What’s wrong with women expecting some chivalry?

Personally, I have always felt very uncomfortable with “chivalry”. It’s not that it makes me feel “oppressed” per se, it’s more that it doesn’t feel like genuine goodwill if it’s seen as an obligation due to my gender rather than to me. If someone who barely knows me wants to buy me stuff and open doors for me or whatever, only because I am female, it often, though not necessarily, goes along with other expectations about how I should treat them or behave to them, again because I am female.

In your case, it sounds like it’s a means of displaying affection toward your wife, which is quite different, and not creepy the way chivalry from random men can be.

I would also add that women like showing affection and being useful and considerate toward people we love, as much as you want to be helpful to the woman you love and treat her well. In part, the double standard of chivalry norms – that men need to treat women, especially their partners, well, but not vice versa – is also insulting to straight women because it suggests that we don’t actively love and care for the men in our lives, that we wouldn’t want to take steps to ease their way and improve their comfort. For instance, I love giving my boyfriend gifts and paying for dinners – we usually do this on a pretty even tally, but I still like each instance of gift-giving. A narrow chivalry norm denies us the chance to actively show our affection beyond what you call “small acts of gratitude”.

The problem is, Aaron, if chivalry is respect and courtesy, rather than something you should women because that is The Gender Role That Is Expected, is there any reason why women shouldn’t show chivalry to men too? And if both men and women should be “chivalrous”, what is the point of the word? Surely, what you are praising is simply the display of affection or generosity, or taking care of one’s partner or date, which should hardly be the sole province of men?

The way that this conversation has become about “getting” sex perfectly illustrates my point about how chivalry is creepy. It’s part of a wider complex of gender norms which sees relationships as transactional, with sexual services bought from women through treating us like porcelain dolls.

Sex shouldn’t be a chore for anyone, and shouldn’t be something you “get”, like it’s something you have to trick a woman out of or cajole her into cooperating with, or “buy” from her with “chivalry”. Sex ought to be something you do with someone, not something you take from someone. If you get the sense the woman you’re having sex with finds it a chore and you still go ahead and do it anyway, that’s disgusting. If she doesn’t enjoy having sex with you, you shouldn’t be having sex with her, full stop. If you’re not getting signals of total enthusiasm, you should just wank. If that leaves you wanking a lot of the time, maybe you need to think about how you can make the sex more mutually enjoyable — NOT how you can make the overall package of the relationship more attractive to her (e.g. through chivalry), just so that she puts out even when she doesn’t want to… rape-like sex?! Yuck.

Agagooga:
Not by the same fricking people it ain’t!

Agagooga:
What on earth exactly does that mean? Who are the feminists who take the view that men should be “chivalrous”? You’d be hard pressed to find someone who takes that view who doesn’t also subscribe to some vision of prescriptive gender roles, which subscription conflicts with feminism (second wave, third wave, woman of colour feminism, whichever) entirely.

If women are oh-so-powerful through a “feminarchy”, I’m having a hard time figuring out why we haven’t magically occupied all the top political posts and business positions, introduced a pay gap in favour of ourselves rather than the other way around, put social responsibility for birth control on men rather than women, and made men wear stupidly uncomfortable clothes like burqas and high heels rather than the other way around. Oh wait, we’ve got some SECRET POWER which comes from uncrossing our legs at the right minute, even if all it is is some mild influence on people who wield REAL POWER. Yeah, that’s convincing. Try again.

Uh.. no. Read my second paragraph again.

I think I may have figured out what you meant, but this is speculative, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

You think because men are subject to conflicting expectations, similarly, if women are subject to conflicting expectations, that can’t be a function of “patriarchy”. However, the conflicting expectations identified as “patriarchy” that apply in respect of women qua women are much more all-encompassing, powerful, pervasive, and intrusive, than those (which I acknowledge) that apply to men qua men (I also acknowledge there are some pretty shit conflicting expectations that apply to men, however these when analysed often turn out to be a function of patriarchy, e.g. reserving certain dangerous as the province of men only, stupid masculinity norms impinging on men’s freedom, homophobia against gay men etc. – and guess what they are the very same things feminists rail against). Moreover, there are men who have positions of real power (for instance, in government, in media, in business, in education) etc. who play a much greater role in shaping these expectations than women, who as a class are much less represented in those positions of real power. The thing is, as I keep trying to explain, this isn’t a MAN V WOMAN smackdown – when you ANALYSE the attitudes underlying the crap expectations facing both men and women you get what is traditionally identified as “patriarchy”. I don’t get the sense however that you object merely to the term, you seem to object to the very analysis and REJECTION of the traditional attitudes. You don’t think equality is worth striving for (you’ve admitted as much), and you think women are generically inferior to men (you talk about this continually on your blog). So, you know, basically, you kind of LIKE PATRIARCHY. Why don’t you just get behind it and argue for it openly instead of pretending it doesn’t exist?

There are many problems with this but the biggest one is the “i.e. men are evil” part.

Patriarchy is about an entire system and complex of attitudes controlled by some men and which, on the round, tends to benefit men in some way and benefit women in some way, although I would argue it benefits men in general more. An analysis of the underlying MEANINGS and MINDSET defining patriarchy also show a particular denial of agency to women (although also a contempt for men in a variety of ways, it tends not to limit men’s overt agency as much). Moreover, even though only a limited subset of men gain the full benefits of patriarchy, men are not as totally automatically DISBARRED from the “benefits” on a gender-based criteria (although the vast majority are disbarred on other criteria). While I think the “benefits” whether for men or women also, in the round, kind of suck if you care about people connecting as people, rather than people as resources to squeeze pleasure out of and to dominate, this explains why it is called male dominance and not female dominance.

But it follows from all of this that I think men in general would be better off (as judged partly materially but primarily under a value system which does not value domination) without patriarchy, and I also think some women behave in a way that supports the patriarchy (e.g., people like Thio Li Ann).

So “patriarchy” is NOT saying men are all evil or that they all coordinate their actions to oppress women. For instance, it is a patriarchal view that women should be the property of men – this is profoundly insulting to women obviously, but ALSO to men, since it says that men are the sort of brutes who would like to treat women as chattel. Feminists are precisely the people who say, men do NOT by their nature HAVE to dominate, do NOT have to rape, do NOT have to have ownership and control. Feminists hope for better for men. It is the cultural phenomenon and systemic attitudes of patriarchy that we opposed, NOT MEN. You are attacking a strawfeminist.

Finally, you really need to not say things like “oh it’s ok now because you’re not property” because, jeepers creepers, is that something I’m supposed to grovel and show DEFERENCE and GRATITUDE for? It’s no less than I deserve.