(Post 2) I'm Not A Feminist, Because I Don't Hate Men.

This past weekend I was visiting my home town of London, Ontario to spend time with my family and friends for the Thanksgiving weekend. I was at my boyfriends house when I instinctively asked him to get me a glass of water. He dutifully paused the movie we were watching to go fetch me a glass of water. As he handed me the glass and I thanked him, and I was struck with the idea that we had been discussing about gender roles in class and followed the gratitude with a statement around the lines of "see, I'm not against gender roles". My boyfriend, replied with "yeah, if you played into gender roles, it'd be you grabbing ME the drink" he said jokingly. It then struck me that my idea of gender roles was completely different than what his was.
It's not that my boyfriend is sexist, it's actually very much the opposite. He's the old-fashioned-gentleman-type that would throw his coat over a puddle so your brand new louboutins wouldn't get wet.
To me, when I stated I wasn't against gender roles, I meant that I was for them, or at least my idea of them. In my mind 'gender roles' was that a man would care for his S.O, pay for dinner, hold the door open for her and in return the S.O. would enjoy cooking or cleaning and make sure the dishes were taken care of. Which I'm absolutely on board with. However, after realizing what his idea of gender roles was, I had to re-think my argument. I've grown up in a world where woman have been empowered. I've never lived in a day where I felt as though I was deprived of anything simply because of my gender. Quite the contrary in fact, I love being a woman.
I love cooking, I always have. Not just cooking either. Baking, and cleaning, folding laundry, doing the dishes. It's instinctive to me that a woman should be able to do, and enjoy, these tasks. Not just for the sake of a man, but for herself in order to be a strong independent woman. I didn't learn to enjoy these things with the hopes of making anyone but myself happy.
I got the feeling that when I mentioned gender roles to my boyfriend that he took it as a derogatory term. Like I was saying woman should be slaves to the whim of their husbands. It really opened my eyes to a concept that had never once crossed my mind. That a woman would be less valued, or treated unfairly because of her gender. To me, that's not what constitutes gender roles. The point i'm trying to make is that I never thought that gender roles were restrictive. I feel like in modern society there's too many strong independent women as role models who prove that as long as you have self esteem, and stand up for yourself, you should never be put in a situation where you feel unworthy of any opportunity.