Calling All Gentlemen

We have been asked a lot of questions over the past few months of how we feel about #metoo.  There are so many conversations on the issue that challenge and unite us as women. However, we all must be careful that the pendulum does not sway too far to one side or the other. Obviously, being from two different generations we had two different perspectives, but we decided that rather than debate the issue (and to ward off further “Aziz Ansari” dates) we would extend some information for the men and our lives…

Mimi’s pick:  Peggy Noonan’s Wall Street Journal Opinion Editorial, America Needs More Gentlemen. Mimi also add’s that the MDC remembered one of the best definitions of a gentleman from John Walter Wayland in 1889. He learned it in college, so  listen up young men…

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

– John Walter Wayland

Mademoiselle’s pick: Julia Reed’s, The High & Low:  How to be a Southern Gentleman, is a witty take on being a gentleman, summing it up as, “If you want the girl, study. When you utter some lines, mean them. Travel with a winch and a chain. Go after maimed dogs. Take the woman you are in front of very, very seriously”.

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