The chivalric ideal…and gender-based violence

President Michael D. Higgins spoke last weekend about the “scourge” of violence against women – there is a global campaign this week and next to halt this horrible offence.  Who would disagree with him, or the purpose of the campaign? Gender-based violence – sometimes called domestic abuse, since it often takes place in the home – is odious, and every possible restraint should be employed to deter it when it occurs, and punish it when it has happened.

But I do wonder, sometimes, if the feminist movement – in which I played a full part as a young woman – should take some responsibility for the way things have panned out.

Derision

One of the objects of our derision, as young feminists, was the outdated concept of chivalry. No, we didn’t want men to open doors for us, no, we didn’t want men to offer us a seat on a bus, and no, we didn’t want men to stand up on being introduced to a ‘lady’, doff their hats (when they wore hats) or assume, in any way, that we were either the ‘weaker’ or the ‘fairer’ sex. We certainly didn’t want to be called ‘ladies’.

‘Chivalry’, with its underlying notion that women needed protection, was seen as men patronising women. We didn’t need ‘protection’ from men! We were equal to men! And so we banished chivalry, a Christian ideal which gained ground from the 11th Century onwards.

The Irish Protestant historian W.E.H. Lecky wrote in his voluminous history of European morals that the idea that women were to be treated with respect and honour was inextricably linked to the growth in devotion to the Virgin Mary. Marian devotion, wrote Lecky, “softened” the more brutal side of men’s nature.

As a young woman, even in the rough-and-tumble world of Fleet Street, there remained a residue of this chivalric tradition. I actually heard the words “we don’t bandy a lady’s name in the mess” spoken – maybe half-ironically, but nonetheless with some impact – when a chap began to disparage a young woman’s reputation in the local watering-hole.

I heard it said that a man who “takes advantage” of a woman who has had too much to drink was “a bounder” who deserved contempt from his peers.

Now, this is not to say that violence against women, or many other offences, didn’t take place: human nature changes little, and people do bad, stupid and wrong things. But there was, even up to the 1960s, an aspiration towards some kind of chivalric ideal – that women should be respected, and yes, protected, precisely because they weren’t, physically, the equal of men.

We threw all of that out in our bid to be the equal, in every possible way, to males.  As Eric Zemmour, the well-known French commentator wrote recently: “Feminism is based on contradictions: libertinism as well as puritanism, protection as well as equality.”

The scourge of domestic violence needs to be conquered, yes: starting with according women respect and esteem, by valuing women and by honestly acknowledging, too, that women do need protection.

*****

When a couple marries after 32 years together, as Pogues star Shane MacGowan and Victoria Mary Clarke [pictured] have done, you might conclude that wedlock finally triumphs over co-habitation.  However, for many such couples, if not for Mr and Mrs MacGowan, I fear that it’s the tax and inheritance laws which are the final persuaders!

*****

Theresa May –  reared for martyrdom!

Theresa May’s tenacity in the face of many ordeals – desperately working for a deal with the EU and then desperately struggling to get that accepted by her own parliamentarians come December 11 – has been ascribed to two factors: she is a vicar’s daughter and she was an only child.

The vicar’s daughter was imbued from an early age with the idea that once your duty becomes evident, you must uphold it doggedly.

Being an only child can build self-reliance: there are no siblings to bail you out, fight your battles or offer you family solidarity when outside forces oppress.

Being the daughter of an Anglo-Catholic cleric, and having attended a Catholic school for a time, Theresa will also have learned something about the course of martyrdom.

Humiliated, jeered and mocked at in the House of Commons this past week, and likely to be defeated on December 11, she may come to feel by Christmas that she has more in common, metaphorically, with St Stephen than with her own saintly namesakes of Avila and Lisieux.