What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Chivalry Q&A

John-roman asked: Well, that Anon may have something of a point (if I can pull anything out of his comment). I would have to agree that a serious detriment to any/all chivalry these days is the serious aversion many young woman have fostered for “the creepy guy” who may very well ONLY be doing his best to be forthcoming and honest with his feelings. Many women are much better at harnessing and expressing their emotions than men, and oftentimes, the guys who are a bit insecure get trampled by projected offenses.

OK, but the thing is, young women aren’t wrong to maintain a serious aversion to creepy guys and creepy guy behaviour: at best, it’s offputting and unpleasant to deal with, and at worst it can be actively threatening or dangerous. You’ve put the term ‘creepy guy’ in quotation marks as though it’s necessarily a misnomer if the guy doesn’t actually mean to be creepy, but that’s just it: nobody does. Good intentions don’t prevent bad outcomes.Creepiness happens when people don’t have an accurate understanding of social cues, personal boundaries, appropriateness and/or body language, and is frequently compounded by an inablility to tell when someone else is unsettled – and if someone’s behaviour manages to tick all those boxes, it doesn’t matter a damn if they meant to be chivalrous, because the outcome can be genuinely distressing for the person on the receiving end; and that person is under no obligation whatsoever to be sympathetic. The stereotype that men are somehow fundamentally less adept at harnessing emotions than women is biologically unsupported: rather, it’s a biased social construct used to get men off the hook for bad behaviour, and a justification as to why they shouldn’t have to learn better.

Chivalry might sound like a lovely thing on paper, but stop and think for a moment what it actually implies: the term developed as a code of conduct for men at a point in history where women were significantly lacking in autonomy, respect and power. Gender-neutral politeness, like opening/holding doors for someone or asking if an overburdened person needs a hand carrying their stuff, is fine, because it’s potentially reciprocal behaviour, and it can also be politely refused if the subject asserts that they can manage on their own; but traditional chivalry isn’t extended man to man, and women aren’t meant to refuse it. Chivalry isn’t about people being polite to one another – it’s about women requiring male protection and assistance because they’re fragile, special creatures. Being treated like a damsel isn’t a compliment: that’s what so many Nice Guys fail to understand. It’s not that women don’t enjoy being treated nicely – we do! But there’s an important distinction between, for instance, politely offering to help someone of either gender who’s visibly struggling to carry lots of heavy bags, and persistently offering to carry even a single, light bag simply because the person carrying it is female. The former is a genuinely kind provision of assistance; the latter is an insulting assumption of gender-specific weakness. And if men can’t tell the difference between the two – and particularly if, having been denied permission to carry my one light bag, they keep on asking – I’m not wrong to find their behaviour creepy. That’s not a projected offense, in the sense of me creating an issue where there isn’t one: it’s an actual offence that the guy was oblivious to creating.

Two examples, by way of demonstration:

-          As a teenager, I sometimes used to go to a male friend’s house after school. On the walk from the station, he’d always keep on my left-hand side – even to the point of bodily herding me sideways like a stray sheep, breaking the conversation to duck around me – because he’d been taught that, if you were walking with a girl, you had to keep yourself between her and the traffic. He didn’t do this with male friends; only me. When asked to stop – this was, after all, pointless, especially given the width of the footpath – he refused. It was aggravating: I knew he meant well, but I still felt insulted by it, and even though I made that clear, it was more important to him to enforce an archaic code of conduct than to treat me as an equal.

-          Again in my teens, I dated a guy who once tried to compliment me by saying I was ‘cute and helpless’. He genuinely thought this was endearing: when I said it was insulting, he laughed at my indignation and said, ‘But you are! You’re cute and helpless.’ This whole exchange took place in the context of me having asserted that if someone ever attacked me, I’d fight back. It made me absolutely furious, and I spent the rest of the day feeling belittled and frustrated.

Point being: it’s entirely possible for men to help women while recognising their strength and respecting them as people. But most of the time, chivalry doesn’t do that, because the men who employ it as a strategy haven’t factored in that women are within their rights to refuse them: instead, they use it as a passive-aggressive way of making us feel socially indebted, rather than politely extending an offer of help in instances where we might actually need it.

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