it was okay and that i had threatened to fail them which was nowhere near my syllabus that'd be a really fun thing to add to my syllabus if you piss me off i get to fail you that'd be a fun little easter egg right how far did you read

but that i would fail them and that i created this space where it felt really unsafe and i'm like are you are you kidding me like were you in class because i never once said that so yeah and i worry that this person went into health care and what happened the first time someone said don't not even if it was a gender thing or maybe just don't use that name like yeah as michael jones but please call me mj no one calls me michael and i hate it i won't even respond to it like yeah if you can't even understand like i'm baffled that that was their reaction because it was so far from what was actually happening and it was so much about her about the student we'll pretend the frilly writing may have been either any gender

um so much about them it was so much about them that they couldn't get that when the way you address someone is supposed to be respecting them and they miss the point I think that's the thing that pisses me off more than anything else is that they miss the point when you call me something and I say please don't call me that and you insist on it you are missing the point that you were supposed to be respecting me if you hold the elevator for me or Charlie and we say no thank you and you keep insisting it's now not about respect it's about you trying to force us to do something so you can feel better like get a point like is there a star right is there a star is that what it is am i blocking someone dr sue could get on board yeah if there's a star or a badge or a

tiara or or a sticker oh yes so if i'm stopping you from leveling up like then i could understand why you're pissed um but but we need people to understand and i think that's the whole point of this because i'm sure people like really they're doing a whole episode and like holding the door yes yes we are because there's nothing to do with holding the door no it is wholly symbolic of what we get to at in many of our episodes and that is consent and paying attention to the other person and paying attention to their comfort and hearing them when they even if they say no thank you if they say in the holding the door example because there's many examples of chivalry in modern society but in the holding the door example if they say no you go ahead

then just do it yeah yeah what do you lose yeah honestly what do you lose i i have a story um several years ago i was moving and i had the luxury of being able to hire um movers yeah that's what we that's what we hit adulting I know you hit a certain age and asking your friends to help you move your couch in your bed just like no for pizza and beer yeah absolutely not yeah not with my back yeah exactly you want to pay for my chiropractor appointment so um very very amazing team of movers and one of them kept saying miss charlie and and i understood why um but i also said gina and after a couple of times i let it happen a couple of times and then as we got on through the day and through the experience i was like you know

what please call me Charlie well my mom I said well I don't know your mom and if I ever run into her and she asked me or if you come up to if we see each other and you're with your mother and you call me Charlie and she says hey you're supposed to say Miss Charlie or whatever I'm gonna step in and say no no no no he did that and then I asked him to call me Charlie I gave him permission I gave him a pass to call me Charlie he didn't have to call me Miss Charlie anymore but he absolutely did so but that's the piece it's the listening it's and it's the mutual respect because i i absolutely understood the um the cultural background background and how um how his community raised him to talk to his elders interact with his elders and say miss charlie

i understood that and i respected it and then as we got and especially initially when they show when he showed up initially like you're getting to know each other and like what the rapport is going to be throughout the day and then you hit a certain level and you're like you know what now we're friends yeah you've just now we're friends for today so just call me charlie you've just picked up all my boxes of like all my crap you may call me charlie yeah yeah you packed my bedroom you can call me charlie you saw my closet so it's it's that piece but that was the mutual respect there was an understanding there was my

understanding of his experience and then an understanding of this mutual experience that we were building together and then a request or or permission and then going from there And then just understanding, like, he would have been uncomfortable because on some level, I think he thought his mom would find out. And so that's where that piece comes into of like, you have done that, though. You have respected your mother and the way that she raised you. You have done that. Now I'm asking you for our interaction. Let's respect that and create our own dynamic.

you've now ruined that kid for the right no i'm just kidding they doubt it you know the thing or just add it to the list yeah the the thing is again for those of you who are are still listening although i'm sure the people who are just like whatever this is about holding a door they're long gone so hi everyone um if people don't think this is about power then watch what happens when you try to reverse the gender roles um i have held doors for men because i was taught the way i was raised my upbringing was you hold the door for anyone who's got stuff in their hands anyone on crutches anyone anyone who's struggling or just if you get there first like that was the basic rule like whoever gets whoever touches the door first gets

to open it the number of fights and this is not a south thing this is an all-over thing like i've had this happen where i am now um i had a faculty member i was working with who would refuse to go through any door I opened and I'm like wow it's just incredibly rude like just incredibly rude that you won't let me hold the door for him for you and he was like well it's incredibly rude and now we just don't yeah well he's gone now so it's okay there you go um but the number of men I have run into in my life where I open the door first and it's like it's okay if they have stuff in their hands like oh thanks it's okay like I appreciate it but if they don't I have had men who will refuse to go through the door and if they're with a female partner oh yeah no i've

had that and it's like so if you if you don't think this is about respect and power like again question why question why when the gender roles were reversed suddenly people were like no no no no um do you want to talk about being with the female partner thing sure go ahead no it's just it's always interesting to me because and especially out here on on the best coast i did that for your face for those of you who don't have video there was a face and i peeked it right after i said it um that wasn't respectful no oh well then let me hold the door for you um ma'am um wow we are just evolving here so quickly

i just dropped my headphones everyone i made her laugh so hard she knocked her headphones off okay so technical technical difficulties aside headphones falling off and such the story that i want to get that was non-technical difficulties that was the east coast getting revenge that was karma okay okay sure it's nothing to do with my silky soft hair this is this really is going to devolve into it east coast west coast thing you make it sound like it didn't when we first met but okay so out here on the best coast I find that it doesn't happen often but when it does it throws me off so there will be times where i'll get to

the door first or i'll see a couple um going to you know coming into the same restaurant that i'm about to head into and because i'm there first just as we were talking about i'll hold the door open especially if i'm by myself like i'm just gonna i'm gonna go to the bar i'm not gonna wait for a table or anything like that i'm just i'm gonna enjoy a nice solo evening and treat myself and so i'll hold the door open and the the a female partner never never takes issue with it now i don't know if there's a conversation about it later i don't think that there is but that just could be my assumption um but the the look of Bill Wilderman and I don't I don't know what to do with my hands kind of reaction that I get from the male partner in those situations and they'll

try and they'll try and go and you know put their arm over you to hold the door so you can scoot under right or that or that they're signaling like no no i got it it's like no no go ahead like get your name on the list i'm just going to the bar you know and sometimes if i if i present it that way it's a little less it's received better but if i don't say anything then there's just this look of like a fucking women's lib or whatever you know it's like it's very it's very delicate balance and it's interesting you bring it up being on the left coast because one of the big issues i found moving east coast to west coast was that the difference between being nice and being kind and so this is gonna start a fight between the two of us so so what i find is

that in the east coast people were we're not nice we're not we're kind but we're not nice you're just when it comes out like you do something stupid we're going to tell you you're doing something stupid but then if you need our help we're going to help you while we tell you how stupid you are on the left coast the west coast i found that people were like polite to my face but there is no action behind it and so for me and it took me a long time to name that when i first moved out there took me a long time to name like what is it about this that bothers me outside of just like the weather differences and time zones and water out there sucks um it was it was trying to figure out and i remember when i was finally i'm in conversation with someone and i

was able to name it and what happened was it was i'm a klutz i'm a horrible horrible klutz and so when i had been living in the dc area i was teaching in university and i knocked over my water and my kids were like well that was really stupid well they didn't actually call me stupid that we were far enough in then like again seriously Dr. Milstein but then like three of them got up

and went to the bathroom and got napkins to help me clean up the mess it was not the first nor the last time I had done something like that so move out to California

same thing I'm still a klutz I didn't lose that just because I moved west and I knocked it over and they're like oh Dr. Milstein are you okay

I'm like yeah like frantically trying to get stuff out of the way they're like oh okay a couple of them like scooted their own stuff back

and I'm like that right there and it took me a really long time to name the difference but that right there was the difference between like doing something about what looks the right words and then the action behind it and i don't know if you agree with me or if i just started or if i continued our rift of east coast west coast um and that's a lot of what it is and i know some people like wait i gotta pause this and think about my culture like right where i am in the country yeah um and and so for me that's that was really the thing like it was it was always about is what you're doing the action that you're supposed to do oh Dr. Melstein you knocked over

something again oh are you okay versus oh like you knock something over let me help you and that's where I started being able to kind of look at that it wasn't it wasn't the thing that you were doing for the sake of doing it it was the kindness it was the it was the attempt to help me clean up it was the letting me hold the door for you it was respecting my no and so it took me a long time to realize that that was the thing and then as soon as i was able to name it and then put it together with the gender piece um yeah that's when it all kind of came together that was my light bulb moment for that and my attempt to make a dig at uh you after that little west coast comment so this is just i'm just i'm in sunshine so it doesn't bother me whatever

but the thing is i want to and i want to go back to this idea of if you don't think it's a big deal with the gender swapping so i was coming out of a box store home improvement kind of place hadn't gotten anything there was someone like two cars down from where i was packed parked packed apparently i've been to boston recently sorry boston folks i didn't mean to um i always mean we're getting every region today um but he looked like he was struggling and he was like my dad's age and he was trying to lift something really heavy from like you know like the flatbed carts that never quite say still when you need to lift something heavy off of them and i'm like yeah yeah and i was very polite and i went over and i said sir so maybe i pissed him

off by saying sir i was like sir do you need a hand and he's like oh am i blocking your car and I'm like no you you look like you're struggling I was wondering if I could help you and I obviously insulted Dennis's manhood in that he's like no I'm fine and it was like anger and I don't maybe that was anger at his own body for being old maybe that was anger for the point that I was pointing out that he was struggling there may have been a lot of it wrapped up for him and that I've never had a woman react to a situation like that hey you know you look like you need a hand can I help you and some of them are like no I'm good or like well fuck you talking to me um but no one has ever taken it personally the way that that that person did and that

has happened repeatedly because now i go out of my way anytime i think a man is struggling to help him well i i do i i would be remiss if i didn't provide this consistency though his reaction was not about you it was absolutely not about me yeah um but and and this also goes to the interesting the interesting discussion about the gender norms because many times maybe some of the women want to say no but they don't want to seem rude because it's another woman and they feel you know so there's a yeah it's like it could be all over the place but we just want i think the whole point of this was just to really think about the things that you're doing you are valued listeners and viewers like think about the things that are happening

around you and if you're doing them out of respect like true respect for another human being that you don't know or if you're doing it out of performance or if you're doing it to model it maybe you're modeling for your child what respect should look like but just really thinking about what that means and are you having the conversation when it doesn't go the way you expect it to especially if you're modeling it for other kids like thinking about that person who helped you move so i think we just want people to think more about it and just the consent piece that's rolled up in it and just as things are changing like how do we start having these discussions that are not just about holding doors right right and and making space for that self-reflection piece

if I'm if I take it personally what does like then what does that mean about my motive to do it right whereas if I'm doing it because I truly just it's convenient for me I'm right there I can help I have the ability and they still say no and I say okay and I don't feel any type of way about it other than like they maybe maybe in that day they didn't want it but they just needed to know somebody else saw them mm-hmm like they're it's so nuanced and so just I think a big piece of this is look back and look at your reactions for when people declined your chivalry yep and and unpack that super easy homework yeah homework so let's unpack we'll unpack your emotional conditioning yeah that's never a homework like 48 hours yeah perhaps you know someone's gonna

be like well doctors you just told a story where she didn't do that i'm like but actually i did because i realized like how much that was wrapped up in the gender piece but yeah just think about think about what it means think about that it's not that simple and i know i've talked about this on another episode i was working with a widower a widow widower support group and one of the guys decided he wanted to date again he was an older gentleman and he's like i don't i don't know how to do this do i do i hold her chair like is she gonna get mad do we still do that and and i said well, why do you want to hold her chair? And he said, well, I just, I was always taught that that was respectful. I'm like, okay, well, what happens if she says no? And he goes, well, I'd be okay

with it. If she didn't yell at me, I think was kind of like the, he had that cringy, like, I think I'd be okay with it. Um, if someone offers you, I, the other thing that I'm seeing is people, I saw this recently on a different campus, um, where someone held the door for a woman. She's like i don't need your help and i'm like that really wasn't like like looking at your own reaction like you were just talking about yeah on both sides of it yeah um don't always assume that it has anything to do with your gender don't always assume it has anything to do with you looking helpless or frail it could just be someone who's in a great mood and wants to do a good deed and chalk it up for the day so um just really kind of looking at something as simple as

holding doors it's really about that yeah i have no idea what the title of this episode is going to wind up being stay tuned listen you'll know what the title is but it's where you click on it it's always a mystery to us because we never do because we never like we just do some brainstorming and we're like oh yeah that sounds good that sounds about right we never know quite where our conversations are going but yeah just be kind man yeah not nice be kind be kind and nice i guess if you have to i mean nice is a nice gateway yeah just make sure you back up the niceness with the kindness there you go which means action don't be a dick there we go that's our merch idea don't be a dick don't be a dick

regardless of gender yeah man just yeah it's it's really that the chivalry the basis of it and the and the perpetual use of it is so often weaponized because like in one of your the one of the recent examples you gave the the gentleman getting ready to date i just don't want her to yell at me how much of that was from like all the punchline jokes about women's lib being like i don't you know it just it just is so nuanced and it's just about paying attention to each other so be kind you don't be a dick yeah and if someone says no thank you for anything ever it's not an invitation to be convinced

they meant no thank you and it has nothing to do with you even if it's something as simple as offering a bite of your food if they say no thank you oh do you have strangers offering you bites of food no friends okay but that's an important part this isn't just about strangers this isn't this is about any interaction and there's that there's that piece in in maybe family dynamics where sharing your food or whatever or like you have your own plate of food and someone in your family reaches over and takes i just thought that was an invitation to stab them is that not what that is clearly i should have grown up on the west east coast is is that why i'm not invited to family mess anymore

but that's that's really the thing though like don't assume that you can just take a sip of somebody's drink because you're on a familiar level oh my god always like the but that's that's what it this is a whole spectrum of stuff yeah of respect you want respect and consideration make room for the respect and consideration of the other person you're expecting it from. Yep.

And on that note, is there anything else or is that a good note? I think it's a good note. I think we kind of nailed it with be kind and don't be a dick. Whichever one resonates with you. West coast, east coast. Be kind. Don't be a dick. Fucking universal. yeah and if you're in england it's a whole different phrase which i personally love

but i know it's a little tenuous over here in the states so i will respect our listeners ears and not use it there you go so anyway i want to thank you all for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex with dr sue and charlie we hope today's episode sparked new thoughts will open up conversations worth having and remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships and dare I say it human interaction how we people together if you enjoyed this show um this episode please subscribe leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this and if you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into reach out to us via the link in the

episode description a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting unzipping taboos don't forget you get up to 20 off your order with the code unzipping20 we want to give a very special shout out to ali o'brien for our incredible theme music thank you so much ali and until next time keep the conversation going keep unzipping those taboos and everyone take care © transcript Emily Beynon