A question for the men and women of The Escapist

[Baby Tea]

I did the exact same thing at a concert I was at.
My girlfriend at the time (Who is now my awesome wife) and I were off to the side, since we weren't interested in that retarded angsty-flailing called 'fight dancing', but the 'pit' was getting bigger, so I stood between the edge and her. She didn't mind.

 

[Von Strimmer]

Sounds like the OP accidently copped a feel and is now trying to justify himself to a bunch of randoms on the interwebs...

Just kidding in all seriousness I have been in the same situation before and I did the exact same thing. However I dont see it as sexist and dont define the gender. It's just minding a friend and good manners.

 

[Appleshampoo]

Welcome my friend, to a dwindling little club I like to call 'Being a real man'. It's surprisingly hard to find other men who are proud to help out Women, even more so with all this 'SEXIST LAL' crap going around.

Hats off to you!

 

[Dogstile]

Maybe it's just me, but random fuckfaces smashing into me in a mosh pit would likely lead to me swingin' punches and throwin' 'bows. I don't like that shit. Get the fuck offa me.

In which case, get the fuck out of the mosh pit. The reason its there is so people can smash into eachother. Swinging punches will just get you knocked out, because everyone will turn on you.

OT:

I've done it once, although not directly. There was this asshole in the mosh pit running and doing full on dives into the crowd and he kept causing injury's with his feet. This little 5ft 1 or so girl took a foot to the face, then he tried for a second dive and I noticed he was gonna hit her again.

Que bodyslam and telling him to fuck off. Got me a cheer and a beer off her boyfriend (who wasn't a large guy by any means). Good show really. I think it depends on the situation though, if a girls taking slams in a mosh pit but she's smiling and giving back as good as she's getting i'm obviously just gonna keep moshing and not give a damn.

 

[Gamer_152]

Male here and a rather skinny one at that. Personally it would depend on what I knew about the girl, if it was someone rather shy who I thought would want to be protected then yes, I'd shield them but otherwise I wouldn't make any presumptions.

 

[GeorgW]

The question is, would you do the same for a, let's say, short, weak man?

For me, yeah I do that. I believe in chivalry. I like to do that stuff, it doesn't reflect my view on the person in question.

 

[Fetzenfisch]

its a natural reflex. and though it sometimes sucks to play the bodyshield, i rather have a little less fun at the concert than having to scrape her remains off the other's boots.this only applies near to a moshpit, i am kinda grown out moshing myself, so i am usually standing between them and the crowd just standing around. If she insists to go to the front despite the pit, she better knows what that means. I am happy to help and protect if necessary, but i wont follow a crazygirl into a huge pit she has no chance in, i at least want to follow a little bit of the concert.
Luckily my pitlovin GF knows how to make a stand in the brawl ;-P "If you have no blackspots and bruises you havent been to a concert"

 

[Turing]

If she's a in mosh pit odds are she knows how a mosh pit works.
Of course, helping a friend is admirable but on the other hand did she actually need help cause if not I can see why your behaviour could be construed, at the very least, as overbearing.

Women are as equally capable as men to learn from the mistakes and assess situations, unless she asks for your help or its obvious she's in serious trouble (not just some bruises or a few cracked ribs), why is it that she needs your help to handle the mosh pit that she herself chose to be in?

Don't get me wrong, chivalry is great and all but what most of you kids call chivalry is actually a misplaced sense of protecting that more ends up as a display of chauvinism in the sense that you're telling her that her decisions are wrongly made and she can't handle the consequences, that you're somehow better suited to handle a problem she created than herself.
Yes, there's a tendency for woman to overreact to overbearing male friends that (perhaps subconsciously) signal that they are incapable of protecting themselves but its honestly not surprising how common the phenomenon is.

"A gentleman is a man who protects a women from all other men than himself"

In short: Chivalry is dead and women can take care of themselves as well as men, be gallant instead because they still like to be pampered

 

[Valnyan]

Female here, I just created an account to answer this actually.

From what I understand she was actually stronger than you, then, if anything, she should be the one protecting you.

It is not "more acceptable" to protect a woman that doesn't need it than it is for a man, I'm sure if it was a guy you wouldn't have protected him and that's totally illogical.

Now, to answer your question, if it were me in this situation, if I felt the guy was weaker than me I would have protected him. If he tried to protect me I would have been grateful if he was stronger, mad if he was weaker.
And to further answer, if I am with a group of peoples and that a stronger person (man or woman doesn't matter) protected me when there was someone weaker to protect, I wouldn't accept it.

If anything acting all chivalrous when you are weaker make it look like either you consider every woman as inferior to any man or that you have some kind of crush on her and try to impress her.

I'll just go with an example that doesn't take into account strenght at all. Your question is a bit like "Do you think we should always hold the door for women ?" to me.
Of course you should, when someone is before me I expect them to hold the door until I'm at arm lenght for it. But if I was a man I would expect as much, that have nothing to do with chivalry but with politeness and common sense.
You should always hold the door for peoples behind you, no matter their gender or age.

And I think the same, you should always protect the weakest peoples first, no matter their age and gender.

 

[templargunman]

I think men have a natural instinct to protect women they like, and I mean like literally, so friends too. I don't think you did anything wrong, and most men would've probably done the same. If you're worried about this because you actually think she might be annoyed, ask her. I tend to do this as well, but I'm bigger (if not taller) than any of the girls I hang out with, and I've never even noticed them acknowledging the fact I've done it in concerts. From the sound of your situation stood behind the girl so that people pushed into you instead of her, and that's not really a problem. If she's in a mosh pit voluntarily and you're trying to keep everyone off her, that's weird.

 

[Kenbo Slice]

A few months ago I did the same thing for one of my lady friends when we were watching System of a Down. She's really little and she was standing against the railing and I was standing behind her with my arms on each side of her trying to keep her from getting shoved around.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

As a result, I did my best to try to shield her as best as I could from the people pushing forward. Now, for context, I'm a tall but not very muscular guy, and she's also fairly tall and could've probably held her own if a mosh pit had broken out. In short, she wasn't helpless, but I still felt the need to try to protect her as much as I could.

My question for my fellow guys: How would you act in a similar scenario, and why?
And for the women: How would you feel being "protected" by a male friend? Would you accept his gesture, or would you prefer to take care of yourself?

I was in this situation before, me and a friend got right up to the front of a Razorlight concert, and the mosh pit was dreadful, to get that far forward we had to stand there all day (from 3pm to 11pm) so most people were already kinda tired, and pretty much everyone was plastered. There were girls being pulled out left right and centre by the guard guys because they couldn't stand the crush, so we both kind of "adopted" a girl, and stood behind them, trying to protect them from the lurching so they didn't get trampled on. Even though I'm not well built just the act of having your arms out around them helped greatly, and the girls would have been much worse off without us.

It was kind of an unspoken agreement between us and the girls, and they seemed happy enough at the beginning to let us protect them, because the alternative was getting crushed, but the strange thing was that the girls we stood over never stayed long, maybe a few songs, and then they would decide to go back out alone into the mosh pit. All in all we probably protected half a dozen different girls each throughout the concert. Maybe they didn't like feeling dependent on us, or were just suspicious of us as random guys in a mosh pit (can't blame them.)