Spin it any way you want it, it boils down to failure because all woman are inherently selfish in any relationship. Yea, I used to be chivalrous, thats until I realized women are just out to get what they can get and whine and complain in the process.

That simpering idiot will listen to a woman cry her eyes out over her last romance, and if stood up 4 times will actually show up the 5th, just because he said he would. He's a girl.

A woman feeds him crap and he just takes it. He keeps you up on a pedestal no matter how hard you try to climb down. How can a woman respect a man like that? She can't. She doesn't.

That guy, reliable and safe, doesn't make any girl's naughty parts tingle, because it doesn't matter how hard you party he won't ever take 'advantage' of you anyway. He's a weenie.

All guys are rats, but these chivalry rats think they're better when really they just don't have any self respect.

Grrls are tuff. Grrls know their rights. There are grrl cops and grrl lawyers and grrl judges. Grrls don't need chivalry. Forget him.

Really. Please forget me, and leave my sons alone. They aren't for you.

Crap. There's something else I'm gonna have to work on, then.

Anybody who has even a passing knowledge of the original chivalric romances knows that Chivalry has nothing to do with casting women as powerless — if they were powerless, how could they impose such dangerous and exacting tests upon their knights?

So read the book my wife and I wrote:

Dear Friends:

This February, 2008, we have published a book entitled Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition. The themes we cover include The Metaphysics of Romantic Love; Spiritual Courtesy; Love in the Imaginal Realm; A Comparison of Muslim and Christian Chivalry; The Fedeli d’Amore; The Templars and the Holy Grail; Love, Human and Divine; Love in the Kali-Yuga; Armed Courtesy; Love Against the World.

During our 30-year marriage, we have come to understand how deeply “the World” hates human love – particularly love between a man and a woman, which is not considered “politically correct.” Romance has not just faded out – it has been systematically cursed. And our shared interest in traditional metaphysics has revealed to us both the exalted station from which Romance ultimately derives – that of God’s most intimate Self-Knowledge – and also the infernal depth of the evil that hates Romantic Love, and wants more than anything to wipe it off the face of the earth, as part of its ongoing agenda: the deconstruction of the human form.

If the World fails to incite rivalry between a husband and a wife, it may draw its final weapon: to stir up rivalry between one’s human beloved and God. Satan too has his great intellectuals, his “fallen cherubim”, and one of their ploys is the attempt to separate God’s Transcendence from His Immanence, placing each in the shadow of the other, playing one against the other in our confused and darkened minds — because nothing threatens the Prince of Darkness like human love seen and known and lived in the light of Divine Love.

I (Charles Upton) have composed the “intellectual” part of this book: metaphysical discourse, psycho-social criticism, history. My writing, being expressive, comes out to meet you. I write about Spiritual Romance, as if it were a kind of mental or imaginative understanding of something.

I (Jennifer Doane Upton) have composed the “existential” part of this book: spiritual meditations, poems in prose and verse, written directly out of the sometimes grim depths of Spiritual Romance itself. My writing offers you nothing; it makes no appeals. Take it, or leave it alone; just be aware of your choice.

Sincerely,

Charles Upton and Jennifer Doane Upton

Shadow of the Rose: The Esoterism of the Romantic Tradition: Sophia Perennis, 2008; 184pp. $17.50 [£9.95]. Available through http://www.barnesandnoble.com , http://www.amazon.com , and http://www.amazon.co.uk. RESELLERS: This book is distributed through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bertrams and Gardners; query jameswetmore@mac.com for further information.

Women like to believe that they are "the prize"; but the truth is, we know that we can only choose from the guys that approach us. Because society thinks its wrong for a woman, especially an attractive one, to pursue a guy; they get labeled desperate and sometimes even a slut. It's a shitty double standard we have to accept and learn to deal with. Too many of my hot friends whine to me about not being able to meet "Mr. Right," when they just sit around expecting him to fall into their lap.(Luckily, since an early age I've had no qualms about pursuing what I want.)

So in other words, yeah, guys are actually the ones who have the power to choose, because if no guy approaches a girl, then she can choose no one. There's a reason why we spend 3 hours getting ready to go out while most of our guy friends just take a shower and shave. It doesn't mean that one gender is inferior or superior to another, but that we need to take a more active stance in the dating world.

I make men like you, beg, sit and roll over, quicker than your whore mother can spread her legs for her next 'client'

And 'american women' ?? survey says NO.

Try again, love.

Men are not chivalrous because they think they are better than women. They are (or should be) chivalrous because they know WE are better than THEM!!

Therefore they have to treat us with respect and courtesy, i.e chivalry, because we are superior to them

I DO agree that there's a balance between being chivalrous and being respectful of a woman's own… independence(?). The REALLY confounding factor is that each woman has a different scale for this. So, if a guy gets it right with one woman, it may be (and most likely will be) very different for the next woman.

oh boy.