Rachel Allen
rallen19@uwyo.edu
It is the phrase uttered by any woman who has been on a failed date –“chivalry is dead. There are just no good men left.” Comedian Brett Druck said, “A lot of people mis-use the word ‘chivalry.’ I looked up the code of chivalry. There’s only one part in there about respecting women. The rest of it is medieval battle etiquette.” The actual definition is “the system of values (such as loyalty and honor) that knights in the Middle Ages were expected to follow.”
As far as I know, there aren’t many knights left in the modern world. Druck finished up his joke with the punchline, “A week ago, I didn’t hold the door open for a lady and she said, ‘I guess chivalry’s dead.’ So I challenged her to physical combat. Turns out I’m the better jouster.”
That being said, the idea of chivalry has shifted to this image of the perfect gentlemen. While the denotation involved dueling and knighthood, the connotation became holding doors open and paying for dinner. In the famous words of Bonnie Tyler, “Where have all the good men gone?”
But I beg to make a different point. I say there are still chivalrous men left. It might not be easy to track them down, but they’re out there – hiding in the woodwork. They just get over-shadowed by morons declaring, “Not all men!”
The problem with chivalry arises from the feminist movement. This idea that chivalry will be the death of feminism is perpetuating the idea that women want equality instead of chivalry. This conflict drifts into a sort of grey area, and the personal desires of individual women. Maybe you’re not looking for chivalry, maybe you’re looking for total balance. And that’s fine. But radical feminists who believe that men who hold doors open for them are being sexist and supposedly don’t think women can open the doors for themselves are the reason that chivalry is sinking into the shadows.
An interesting phenomenon that I’ve encountered is the awkwardness that occurs when I attempt to hold the door open for a male individual. The act of holding the door open is followed by a weird interaction where the man gestures for me to go in first, or the man hesitates for a few seconds, resulting in a confused shuffle and a traffic jam of people. I simply want to be polite, but the masculine population seems uncomfortable with the idea of this role reversal. Proof that chivalry isn’t exactly dead, just sort of existing and crawling instead of alive and kicking
The heart of the matter is at society’s standards. This battle of equality versus chivalry has resulted in a battle of the sexes and a double standard. Some feminists are saying that chivalry is undermining the feminist movement, while others are claiming that age-old adage, “Chivalry is dead.”
These views vary from individual to individual, so there’s no way to create an equilibrium where everyone is happy. I’m not the authority on either side, so I don’t claim to know what’s correct. I am one of those people with specific, individual needs. With any luck, I’ll be able to find the one person whose views match up perfectly with mine.
