If chivalry isn't quite dead, it's definitely on its last legs and in need of life support, or cryogenic freezing, until someone comes along and invents a cure.
Growing up around my father I used to think that being a gentleman was the natural way of man and to this day it still puts a smile in my heart when my mother walks in a room and my father stands up until she sits down, leaves the room or asks him to sit down.
He always opens the car door for her and no matter how cold it is outside he'll stand there in the thinnest of shirts if it means his jacket will keep her warm. It's the way it's always been and as a little girl, I just assumed that's the way things were always done.
It's a sad reflection on society today that I'm actually genuinely surprised when a man holds the door open for me or carries my shopping and I nearly fell over in shock a couple of months ago, when out for dinner with a group of friends, I left the table for a couple of minutes and on my return one of the men at the table stood up (kudos Danny!).
But, what's an even sadder reflection on society today, is that a couple of the other guys at the table looked at him like he'd just grown an extra head. The women at the table on the other hand all smiled and looked at each other with awed looks on their faces.
The men among you reading this will all grunt knowingly and put it down to the fact that Danny was just trying to show off or impress the girlies but the fact is it was done with such natural ease that it was blatantly obvious it was just the way he's been brought up. His mama taught him well!
It's amusing really when you think about the lengths men will go to when they're trying to impress a woman, from boasting about the money they make and the car that they drive to performing daring feats of strength (by which, I mean head-butting each other 'just for the fun of it') to prove their masculinity.
Few would even think of something as simple as pulling out a woman's chair in a restaurant before she sits down but ask nine out of 10 women and they will tell you that they're much more impressed with good manners than macho bravado.
And yet, irony of all ironies, is that it's us women who are largely to blame for this depressing turn of events.
The advent of feminism and so-called equality has a lot to answer for. Women went out to work and children became latch-key kids who had little, or no, influence around the home to teach them manners, which in turn means that many of our generation now are bringing up their children with few (if any) of the values that were instilled into our parents when they were growing up.
Add feminism into the mix and we now have men who are scared to hold open a door or offer to carry a heavy box for a woman in case he's accused of being sexist.
I'm all for anti-chauvinism ... but feminism be damned! We're women, we're supposed to be different and trying to pretend that we're equal to men is ridiculous!
Yes, we can do almost anything a man can do and it's no secret that we're intellectually superior but women are known as the fairer sex for a reason and, rather than bemoaning it, we should be embracing it and using it to our advantage.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an independent woman who's proud of the fact that I provide for myself and my son and I never want to be in a situation where I have to depend on a man to take care of me.
I can change my own car tyre and build my own flat-pack, hang my own pictures and change my own plug, I've even learned to wrap my hand around a handle and pull open my own door, but with all that said, I'm not a man and don't want to be treated like one ... and after a long day at work, I'd much rather be the woman in the kitchen cooking dinner, than the man in the living room getting sweaty, drilling holes and putting up shelves!
