Commenter J. J. Griffing disagrees with my use of the term chivalry:
Just call it “Courtly Love,” already, @Dalrock. You seem to have no idea what ACTUAL “chivalry” consists of beyond that, but what you call “chivalry” repeatedly is to the real thing what the Book of Mormon is to the Gospel. By defining the whole by one cancerous outgrowth (through a single book about said growth), you demonstrate gross ignorance of your topic and of the serious scholarship even your one abused source represents.
You’re usually RIGHT about feminism. But your persistent ignorance of chivalry is appalling. (Yes, I am still working on the promised rebuttal, but Real Life often interferes.)
I have no doubt that Griffing and other readers have much they could teach me about chivalry, and I look forward to the instruction. But nevertheless I don’t agree that we can draw the clear distinction he claims between chivalry and courtly love. While there are multiple aspects to what we commonly call chivalry, in popular usage chivalry is largely if not entirely about service and deference to women. If a parent tells you they are raising their son to be chivalrous, they almost never mean they are raising their boy to say go on armed adventures, or fight duels to defend his honor. What they most commonly will mean is they are raising their boy to look for ways to be of service to the women around him (carrying heavy loads, offering his coat, opening doors, etc). They often will also mean they are training their boy to court chivalrously by boldly declaring his romantic intentions, always paying for dates, and (when the time comes to propose marriage) kneel in submission before his lady.
Moreover, it isn’t just in modern usage that chivalry is associated with what the men’s sphere calls white knighting for women. The most famous real life act of chivalry (according to legend) is arguably when King Edward III gallantly came to the aid of a woman with a suspiciously timed wardrobe malfunction:
While she was dancing at a court ball at Calais, her garter is said to have slipped from her leg. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and returned it to her, exclaiming, “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Shame on him who thinks evil of it.”), the phrase that has become the motto of the Order.
This legendary act of chivalry led to the founding the oldest order of chivalry in the world, the Order Of The Garter. This is the most prestigious order of chivalry in the UK:
Order Of The Garter
This is the highest ranking order of chivalry in the United Kingdom, it is entirely within the personal gift of the Monarch and is very exclusive. Only The Queen, The Prince Of Wales and 24 knights may be in the order at any one time. When one Knight dies, another is appointed. It is also, the oldest order of chivalry in the world, going back to 1348.
The phrase the king uttered when the woman dropped her underwear was thought to be so gallant, so perfect an act of chivalry, that it along with a depiction of the garter itself was prominently incorporated into the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. As a result, this glorious example of the chivalric ideal is to this day embossed in gold on the front of British Passports.
Neither is it just C.S. Lewis who observed that tales of the Knights of the Round Table are steeped in the morality of courtly love, nor is this morality limited to works like Chrétien de Troyes’ Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. As Associate Professor of English Laura Ashe at Worcester College, Oxford explains, Malory is likewise steeped in courtly love:
Malory’s ideal of chivalry has love at its heart: ‘thy quarrel must come of thy lady’, he says, ‘and such love I call virtuous love’. Each knight is to fight for the sake of his lady; with his victories he earns her love, and defends her honour. He is absolutely loyal to her and will follow her every command, whatever happens – whether she sends him on an impossible quest, banishes him from her company, or stands accused of some terrible crime, in desperate need of his help. Here, tragedy enters the picture. Lancelot’s love of Guinevere can never have a happy ending, for she is King Arthur’s queen. This is the epitome of ‘courtly love’ in literature: a commitment which binds the lovers until their deaths, but is never fulfilled in happy union.
Lastly, the very term courtly love Griffing wants me to exclusively use is relatively new. While there is some controversy, it is generally attributed to Gaston Paris in an article from 1883. It is a term coined by literary critics hundreds of years later to describe a common characteristic of literary chivalry in the Late Middle Ages. Courtly love was always a common component of chivalric tales starting around the late 1100s. There were not two separate literary genres, chivalry and courtly love. Courtly love was part of the Late Middle Ages concept of chivalry, so much so that a separate name wasn’t required.
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A brilliant essay, as usual.
Perhaps hard times will spark a return in the West to the warrior roots of chivalry. I doubt it. But it happens, the process won’t be pretty.
Can the clock be turned back? Yes, with the application of sufficient force. As the Islamic fundamentalists have shown in the Middle. Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (and perhaps soon, Syria) – all were secular states giving rights to women, often in western dress. Now women are second class citizens, usually in some form of burqa.
See before and after pictures from Afghanistan:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/04/25/girls-of-afghanistan-show-america-at-work/
We live in an era when high school girls can get a high school lad put under house arrest, just by cooking up some lies and telling them to authorities. We live in an era when boys are drugged into submission in the K – 12 system and declared to be inherently bad in colleges. Dimwitted feministas bandy the idea of “curfew for men”. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera ad naseum.
But some people want to engage in Live Action Role Play (LARPing) and not just at the RenFair once a year. Well, everyone has to have a hobby, I guess.
There are more important issues around us than reclaiming some Victorian era mythos, especially when that mythos is harmful to men and their sons.
Pffffft, I say. What is Griffing’s quest, his real quest? Even more important, what is his favorite color!? Eh?
Anon Reader,
It’s not that I disagree with your comment. It’s logic. But logic seldom works with people.
Social reforms almost alway come from attempts to recover lost values – adapting them in new forms for the present’s needs. Selling new values and new ideas is much more difficult, and seldom succeeds.
Chivalry has deep roots in the West, as does the warrior ethos it embodies. I don’t know if it could be, shall we say, sold to to today’s young men should hard times create the need. But I don’t have any better ideas.
Larry
Social reforms almost alway come from attempts to recover lost values – adapting them in new forms for the present’s needs.
What? No. Not even close. The most cursory review of the last 200 years falsifies this. William Wilberforce wasn’t trying to recover a lost value, he was forging a new one, just to pick a single 19th century example. I can go on at great length on the topic of social innovations since 1800 if you want me to.
Selling new values and new ideas is much more difficult, and seldom succeeds.
Ridiculous. Women voting was a new value and a new idea until 100 years ago…one example of many, many, many to choose from. I can’t really believe that you made this claim, it testable just by looking out the window and it fails.
Chivalry has deep roots in the West, as does the warrior ethos it embodies.
Only to a minority of men, and a shrinking minority at that. Few men under 30 have any clue about these legends, they “know” that “Crusades were Islamophobic, bro!” and so forth. Only aging Boomers still really care about this stuff, although conservative feminists have learned to use “chivalry” as a dog whistle to get White Knight TradCons to do something.
Dog whistle or LARPing, that’s pretty much what “chivalry” is in 2018 . IF it wasn’t so deeply embedded into the culture of the US majority it would not matter, it would be just an historical curiousity of some sort. Dalrock has done a great service in showing this.
PS:
All this leaves out the New Americans who generally have zero connection English or American history, never mind Charlemagne. That’s a whole different ball game.
The end of endless courtship, and how the sexual revolution shifted men’s behavior too.
https://nypost.com/2017/08/30/beware-of-foodie-call-dates-who-are-just-in-it-for-a-free-meal/
Anon Reader,
“William Wilberforce wasn’t trying to recover a lost value”
The abolitionist movement in Britain and the US was begun and sustained by Quakers and evangelical christians. Their writings justify abolition of slavery in terms of Christian beliefs.
Wilberforce would be especially appalled at your claim. He became an evangelical Christian in 1785. He said he began his crusade against the slave trade as a direct result of his new beliefs. Much of his other work was writing about Christian doctrine and supporting missionaries.
Many of his associates were motivated abolitionists due to their Christian beliefs. For example …
* Thomas Clarkson was a deacon, on track to become a priest. But in 1785 he had a spiritual awakening (his phrase), which led him to dedicate his life to the abolitionist cause.
* Granville Sharp taught himself Greek and Hebrew to more effectively carry the word to unbelievers.
* Hannah More was a famous writer of essays on religious doctrine and Christian-themed plays.
I could discuss the rest of your comment, but really – why bother?
Larry Kummer:
Now women are second class citizens…
Are you envious on behalf of women that they are not given equal poor treatment as the men of these countries?
Nowadays a man would be smarter by being a Knight Templar, instead of being some treacherous female’s “White Knight” sucker.
“Non nobis, Domine, non nobis.
Sed nomini, tuo da Gloriam!”
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Larry Kummer:
I could discuss the rest of your comment, but really – why bother?
I’ve definitely noticed over the last several months that your one approach to a losing argument is to nitpick one minor point of your intellectual better’s statements with a solid heap of bafflegarble and then wash your hands of it. It’s contemptuously transparent.
I wrote:
“William Wilberforce wasn’t trying to recover a lost value”
Larry
The abolitionist movement in Britain and the US was begun and sustained by Quakers and evangelical christians. Their writings justify abolition of slavery in terms of Christian beliefs.
I know that. However, they were not looking back at some past value to recover, they were looking forward. You can read their writings and see that. Therefore they do not support your claim.
Wilberforce would be especially appalled at your claim.
Doubtful.
He became an evangelical Christian in 1785. He said he began his crusade against the slave trade as a direct result of his new beliefs. Much of his other work was writing about Christian doctrine and supporting missionaries.
Oh, his new beliefs, you say?
What lost value from the past was he trying to recover, again?
HINT: He wasn’t.
Many of his associates were motivated abolitionists due to their Christian beliefs.
True. Also irrelevant. Your claim was about “trying to recover a lost value” in the larger picture some one LARPing about Chivalry. You made zero claim about Christian beliefs.
Moving the goalposts is not honest. Please don’t do that.
Fact: Chivalry is dead no matter what LARPers claim.
Fact: There was no golden age, and even if there was there is no way back, because conditions are different even if human nature is not.
I could discuss the rest of your comment, but really – why bother?
Irony.
Dalrock, very educational. Your thesis may be no less irrefutable than Alex Jones’ certain theory, but your ‘evidence’ from the lips of a woman who earns a living as a college professor…you should know better. You did not address the potential for female spin to sell ‘chivalry’ as (re)defined by Team Woman. It’s not like I will come up with my own expert opinion on C.S. Lewis or Thomas Malory, but I must be suspicious of the sex so fair and so artful at rewriting the history of men not just past but present and even future. I would be suspicious of any current academic, I admit; and how may experts on chivalry are there to reference?
In my brief online search for overt feminist tendencies I did find any. If anyone cares, for physiognomy and presumably her voice (and perhaps historical insight): https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/people/laura-ashe
Oh dearie me no that is not a British Passport – but a horrid european impostor – a British Passport is in colour dark blue and on the inside reads: Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Empire Affairs requests and requires in the name of her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary. This is why we British stride through the world as if we own it and everyone else acts as if that is true. Calais in 1348 was part of the realm of England – stolen back by the cheese-eating surrender-monkeys in 1558.
Hi Dalrock,
in my view, courtly love is a more apt term than just chivalry.
The country I’m from was in large parts hacked by religious chivalric orders of monk-knights back from the Moor. There is no doubt that these men were knights, were noble, and would’ve most likely take part in that form of leisure had they not consecrated their life in service of God.
Personally, I’ve always been told that chivalry is service. Not service to women specifically but in the sense of Christian charity. That includes, naturally, women.
Chivalry in the sense you speak of, however, undeniably existed – a large part of our medieval poetry was about that – cf. “Cantigas de Amigo” and “Cantigas de Amor”
But I always considered it a kind of leisurely offshoot or corruption of the Christian knight’s ideal of service. Perhaps it’s due to our peculiar history that cannot be separated from the fight against the Moor.
The truth is, in Portugal – and I’ll bet also Spain – a knight is more likely to be known for the Moorish heads he collected rather than by the ladies he seduced.
Now that I think of it, there may be a reason why D. Quixote was written around here – with his infatuation for the poor clueless washerwoman that he imagined as his cruel mistress. I think courtly love / leisure chivalry was never big around here…
I find it especially interesting, that chivalry is basically the issue, that started modernity. Chivalry is what is mocked in don Quijote after all and the book already contains the principles that built the secular world as we currently have it – irony and centrality of an individual.
You could see the path from there to postmodern art as inevitable road towards the expression of these principles and also a pretty convincing evidence of what happens when you detach yourself from the Christian principle (in a structurally Christian society – I have no idea how this works elsewhere).
Chivalry is comfortable, because it hides the terrible reality and weight of our roles. Being a husband is difficult, when you are accepting the responsibility in full, especially when your woman was touched by feminism, but the responsibility is real and important. The work is there to be done, every day.
I feel that if the Christian world would be able to deal with the issue of chivalryin all its implications and the secular realm would deal with the irony (reading David Foster Wallace, I suppose), we could have a nice coming together – in a simple reality of our humility in front of our real responsibilities, conferred by the “eternal” roles.
That’s how I would understand it too…back in the day it certainly was a code of honor amongst men and may have had roots in the love of God which naturally extended to the weak amongst the knights (like women)…but there is nothing like that contained in chivalry today. It’s about submitting to all women and calling it a virtue.
Slavery has been a part of the world for almost all written history. Its claimed modern lack is the oddity, not a return to history. Though we really do have slavery, we just call it different things.
(You don’t own any land in the US for example, the government does and you have to pay significant taxes for the right to live on it, as one example.)
@‘Reality’ Doug
This is the point. Women did redefine chivalry for Team Woman. But this didn’t happen in modern times. It happened in the 1100s! The chivalry we love wasn’t corrupted, it is the corruption. The woman who redefined chivalry to serve team woman was not a professor at Oxford, but Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Oldřich:
D. Quijote mocks both chivalry and modernity – in Sancho Panza.
As for this chivalry issue, I think it boils down to the bourgeois adopting a particular form of leisure from a particular class that they ended up abolishing.
Chivalry/Courtly love worked fine – for values of “fine” – with aristocrat knights in the 3-partite society. That wasn’t how the People got married and with their lives, for instance.
But it doesn’t work so well in a liberal/”free”/bourgeois/market society. Like, well, everything except markets.
Replacing Christian love as the pinnacle of grace with romantic love was our first mistake.
On the topic of slavery…when Jesus mentions “servant” in many parables, does that word really translate to “slave”?
@Dalrock
Yessir.
You people misuse ‘hypergamy’ in a false way, so why not do the same with ‘chivalry’?
Portuguese Man:
I think that the problem of chivalry and of irony is basically the same, it prevents the pain coming from learning from your experiences.
Irony always sees itself ironically, that is the point, that is how prevents the injury, it is too cool to care. Chivalry, on the other hand, is too unworthy to care.
Either is a “sickness of soul”, I would say. I believe the oportunity for a great synthesis is coming and on my side, it is named postirony and I recommend reading David Foster Wallace 🙂
Thanks for the response. It is not my primary goal to show how recently the tare of “Courtly Love” (by whatever name) was added to the wheat (“chivalry”) but to help readers to distinguish between them. It is my contention, contra your binary division of Game v. Courtly-Love/Chivalry (and all that is not per “Game” amounting to “Chivalry”), that both “Courtly Love” and the “Game” are errors, the Nicomachean poles between which one finds right “Chivalry.”
@ Ilíon
@Oscar
I assume he means people who read and comment on the blog. People like himself.
@Dalrock, apparently I’ve skipped some of your classes and gotten behind. I’m not familiar with Eleanor of Aquitaine. I am of the opinion that long-lived institutions are corrupt institutions and that the courtly intrigues were the base humans with power doing what base humans do. Imagine my shock at realizing that the peasants were no better and in fact generally worse. Exceptions would be the fresh blood that starts new dynasties that aren’t necessarily worse, the ‘bastards’ made royalty. The transition from Roman Empire to Middle Ages I attribute to the institutional corruption of Rome. The transition from European Kings and Queens to Western nation-states I attribute to the institutional corruption of Divine Right of Kings and the like but the courts of courtly love. I can’t gainsay your deets about how it actually happened that second time.
I will venture that women in general become politically powerful concomitant to institutional supremacy, and being that we are animals at least the sexuality of women is horded and sabotaged to keep the politically outside countrymen down, whether by conscious human design or nature’s revealed and reinforcing path of less resistance and greatest base reward. Sex is an incredibly important economic asset. Women are sex objects. To not manage women as such is to make civilization impossible. Anyway, if your thesis is right about Eleanor of Aquitaine, I would expect that at that time marriage became a causalty, etc.
The Magna Carta must then figure in the same milieu, perhaps the supremacy of the gravy train getting top heavy. It may be (as I think I’ve read somewhere) that only at the top of society that women had political power or whatever ‘freedom’, which would still be enough to track the process of decline of royalty as an institution. Kings may have had welfare for favorite side pieces, but the modern credit money did not allow for giving rank-and-file women a better option than chaste wifedom, I think.
Then, perhaps, like Alexander the Great’s great conquest to spread dead Greek culture to where it might be bloom anew in more alive peoples, the nationalization process spread the mystique of Romantic love to the people. Spare the rod, spoil the broad. And emasculated men will tell me my conclusions are wrong, but a country is only as strong as its people, and there is not defense in depth if men do NOT take the law into their own hands. Institutions die. People that are their institutions die. Funny how libtards and cuckservatives are these Western institutions in their loins and hearts, somewhat respectively but not cleanly so.
I would temper the decline of European royalty due to courtly feminism with the economic means of trade by land. Once Portugal circumnavigated Africa the trade from the Levant to Italy into Europe became relatively unimportant. Not so much that France could not have their imperial jollies with two famous ministers and his highness the Sun King. I wonder what momentous political decisions have been made by kings of this time by the wiles of their ‘loves’. Would a pattern emerge? Women can’t help but to insist on dominant men as the animals understand dominance. Maybe in all that there are some fruitful ideas the intrepid scholars here would like to explore. As for me, I know my goose is cooked and have more pressing matters. One is to spew all this just to feel more connected and relevant than otherwise. I posit we all have that motive. Actionable intelligence is better than pure theory, but, and I ask this rhetorically, do what? I’m still trying. Thanks for reading, anyone. Best wishes to the men who suspect their value.
@Damn Crackers, of course the Greek work translates to servant and slave. The distinction was less viable without a government gravy train for the masses. You can look online as well as I for the essays that must be there. I quick check of the evidence is available at biblehub.com. There you can look at the various English translations side by side and find that the choice between ‘slave’ and ‘servant’ is about 50/50. There is nothing foreign about the word slave if the goal is world conquest. I doubt many here know the full literal meaning of the word ‘Islam’ or its derivation in Judaism and Christianity. Qumran was militant Judaism and shows how not far-fetched the association is. It’s always about power, religion, anything that frames social shoulds. What are these discussions of chivalry about if not about the means of emasculating men, i.e. who has and does not have power? And here on earth no less. I’m being rhetorical again.
Oldřich:
Perhaps. I never saw a problem with irony, and never realised that the problem of chivalry was it, until I read about it here.
I’ll still contend that the “real” problem is not the aristocratic leisure known as chivalry but rather that the stupid bourgeois decided, in his infinite frivolity and superficiality, to adopt it as ideal conduct and actually take it seriously.
@J.J.
The wheat-and-tares analogy doesn’t work because if you removed courtly love from the stories what is left is something that is not recognizably chivalrous.
Defenders of chivalry always want to refer back to the code from the Song of Roland as The Real Chivalry. But chivalry is a cultural phenomenon, and as such its definition–what it IS–is subject to cultural movements. The same is true of things like the U.S. Constitution. I despise the 19th Amendment, but I cannot say in truth that the current U.S. Constitution isn’t The Real U.S. Constitution because it contains stupid amendments.
Likewise–whether anyone likes it or not–for almost one thousand years the cultural movement of chivalry has been about pedestalizing women.
“…and (when the time comes to propose marriage) kneel in submission before his lady.”
What immediately comes to mind is this:
“I’ll bow down to no other one, except for The Father and HIs Son!” -Suicidal Tendencies
This really speaks the bottom line right here. Both chivalry and feminism would have all men worshiping women instead of God. They are forms of idolatry.
I actually agree, Portuguese Man. but I think that the tendency that creates the bourgeois type is a tendency that has to be fought all the time, even inside oneself, I would say it is simply a kind of unpleasant childishness.
The problem is that the structure of social ethics that should have educated it and keep it in check has fallen apart.
There is a whole ocean of issues that we could discuss in relation to this, but I am actually personally interested only in one thing – can it grow together again?
@Uncle Squid
I think the more proximate attack is on biblical marriage. The Bible teaches wives to fear their husbands and to submit to them, call them lord. Courtly love inverts all three of these, albeit (initially) outside of marriage. And even the last part is of course an attack on marriage.
Oldřich:
Yes, we’re all bourgeois now.
As for your question, I do not know. But Reason seems to point to yes.
The Apostle Paul wrote to a Christian brother Philemon about a runaway slave he returned but also wished freed.
His instructions to Christian slaves in 1 Corinthians tells them to seek freedom. “Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you–although if you can gain your freedom, do so.”
It is fair game for a Christian culture to examine whether the continued practice of slavery is an appropriate expression of its Christian values.
As a Lewis fan, this post made me think of The Silver Chair, where the prince is certainly chivalrous. However, he’s also under a spell to an evil witch, and once he’s freed he slays her!
Dalrock, since you’re getting all into history (which I’m bad at) and seem to have hit the very point where feminism enters the fictional world… what’s the first instance of the manosphere coming to the rescue in this respect?
Sir Hamster
It is fair game for a Christian culture to examine whether the continued practice of slavery is an appropriate expression of its Christian values.
If you hear a whooshing sound, it’s the actual point…way, way, way over your head.
But since you have decided to play, what “lost value” was “restored” by the 19th Amendment?
If you want an answer, you’re going to have to first provide the context on how the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution has any relevance to whether William Wilberforce was restoring lost values from the past.
SirHamster
If you want an answer, you’re going to have to first provide the context on how the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution has any relevance to whether William Wilberforce was restoring lost values from the past.
Ok.
Larry stated:
Social reforms almost alway come from attempts to recover lost values – adapting them in new forms for the present’s needs.
This is the statement that you have chosen to defend as well. It is foolish.
Pointing to Wilberforce as an example is obvious: the anti-slavery social reforms of the 19th century were not at all about recovering any lost values for the simple and obvious reason that slavery had existed throughout recorded history and before.
The anti-slavery social reformers are an example that demolishes Larry’s foolish statement. Because ending slavery was a new value, not any lost value that was recovered.
History. It’s relevant.
Now you come to play and I am certain that you more than up to the task. Here is what you have chosen to defend, the hill that you are eager to die on in a metaphorical sense:
Social reforms almost always come from attempts to recover lost values…
SirHamster: what “lost value” was “recovered” in the 19th Amendment?
Waiting for your answer…then you can explain what “lost value” was “recovered” in the 18th Amendment.
SirHamster,
Saying “take it if you can have it” is not anywhere close to “actively seek for it.”
The story you mention, about the ball at Calais, is almost certainly false. That story’s on Wikipedia, and the continuation is:
“However, the earliest written version of this story dates from the 1460s, and it seems to have been conceived as a retrospective explanation for the adoption of what was then seen as an item of female underclothing as the symbol of a band of knights. In fact, at the time of the Order’s establishment in the mid-14th century, the garter was predominantly an item of male attire.”
In regards to the motto:
“The motto in fact refers to Edward’s claim to the French throne, and the Order of the Garter was created to help pursue this claim.”
Both of these statements are from the writings of Clifford J. Rogers, a professor of history at West Point.
I should also add that the story you mentioned is cited from the College of St George – Windsor Castle, which calls the story a popular legend, and immediately follows it with explaining that it’s not true, and that the motto in fact was in reference to the king’s claim on the French throne.
I have not. I only questioned your implication that the newness of Wilberforce’s beliefs indicated completely new values. The value of “no slavery” has a root in the treatment of slavery in the Bible, Old Testament and New. Israel being ex-slaves of Egypt and all.
Now if you want to argue that the abolition of slavery is a net loss, have at it. I only care about the Christian concept at stake here. Setting slaves free is not a new value, it is an ancient one.
I don’t have a thesis that yields a position on your question. The history of goddess worship and the decline of the virtue of Roman women in ancient times demonstrate that the error of female empowerment are not new. Really, it goes back to Eve.
@ BillyS,
Having the idea that one can seek freedom creates a giant opening to actively seek freedom.
The alternative teaching from Paul would be, “don’t seek freedom, stay a slave until you’re dead.”
John Wright, in his discussion of Disney Wars, notes the following:
[i]Here is what I mean: as anyone who has watched boys versus girls fighting can tell you, girls rarely enjoy the battle-frenzy of fighting, they are rarely good sports about it, and they do not understand chivalry.
In a chivalrous fight, you deliberately give up anything that might look like an unfair advantage, so that when you deck your foe, and you stick your hand out to help him up, he knows in his heart of hearts that you did not win by cheating, but just because you totally dominated him by skill and strength alone, and hence can easily destroy him, but decided not to.
He knows that if he does not accept your hand, you will destroy him. Chivalry, when extended to the loser, is meant to make him feel more helpless, and to force him to accept you no longer as an enemy, but now as a friend. (The friend is lower in the social hierarchy than the victor, but he is now in the hierarchy, and knows his place.) It is a simple survival mechanism used by gentleman and savage wolves alike to win both battles in the short term and wars in the long term. Chivalry is based on the idea this is not the last fight you will ever be in, because war will be with us, always.
Schoolboys play at fighting to learn how to control their strength and retrain themselves, so they can be brutal when brutality is called for, to knock heads together but save lives, or so they can be lethal when lethalness is called for, so they can kill quickly and efficiently with no hard feelings after.
Those who doubt me, if they do not know any schoolboys, can look at some of the Robin Hood ballads: see for yourself how often Robin has his ass kicked by Little John or Gamble Gold or Friar Tuck, who later become ale-friend or partners-in-crime or war-comrades.
No woman in his history of the world can ever really, truly understand this concept, not in her heart of hearts. Women, by and large, are created by nature and trained by custom to fight when and only when all retreat is cut off, all negotiation has failed, and there are little children cowering behind her, crying.
Then she fights like Mama Bear, and may use any trick or deception, any weapon, any blow fair or foul, feminine guile or human sadism can invent. And she is wise to kick the foe in his face when he falls, and slit his throat with the razor she uses to shave her legs, quickly before he finds his feet again. Because he is a monster, or else he would not have been fighting a woman to begin with.[/i]
(http://www.scifiwright.com/2018/10/the-last-straw-12-the-non-fight-scenes/)
If you can explain to me how this description of chivalry – which makes immediate intuitive sense to me and I expect to every man who reads it – fits into your claim that chivalry itself is corrupted by women, I would be interested to see it.
Failing that, one must conclude that you are avoiding evidence that doesn’t fit your thesis.
what “lost value” was “recovered” in the 19th Amendment?
SirHamster
I don’t have a thesis that yields a position on your question.
Then you are merely trolling for flames and have nothing of substance to contribute.
Same stuff, different day.
SirHamster,
You may want to take some reading comprehension courses. Those are two different things. Paul would have said “actively seek it” if that is what he meant. That is a “like duh” point. Too many people twist the Scriptures to put their own meaning into it and you are unfortunately doing the same. Take what is written, not what you wish was written or implied.
It is not an either-or issue, even if you claim that. Paul was basically being consistent with his own proclamation elsewhere that he was content in whatever state he found himself. Why must you add to what is written?
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As promised in the comment linked and answered, above, I have at long last answered your claim. The line between chivalry and courtly love is not visible from low-earth orbit, to the naked eye, but where the rubber meets the road it is at least a four-lane highway with DoT wildflower reclamation in the median. See more at the following link:
Chivalry is the narrow road between the ways of eunuchs and of barbarism.
Okay, it doesn’t look like the link took. Trying again:
On Chivalry
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