Why (Unchecked) Chivalry Should be Dead: Beyond “I Can Hold the Door Myself”

As I engaged in another nightly ritual of procrastinating on homework and letting an endless stream of unanswered emails shamelessly pile up, I turned to my ever-trusty Facebook account to provide me with a lazed alternative to productivity.  Ironically enough, I was so roused by an article I stumbled upon during my Newsfeed-stalking session that I was actually prompted to write this post three whole days before the deadline.  Shocking sentiment aside, the impetus for my spontaneous “star-student” streak manifested itself in the form of an article entitled “Why Chivalry is Dead, From a Man’s Perspective.”    It’s an interesting piece written by John Picciuto, and blames the “hook-up culture”, coupled with women lowering their demands, for the erosion of chivalry.  An excerpt from the piece:

 All I know is, the more I look around, the less I see men treating women the way that we’re raised to. What happened to paying for dinners and drinks? What happened to pulling out chairs and holding doors? What happened to walking on the outside, closest to the street and all that sh*t? Where did we lose the chivalrous touch?… I’m just saying, why have we strayed away from what has been established as the norm?

Short answer:  Because your heart’s NOT in the right place.

Long answer:  I hate norms.  I especially hate what I refer to as “unchecked chivalry”, which I classify as an action taken by a man which he deems chivalrous and appropriate because it’s “how he was raised” and “the norm”, without due consideration for how the gesture is received.  A perpetrator of unchecked chivalry will push his Prince Charming agenda, even when it’s unwanted.  Consequently, this isn’t an organic display of a man trying to be old-fashioned, or a gentleman, or to show respect.  Rather, it’s a contrived norm that he adamantly propagates, and justifies on the grounds of a fallacy from tradition (“it’s how I was raised”).

Allow me to provide you with a lived example of this well-intentioned (maybe?), but skewed logic.  A few years back, I went out to a movie with a few friends of a friend, one of whom I didn’t know very well.  As we all approached the door to the movie theater, I opened it to let everyone through.  This particular individual refused to let me hold the door open for him, because he wasn’t a “progressive”—he was a “chivalrous guy”.  I insisted, and he proceeded to pull the door handle away from me, prompting me to enter before him.  That really bothered me—a chivalrous act doesn’t count if it is forced on someone.  The act of holding the door for me wasn’t what made me judge his decorum; rather, it was the fact that he forced his will upon me that categorized this as an instance of unchecked chivalry.  It goes beyond the empowered notion that “I don’t need a man to hold the door open for me, because I can hold it myself”; when a man forces you to let him hold the door for you, he’s making you and himself conform to your appropriated gender roles.  He’s perpetuating patriarchy, not chivalry.  This is exactly the brand of “chivalry” that Picciuto addresses in his piece.

Perhaps the most ludicrous suggestion Picciuto makes is that it is women’s fault that chivalry is so hard to come by these days:

Eventually, I feel that women will wise up and start asking for the things that they deserve, the things used to be automatic and expected of men, like holding a door, pulling out a chair, and paying for dinners. Until then, men are going to get away with putting in the bare minimum and receiving what we ultimately want anyway – sex. It’s pretty obvious that women own the cards, and when they start acting like it, they’ll finally start getting dinner from places that don’t deliver.

Ah, Picciuto, your romantic spirit almost had me swooning until this paragraph (note that sarcasm is pouring profusely from every last letter of this opening sentence).  I’m glad to know that you’re such an upstanding gentleman that you want to serve us gals the same old mainstream objectification, but on a silver platter with imported wine and fancy dinners to restaurant names I can’t pronounce.  What a guy!

I don’t like the refined tone with which Picciuto is essentially saying “ladies, shut the fuck up and learn to accept the chivalry that satiates my self-image in bestowing upon you, regardless of whether you want to receive it.”  This sort of logic devalues the agency of the woman on the receiving end of the unchecked chivalry.  Here’s a tip: the real chivalrous man is the one who shows earnest respect for all individuals—not just the women that he’s trying to know in the biblical sense.  What’s espoused in this article instead is a Casanova-esque tactic for getting a good lay.  A woman doesn’t need to be bought with dinner and dramatic acts of age-old romanticism.  If you’re an old-fashioned type guy, try a little old-fashioned respect mixed in with your brand of chivalry.  It might get you a little further than a second date, and perhaps you’ll actually find the fulfillment you seem so bent on finding.

Should chivalry be dead?  I don’t think so.  However, unchecked chivalry needs to die hard and fast, because of the (perhaps unintended) consequence of oppression it exacerbates.  In its place should emerge a new, modern “chivalry”–one that cloaks itself in genuine respect and consideration for others’ wishes.