What is Chivalry?
In modern culture the term chivalrous is often used to describe a man who opens doors and pulls out chairs for women; who pays for dates and walks on the street side of a sidewalk in order to protect his companion from any potential harm.
The chivalrous man is someone who proudly harkens back to a time before Women’s Lib and still believes that these gestures are the best way to conduct himself in an honorable. Chivalry is about nostalgia as much as it is about conduct.
Chivalry is about nostalgia as much as it is about conduct.
The word chivalry is much older. The chivalric tradition emerged in a body of literature in Medieval Europe. It was a group of stories about knights roaming the countryside, going from place to place, falling in love with and wooing both maidens and matrons, fighting beasts and winning contests.
These were men trained to fight, killing time between wars. Sex and romance, noble quests and feats of strength were marvelous time fillers.
These two uses of chivalry are related, but not in a direct line. Our modern use of the word chivalry is based on an ideal that never really existed. Knights in the chivalric tradition were not overly concerned with protecting women’s virtue – they were, in fact, the same mercenaries that routinely raped and pillaged in times of war.
The chivalric code was entirely about a knight’s own honor, just as our modern ideals of chivalry are about the virtues of that particular man. While a woman is needed as the screen upon which to show those virtues, she is not the end of either modern chivalry or the medieval chivalric code – she is merely the mean of showing society what an honorable man looks like. Like all toxic masculinities, it robs women of their value as human beings and reduces men to an oversimplified set of conduct rules.
In contrast, a helpful masculinity would be one that showcases care instead of personal honor. To care for women and other men may look like opening a door or pulling out a chair or walking on the street side of a sidewalk to shield your companion. But a helpful masculinity does so with the aim of caring for another human being. Not in order to shield the weak in order to showcase his own honor and value.
About the Author; Joy Tuveson has a MA in Women’s Studies and is passionate about sharing knowledge with the world.
