Chivalry really has given way to a greater sense of common courtesy when it comes to the gender components of the word, and the golden rule when it comes to the general meaning of the word.
I think that the historical nature of the gender-based chivalrous behavior was pretty much disposed of when women insisted on absolute equality with men. The room for “proper Knightly conduct” almost demands some amount of pleasant inequality, but since women demand to be treated as men, the elimination of that difference has also disposed with those kinds of behaviors. Now it’s gender-neutral and has dropped to the more generalized sense of “common courtesy”. Now its common courtesy to open the door first and hold it open for everyone in your party, men and women both. That everyone gets a chance to be that helpful to everyone else. Women open doors for men, men open doors for women, so on and so forth. The bowing and flourishing, the old reliable notions that men open doors for ladies are really now quite hazardous. For many men it’s as hazardous no matter what you do. If you open a door for a lady, she may be pleased, or she may be angry because you are treating her like a lady and not as an equal. The reverse may also happen, and because the rules to classical chivalry were tossed out the window on the way to modernity, you either ignore the pleased-or-upset response or everyone opens their own doors.
As for the gender-neutral meaning in chivalry, that was pretty much subsumed by the golden rule. You can’t really extricate the gender components from chivalry and still use the word and be serious. There needs to be a new word. I like the idea of a golden rule, that you do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. That new word, that new gender-neutral sense really goes a long way and helps people avoid the land mines of awkwardness that are loaded into the word ‘chivalry’
So in a way, chivalry is dead and the sexual revolution and women’s liberation have killed it. Two different things grew out of that grave – common courtesy and the golden rule. I don’t know if things are better now than they were, but they are different. Different can be just as good.
