Posted on 04/29/2003 1:39:27 PM PDT by fhardesian
Is Chivalry Dead?
By Bernard Chapin
There are a great many burdens to shoulder in the modern world and surely one of them is whether or not we adhere to social mores. The challenge is whether we successfully can adapt to how the world actually functions in the face of what we learned as children. For men, one of the biggest obstacles is whether we should still incorporate the virtues of chivalry into our daily behavior. Chivalry is a practice that is in transition and may be, in a hundred years, just another quaint artifact of an obsolete age- like the horse and buggy are to us today. Males are currently taught that women´s equality has negated the need for chivalry. It seems our attempts to be chivalrous can be interpreted as attempts to assert superiority and return women to an inferior position in our polity. Chivalry was once deemed an obvious virtue but now it is shrouded in controversy. I feel that to abandon the practice of chivalry is to abandon something sacred on this earth.
The sans culottes of the sexual revolution made chivalry one of the first male behaviors to be attacked and deconstructed. In the airheads of the mad crew that embroiled our nation in so much suffering since the sixties, males opening doors or standing up as women entered rooms could only have been the result of a wicked plot to demean and subordinate 51 percent of the population. In fact, nothing was further from the truth. The act of deferring to women is an act of celebration and not of derogation. In my opinion, the radical feminists who laid siege to chivalry also laid siege to the basis of respect between the sexes.
In one´s personal life it becomes harder and harder to engage in chivalrous behavior. I still open doors for women and unlock the passenger side for them first. I still buy them flowers and pay for dates but these habits, at least logically, are regressive. There seems to be little societal justification why I, or anybody, should continue to engage in these retro conventions.
What the radical feminists ignored when attacking chivalrous deeds is that males like myself open doors for everyone regardless of their sex. I open the door for whoever´s behind me and many do the same for me and do you know what I say when they do? “Thank you.” That´s it. No accusations of an entrenched patriarchy or matriarchy flow from my mouth. My autonomy or humanity is not threatened by someone pulling on a handle in anticipation of my arrival.
What kind of weak-minded harridan would confuse simple courtesy with dehumanization? Answer, the spoiled, malicious joy kills who want to pass their ubiquitous depression vicariously onto us. No thank you. They didn´t have any good ideas 40 years ago and they don´t have any today. I´ll continue to open doors in spite of possible repercussions. I was disappointed last week as I walked into my gym when, in my usual post-work fog, I failed to notice a disabled man having trouble lugging his bag up the steps. He asked me to help him. I immediately carried his luggage up the stairs and apologized for not being quicker about it. Did I humiliate him in any way? Of course not. Helping others or opening a door is an act of communion with those around you and is not a nefarious political act.
Radical feminism has given birth to a society where men never really know where they stand on many issues or how to behave at all (you might say that this is the only type of birth that radical feminism has been successful at promoting). We never really know what is appropriate or what is not. In a society where the highest goal is to be non-judgmental, the lack of social stigma produces a wide gap between appropriate and non-appropriate behavior.
Unfortunately, radical feminists have seized on this condition and forged a Catch 22 as the status quo. Cathy Young in her book Ceasefire! tells of a young women who essentially laid bare her emperor´s clothes for all to see. She advocated “creative feminism” as a means of getting what you want in life. According to her it seems one should scream “sexual harassment” if threatened but defer to males when you need something ugly done-like killing a bat or an insect. She summed up the uncertainty of the male role aptly:
“So men are confused, and I say good…The more confused the men of this country are, the easier they are to manipulate…The more easily they are manipulated, the more likely it is that we´ll get what we want-whatever it is that we want.” [p.7]
I think her admission was clearly a mistake as she forgot a basic rule of life which is that no rube likes being called a rube. She should avoid work in sales as few commission checks are garnered by standing up and yelling “sucker!” after the customer signs on the dotted line. If we took her views seriously then clearly people like me would become Helots in her new sybaritic, yet still Spartan, world. I suppose that we should be lucky if she departs from history and does not set a time aside for the Helots to be flogged in the streets.
The central question is, since I have no desire to be soft clay for manipulation in a radical feminist´s 100 dollar manicured hands, do I abandon chivalry and treat women no differently from the way I treat everyone else? If men and women truly are equal then is chivalry inherently a dead issue with no more use to us than a five mile an hour speed limit?
These questions I will have to answer with a manipulated and cautious, “I don´t know.” It´s too late for me to abandon chivalry. It´s ingrained but, at least in my case, the radical feminists have had a huge impact on me as my chivalry is situational. I hate to admit it but I let individual women be the determinant as to how I´ll act on any particular day. The more feminine they are, the more that I´ll do for them. Women who sport a haircut like mine or dress or act like men I do not treat with deference. I treat them exactly as I would treat my male peers. Personally, I think that´s how it should be. I regard courtliness as being something reserved for the worthy and not a thing to be granted to everyone by fiat.
I suppose I´m constructing a double standard, which is alright by me as the words “double standard” are anathema to the average radical feminist which makes the phrase welcome in my lexicon any day. I don´t mind bowing to the gracious but never before the shrill and bitter. Sacrifices should always be made for the exemplary and this is often the case with men in general. As Vox Day put it “Southern belles always get what they want. Watch and learn, grasshopper.” He couldn´t be more right and those are the women for whom chivalry should be reserved.
My belief is that the future of chivalry will rest with women as if they are estimable males will forever treat them respectfully and sometimes even be in awe. As with all gender issues the symbiotic relationship in this one cannot be slighted. We, as males, are a product of the way we´ve been treated. Danielle Crittenden sums up the dynamic perfectly: “I happened to watch the movie Emma with a thirty-two year old single woman friend of mine, who afterward exclaimed sorrowfully, ‘There are no Mr. Knightleys!´ But if there are no more Mr. Knightleys, then it´s because there are no Emma Woodhouses, either. The two can only exist in a world in which each supports and reinforces the character of the other.” [WHAT OUR MOTHERS DIDN'T TELL US, pp.41-42]
Without reinforcement, chivalry will soon be extinguished for all time.
As of late, there are promising signs that more and more men do not look for guidance from politically correct sources. Now it is the turn of women to salvage something magical and meaningful in this skeptical, post-modernist age. What they need to recover are their inner selves. They need to recapture the allure they possessed before the sexual revolution. It must be women who stand united and say “enough is enough, the radical feminists are driving us into the ditch and there´s no reason to listen to them any longer.” Pia de Solenni put it much more eloquently in the current issue of the National Review:
“Women have forfeited control of their destinies…they´ve set the moral bar so low that men don´t need to rise to the challenge of being good men. They don´t have to because women don´t demand it.” [p.52]
Chivalry´s jeopardy is yet one of many possible casualties in radical feminism´s eternal war against our society, and, as long as these harpies continue to completely deny that there is a biological basis for difference between the sexes, chivalry will soon fade away like smoke from your grandfather´s pipe. Unless we thwart the intentions of the radical feminists, chivalry and virtue will have to be referenced in the endnotes of future generations and no longer be a part of the interactions between us. Until we expel them from our society, we will echo the words of Trotsky and “have no peace and have no war.”
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Bernard at bchapafl@hotmail.com .
Radical feminism has given birth to a society where men prefer pornography to the company of women. Men know exactly how to behave - they are dropping out of the game.
“Women have forfeited control of their destinies…they´ve set the moral bar so low that men don´t need to rise to the challenge of being good men. They don´t have to because women don´t demand it.” [p.52]
Pia de Solenni has many interesting things to say on this subject. I hope she writes a book soon.
Contrary to what some others here think, feminism will only be successfully defeated by women, not men.
Cathy Young, on the other hand, is the wrong person for the father's rights movement to align itself with. Her message is poisonous.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.