Do Men Need Some Chivalry?

Justin Toh from the Centre for Public Christianity writes “Make Chivalry Great Again.” After noting a string sexual assaults and sexual harassments in the Australian parliament, she writes:

Enter chivalry. Admittedly, it seems downright medieval. Can’t argue – it was big around a millennium ago. For liberated moderns, chivalry reinforces rigid and retrograde gender roles: think brave knights and swooning damsels in distress, or excessive, flowery displays of courtly honour that underline female helplessness. That “honour” word raises eyebrows too, especially concerning women, since it links a woman’s value to her virginity and chastity – more terms that clang on the ear in a post-sexual revolution world.

Yet she adds:

A new chivalric order simply [not] make peace with the world’s present injustices. It could potentially sensitise the powerful to inequality of all kinds. That’s because in spirit, chivalry is a reminder to check your privilege: that all things being unequal, other people are always owed your personal respect. And that an attitude of humility – promoting the welfare of others before your own – is an excellent foundation for good social relations. Pay that forward enough, at scale, and who knows what revolution – not just in morals – might result?

I have long wondered the same, whether the solution to toxic masculinity is not unmasculine men, but finding a type of masculinity that is chivalrous rather than chauvanistic, virulent yet virtuous, protective without being patriarchal.

But what would that look like?

The funny thing about my time in the Army was that it was a weird mix of chauvinism and chivalry. On the one hand, there was porn everywhere, bawdy jokes abounded, denigrating remarks about women were common, complaints about wives and girlfriends, and derogatory sneers against high-ranking women. But at the same time, there was a sense of pride that there were things that we did not do in war. Australian soldiers don’t rape, they don’t shoot civilians, and they rescue women from danger. It was a strange mix and anyone who has served in the armed forces can probably relate to the moral paradox of male attitudes towards women in the military.

So would chivalry solve the crisis presented to us by the #MeToo movement and the various sexual abuse scandals that plague organizations and institutions of all types?

Now the very word “chivalry” can sound incredibly sexist and condescending. Conjuring up as it does images of women of weak constitution, prone to spraining ankles, fainting at the first sign of trouble, damsels in distress, needing a big burly bloke to come and save them. That is not what I mean by “chivalry”, but it’s understandable that the word still grates on modern ears. By all means, then, junk the term but not the concept. For chivalry is not the valorization of violence or the salvation of swooning maidens. Rather, chivalry emerged as a medieval ideology that promoted a code of honor, justice, and virtue. Its most supreme manifestation was in the defence of the defenceless and the protection of the vulnerable.

In a modern sense, we could think of chivalry as that code of conduct which ensures the welfare of those entrusted to one’s protection. A resolve to protect those in a position of vulnerability and to put the security of others above our own—and this need not be the sole preserve of men, but women as well.

However, in terms of what it means to be a chivalrous male, it would mean, riffing off St. Paul’s Carmen Christi– God himself becoming the ultimate servant—that masculinity is not something to be exploited for aggression and abuse, but to be placed in a position of helplessness so that others need not be. To act in such a way that no one would ever feel afraid to be in the presence of an Aussie soldier, whether in Kabul or in Kings Cross, whether in Dubai or in Detroit.

But what do you think? Is chivalry a concept with rehearsing or something too medieval to be of any value in our highly gendered, power-sensitive, intersectional world today?