BGH122 said:
TundraWolf said:
A lot of what you wrote deals with a semantic argument. I did not intend the word 'chivalry' to mean 'kindness and respect to everyone', I intended it to mean preferential kindness and respect to women as I believe most people understand the term (more properly, this term would be 'gallant', but the word chivalry has come to mean the same thing colloquially).
You did not rebut any of my points, or show how preferential treatment to a particular gender is not sexist, hence it does not appear that you have addressed my argument. However, within the frame of your own argument, certainly it would not be demeaning or sexist in any way to treat women pleasantly because you act this way with all people. You are neither doing it because you expect a reward (as many women will probably assume and thus the negative reactions), nor because you consider women to be inferior/better than men.
I intentionally did not mean to directly address your own arguments mostly because I disagree with the way you view and have defined 'chivalry'. My response was more intended to show my own point-of-view, and to shed some light on how I believe the term 'chivalry' has become twisted over the years into the preconceived notion that it has become today. Because of the disagreement regarding definition, it would be hard to properly address your argument without coming to some sort of compromise beforehand. Having said that, let me try and voice something more directly in response to your original statement.
I willingly admit that, when it was first utilized, the tenet of chivalry that dealt with the treatment of women at court was fairly sexist. There is a very romanticized ideation regarding the way a knight should treat a lady, most of which is constantly perpetuated by Hollywood or my aforementioned abusers of chivalry. I, just as much as you, would like to break that perpetuation, as such actions are very demeaning to women in this day and age.
The way you define it, I suppose I would also have to agree with your statement regarding the superiority/inferiority predication; committing such 'chivalrous' acts would seem to automatically preclude any feelings of equality, because they obviously must be based around either showing respect to those higher in status than you, or non-verbally boasting of your own moral superiority over other people.
However, because I do not share the same definition of 'chivalry' as you do (or at least how you are implying it here), I cannot truly agree to that assertion. Because, by my definition, chivalry is something that implies you respect everyone and show them kindness appropriate to that respect, chivalry is based around equality. You are no better nor worse than any other person, so you should show them kindness. In turn, then, it should not be unreasonable to assume that people respect you and show that kindness as well. In that way, chivalry is very much about equality. And because of this, it would not be unreasonable to believe that women could act within the tenets of chivalry as well.
Because chivalry has so colloquially become associated with the male gender, that is obviously an assertion that many people cannot, or will not, follow. But I believe that it is no more outrageous a statement than that females should be treated as equals to males.
This is all assuming that we lived in a perfectly harmonious world where people respected each other equally all over the world. Which, of course, just isn't true. But from an academic standpoint, which very much seems to be where we are arguing at the moment, I do not see why this point-of-view is any less valid than another. Not that you implied as such; I am just stating my case.
