Tea at Trianon: Opening Doors

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 18, 2013

Opening Doors

Should men open doors for women? Some thoughts from a blogger:

As a real man I know that for my masculinity to scale the heights of greatness, I depend totally on the feminine genius to become the best that a man can ever be – in much the same way that I depend on oxygen to keep on living.

Without the complimentary and amazing feminine genius I can never be a real man. Instead I am doomed to be nothing more than the masculine equivalent of a rōnin – the Japanese name for a samurai without a master to lead him, a term which literally means “wave man” because he is adrift without direction and purpose.

I open doors for women because I know they deserve my profound adoration and selfless love. My tiny act of sacrifice is my way of saying ‘I am in awe of your feminine genius and all that I owe to it as a man’.

Any man who tries to tell you to stop opening doors for women is unvirtuous and selfish – he is not a real man. Do not listen to him. Any person who tells you that opening doors for women makes you a hater or belittler of women and femininity is tragically confused and desperately out of touch with reality.

Ladies, not only do you have every right to expect such respect and selflessness from the men who encounter your presence, but you should be extremely worried by any person lobbying for a world where men walk past women with a blind ignorance to your female greatness. Such a world would be a truly scary place, and definitely not the world I would want my daughters to grow up in – their feminine genius deserves far better than cold indifference. (Read more.)