Once upon a time, in the 10th century in France, a bunch of chevaliers (knights) were attempting to regulate and diminish the violence of their society and so a code was created to bind soldiers to moral and upstanding behavior. And thus, “chivalry” was born.
From the “honorable” code of chivalry, we are also introduced to the idea of courtly love. Courtly love refers to the behaviors, practices and expectations of romance in medieval times. Some of the rules for expressing proper, true love during this era are “he who isn’t jealous isn’t really in love,” and “true lovers must obsess constantly and ceaselessly over the object of their affection” and “chastity, am I right, ladies?” And if you think that those directions for maintaining a relationship sound a tad sexist, or like indications of an unhealthy relationship, you’re right. Today, we romanticize the idea of chivalry into an indicator of an ideal relationship, which trivializes the agency of women, belittles the role of men in partnerships, and ultimately creates unrealistic and harmful expectations for romance today.
People are always commenting on how “chivalrous” men are when they open doors and buy dinner and text back and bring flowers, and this is (swear word) ridiculous. Chivalry is not your significant other wrapping you in their jacket because you look a little chilly. Chivalry is, according to “Medieval Life and Times,” “to fear God and maintain His Church,” and “never refuse a challenge from an equal,” and “to give succor to widows and orphans.” So unless your boyfriend is being generous with his succor or is constantly picking fights with his equals, he is not being chivalrous.
Notice how I say “boyfriend” and refer to males when I discuss the performance of chivalry. This is because, in medieval times, only wealthy, aristocratic men could be knights, and only knights were bound by chivalry. They were to “respect women” and “protect the weak” (meaning women), and therefore, chivalry is a sexist idealization that reinforces hegemonic masculinity and reduces women to objects of desire, turns them into prizes, and forces them to be powerless, second-class individuals. Men are caged into the restrictions of hyper-masculinity; they must be strong, must never have problems of their own, and must defend, protect, and fight whenever the opportunity presents itself. And of course, as women were not allowed to be knights, were not allowed to practice chivalry, they were the ones who were to receive it, immediately becoming the passive participant in the relationship. The idea of chivalry is linked to damsels in distress, stupid princess waiting around for men to save them, and it glorifies this inaction to control one’s life, praises women who relinquish their futures to the hands of men.
I call for an end of chivalry, and a re-establishment of respect. Our concept of chivalry not only glorifies men for doing small, irrelevant actions in relationships, it reinforces stereotypes of what women want out of their partnerships and, on a larger scale, out of the treatment that they receive on a day to day basis. Yes, I want people to hold the door for me when the situation warrants it (like when I’m right behind someone and if the door were to close I would run right into it), but I also want to be paid the same amount of money a man is paid for doing the same exact job, I want to be able to walk down a street at night in silence instead of mentally deflecting the horrible, derogatory remarks that are shouted at me from across the road, and I want to live in a world where a monster who has sex with an unconscious human is put away in prison for longer than six months and no one tries to blame the unconscious human for his actions.
And if having to hold the door open, along with all of my other wishes, is too much to ask, then you know what? Forget the door. The other requests will do. Don’t hold the elevator door for a woman because she’s a woman; hold the elevator door for her because she’s a human being and because it’s a nice thing to do. Don’t think that all you have to do to treat a woman right is open her car door, don’t believe that women cannot open doors on their own, and don’t ever be so stereotypically gendered that you don’t allow women to open a door for you. Also, if you think that the fight for equality is about who is holding doors for whom, you’re missing the point entirely, completely, and absolutely. The fight is about who is closing the doors, it includes people who do not realize that the door has swung closed onto those behind them, and it is being fought by and for those who are being shut out.
