"Men, it is not cool to not hold the door for a girl behind you. Chivalry is not dead. Men, you should be treating these girls like princesses." Sitting in the grass at this music festival, in between sets of rock and roll and country Christian music, this message was preached to the cheering crowd.

Now, my 15 year old self would have swooned over the band's well kept hair and savvy clothes, speaking on stage. I would have jumped at the thought that someone was going to treat me like a princess. But I am not a 15 year old girl anymore and it alarms me that there were women of all ages in the audience that may have bought into this message, not realizing what they were actually swooning over.

Now let's get one thing straight. I am not a girl. As a twenty one year-old human being I am a woman. This is the first step to achieving any form of equality. If you are a self-identifying male adult, you are a man and I am an adult self-identifying female, making me a woman. I am a woman, not a girl or a lady. Before we, as a society can level any kind of playing field, be it in the workplace or within our personal lives, our vocabulary needs to change. Let me repeat myself, I am an adult. I am female. I am independent. I am a person. I am a woman.

I don't ask for your respect, I demand it. This has nothing to do with my womanhood. It has to do with the fact that you are a human being and I am a human being, therefore, we should both command a mutual respect. It does not matter if we are at a Christian music festival or bumping into each other at the grocery store, if you're not going to hold the door for the person behind you, no matter where they identify on the gender spectrum, you do not need to hold it open for me.

Did you know that most of the rules of Chivalry had to do with regulating fair combat? I don't know about you, but I have never seen someone joust in actual combat, and if people still do that, it is definitely less common than it was in the Middle Ages. The truth is, our world is far from medieval times. I am not a princess that needs to be saved or a treasure that needs to be lead. I am a human being with my own hopes and ambitions.

So maybe Chivalry is dead, but I think that's okay - as long as the respect for other human beings is still very much alive.