I guess I’ve established that I won’t make a boy a sandwich, but have I gone too far?

I don’t exactly know how it got to this point, except I can say that over the past two years, I’ve somehow became that feminist chick. In a typical teen movie fashion, I began to preach on lunch tables and in physics class about the importance of higher education and equal pay. I made frequent references in casual conversations to the greatness of Hilary Rodham Clinton. I denounced Disney for only making one animated movie, Mulan, with a strong female role.

What’s worse is that no one seems to understand. Or care.

And it’s prompted me to wonder: have I taken the dream of smashing patriarchy too far?

Last week, a guy friend of mine, let’s call him Sam Dorsch (because that’s his name), opened the car door for me when he picked me up for a study group. It seemed silly. Neither my arms nor opposable thumbs were broken or in any way handicapped, and I was soundly capable of opening my own door. I refused to get in until the door was shut and I could open it myself. 

I kind of shook it off as a joke, but in the weeks following the incident, I was mocked by the guys and questioned ceaselessly by my dainty girl friends. “He was just trying to be a gentleman,” they say sympathetically. “It was so nice of him.”

It had me thinking: if I had been driving and was picking up a boy, would it be socially acceptable to step out of the vehicle and open his door?

“Well, of course not,” they shrug. “That would make him a wimp.”

I was certainly taken aback by the complacency of my friends. I thought girls at least disliked the idea of their having their individual liberties slowly stripped away.

But instead they liked boys being in the lead. They liked the gentlemanly acts, the pulling out seats, the paying for the entire dinner bill and casually saying “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”  They liked being the one waiting for the Homecoming invitation and saw no problem with spending thirty dollars weekly on gift baskets for boy athletes. We were preconditioned to put men in the lead and leave girls in the dust.

Even my mom— my full-time working, doctor flesh and blood— agreed with the rest.

“Save your energy bigger battles,” she scolded.

But how could I, mother dearest, when I saw injustice everywhere? It went deeper than a silly refusal to get into Sam’s car. Making jokes about women’s rights and sandwiches, listening to Lil’ Wayne rap about strippers and hookers and all sorts of other very respectable things. Eating at Hooters, watching Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on the jumbotron. How we as a society have placed so much emphasis on men’s sports while outright ignoring accomplishments of female athletes. And how even though strides in the professional world have been made, people are still surprised to know my mother is the doctor in the family.

My peers can call me insane, aggresive and all together unreasonable.

Still, it’s a battle I’ll continue to fight, one  car door at a time.