If Chivalry is Dying, Women are Holding the Bloody Knife

There’s a sad, old song I used to like by the '80s hair band, Cinderella. It’s called, “You Don’t Know What You Got Til It’s Gone”:

It’s one of those depressing songs that makes you think of some girl who broke your heart into a million pieces and how much it still hurts if you let yourself ruminate on it.

That being said, the hook could apply to a lot of things,

Don't know what you got 'til it's gone

Don't know what it is I did so wrong

Now I know what I got

Just this song

And it ain't easy to get back

Takes so long

How many things in our society have we failed to appreciate, let slip away, and then realized how valuable they were once they were out of the picture? Remember when the media at least tried to give people the impression that it wasn’t biased and getting a story wrong was a big deal? How about having teachers in school who were normal people and weren’t trying to confuse kids about their gender or get them to wave a rainbow flag? Wasn’t it nice when there were all sorts of non-politicized topics that people of different ideologies could get together and bond over without thinking about politics? What about when people weren’t screaming at each other on social media and most attractive, young women weren’t dressing like they were getting ready to go out to work a corner for their pimp?

All of us could name things like that, and one of them that isn’t quite dead yet, but seems to be on life support, is chivalry.

This came to mind after seeing an article written by a woman complaining about the lack of chivalry these days in the New York Post. Let’s take a moment to explore some of this article:

Is Chivalry dead? After a grown man practically trampled me to get on the bus recently, I’d be inclined to say yes.

He was in a suit and fun socks (boring finance bros tend to think quirky socks make them look fun), and he was on the verge of elbowing me to get a seat.

...It wasn’t very chivalrous, but is that even a thing anymore? Is men letting women go first on public transport a dead concept?

Did it die when we started advocating for fair pay and the rights to our bodies? Is the price of equality that men just aren’t that polite anymore?

I want equal pay and men to follow the Titanic rule of women and children first.

...A woman in the UK posted a video of herself standing on the train and then filmed a bunch of men sitting while she stood and it amassed millions of views.

She set the clip to Lorde’s song ‘Man of the Year’, which is being used on TikTok at the moment to call out poor behaviour from men.

People online were divided over the clip.

Many saw nothing wrong with men not standing up for women, suggesting that chivalry isn’t a thing anymore.

“I’m confused- are you pregnant? Disabled? Injured? If you aren’t, and they got there first, are total strangers, they don’t owe you a seat,” one person said.

“What’s the issue here?” another asked.

“Men don’t owe women anything,” someone else argued.

However, there were others who claimed the video was proof that “chivalry is dead.

So, before I dig any further into this, I want to note that like many Southerners, I was taught to be chivalrous from a young age – and it stuck. I open car doors and pull out chairs for women. I even walk on the side of the street closer to the road, so that if a car jumps the curb, I will be the one hit. This article discusses men giving up seats for women on the subway. Well, the last time I was on the subway in NYC (which has admittedly been quite a while because I now like to Uber while I’m there), it was crowded and I gave up my seat for a woman. In other words, I am someone who grew up with the habit of being chivalrous, and it still continues to this day.

However, it’s also worth noting that over the course of my entire life, I’ve had one girlfriend who genuinely seemed to appreciate chivalrous behavior, another that seemed to expect it and a third girl I only went on a couple of dates with, who (politely, mind you), basically said she didn’t see the point of chivalry. Beyond that, the reactions to it from women could best be described as complete indifference.

Similarly – and understandably – most men don’t care about it either, and some guys even think chivalrous men are chumps, which is a result of listening to feminist women who basically tell anyone who listens some version of, “Women can do anything men can do, except better!”

Well, if that’s true, then women should be able to get their own seats on the bus and subway without men needing to worry about how it plays out for them, right? Of course, it’s even worse than that because a lot of men believe there’s a possibility that a woman may be genuinely OFFENDED if they behave in a chivalrous way toward them. How realistic is that outside of Berkeley or some Manhattan feminist enclave? It’s hard to say, although several men in the comments section discussing this article on X talked about bad experiences they had, so that seems to be at least a somewhat realistic concern men genuinely have.

There are also some men who, fairly or unfairly, have come to conclude that women are increasingly hostile to most men and that the rules are rigged against them. Is there some truth to that? Absolutely, although we can argue about how widespread that issue is across society. Just to give you the gist of what men like that are saying, I wanted to include some comments from the article on X. You can make your own judgment about how valid these sentiments are:

Getting beyond these comments, there’s a very basic principle worth pointing out here that’s at the root of why chivalry is on the downswing.

That being, “People do what they’re rewarded for doing and cease doing things that have no payoff.”

This principle works with almost EVERYTHING. If you want a very basic example, which slot machine are you pulling on in Vegas? That one that pays off every 4th time you pull on it or the one that never pays out? We all know the answer.

Similarly, how do you housetrain a puppy? If he pees in the house, you tell him he’s a “bad dog!” If he pees outside, you tell him he’s a “good dog!” Then, you take him outside frequently so he can do both and see the difference. Soon, he learns to pee outside.

Simple, right?

So, let’s apply that to chivalry.

To the degree that we have chivalry today, it’s because men are doing something that they think is valued. Men who believe that behavior has no reward at all generally aren’t going to bother being chivalrous.

Incidentally, we’re not talking about handing a man a gold coin every time he opens a door for a woman here. We’re talking about things like a minimal level of appreciation. Like feeling as if being chivalrous sets them apart from other men in a good way. Like believing that being chivalrous says something positive about them as a human being. If men conclude that being chivalrous isn’t valued at all, is going to lead to them catching flak from women, or could even lead to them being prosecuted like Daniel Penny if they defend a woman in trouble, their attitude is going to be, “No thanks.”

In other words, women are the ones that benefit from chivalry. So, if they want chivalry, they have to find ways to value and reward chivalry. If enough women don’t want to do that, then I guess chivalry isn’t that important to them after all.

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