Immodesty and the Feminist Code of Chivalry

It has been 10 years since I wrote A Crisis of Modesty in the Evangelical Church, to confront the sexually immodesty clothing that had become prevalent in women in places of work and at church.  In this writing I addressed the issue of chivalry and its relationship to the visual sex/lust-positive culture. 

I believe that feminism has not so much killed chivalry in our modern age, but rather it has driven it underground for it to emerge in a mutated form that expresses its deep pagan roots. There is a actually a feminist form of chivalry that has been further advanced by fourth wave feminism.

In Western Europe, there have been both pagan and Christian strains within chivalry, encoding deeper, underlying ideas of men's protective responsibilities toward woman within symbolic cultural gestures and codes of behavior.   Chivalry was forged from two different strains of Western European paganism: the Vikings who raped and pillaged and the Celts who saw women as beings with special access to the spirit world. 

Chivalry was conceived by the Catholic Church during the crusades as a way to channel the warrior energy of Viking men to operate under the banner of Christendom to combat the incursion of the forces Islam into Jerusalem and into Europe.   The code of the "holy warrior" involved the protection of women and children.  

As chivalry extended culturally to Christians who had Celtic roots, chivalry also absorbed and redirected ancient Celtic paganism, where women, along with bodies of water, were considered to have a special connection with the spirit world.  This is reflected in the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legend. 

Chivalry has also had the characteristic of conferring nobility on those who bestow chivalry and those who receive chivalry.  Chivalry in the time of Louis the XIV among the nobles was expressed with an elaborate set of mannerisms way to distinguish the noble from the non-noble (the idea of a noble class of people from royal/noble blood lines is pagan, even though there are have been Christians who have attempted to give it a Christian gloss). 

The early and mid-20th Century era chivalry of paying the bill on a date and holding open the door for a woman, among other things, were social conventions that symbolized the Christian worldview of man was the head of woman as Christ was the head of the church.  

When modern feminism arose to reject 20th century expressions of chivalry, it only rejected the Christian side of chivalry, but not the deep, ancient pagan side of it. The Celtic idea that women had special access to the spirit world had mutated into the modern feminist idea that women are imbued with special access to the enlightened, civilizing wisdom of the universe.  

While the Christian idea of chilvalry saw masculinity as a source of leadership and protection, Feminism sees it as a source of danger to be protected from, and as something that is only redeemed when it is submitted to the cause of feminism.  Men, being naturally more brutish, gain their enlightenment and access to civilized society by operating in a posture that is simultaneously protective and deferential toward women.

So the new code of feminist chivalry is for men to be protective of women within the parameters of what feminism has ideologically defined as safe and comfortable. For men this means approving of feminism, opposing those who challenge feminism, and being a a facilitator of the wishes of women, giving them latitude to do and say whatever they wish. If you are a man who adheres to the feminist code of chivalry, you are rewarded with access to women. 

Men who do not adhere to the feminist code of chivalry are targets of feminist shaming tactics. Feminists will try to emasculate a man who speaks out against feminism by declaring him to be "insecure" in his masculinity. Fourth wave feminism has developed a new set of man-shaming terms that are justified as being counter-patriarchical, counter-chauvenistic, counter-shaming: terms that include "man-splaining", "micro-aggressions", and other ultra-subjective ideas of sexual harassment. If you are a man who calls out the modern women regarding sexually immodest clothing, you are guilty of “body shaming“, "slut shaming”, not having a uterus, and/or simply being a creep.  

Feminist chivalry places women as the new nobility, and brazen displays of visual sexually immodesty is one of the privileges of being a member of this nobility.  Anyone who is attempting to address the issue of modesty, even in the church, will likely encounter the resistance of the feminist code of chivalry that promotes and enforces the nobility status of women.