Chivalry. To a lot of people, that is a foreign concept. What exactly is chivalry? According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the definition of chivalry is “behaving in an honorable or respectable way especially towards women.” Chivalry is derived all the way back to the medieval times, where men were expected to act a certain way towards women.
Pulling out chairs, holding the door open for a woman, monitoring language… How often do you actually witness this today? We did a survey with JICHS students and staff, and 78% of those asked firmly hold the belief that chivalry is long dead. The other 22% were a little more skeptical.
“Chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just changed a little bit. I still take my girls out on dates and pull their chair out and would do it for anyone,” an anonymous student proclaims.
A little skeptical ourselves of the chivalric nature of most guys today, we strung up another survey. Almost 90% of JICHS guys claimed that they would hold the door open for a random girl passing through. Thinking that is a little off range, we decided to conduct an experiment.
Standing outside of the cafeteria door during first lunch, Rachel walked a few feet behind a randomly selected 20 guys to see how many would take the few extra seconds to hold the door open for her. An alarming 3 guys actually held it to let her pass through. Even an administrator let the door slam in her face without a second glance. That’s only 15% compared to the 90% who supposedly claim to hold the door open for every girl. Surprising? It only provided further proof that chivalry is dead, or at least slowly dying.
We have a few theories of why chivalry is fading into a thing of the past.
· Today, we live in a gender neutral society where feminism is on the rise, and certain chivalrous acts could be considered “offensive” or “sexist.”
· There really is no “right way” to court someone nowadays; every girl is different. It’s not quite a “one size fits all” situation anymore.
· Actually going on dates is beginning to become a rare occurrence in this generation.
Basically, chivalry starts and ends with one thing. Respect. And if you don’t have respect, in the long run, do you really have anything?
Pulling out chairs, holding the door open for a woman, monitoring language… How often do you actually witness this today? We did a survey with JICHS students and staff, and 78% of those asked firmly hold the belief that chivalry is long dead. The other 22% were a little more skeptical.
“Chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just changed a little bit. I still take my girls out on dates and pull their chair out and would do it for anyone,” an anonymous student proclaims.
A little skeptical ourselves of the chivalric nature of most guys today, we strung up another survey. Almost 90% of JICHS guys claimed that they would hold the door open for a random girl passing through. Thinking that is a little off range, we decided to conduct an experiment.
Standing outside of the cafeteria door during first lunch, Rachel walked a few feet behind a randomly selected 20 guys to see how many would take the few extra seconds to hold the door open for her. An alarming 3 guys actually held it to let her pass through. Even an administrator let the door slam in her face without a second glance. That’s only 15% compared to the 90% who supposedly claim to hold the door open for every girl. Surprising? It only provided further proof that chivalry is dead, or at least slowly dying.
We have a few theories of why chivalry is fading into a thing of the past.
· Today, we live in a gender neutral society where feminism is on the rise, and certain chivalrous acts could be considered “offensive” or “sexist.”
· There really is no “right way” to court someone nowadays; every girl is different. It’s not quite a “one size fits all” situation anymore.
· Actually going on dates is beginning to become a rare occurrence in this generation.
Basically, chivalry starts and ends with one thing. Respect. And if you don’t have respect, in the long run, do you really have anything?