The Death of Chivalry?

  Many people comment that chivalry is dead.  I wonder if chivalry is dead or it’s just a sign of the times.  Chivalry is often miscontrued.  Most people understand it as opening doors for any member of the female sex or putting females first.  Chivalry is not only good manners and politeness but also a sign of loyalty.  Chivalry in the form of door opening was shown to upper-class ladies, and rarely anyone of a lower station.  Ladies required this in a man to show that he was genteel.  Chivalry was a mark of a gentleman.

    Are there no more gentlemen or is chivalry dead.  I propose neither.  Rather, I believe it’s a sign of the times.    There are still old-fashioned gentlemen who practice chivalry.  I believe the better question is whether ladies exist.  There are very few old-fashioned girls in the world.  In the last fifty years, women have made great strides to become equal in the world.  In that equality, women began to look at chivalry as a bad thing.  Chivalry was no longer polite or gracious, it became, instead, pig-headed and chauvinistic.  A man who opened a door for a woman was looked at as being condescending.  During feministic movements, women tried to kill chivalry thinking that it demeaned women.

    Now, men and women are almost equal and gentlemen and ladies are hard to find.  It is within them that chivalry is found and smiled upon.  Instead of wondering why men no longer practice chivalry, wonder what happened to the genteel lady.  When you find a lady, you will find that gentlemen appear.  A lady isn’t just a pretty face, she understands her place in the world and is confident.  She knows that being equal or superior to men doesn’t mean that women have to make more money and have more prestigious positions than men.  Money and jobs don’t make a person.  We have to look deep within and find the genteelness that has been supressed for so long.  That is our hidden weapon.  In that genteelness, we find a natural superiority that raises us and turns men into gentlmen.

   Being genteel isn’t demeaning be any means.  It’s liberating and fulfilling.  We don’t have to work three, four, five times harder than men to prove we are equal to them when we are naturally superiour.    Ladies are a dying species.  Women have abandoned genteelness and have turned on men and tried to extinguish chivalry.  Chivalry isn’t dead. It’s a sign of the times, a sign of a new period of trying equality.