Chivalry must die
Ah…chivalry! The ancient, age-old guide for how men are supposed to treat women. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, chivalry comes from the Middle Ages, and is defined as the, “honourable and courteous conduct expected of a knight.”
Chivalry demands that men are supposed to pull out the woman’s chair, help her with her groceries, let her walk through the door first, and so on. But maybe this should all be put to rest. That doesn’t mean men shouldn’t have respect for women in public spaces. But it’s 2019, and we should all be feminists.
Chivalry is an outdated concept that supports the idea that women are weak, inferior beings worthy only of minute and annoying public courtesies of their social position.
Over time, chivalry became a social code for how a man should act and how they ought to treat a woman. Today, I think that chivalry has morphed into what we now know as toxic masculinity coupled with an anti-feminist viewpoint. The same knights that rode off on horses with a woman into the sunset are the same men who wanted their woman to stay home, in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant.
Being a feminist means that one believes that women deserve to have the same rights as men. Being a feminist also means that there are no societal or gender roles. There are no jobs that a woman can’t have, there are no public spaces in which a woman does not belong.
Women are so much more than having a man walk around to the other side of the car to open her door. If men want to honor women, they should do so by treating them equally.
Article: Angelique Frazier ’20
