I alluded to this in my previous post on free will that God hates chivalry.
Chivalry is a societal expectation imputed upon men and women to act in a certain manner, often in a polite and exaggerated manner, in order to impress or attract the opposite sex.
What happens when there is “chivalry” in a society, there becomes an expectation of men and women to follow and act in such a code. This places a coercive force on both men and women to act in a certain way.
When such expectations are unmet, the ones with the expectations have their image of what is “supposed to be” shattered and with thus become angry about it. This is the same thing that I discussed in the free will post where women expect that men hold doors open for them, carry luggage, or other favors for free or just because they are a women. This is why men assume that women should act like ladies and when they don’t they get angry at them.
The interesting part of the concept of chivalry is that it is more of an implied social contract rather than a law. Much of this societal based thinking is imputed as Christian because they may be good things to do, but that doesn’t make them good when it’s a coercive force rather than an act of someone wanting to help out someone else. Ballista has written on this a bit, and chivalry was some random concept that came out of the 1700s or knights if I’m not mistaken.
I’m not averse to conforming to such a standard because I want to help people, but guilt tripping someone into doing what is right is not the answer either. They’ll hear from me on that.
Brief post. I’m still working on a longer one as I get more time.
