Why is that we look at the legions of incredibly disrespectful and frankly sexist men, and lament that "chivalry is dead"? No, I am not some violent misogynist with a Men's Rights Activist pin and a suffocating sense of entitlement over women. But are sexist attitudes really ingrained in men because of a lack of chivalry? I would argue that the concept of chivalry is an absolute recapitulation of sexist beliefs and actions.
The full weight of my argument isn't necessarily over etymology or locating the concept of chivalry historically as a mechanism of highly sexist and stratified feudal societies. I can accept that its place within contemporary society has changed to mean providing polite gestures to women. But this contemporary meaning of chivalry and how it functions within social discourse is still alarmingly regressive and repulsive.
Chivalry looks great on paper, like trickle down economics. Men being polite to women definitely seems much needed in a society that consistently over-scrutinizes, objectifies, and violates women's bodies. But chivalry specifies polite gestures and mannerisms towards women because they are women. It is this indulgence in an essentialist tautology that fails to address fundamentally sexist beliefs of "chivalrous gentlemen." There is no recognition of a system of sexist beliefs and actions ubiquitously reinforced through the backdrop of a normative society that causes women to face more challenges. Instead, men should treat women politely because of their implied and enforced submissive femininity. If chivalry declares that men should act like gentlemen, then women should act like ladies.
Adding onto this archaic conception of gender is the transactional nature of chivalry. Men who subscribe to the notion of chivalry like to stylize themselves as gentle, thoughtful, and sophisticated. To achieve this illusion, they find the most aesthetically pleasing woman and shower her with gestures; They pull out her chair for her, open the door, offer her their jacket, send her small gifts, and take her out to dinner. But there is an implicit demand in all of these actions. The woman needs to repay the man in her own ways — a smile, conversation or sexual favors. The same men who pantomime this chivalric "altruism" become enraged at the thought of "doing everything right" and not getting what they wanted from a woman. No, a woman does not owe you sex or a conversation or even a smile when you run over and open the door for her or pay for her meal.
Defenders of chivalry, if not resorting to essentialist arguments, will cite common courtesy as the principle exigence of chivalry. But why is it that many chivalrous gentlemen rush to hold open the door for conventionally attractive women but not others? Common courtesy isn't directed towards a specific gender ideal, but to everyone regardless of categorization. Specifying women as recipients of these gestures is grossly paternalistic and restrictive to women, as the men determine who the "real" women are by choosing who they dote on and ensuring that they are properly rewarded.
Chivalry seemingly advocates honorable and just behavior but instead interpellates women into a highly specific subject position, that of the feminine, conventionally attractive woman, and then necessitates that the woman repay men with social favors. When proponents of chivalry hold open a door for a woman and she doesn't react in the exact manner that they demand, then she isn't a proper lady or a real woman, but an ungrateful bitch. Chivalry is not some open code of respect for a wide variety of people, but rather is constituted by highly specific social mores that force women to occupy a narrowly defined position. The regressive nature of chivalry isn't some superficial blemish, but its defining feature.
Chivalry has been reanimated in an attempt to address disparities in gender relations in our contemporary world, but all it has done is shuffle around uselessly and give off an unbearable stench. How we think of and interact with gender itself has changed so much, and it is difficult to negotiate through chivalry's inherent transphobia and inability to deal with gender fluidity. We need to have a serious conversation as a society on how we treat each other, especially those belonging to marginalized social categories like women, but this conversation cannot be facilitated through regressive models of behavior. Chivalry is nothing more than a desiccated reminder of egregious mistakes of the past in the present. We should take care to keep it dead.
