Apparently “independent” women like Carrie Lukas love chivalry.
When the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, the answer was obvious: women and children had first priority. Why was this? Certainly, the male passengers could have over-powered most of the women and saved their own lives. What kept them from doing so?
Chivalry. The idea that part of being a man (and certainly part of being a gentleman) is to sacrifice willingly to protect those who are more vulnerable. Of course, all those aboard the Titanic were equally vulnerable to the near freezing water. The men who gave their seats in the lifeboats gave their lives. Out of all of the Titanic’s passengers, 74 percent of women lived while 80 percent of the men died.
Christina Hoff Sommers began her review of Harvey Mansfield’s new book Manliness by reminding readers of the memorial erected by women in 1931 to honor those men on the Titanic. The memorial’s inscription reads: “To the brave men who perished in the wreck of the Titanic. . . . They gave their lives that women and children might be saved.” As Sommers suggests, this overlooked memorial is a fitting symbol of the state of chivalry or even of manliness today:
…almost no one remembers those men. Women no longer bring flowers to the statue on April 15 to honor their chivalry. The idea of male gallantry makes many women nervous, suggesting (as it does) that women require special protection. It implies the sexes are objectively different. It tells us that some things are best left to men. Gallantry is a virtue that dare not speak its name.
Ok, time out. There were about 2,000 people aboard the Titanic, of which only about 30 percent — or 600 people — survived. That was in 1912. A lot of those people (I’m gonna go with most) are dead by now. I’m sure they still have surviving relatives, but it’s not like thousands of people alive today were personally touched by the Titanic sinking. I’d be willing to bet that not a whole lot of people bring flowers to commemorate, say, the first Balkan war, which also happened in 1912.
It has nothing to do with chivalry, and everything to do with proximity. Go to DC and see how many people bring flowers and gifts to the Vietnam War memorial as compared to how many bring such things to the Lincoln memorial, or even the WWI memorial. There’s a marked difference, and it isn’t because people don’t think that ending slavery was important.
A man giving up his seat to a woman who he knows is equally capable of standing on her own is different. It’s a gesture that doesn’t (as some feminist suggest) imply women are weak. It’s a simple show of respect. Respect not just for the woman, but also for himself. It shows that this man believes himself to be a gentleman and holds himself to high standards. Those standards are more important than enjoying the comfort of a seat on his morning commute.
Ok. Really, it hasn’t been feminists who are obsessed with “chivalrous” gestures like opening doors and giving up seats. I’ve never heard a feminist lambast a man for pulling out her chair. I think that most feminists recognize that good manners are important, but that we’re also pretty physically capable of standing on our own. If I’m on the subway and there’s an open seat, and the guy behind me looks like he’s been working all day, is carrying a heavy bag and is completely exhausted, he should sit down before me. If I’m going to school in the morning and I’ve got my giant bag slung over my shoulder with my computer, my gym clothes, and a bunch of law books in it, I’ll probably take the seat before the 25-year-old guy who’s only holding a newspaper. That seems fair, right?
That said, these cries of “chivalry is dead!” are a little premature. Men offer me seats on the subway all the time. Most of the time when a seat opens up, men don’t even try and sit down. Everyone I’ve dated has held doors, etc. And if I get to the door first, I’ll hold it. Good manners.
Resurrecting chivalry begins by remembering why it’s important. Chivalry is part of a civil world. Women should welcome gentlemanly gestures, and graciously accept them with a thank you. I’ll start by thanking the men of the Titanic, who 96 years ago gave up their seats so that the women could live.
As far as I can tell, women usually do say “thank you” for polite gestures. But do I think that men should have to die in the name of chivalry? No thanks.
Again, I really have to ask: Who’s anti-man here?
And regarding the chivalry aboard the Titanic, I thought that the majority of third class women and children did indeed die along with the men. Apparently only first class women and children are to be protected by chivalry, since Lukas is claiming this practice was in place during the tragedy.
Really, if chivalry were at work on the Titanic, then the only survivors would have been women and children. I do believe that was not the case.
All sarcasm aside, I think that’s pretty much how chivalry does work.
No, no, you don’t understand! They were offering themselves up as potential chum, or possibly providing a handy source of protein for the women and children. Their own survival couldn’t have been farther from their minds.
Besides, women don’t have the upper-body strength for drifting.
assuming men did die so that women could survive: apparently women are supposed to happily accept second class citizen status every day of their lives in return for getting a better chance of surviving a bizarre and rare disaster. Great trade-off, thanks!
SOMEONE HAD TO ROW THE BOATS!
The thing that annoys the hell out of me is that the women held up as damsels in distress are generally incapable of protecting themselves only because they aren’t allowed to be strong. I mean, your average upper-middle-class Victorian woman wasn’t allowed to exert herself any more strenuously than during an occasional game of lawn tennis.
“The thing that annoys the hell out of me is that the women held up as damsels in distress are generally incapable of protecting themselves only because they aren’t allowed to be strong. I mean, your average upper-middle-class Victorian woman wasn’t allowed to exert herself any more strenuously than during an occasional game of lawn tennis.”
Exactly! It was in the Victorian era that people honestly thought that women who ran too much or performed physical labor would actually turn into men! Meaning, their wombs would shrivel up and disappear. Not too far off from the ancient Roman belief that the womb actually traveled around the body and sometimes could rise up to smother a woman. So much progress in medical history those 2,000 years, huh?
Yes, it is how chilvary works. We’ve been talking about this with regard to Victorian notions of womanhood for middle and upper class women, which rested entirely on notions that they had certain kinds of sexuality and physical capacities that weren’t shared by working class women or slave women (in the US). Their bodies were marked in certain ways in order to provide white middle and upper class women with the ‘protections’ of chilvary.
The best, historical and empirical treatment of this was in Deborah Gray White’s “Aren’t I a Woman” (She’s referring to Sojourner Truth’s speech where she, a former slave asked, if she wasn’t a woman since she didn’t suffer from the male code of chilvalry.)
And yeah, interesting that the author completely leaves out the big story of the Titanic: class. You can’t even really blame loss of historical memory here, since Titanic the movie addresses this in a very obvious way.
Chivalry isn’t dead; it’s just being spread around better. I’m one of those women who wear “sensible” shoes because the other kind annoy me, and I’m generally annoyed enough. I also part my (long) hair to flash the gray patch, and lately it shows whether I part there or not. And some days my knees hurt, and I suppose that shows too. It was at the end of one such day that I realized that I’d joined the Respected Senior contingent: A young woman offered me her seat on the commuter train. I took it, too, gratefully.
Of course I open doors for people when I get there first or when they’re carrying stuff or pushing things or riding wheelchairs or looking tippy or fragile. Doesn’t everybody? Doesn’t Carrie Lukas? Goodness gracious.
You know, there’s something else they leave out. Men outnumbered women on the Titanic by about four to one, if I remember correctly, so there’s no excuse any single woman or child to die. Yet half of third class–including children–died. How’s that prove chivalry succeeded?
My thoughts exactly. Women should obey men because, somewhere, at some time, some men died for some women. How could you not be grateful?
just want to point out – many of the men who survived (other than crewmen) were largely socially outcasts afterward, at least for a time.
that’s such a nice shortcut to undermine feminism! ever played doctor? that’s when we start to figure out we’re not “the same” and pretending otherwise would be simplistic and foolish.
of course if men aren’t gentlemen, it’s because of feminists. right. we couldn’t all just be gentlepersons, huh? that’d be, what, too hard?
if it’s true that “Gentlemanly conduct isn’t about women at all. It’s about men and their sense of themselves.”, the same goes for respect – it’s about being respectful from within, because it’s the kind of person you want to be, not because you’ll be rewarded – not by a thank you, not by an entire gender’s admiration!
just want to point out – many of the men who survived (other than crewmen) were largely socially outcasts afterward, at least for a time.
And I just want to point out that chivalry is the reason the men were branded as outcasts: “If you were a real man, you wouldn’t be alive today.”
All other things being equal, when the seat on the subway opens up and both a man and a woman are eyeballing it — both, say, empty-handed, physically capable, and equally tired — the man will let hte woman sit. Why? Because in the back of his mind, there’s the tiny glimmer of hope that the woman will recognize his gentlemanly ways and be so grateful for his male kindness that she’ll give him teh sex. Maybe not there on the subway, but eventually. The smile of gratitude, the opening remarks, the chit-chat, the exchange of numbers, the casual date, the rape in her apartment’s foyer, and eventually, the man on the subway kindly offering up his seat to the next pretty woman with the Gap bag. Chivalry is mating behavior — behavior premised not so much on women’s weakness (though that’s certainly part of it) but on women’s need to be protected. From other men. Who may have their eye on my woman. MY woman.
lo and behold, so were some of the women. ever heard of Lucy Duff Gordon?
evil-fizz said:
- lo and behold, so were some of the women. ever heard of Lucy Duff Gordon?
No, actually. Plot summary before I go ahead and google her? :-) I find these kind of historical footnotes to be fascinating….
Oh, and y’all beat me to it, but my first thought on the “74% of women/children survived but 80% of the men died” seriously WAS “yeah, in *first class*. Steerage pretty much got wiped out regardless of gender or age.” I’m glad someone was paying attention to that detail. Perhaps someone ought to remind Ms. Lukas of that….
Its always polite to offer someone assistance but to me chivalry assumes women automatically NEED the help and barge on in. I was carrying a box from furniture store, guy decided I needed box carried for me, moved in to take if from me, while I was trying to wave him off I didn’t notice curb, twisted my ankle and wrenched my neck. That’s chivalry for you right there.
There is something really unseemly about conjuring up an obvious example of men chosing self-sacrifice over survival and then using it to bludgeon women over the head. I really like Jill’s response; it was cogent, logical and very even-handed.
Equating the behavior of men on the Titanic with (big c) Chivalry is a rather large simplification. I’m sure that some (small c) chivalry was involved, but I suspect that many of the men who gave up their seats on the lifeboats were giving them up to friends and family; which is more rational than it is idealistic. It has also been pointed out that most of the third-class passengers (men, woman and children) were screwed; which has more to do with how society works than with male privilige or duty.
In one sense, the author (Carrie Lukas) is correct that there is some behavior worthy of respect, but the arguement she’s trying to make doesn’t have legs.
Ironically, I think this same arguement gets used quite a bit to encourage young men to die for king, country or the cause du jour.
You would be correct in that thinking, though as a demographic on the Titanic, men did make out the worst, whether they were first class, second class, or third class. Here are some stats, apparently culled from British Parlimintary records:
The highest survival rates were among first- and second-class kids–100 percent of both demographics were saved. Then came first class women at 97.22 percent and female crewmembers at 86.96 percent, followed by second- and third-class women and then third class children, at 86.02 percent, 46.06 percent, and 34.18 percent, respectively.
The lowest survival rates are, in fact, all among the men, in descending order: First class men, crewmen, third class men, and second class men, at 32.57 percent, 21.69 percent, 16.23 percent, and 8.33 percent.
Well, if one of the tenants of chivalry is “women and children first,” I think that it was pretty much upheld. Whether or not it “works,” to whatever end, is another question entirely.
This idiot is totally ignorant about the Titanic disaster.
First, men weren’t particularly chivalrous; “women and children first” was the law of the sea. (That law was subsequently changed so that it was not class-conscious. As a result of the Titanic disaster, all classes of passengers had to have equal access to escape in case of emergency. The sinking of the Titanic is considered the death blow to Victorian privilege.).
Anyway, whether individual men were chivalrous or not, the crew did their best (mostly) to enforce the law of the sea.
Another thing is, that female survivors, including “Unsinkable” Molly Brown, rallied to have the “women and children first” law changed, pointing out that in a disaster it left families destitute. Women and children surived but their breadwinner was gone, so that they were functionally destroyed. Brown advocated that leaving women and children without means of support was crueler than letting them drown, and therefore families should be kept together in a disaster.
Yeah, ’cause it’s such a wonderful gift to be a woman who’s got a seat on the lifeboat while her lover or husband or father or adult son is socially required to stay on the sinking ship and drown.
The corallery also sucks — it would be equally terrible to survive knowing that you did so at the expense of your wife and children.
so we all agree it cucks to die? :-)
sucks. (wo)man, of all the times to make a typo…
I agree Jill… I really don’t think “chivalry is dead” so much as more spread around. My husband will hold a door for me if he’s there first and vice versa. I’ve been known to offer a seat (the few times I’ve been on a bus) to a woman with small children or an elderly person of either gender. I’m only 24, for crying out loud, it’s not going to kill me to stand for a few minutes. On the other hand, I’ve had people offer me a seat when I was expecting my daughter because I was very big and probably looked uncomfortable. To me that is just common sense. It does annoy me when I see a man my age sitting there as there are elderly people or people with small children or even pregnant women (it gets really uncomfortable to be standing for long periods of time towards the end!) but it annoys me just as much to see a woman my age doing it.
On the man’s side, the thing about chivalry that bothers me the most is that it turns men’s bodies into weapons and/or barriers. There’s no honor in being a tool.
No pun intended.
I read somewhere on the web, my last Titanic kick (which doesn’t include that damn movie ever), that if the men had loaded into the boats with the women they would have filled all the boats and they could have saved all the women and children and 70% of the men. Women wouldn’t leave their husbands or would not go into a boat with strange men. Things like that led to the boats not being full. So the chivalry may be the reason at least some of them died.
I’m looking for that article but haven’t found it yet. Can’t remember why I thought the site it was on was reputable either.
I don’t think that bothers men all that much. In my experience men are far more likely than women to be operating under the dualist dichotomy that seperates the body – the “meat” – from the self.
I do, to a large degree. I do view my body as a tool, and I don’t feel de-humanized or objectified by that. That might be a combination of the influence of male culture and reading cyberpunk novels at an impressionable age (i.e. my whole life).
I dunno. Seems like the MRAs get all bent out of shape about being called on to die in war and WORK THEMSELVES INTO THE GROUND TO PAY FOR SOME WOMAN’S GOLDDIGGING SO SHE CAN EAT BONBONS ON HIS MONEY and whatnot.
Also, much of the female side of chivalry is that to deny men a chilvalrous act (holding a door, carrying your bags), is to be a “bitch.” So denied the ability to say “no, I will carry my own things,” “no, please go away,” or even just the power to say/scream NO! leads many women into situations where they are either uncomfortable because of invasions of personal space by men. The book “The Gift of Fear” was written by a man in response to a letter asking “Why did I invite my rapist into my house.”
And their is the point that they let first class women take seats in front of them, not the 3rd class passangers.
So it was still bigitory.
[...] April 14th, 2006 I know it embitters you to no end that a boat sank once nearly a century ago and more women than men survived. Get ov [...]
Chivalry does have the side effect of physical damage for men who are unwilling to share physical burdens with women. Apparently men, who got to make the rules, felt this was a fair trade-off for the ego boost it gives them. This cannot be blamed on women.
My grandfather threw a shit fit when my mother and I had to insist that we move some heavy furniture because he recently had a frigging hip replaced and could seriously hurt himself. If chivalry is really about the strong protecting the weak, and the weak are expected to react with slavish gratitude, then how is it that he didn’t react with slavish gratitude to our protection?
Chivalry is about implying that women are lesser and weaker and is a manifestation of the way society views them.
Wow! What subway do you ride? I stopped riding the DC Metro to work when, at 8 months pregnant, I was heading toward the last remaining seat in the car and a man who had gotten on at the other end saw me, raced me to the seat, and won.
Bastard.
But I agree, that was a matter of manners rather than chivalry. I’d have been equally pissed at a woman who did that.
And BTW, there were plenty of times people offered me a seat while pregnant. Sometimes I took it, sometimes I didn’t.
I just can’t let go of a grudge, is all :-)
Dustin nailed it. If you doubt that there’s a sexual motive to chivalry, watch cars driven by men stop to let a young attractive woman cross the road when she’s lost her light. Then watch an older woman (or older man) with a cane trying to make the other side when their light changed mid-lane and mid-hobble, and being edged edged and trying to hurry to accommodate the brain surgeon on his way to an emergency.
Probably because he’s aware of just how demeaning it is to be included in the category of “the weak.” Elderly men realize, I think, how much is at stake in not losing membership in the strong club.
I propose that if I’m ever on a doomed ocean liner, we save as many children as possible and then draw straws to figure out which of the grownups will get space on lifeboats. I am willing to face the risk of a watery death in order to avoid being placed in the “weak” category with the kiddies. And futher, I propose that we admit that physical strength is just about physical strength. I appreciate it when people give me their seat on the bus, because it’s very difficult for me to stand on a moving bus. That doesn’t have a damn thing to do with my ability to vote or work or manage my finances or whatever. I need specific, not blanket assistance.
Incidentally, I’m sure a lot of people think I’m a lazy young person hogging a seat on the bus. The thing is, you can’t see that I have wonky balance when I’m sitting down. People’s physical challenges aren’t always immediately apparent.
(My personal bus gripe is the people who put their bags on the seats next to them on nearly-full buses. Assholes.)
If you doubt that there’s a sexual motive to chivalry, watch cars driven by men stop to let a young attractive woman cross the road when she’s lost her light
I once had a guy let me cross in front of him so he could stare at my ass the entire time. Once I’d crossed the street, he turned his car to follow me, and propositioned me. Chivalry and sexual harassment, two sides of the same coin.
Oh wow, one of my biggest pet peeves. I usually go up to them and ask them if the seat’s taken; very few actually refuse to move their crap if you confront them.
Depend on the the patriarchy to turn courtesy into chivalry so they could control behavior. The man will decide if you can sit down by drawing out the chair. The man will decide who lives and dies when the ship sinks. The sumptuary laws defined how you were permitted to dress so all would know your class. ‘Aint I a Woman’ says it all.
I see what you’re saying here, but the neutral perception of this phenomenon disregards that men are often forced to act as, as I mentioned earlier, barriers or weapons. And cannon fodder.
The percentage of men in first class who survived was higher than the percentage of women in “steerage” (the lowest class) who survived. Chivalry isn’t extended to the hoi polloi.