The lost luxuries of ladyhood: in order to put women in the boardrooms, was it really necessary to put them in the mire? - why chivalry and feminism can co-exist

National Review, Oct 18, 1993 by Linda Lichter

In order to put women in the boardrooms, was it really necessary to put them in the mire?

IN APRIL 15, 1993, a healthy young male entering a suburban Washington library slammed the door on a woman laden with books. In a world plagued by racism, poverty, and AIDS, it should be easy to ignore such a trifling incident. I might have done so on any other day, but this particular day was the 81st anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, the last gasp of Victorian chivalry.

Only a third of the Titanic's passengers survived; most were women and children. When a surviving ship's officer was later asked whether this "women and children first" policy was the captain's rule or the rule of the sea, he replied that it was the rule of nature. Official inquiries revealed that several male passengers refused to enter lifeboats because they couldn't be sure all the women aboard had been rescued. Among the few ungallant males who dashed for the life-boats, one was beaten bloody by several men who stood stoically on deck, facing death but spared dishonor.

Such men understood the essential and intimate links between door holding, hat tipping, and making the ultimate sacrifice for the women every layer of their socialization had taught them to revere. Those chauvinistic fossils would be appalled to learn that the sex they drowned for is now routinely raped, verbally assaulted, and denied seats on trains even when obviously pregnant. They would ask how we could fight to put select women on the Supreme Court and in corporate towers while stripping all women of the freedom to walk our streets safely.

With a righteous twist of their handlebar mustaches, those Titanic gents would declare that women were the soul of this country's civilization before it was a country. When saints are toppled from their pedestals--or willingly leap off them--the social church is cold and empty.

Breaking Silence

I NEVER had the courage before to openly admire those men or envy the women they saved. At least a decade before the siege of political correctness, I was silenced by the unconscious but relentless intimidation of female friends and colleagues who are educated, self-sufficient, and eager consumers of the latest feminist books. I am supposed to owe the authors of those books unqualified gratitude for all the hard-won rights the Titanic women never enjoyed.

There is gratitude, but it is tempered, because the feminists who battled for my rights decided chivalry was tyranny dressed in pearl grey kid gloves. So they mocked, cursed, and lectured men who held their chairs until men stopped holding all our chairs in the name of equality--the one universal God we are allowed to worship.

Bucking the feminist party line, I expect to be accused of having low self-esteem or not thinking "freely." Bemoaning the losses of the past is for intellectual slugs who enter beauty pageants or join the Junior League--women who don't count, women who are excluded from the diverse politics of inclusion. It is also politically incorrect to notice that those who preach against sexual double standards often arbitrarily practice them. For example, many feminists believe women should be "protected" by laws against pornography, but no such protection should apply to military combat. And I wonder whether feminists would view PMS as a legitimate defense for violence if they knew that Victorian doctors attributed everything from mood swings to insanity to the monthly "wound of love."

Revolt against Self-Restraint

BUT FEMINISTS deserve only partial blame for the erosion of chivalry and civility. Since the 1960s, an entire generation has gleefully obliterated every vestige of Victorian manners. The manners of a silk-hatted century were deemed too rigid, too snooty, too WASPy. But their worst crime was perpetuating and embodying that great Puritan bugaboo---self-restraint.

The post-bellum Victorians were stunned to learn that they were not one step below the angels but a few steps above primordial sludge. They gulped hard at that revelation, then tightened and expanded their comprehensive etiquette code to prove they could rise above their roots. They realized that a fragmented nation needs the common currency of common courtesy to peacefully settle its disputes as much as it needs a common language. In contrast, our generation has opted to replace that code with a cultural anarchy that encourages every individual to maximize his or her self-expression, whatever the cost. The same crusaders who want to battle social Darwinism with government assistance to the victims of various poverties, handicaps, and addictions also celebrate a free-for-all, in-your-face world that would have appalled their great-grandparents.

Meanwhile, they malign Victorian mores to unmask the repressive functions of courtesy and civility. A 1990 book by historian John Kasson typifies the current fashion:

The ritual order of etiquette, by sternly guarding against slips in bodily and emotional control, assured the individual's deferential participation in the dominant social order. Instead of allowing any outward relaxation, bourgeois etiquette drove the tensions back within the individual self, providing ritual support for the psychological defense mechanisms of repression, displacement, and denial necessary to cope with the anxieties of the urban capitalist order.