I have good news and bad news.

The good news: chivalry is not dead.

The bad news: chivalry wasn’t really about me at all.

Perhaps it would be best to start where most European history seems to begin: the Church. In short, after the invasion of the Normans from what is now France in the tenth century, the Church decided to ease the terror by instilling an honor code for aristocratic, self-professed Christian knights to follow in their personal lives and when they encountered neutral common folk while in uniform.

Now, imagine you are one of these country women used to being barged in on by foreign troops and you are greeted by a cavalry of knights and horses. In such a case, chivalry dictates a sort of etiquette for these knights to communicate to the woman that though they are indeed large and intimidating, they do not intend to hurt her.

In this situation, I don’t imagine that anyone would have a problem with chivalry. Love your neighbor, and don’t rape and pillage an innocent village. If you want a wife, don’t abduct her. Common sense. But note: innocent villages are full of men, women and children; and they are innocent because they do not possess the same force as the knights do.

The aristocratic man continued to practice chivalry even without the constant threat of war, deeming it his individualistic duty to protect his household, physically or verbally, whenever it came under attack. A woman, however, did not possess similar influence to defend her family’s honor and was thus deemed dependent on a more influential class: in this case, the males, who have traditionally had power in Western civilization.

The problem arises when we attempt to reconcile our modern ideals with the medieval chivalric code. We have decided that women are fit to work alongside men, own property and hold public office, yet we have spent these hundreds of years since the end of the Dark Ages recovering from the idea that women are inherently powerless and that we must defend them as if they are domestic goodness and powerlessness incarnate.

A man, unfortunately, never knows what to expect when he holds a door for a woman anymore: maybe eye rolling, perhaps a pleasant smile and the occasional I-can-do-it-myself-thank-you scowl. I like holding doors for people, too, regardless of their gender. It’s a nice thing to do and I like it when other people do it for me, too. Other women understand this practice: they go through the door when I hold it, and most of the time, they look up and say thank you.

In my experience, men generally have a harder time with doors. Some will go through the door and perhaps say thank you as well, but many will stop dead in their tracks, pace around the entry in confusion or even declare that it’s not my place to hold the door. Often, they’ll place a hand on the door to supplement mine and not acknowledge me at all.

Allow me to share some a couple more specific experiences: Once, I opened a door for an older man in the morning, and he loudly declared, “OH, NO! My father would roll over in his GRAVE if he saw this!” and took the door from me. I stared at the ground as I shuffled inside. I encountered him again a couple months later, and he did the same exact thing. Turns out that he simply has his script rehearsed and ready to go.

My personal favorite is the time I held the door for a boy before we both went down a flight of stairs. He tried to take the door from me and insisted multiple times that I go in before him, but I smiled and told him that I was opening it specifically for him. His expression grew from friendly to almost scary, and he looked me in the eye and said, “Stop trying to be noble.”

But what if we can all be noble? It only takes one mean-spirited woman to counterclaim the idea that all women possess some sort of intrinsic defenselessness. Chivalry is founded on the ideal that civilized knights, or gentlemen (can we coin the term “gentlewomen” now that chain mail is outdated but the ideal of a “gentleman” lives on?), have a responsibility to defend the powerless. Those that we would point to and declare true gentlemen today value those that society looks over and treats them as equals, not as dependents.

My point is this: men, hold the door for people. Women, hold the door for people, too. Both of you, go through doors when others open them for you; an open door is an extension of virtue. Accept it. Chivalry is noble, but practice chivalry not to lord it over another because of your own privilege, but rather to uphold honor. No one owes you anything for your chivalry, but all of us should practice chivalry nonetheless. Your honor exists regardless of whether or not another is there to accept it, and you cannot earn honor by demeaning that of another; on the contrary, you must create your own.

The post Chivalry is not about sex, it’s about honor appeared first on The Triangle.