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Is chivalry dead?

DejaHo

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LaskyaClaren

LaskyaClaren

Posted
Posted

DejaHo wrote:

LaskyaClaren wrote:

DejaHo wrote:

LaskyaClaren wrote:

 

Am I allowed to be chivalrous if I am (just) a woman? And an oversensitive feminist too?

Yes, that's what I mean, Lassie. 

And no, you are not allowed. . .  because of the reason you gave.

 

 

So, wait. A woman can't be courteous, polite, or kind?

 

I think I may have met your cousin, btw. You know . . . Mr. Vu.

A woman can be courteous, polite, and kind (although perhaps not at the same time) however have you ever met an oversensitive feminist?  I have, and no they can't. 

I think I must (politely and courteously) take offense, as I *know* that I am an oversensitive feminist (testimonials available upon request!), and I think that I am reasonably . . . you know, those three things.

 

I am going to be kind, however, and simply assume that you haven't met the right kind of oversensitive feminist.

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Madelaine McMasters

Madelaine McMasters

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Posted

LaskyaClaren wrote:

Or by chivalry do you mean basic courtesy, politeness, and kindness?

I don't think that THAT is dead at all. In fact, I like to think that I practice it!

Am I allowed to be chivalrous if I am (just) a woman? And an oversensitive feminist too?

When I'm approaching a door along with someone else, if I'm the first there, I open it for the them. If I'm way ahead of them, I might say "Hurry up, I can't hold this door all day!"

If it's an airlock I've reached first, they're going to reach the second door before I do. So, as they pass me, I'll say "the next door is yours". If they reach the airlock first, and open the door for me, I'll say "Thank you!", walk in, open the second door and say "Now we're even!" with a wink.

If a kid is approaching a door, I'll try to get there first. If the door is automatic, I might wave my hands as if to suggest I have magic powers. If it's not, I'll open the door and give a welcoming sweep of the hand and say something like "Welcome Madame/Monsieur". If I'm on my way out and the kid is on the way in I might say something like "If you see a big man inside, wearing a blue shirt and a white beard (that would be Kevin), tell him you saw his reindeer in the parking lot."

I recently walked into my health clinic, opening the door for a woman on crutches with a cast on her foot, being followed close behind by a man carrying her purse...

Me: "Uh oh, don't tell me you broke your foot trying to kick him in the ass."

Her: "Oh, I wish."

Him: "I'm safe for a while."

I don't always do these things, and most of my attempts don't product such amusing results, but just one of those exchanges can keep me going for months.

Is that chivalry?

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LaskyaClaren

LaskyaClaren

Posted
Posted

I'd say they are kindnesses with amusing twists. And maybe that in itself is a kindness, if it generates a smile or maybe even a laugh?

Really, chivalry for me connotes very imposing and well-armed men buried under armour clumsily trying to swat one another with sharpened bits of metal. I doubt they can even see the door wearing those things.

PS. Doesn't opening both doors of an airlock defeat the purpose of an airlock?

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Madelaine McMasters

Madelaine McMasters

Posted
Posted

LaskyaClaren wrote:

I'd say they are kindnesses with amusing twists. And maybe that in itself is a kindness, if it generates a smile or maybe even a laugh?

 

Really, chivalry for me connotes very imposing and well-armed men buried under armour clumsily trying to swat one another with sharpened bits of metal. I doubt they can even see the door wearing those things.

 

PS. Doesn't opening both doors of an airlock defeat the purpose of an airlock?

Okay then, I'm going to call it "Theater of the Kind". I suppose it's self serving. I like to make people smile. I love to make them laugh.

Chivalry for me was men saying and doing silly things in an attempt to impress women who ultimately didn't pay much attention. Like the wild Toms in my backyard who strut their plumage to indifferent hens. Squirrels tumble and chase around my yard and I can't tell the boys from the girls. They look like they're having fun.

I guess I'm a squirrel.

As for the airlocks, I've never understood them. Even when alone, I'm opening the second door before the first closes. But, they are good stage props.

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Vulpinus

Vulpinus

Posted
Posted

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

 

As for the airlocks, I've never understood them. Even when alone, I'm opening the second door before the first closes. But, they are good stage props.

Don't try that with the airlocks I used to go through:

  1. They are interlocked - you can't open one until the other really is locked (and it is locked, not just shut)
  2. If you try, the probably somewhat less-than-chivalrous gentlemen with the UMP45s will be waiting when the door does open.

Anyway, I'm confused now. How do I behave chivalrously when at those large, motorised, revolving doors that some places have? The ones that fit about five people (or ten pushy people) in all at once.

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Derek Torvalar

Derek Torvalar

Posted
Posted

LaskyaClaren wrote:

Speaking (as Derek has divined that I would) as an "oversensitive feminist," I can only say . . .

 

What a very silly question!

 

What exactly do you 
mean
by "chivalry"? What is this thing?

 

If by that term you mean the medieval ideals associated with the cult of courtly love some 600 or more years ago, well, yes, it's very much dead. Along with other such charming relics of that bygone age as feudalism, witch burnings, and the Black Plague.

 

Do you mean the highly-romanticized (and historically inaccurate) resuscitated neo-gothic version of the 19th and 20th centuries? The one built upon entirely unrealistic expectations about the relations between men of a certain socio-economic status, and the women of their peer group? Well . . . mostly the class to which that applied (a gentrified middle class with pretensions and aristocracy) are dead and gone now too.

 

And, as Pussycat has noted, it really only applied to white women -- and women of a higher social status -- anyway. It was always kind of a myth rather than a reality. Just ask the women and children who were massacred along with prisoners at Ayyadieh in 1191 by that Paragon of Chivalry, Richard the Lionheart.

Or by chivalry do you mean basic courtesy, politeness, and kindness?

 

I don't think that THAT is dead at all. In fact, I like to think that I practice it!

Am I allowed to be chivalrous if I am (just) a woman? And an oversensitive feminist too?

Ahh, there you are Lasky. Welcome back. Although I don't think you really left, probably ghosting your way around the forums until something piqued your interest enough to make youself manifest. ;P

Interesting that you would choose to take a historical tact here, as I would have thought you would have come at this from your stronger suit. I mean spending the bulk of your time here

5a.jpg

for the last number of years commiserating with your comrades and all, I would have thought you were cocked and loaded to give D'Ho a full blast.

But I can't totally disagree with your synopses regarding the meaning of 'chivalry' even though they are tinged somewhat by presentist or latter day interpretations that have evolved over the ages, but then that can be expected from a layman, sorry layperson in the area. But I am willing to grant you forebearance for some of the minor flaws I see there and hope that you will see your way to bestowing the same on me as I make some minor points about the Feminist agenda in this regard.

I am sure you will agree that Feminism, or rather, agreeing that equal pay for equal work and the right to equality in job placement does not make one a Feminist. Those things a merely the hoped for results feminists desire. Feminsism is about Power; the acquisition and maintenance or control thereof. Hence, superfical social reifications regarding 'manners' such as 'chivalry' or conducting oneself like a 'Lady' (asin aLady of the Court) are of no real concern to a feminist except only in so far as they are a means to establishing the end of realigning the power structures within society. Basically, Feminists find the idea of chivalry patronizing or condescending because it, in their minds, seeks to whitewash over the disparities they are trying to rectify.

(excuse the brevity of this as I need to run and finish dinner and eat)

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Madelaine McMasters

Madelaine McMasters

Posted
Posted

At the big box stores, the inner and outer rows of airlock doors are far apart, so it's unlikely you can open the second door before the first closes. But in some of the smaller stores the doors are less than six feet apart and there's often a blast of air accompanying each customer's entry/exit.

Those huge revolving doors are a challenge. I've got to think about what to do there. The first thing that comes to mind is to whine about the lack of ponies, but nobody will understand that.

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LaskyaClaren

LaskyaClaren

Posted
Posted

I have no idea why you should be surprised by the tone of my response, Derek. You must certainly know by now what a sweet tempered and charmingly reasonable creature I am. :matte-motes-grin:

My response took both the form and tone that it did largely because I don't take the question, or its implied values, very seriously. "Chivalry" is something that belongs to a dead age, and raging about it would be a little bit like getting angry at a devout monarchist. Yes, the attitudes that it implies are objectionable, but they are so outdated as to seem more charming (in a slightly pitiable kind-of-way) than threatening. And, after all, chivalry -- if by this we mean things like holding doors open for women, or pulling out chairs for them -- is a pretty benign kind of troglodytism, even if it is associated with many far more objectionable attitudes.

I am all for holding doors open for people; I do so myself frequently. I think that being generous and kind and helpful and polite are terrifically good things . . . in most contexts.

The problem with "chivalry," however, is that it is, as you intimate, not really about "generosity" or "kindness" at all, but about power.

If you and I have the sort of mutually-respectful relationship in which we are generous and helpful to each other equally, then all that that implies is that we are generous and helpful people with a good, mutually-supporting relationship. Even if you, in practice, end up helping me more than do I you because you are better placed to do so than I, that is merely a slightly skewed expression of an understanding that the roles of helper, and helped, are mutually exchanged between us. Neither of us is necessarily, by nature, one or the other.

But chivalry of course is predicated not upon a shared exchange of equal power, but rather an inflexible and highly gendered disposal of roles. I am not permitted by this particular code to, for instance, hold a door open for you, or pull out a chair for you, because, regardless of our actual powers and capacities relative to each other, my role as passive "receiver" of favours is predetermined by my gender. So, built into this code is an imbalance of power: even if I possess it, I am not permitted to employ it.

In that sense, condescension is very much the operative word. And every time that someone is consciously and deliberately "chivalrous" to me, as opposed to being merely generous or kind or polite, he is not merely engaging in "nice behaviour," but actually insisting upon his role as the active and powerful partner in a relationship that aggressively relegates me to the role of passive receptor of favours.

So, by all means, hold the door open for me. And thank you! But don't object or be surprised if I reciprocate at the next set of doors. And don't tell me you're being "chivalrous": I don't need that baggage to better appreciate an act of generosity.

Nothing there that will surprise you, I'm sure. And probably not much, I'll bet, that you disagree with, really, despite your undoubted affection for our mutual golf-loving friend.

 

Oh, and yes. The WGSI programme at New College is excellent, and wonderfully multidisciplinary.

Or so I hear.

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LaskyaClaren

LaskyaClaren

Posted
Posted

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Those huge revolving doors are a challenge. I've got to think about what to do there. The first thing that comes to mind is to whine about the lack of ponies, but nobody will understand that.

My invariable response to revolving doors is to stare at them in an mesmerized and slightly apprehensive state for a half minute, while a line of increasingly impatient people queues up behind me. And then I sort of run at them.

It usually works.

Usually.

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LlazarusLlong

LlazarusLlong

Posted
Posted

LaskyaClaren wrote:

The problem with "chivalry," however, is that it is, as you intimate, not really about "generosity" or "kindness" at all, but about power.

If you and I have the sort of mutually-respectful relationship in which we are generous and helpful to each other equally, then all that that implies is that we are generous and helpful people with a good, mutually-supporting relationship. Even if you, in practice, end up helping me more than do I you because you are better placed to do so than I, that is merely a slightly skewed expression of an understanding that the roles of helper, and helped, are mutually exchanged between us. Neither of us is necessarily, by nature, one or the other.

But chivalry of course is predicated not upon a shared exchange of equal power, but rather an inflexible and highly gendered disposal of roles. I am not 
permitted
by this particular code to, for instance, hold a door open for you, or pull out a chair for you, because, regardless of our actual powers and capacities relative to each other, my role as passive "receiver" of favours is predetermined by my gender. So, built into this code is an imbalance of power: even if I possess it, I am not permitted to employ it.

In that sense, condescension is very much the operative word. And every time that someone is consciously and deliberately "chivalrous" to me, as opposed to being merely generous or kind or polite, he is not merely engaging in "nice behaviour," but actually 
insisting
 upon his role as the active and powerful partner in a relationship that aggressively relegates me to the role of passive receptor of favours.

Are you sure you're talking about chivalry?

Not BDSM?

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Venus Petrov

Venus Petrov

Posted
Posted

I appreciate a gentleman. I will not get hung up on the definition of chivalrous as that belongs to another time.

I will and have opened doors for men, women, children, anyone carrying packages or pushing a wheelchair.  I draw no distinctions.  If the response is a 'thank you', a smile, or nothing it is all the same to me.  I do it because it is the 'right' thing to do.

As far as 'absurdly hypersensitive feminist' goes, I react to them along much the same lines as I do the 'absurdly hypersensitive man'  (and, they *do* exist). I ignore them.

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Madelaine McMasters

Madelaine McMasters

Posted
Posted

Kwakkelde Kwak wrote:

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Those huge revolving doors are a challenge. I've got to think about what to do there. The first thing that comes to mind is to whine about the lack of ponies, but nobody will understand that.

Sure they will....

peter-steiner-man-standing-in-front-of-a-revolving-door-with-merry-go-round-horses-revol-cartoon.jpg

or at least Peter Steiner does.

Kwak, you're my first pick for "person to get trapped in a revolving door with"!

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Derek Torvalar

Derek Torvalar

Posted
Posted

LlazarusLlong wrote:

LaskyaClaren wrote:

The problem with "chivalry," however, is that it is, as you intimate, not really about "generosity" or "kindness" at all, but about power.

If you and I have the sort of mutually-respectful relationship in which we are generous and helpful to each other equally, then all that that implies is that we are generous and helpful people with a good, mutually-supporting relationship. Even if you, in practice, end up helping me more than do I you because you are better placed to do so than I, that is merely a slightly skewed expression of an understanding that the roles of helper, and helped, are mutually exchanged between us. Neither of us is necessarily, by nature, one or the other.

But chivalry of course is predicated not upon a shared exchange of equal power, but rather an inflexible and highly gendered disposal of roles. I am not 
permitted
by this particular code to, for instance, hold a door open for you, or pull out a chair for you, because, regardless of our actual powers and capacities relative to each other, my role as passive "receiver" of favours is predetermined by my gender. So, built into this code is an imbalance of power: even if I possess it, I am not permitted to employ it.

In that sense, condescension is very much the operative word. And every time that someone is consciously and deliberately "chivalrous" to me, as opposed to being merely generous or kind or polite, he is not merely engaging in "nice behaviour," but actually 
insisting
 upon his role as the active and powerful partner in a relationship that aggressively relegates me to the role of passive receptor of favours.

Are you sure you're talking about chivalry?

Not BDSM?

Well I better sign up for this workshop then.

 

CEWorkshop1.jpg

 

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