I was raised to be polite, and to speak 'correctly' in the midst of a rough seventies council housing estate. It didn't befriend me to my peers...!! But I have since learned the value of formal cordialities.

It's deeply sad to me, as a woman who is fiercely pro-equality, amongst many other err potentially contaversial 'political' matters, that some women of my generation and younger, take offence at nice gents who simply do what feels right and natural to them.

Sometimes, as a woman you get the elderly gent who insists on offering you his seat on the bus. The greatest difficulty I have in such a situation, is declining in a manner that does not offend. "Thankyou so much. But I'm getting off shortly" Is my response in such an ocassion. I admire the man immensley for his gentility though.

There is a place and a time for correct confrontation, but when someone is simply expressing their socially motivated impulses in the best possible manner, that is not it.

I'm always a little 'wrong footed' when a gent holds open a door for me. But it's up to me to deal with that unexpected feeling. It only ever happens with men of forty or over, and in fact in my personal experience of close male aquaintances, has probably occured most predictably with an exceedingly forward-minded homosexual gent friend of mine, who is now in in his late sixties.

This man has lived through generations of social predjudice and abuse, icluding bricks through his London apartment windows. And I find it warm and charming, that he always retains his gentlemanly style with me. If he takes me out for tea, he always holds open the door for me. That's probably the closest I'll ever get to feeling like 'a lady'.