Chivalry is alive by Will Levine

Chivalry, a word originally describing a code of honor for knights, was an idea first developed by the French during the Middle Ages. The qualities expected of a chivalrous knight were courage, honor, and readiness to help the weak.
Almost a thousand years later, society, like it so often does, has taken this word and beaten the old definition into irrelevance. Society has essentially replaced it with a modernized definition that emphasizes gender roles and piles social pressure on men to act politely while putting down women by telling them they are weaker than men.
With that in mind, let’s get to the point. Chivalry is not dead, and it won’t die any time soon for a few reasons.
The existence of the conversation itself constitutes chivalry as still being alive. As rap artist Macklemore once said in his song “Glorious,” “You die twice, once when they bury you in the grave and the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name.”
Any logical person could conclude that as long as people still debate the existence of chivalry, it cannot die. Trying to get rid of chivalry is like throwing water on a gas fire. You aren’t helping to put out the fire, you are just providing more surface area for the fire to spread.
While chivalry is alive and well in our words, seeing it in action is not as common of a sight as it may have been 30 or 40 years ago. If you know where to look, you will see signs of chivalry are quite common.
The first thing many people think of as being a chivalrous act is holding the door for a someone. It is hard to go out in public for more than a couple hours without seeing someone holding a door at least once.
Everyone does it to be polite from time to time, but do men do it to be chivalrous? Yes, but it is hard to notice because of the tendency for people to abuse the chivalry of of a door holder.
We have all been there. You see someone walking up behind you as you are about to go into school, so you decide to be nice and hold the door for them. You give them a smile as they walk through the door and if they’re nice, they smile back. Before you can turn to walk in the door, someone else slips inside and cuts you off.
Things just go downhill from there. Looking back you see person after person lining up to get through the door. You are stuck. Students stream through the door in a neverending torrent of bodies.
Someone watching this would likely think that the person is just in a very good mood that day and decided to be extremely kind. This is the logical thing to assume because all someone watching sees is a mench holding the door for the wonderful people of the world.
The mistaking of chivalry for other acts of kindness is a huge part of why many people claim that chivalry is dead. It is just easier to make assumptions rather than to dig deeper and look under the surface of acts of kindness to find chivalrous intent.
Chivalry is not just about holding doors. It is about politeness and wholesomeness. Chivalrous values are reflected through the ways that significant others treat one another.
The above reasons point to why a large amount of the population is subject to the illusion that chivalry is dead. The presence of chivalry may not be as great as it had been in the past, making it hard to notice sometimes. All it takes is a deeper look to see chivalry very much alive in our society.

Chivalry is dead by Jayla Cardin

Chivalry is defined as the medieval knightly system consisting of a religious, moral, and social code. In my opinion, it is definitely dead.
People pulled the plug on this method of manners years and years ago. Social media and today’s pop culture contributed to the tragic death of chivalry.
Everyone is inspired by all the vulgar music that’s being put out now that no one has any manners. Not only is the music affecting boys’ manners, but it also affects girls. When we accepts a boy’s bare minimum, we are allowing them to walk over us. We wear the pants but we don’t act like we do because we feel as though the pants-wearing is for boys.
Another problem with girls is that we can be mean. Many boys experience backlash for holding the door for girls. We are all so wrapped up in being independent 24/7 that we shrug off the fact that a boy is actually trying to do something nice for us. We are defined as the weaker gender, but in actuality we can do things just as well as boys, possibly better.
That doesn’t give us consent to act hostile towards the opposite gender. Ladies, if a boy goes out of his way to do something nice for you, i.e. holding a door, the least you can do is ‘thank you’.
Communication has also failed, another cause of chivalry’s death. Social media and technology has ruined our social skills. Why talk in person when you can just text, direct message, or snapchat them? Social media has inhibited us from actually getting to know the person on the other side of the screen, resulting in boring small talk.
If you look back at the definition of chivalry, you notice that it mentions the word ‘knight’. In the 11th century, the idea of chivalry came from the system of the Pope during the First Crusade. The Pope stated that all knights must follow an order to protect the women and children and defend the church. Obviously, this is not how the idea of chivalry is defined in modern times. It has changed and is now based on how men should have manners and respect others, especially women.
Being chivalrous is when a boy want to be truly nice to a woman and not expect an outcome. Many boys these days only act as if they have manners because they’re forced to. John Picciuto, from the website Elite Daily, says “All I know is, the more I look around, the less I see men treating women the way that we’re raised to.”
Even a man knows that chivalry has become extinct in this culture where hooking up and forgetting about the person the next day is regular.
What about same sex couples? Should a lesbian or a gay man be expected to be chivalrous? The answer. of course, would be yes.
Chivalry to me is almost like a mutual respect for one another. A man holds a door, the woman says thank you. When talking about chivalry, respect should definitely come into play.
With the idea of mutual respect defining chivalry, this would mean that lesbians should respect their partners and gay man to theirs.
The reason chivalry is definitely dead is because it’s one the most confusing ideas every thought of. Why only make a method of manners for one type of couple when there are plenty others?