a matter of trust

this morning the French intern who sits next to me came into work kind of limping, having apparently twisted her ankle during a basketball tournament that Saturday (she wasn't sure exactly what happened, except that when she got home it sort of hurt). Her ankle was swollen and she said it hurt a little. Since she only had a strapping to put on it, thus nothing to actually reduce the swelling, I proposed to go down to Boots and get her some proper anti-inflammatory gel. Having played a lot of basketball in years past, I've had my fair share of ankle twists and know how much they suck. For pretty much 90% of players I know (and myself) there's the initial injury, be it serious or not, then it's an endless series of infrequent incidents that show how fragile that ankle has become. Last year I even twisted my ankle pretty bad and limped around for 3-4 days after injuring it on the big bad floor...of the St Michel metro station. So I definitely related on a personal level to what this girl (who's pretty cool and I actually have gotten to know a little) was going through this morning, which made my offer all that more natural. But still you have to wonder how much motivation I would've shown if the person had been a large bearded dude and not a cute intern. It seems like in situations like these when as a guy you're able to provide comfort or protection to a girl, some kind of primal instinct ("I man, I protect tribe") takes over at least part of your decision-making, as though such an act was a way to prove your manliness. Which is pointedly absurd of course, but these things happen all the time, and I'm not sure we even realize it a tenth of the times. Heck I only thought of this because I was on the bus going home and thinking about what I could write about today. And, apart from at work, I tend to be pretty laid-back and not particularly alpha, so you have to think this sort of thing is quite prevalent. In these so-called post-feminist times there's often debates about the resiliency of sexism and the more subtle ways in which machismo still thrives, but I wonder where this sort of behavior would get classified. I definitely do not see it as an outright form of sexism (by virtue of playing on the imagery of women as weak) but more as evidence that these are never black-and-white issues, however curt some discussions on the matter might be. As for me all I can promise is that if I ever a bearded coworker dude I'm friends with twists his ankle, I'll make the same 3-min trip down to Boots and get him the anti-inflammatory gel he so rightfully deserves. That's what a real 21st century man would do, and I'd like to think I might one day be one of them and carry the torch of Rand-esque masculinity.