Chivalry ≠ Chauvinism

Aragorn, not Orcs

In 1931, Helen Taft, the widow of the late president, William Howard Taft, unveiled a 13 ft. tall statue on the edge of the Potomac River in Washington DC. It was a monument to honor those who had died in the tragic sinking of the Titanic. More specifically, the monument was intended to honor the men who had died. The inscription on the front reads:

TO THE BRAVE MEN WHO PERISHED IN THE TITANIC
APRIL 15 1912
THEY GAVE THEIR
LIVES THAT WOMEN
AND CHILDREN
MIGHT BE SAVED

ERECTED BY THE
WOMEN OF AMERICA

The boat’s architects didn’t plan well. There simply weren’t enough lifeboats to fit all of the passengers, and many drowned. In total, 50% of the children survived, 75% of the women, but only 20% of the men. Why so few men?

In the 1997 blockbuster, The Titanic, when it comes time for people to board the lifeboats we see men panicking, shoving women and children aside, furiously fighting for a spot on the precious few boats. British sailors draw handguns and fire into the air, crying, “Stand back! Stand back! Women and children first!” It’s a terrifying scene of pandemonium; customs melt away and and the primal urge to survive claws to the surface.

But, believe it or not, that never happened.

Don Carson comments:

The universal testimony of the witnesses who survived the disaster is that the men hung back and urged the women and children into the lifeboats. John Jacob Astor was there, at the time the richest man on earth, the Bill Gates of 1912. He dragged his wife to a boat, shoved her on, and stepped back. Someone urged him to get in, too. He refused: the boats are too few, and must be for the women and children first. He stepped back, and drowned.

The philanthropist Benjamin Guggenheim was present…when he perceived that it was unlikely he would survive, he told one of his servants, “Tell my wife that Benjamin Guggenheim knows his duty”—and he hung back, and drowned. There is not a single report of some rich man displacing women and children.

So why did James Cameron distort history? Why display men tossing women and children aside for their own self-preservation? Carson cites a film reviewer in the New York Times who asked and then answered such a question: “If the producer and directer had told the truth, he said, no one would have believed them.” Carson writes:

I have seldom read a more damning indictment of the development of Western culture…in the last century. ¹

At one point, Western culture had a clear enough idea of what was expected of men, and thus the difference between men and women, that men would bravely sink into the frigid Atlantic before they would let a woman or child do the same.

One hundred years later, that kind of self-sacrifice was so implausible that filmmakers had to distort history to make their movies seem believable.

Chivalry ≠ Chauvinism

One of the reasons why masculinity is hard to define today is because we have so few good models of it. Masculinity is either a cartoonish stereotype, or so nuanced that it is functionally meaningless, or it is just written off as inherently suspect—toxic—from the get go. Insisting on a male-protectiveness for women sounds infantilizing to women, chauvinistic, and possibly dangerous. Women could have been just as capable as men to bravely face an icy death, couldn't they?

Certainly.

But should they? Is it right for women to perish when men could take their place instead? If a man and woman are confronted by a criminal with a gun, what should happen: the man stands in front of the woman, or behind her?

My suspicion is that masculinity is so fraught today because power and authority are so poorly defined, seen exclusively as tools for self-preservation rather than self-sacrifice—the way of the tyrant. But if power and authority are used virtuously, they are profoundly life-giving—they become the means by which the hero overcomes the tyrant.

Wherever [the tyrant] sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops, then—more miserably—within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land.²

Suffice to say, men in 1912 knew that it was a noble act—a manly act—to bravely face death to save children and women. Sacrifice was inherent in what it meant to be a man.

On average men are physically stronger, heavier, and taller than women. This gives them an obvious ability to endure more adverse circumstances than those who are smaller and weaker. And while some men do use their strength in horrible ways (nearly all rape cases are male-to-female, not the other way around), what should they do with this superior strength and size?

Here is where the old virtue of chivalry comes in.

A man can use his strength to physically assault a woman, or place her in a lifeboat and try to brave the frigid water himself. Strength isn’t meant to exploit, but protect. It is emblematic of a deeper spiritual reality that has nothing to do with a man’s muscle mass or height, but is nevertheless inherent to masculinity: to be a “man” is to sacrifice for the good of others.

Aragorn, Not Orcs

In Louise Perry’s provocative book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, she argues at length on the physical and sexual differences between men and women, explaining that nearly all men are physically stronger and hornier than all women.³ In light of this, that means that women are in grave danger (obviously) of sexual violence. Given the right circumstances, the only thing protecting a woman from being raped by a man is the thin line of his self-control. “Almost all men,” she writes, “can kill almost all women with their bare hands, and not vice versa. And that matters.”⁴

Raging against that in the name of equity will do nothing to actually prevent women from being put in harm’s way, nor will top-down efforts to abolish sexual differences between men and women. What society needs is a reinvigorated picture of masculinity that channels male aggression, strength, and sexual appetite into a virtuous institution that valorizes restraint, sacrifice, and commitment—in other words, chivalry.

Mary Harrington likewise explains,

‘Chivalrous’ social codes that encourage male protectiveness toward women are routinely read from an egalitarian perspective as condescending and sexist. But…the cross-culturally well-documented greater male physical strength and propensity for violence makes such codes of chivalry overwhelmingly advantageous to women, and their abolition in the name of feminism is deeply unwise.⁵

One might assume that these two women are conservatives writing from an traditional perspective, but you’d be wrong. They both write from progressive, secular evolutionary worldviews. As does Justine Toh who writes that we should “make chivalry great again.” These women are not convinced by Biblical teaching on gender, but just by the harm done by powerful men. Toh admits that we should employ chivalry as a kind of “gendered realpolitik,” simply acknowledging the fact that men tend to possess disproportionate amounts of power in society. But chivalry, she argues, is basically “promoting the welfare of others before your own.”

Our society seems bent on identifying masculinity with the behavior of an orc—strength used to destroy and exploit. And, tragically, many men fall in line with orcish versions of masculinity. But the answer isn’t to turn orcs into Grima Wormtongue or Gollum. If pop-culture’s answer to toxic masculinity is to dissolve the very category of masculinity, then, outside of a small band of men who will be gelded, men will embrace the misogynistic, violent, and exploitative caricature even more firmly. The answer isn’t to emasculate men, but to set forward a godly vision of masculinity, like that of Aragorn and Samwise and Theoden, men who use strength and authority to save, to heal, and to protect the vulnerable.

It is only in the coming of Aragorn that any hope remains for the sick that lie in the House. Thus spoke Ioreth, wise-woman of Gondor: The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.⁶

1. Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, p. 30-31

2. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

3. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century, pgs. 21-44.

4. Ibid. p. 29

5. Feminism Against Progress, cited in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p. 68-9

6. JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, “The Houses of Healing”