Chivalry and modesty

The woman in the photo above is named Caprizchka. She has written a piece called Power vs. Love.

It would seem to me that ultimate power rests with he or she who dictates the course that “love” should take with others. Whether one is talking about men behaving chivalrously toward women as a demonstration of love for those women, or women behaving subserviently toward men as a demonstration of love, social norms might call one “good” and the other “bad”. Whoever defines those social norms has a lot of power.

Whereas I think that it is strange that there isn’t a linguistic equivalent of “chivalry” when the actor is a woman. Since men are generally physically stronger than women it would seem to me that the social equivalent of “chivalry” is “modesty”. Specifically, a woman who physically and materially subverts her outward appearance (the primary source of “power” in a woman particularly a young healthy one) such as to recede into the shadow of her beloved man is essentially behaving “chivalrously” by subverting her own power in his service, assuming that it is a service.

Read more here.