On rejecting the helping hand from a gent

Today, I sat in a very interesting course, in which I had some chords stricken by the instructor, Ms Bess.

She's from Mainland China, simple but quite scholarly. But she is of nerd, to certain extent. I could tell she read a lot and thought a lot from her quotation of Marcel Proust (French master of Stream of Consciousness, the author of In Search of Lost Time), theories of sociologies and some of the modern cultural critics.

It was until she imposed a question,"If you, as a female, walk on the street with handful of bulky goods. And you are walking with a male, who is not necessarily sharing intimate relationship with you. If he ask to offer a helping hand, would you let him help you?", did I react at once.

When almost all of the present classmates nodding their heads and say yes, I voiced out,"Well, that really depends."

Ms. Bess seemed to be aroused interests in my response and asked me for reasons.

"Well, I shall say, if...I mean if....I as a female, though, I can still handle the bulky goods with my own ability and I don't feel anything wrong handling them myself, why would I bother letting him offer me a helping hand. I don't wanna be dependent on him just because of my gender, or even him being a gentleman."

I heard arguing or perhaps disagreeing sound in the classroom.

However, the thing is, I could be right, as Bess had also consented.

As far as I am concerned, gender equality was debated mainly on important occasions like women suffrages or equal opportunities in workplace , but not on daily matters or details. In this case, although it might be interpreted as overly sensitive, accepting male help might be a sign of showing submissiveness.

So far as I have written....I found that maybe I am a feminist, hopefully in a good way....LOL

Still got a lot of course to sit in and tons of decision to make. That, perhaps, is called HIGHER EDUCATION: always trapping you to make give-or-take choices..

What a pain....T*T