>>509563083A sound proclamation.
Dante was right. To understand why, consider the phenomenon of courtly love. This movement was not invented by the high-born to protect the weak. Instead, it was perfected by the upwardly mobile to justify violence.
In medieval Europe, knights were not usually princes or great lords. While it is true that some were, most were men on the make - younger sons, ambitious warriors, local enforcers - who sought to earn land, status, or legitimacy. What we naively today call "chivalry" gave them a framework: a set of precepts that allowed them to affect moral guardianship whilst justifying acts of violence against less favoured men.
Duels, accusations of dishonor, tournaments, vigilantism - all cloaked in flowery rhetoric about ladylike virtue and knightly valor - were nothing more than social filtering tools. Consider the pathetic obsession of Arcite and Palamon in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, and yet both men are still portrayed as sympathetic, if flawed figures. Chivalry became a mask for intra-male aggression, with female vulnerability as the shield behind which hierarchy hid its sword.
Few people are aware that the medieval Church saw through this. Far from blessing the cult of courtly love, it was condemned as a form of erotic idolatry - a distraction from the sacramental order of marriage and fidelity to Christ. Bands of knights roving the countryside were not symbols of honor to bishops and abbots, but often a nuisance to be reined in: violent, impulsive, and difficult to govern.
Sadly, today the same pattern survives: men are rewarded not for wisdom or foresight, but for signaling allegiance to female comfort and moral fashion. The new chivalry is corporate, therapeutic, and digital, but it still serves the same function: to allow hotheaded, impulsive men to police and punish those they are threatened by, with the claim of โprotectingโ women as the unassailable cover story.