Shallowater High School in Lubbock County decided to have a “Chivalry Day” at their high school, and one student came home and surprised their mother, Brandi D. Addison, with their assignment for the day.
“On Chivalry Day, most notably female students had to perform and complete tasks that would “please” and “serve” their male counterparts, including male students, male teachers and other officials, and even the males that they live with. The students were expected to perform as a part of Chivalry Day at the school and at home.”
I think this is an asinine school assignment. How did the school think this would pass muster?
In the early 70’s we used to have slave day in middle school. One for girls and another for boys. It was promoted with flyers posted on walls, so everyone knew including the teachers knew.
Edit: They were tame. Mostly carrying books and have the “slave” sit down in front of you or get your lunch.
As I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, none of this is anything like what the chivalric code actually was. It was entirely a limit on the knights to keep them from harming the peasant women. It had nothing to do with making the women subservient to the men.
We had “Sadie Hawkins” dances, where the girls had to ask the boys, arrange transportation, pay for the date…but the boys had to wait to be ask, passively (?) encourage girls to notice them, etc. Love the idea of each gender seeing what the other had to deal with—but it presupposes people are straight, binary.
Medieval chivalry was a complex and wide-ranging code comprising religious piety, warrior ethos and military training, loyal service, courtly manners, courtly love, generosity, truthfulness, and honourable behaviour in general.
I’m a member of DeMolay’s knighthood (aka The Chivalric Knightsof the Holy Order of the Fellow Soldiers of Jacques DeMolay) and I’m appalled at this assignment. As mentioned above, this stupid assignment is definitely not chivalric.
Of course we can blame all Texans for what happened in this one school. It would be stupid, but nothing is stopping us from doing so, except the fear of looking like morons.
Those Texans who oppose or criticize these things are not ‘true’ Texans; they are merely interlopers who don’t know how to Texan properly and should probably move to Austin where all the freakish, non-Dr. Pepper drinking commie-pinko radicals go.
And it had essentially nothing to do with protecting “peasant women” who were considered at best baby factories and mostly a disposable commodity. This isn’t any kind of history lesson about medieval chivalry that grew from the habitus into the Knightly Piety that was largely a propaganda exercise to promote the Crusades. What the school is promoting here is the culture with a patina of overly formalized mannerism to cover deeply abusive and misogynistic traditions with a unique Texan spin on it; everybody says, “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am”, and “God bless you!” while thinking themselves to be more exceptional than anyone who is not a God-Fearing Texan who both believes in Trumpism and also can’t shut up about how Texas is really its own country that just plays along with being part of the United States out of politeness.
I’ve mentioned this story elsewhere, but since Texas is being bashed I’ll tell it again.
A high school friend of mine moved from Fairbanks, Alaska to Texas with her husband. He was a meteorologist in the Air Force. Friend went to the Texas DMV to get a new driver’s license. She was informed of all the documentation she would need, numerous tests, both written and driving she would have to take, plus all kinds of insurance. She asked why it would take so long, since most of the states she’d moved to during her husband’s career didin’t have NEAR so much rigamarole involved. The clerk told her “Well, we don’t take driver’s licenses from foreign countries.” and refused to believe Alaska was a US state.