"Will You Marry Me." I'm Not Asking.
The KatyKatiKate Guide to Surprise Public Proposals
Step 1:
No.
Step 2:
There is no step 2.
Every year.
Every year we get another plague of surprise public proposal fails. Why? WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING? I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can only assume it’s because yours truly has not yet written a blog post to get the word out.
I have heard the cries of my people.
So on this day of days, this seventeenth of July, I shall take up my sacred mantle and write about surprise public proposals, why, why, why why why why they are a thing, and why they need to fade into the fog of history like so many haircuts from the 80’s.
Like, sir, if you have planned this moment to perfection, then explain why you are wearing cargo shorts. EXPLAIN why you put the love of your life live on camera in day-five hair, wearing the comfortably slack jaw of someone who doesn’t think they’re being watched, and then, in an instant, the glassy panic smile of a girl who knows SHE IS BEING WATCHED.
I'm not really asking, I know why. Hang onto your socks, kids, because it’s time for a deep dive…
Chivalry was originally conceived as a broadly-ignored code of ethics for heavily armed rapists and murderers ("knights") who roamed medieval England at the whims of their ids. We’re talking looting. We’re talking burning. We’re talking pillage, rape, and murder here people. Knights operated on a pretty sparse ethical framework: don’t chicken out in battle, and don’t betray your lord and master.
Courage, violence, and loyalty to the seat of power. Sound familiar?
Today, "chivalry" has evolved into a catchall word to describe a certain class of male-female romantic gestural vocabulary. He performs an act; she receives that act. He gives; she receives. If you think about chivalry in anatomical terms, it is a fully-clothed coitus, the kind you wouldn’t mind doing in front of your parents.
If you think about chivalry in grammatical terms, the man is the subject and the woman is the object. Oh, goodie. More stories with men at the center in which women are the objects that help him prove his worth. Because we were short on those. How refreshing!
Chivalry is essentially a playbook, or more accurately, two playbooks. The book written for young men teaches a library of maneuvers that teach him to treat women like valuable objects: special things that must be protected and pampered. When these gestures are sincere and rooted in respect, they can be performed for anyone, not just a romantic interest, and they can be beautiful and affirming connections between both intimate friends and strangers: “I love and respect you, Aunt Denise, and it is my honor to pull out your chair.”
“Hello, elderly person on the train! We are both traveling through the world in the same place and time today. I’m not better than you and you’re not better than me. I just want to acknowledge our sameness and do what I can to contribute to the happiness and comfort of your day. What I’m trying to say is, I would love to give you my seat.”
Acts of chivalry can be tokens of respect, made by a person who respects themselves, to a person for whom they feel respect. And when they are, chivalry is nice!
However, as with any code of conduct or set of cultural norms, chivalry is often twisted to serve power instead of respect, and because chivalry is the primary mode of male-female communication in a patriarchal and sexually coercive culture, this code of courtship has mutated into a playbook for a game at which there is only one winner.
Chivalry, in its worst and I would argue most common form, is a game in which men use a certain set of plays to disarm women so they can score, so to speak.
Women, as the opposing team, learn their own set of plays to evade violence, survive the oncoming offense, and avoid losing more than points. In the game of chivalry as it is played today, men play for touchdowns and women play to run out the clock.
Ideally, chivalry could simply step down and pass the baton to its far more inclusive and less problematic step-sibling, "Respect, just respect, seriously that's all anyone needs is respect, you’re separating gender from your haircuts and Lego and color palettes why on earth would we continue to gender our basic manners." Unfortunately, as we can see in yet another surprise public proposal, chivalry is hanging on. Or at least, mutant chivalry sure is.
Mutations of chivalry run rampant through our Tinder feeds and public spaces- instead of being rooted in a desire to make the people around you as comfortable as possible, these actions are rooted in performance of power.
These acts of “romance” are not really between a man and a woman. They are between a man, a woman, and an audience.
Allegedly, acts of chivalry serve the recipient of those acts. Realistically, acts of chivalry glorify the performer. I am willing to humble myself to honor this person! Hey, everyone! Come see how humble I am!
Much along the same lines as the problematic “white savior” storylines of movies like Green Book, that humbling of self is a performance because it happens on his terms. Though he puts himself at the service of someone with less social power, he chooses the situation and the nature of his humility, and he chooses when to end his impression of servitude and return to his position of authority. The performance of paying her respect costs him nothing, although that may not stop him from invoicing her for services rendered.
When he gets down on one knee, in front of the woman he loves, God, and ten thousand of his closest Mets fans, he is not asking. He’s not placing himself in a submissive position. He’s pushed her under a microscope, before the judgement of untold numbers of strangers, and he’s told her, “This is what we’re doing now. You need to answer me, on my terms and on my timeline.”
The performance of chivalry gives well-mannered dirtbags both denial and deniability. It’s a certificate of authenticity he can print at home. But even more insidiously, chivalry convinces well-intentioned, kind men that their performance of chivalrous gestures is the same thing as being trustworthy, respectful, and even feminist, and it is not.
Many genuinely nice men aren’t aware of how much distance lies between their chivalry and our trust.
In the same way that white liberals may claim that they’re not racist because they voted for Obama, even as they express concern on Nextdoor.com about the “shady character” who walked by their house who just happens to be Black, many men believe that they are champions for women because they always open doors for them, even as they insist over our protestations to help us against our wills. Even as they force us into uncomfortable public displays of affection to which we have not consented.
In the worst-case scenario, chivalry becomes a passive-aggressive form of social coercion in which men can use these gestures to force women to engage with them. Sometimes LITERALLY engage with them.
You can see it in the comment sections below surprise public proposal fails: “Poor guy! She should have just said yes!”
I’m sorry she should have just WHAT?!? He took her to a baseball game on a Sunday afternoon in FLIP FLOPS and he sprung this nightmarish “COMMIT TO ME FOR LIFE OR BE BOOED BY THE HOME TEAM” scenario, and you’re mad at HER for being INSENSITIVE to his FEELINGS?
I want to pants that fool. I want to pants him at the next presidential inauguration. Or on the red carpet at the Oscars while he’s talking to Dwayne Johnson. I want to pants him when he least expects it in front of thousands of people with cameras and then I want to make him feel like shit for not laughing. God, I’d love to read the comments section below that video, when I post it in a future society that doesn’t aggressively hate women:
He should have just laughed!
What an awesome prank, too bad he’s such a boner.
Bro! Where’s your sense of humor?
The goal of the surprise public proposal might be to sweep her off her feet, but it actually yanks the rug out from under her. Maybe you could see how, from his point of view, this is the same thing. But put yourself in her shoes and holy fractured hip, Batman. That’s like taking her to a surprise party and arming all the guests with paintball guns.
The goal of the surprise public proposal might be, maybe, to get an answer to this very important question. But by doing it publicly, by engineering a situation designed to up the stakes, his goal is also to win the game. His goal is to appear brave. Romantic. AWESOME. His goal is to look like a great guy, not act like a great guy.
And here’s the worst part: His heart is probably broken.
He has chivalry to thank for that, too. The code of chivalry gives men a finite toolbox for connecting with women, and almost all of those tools boil down to two basic tactics: compliment her and control her. When he proposed to her, I have to believe he was trying to say “I love you.” And when she rejected that gesture of control, that power play, that forced intimacy to which she did not consent, she rejected the biggest swing he could take, the best play he could run. I imagine him opening his emotional tool box and digging frantically through the clutter. Should I stand outside her window singing to her until she comes down? Should I come to her work and bring her ten dozen roses?
Dude. No. You should talk to her.
Boys and men don’t often hear that they need to listen and yield to the comfort level of other people in their lives. To hear our cultural romantic signposts lie about it, that way lies weakness and emasculation.
It’s heartbreaking that this guy, who wants to spend his life with this woman, didn’t have an instinct to TALK TO HER ABOUT WHAT SHE’S THINKING VIS A VIS THE REST OF THEIR LIFE TOGETHER.
In a perfect world, when you meet someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, you’re also invested in that person’s wants, needs, and happiness. Ideally, and this is just a pure hypothetical, when you’ve fallen ass over teakettle in love with the singular love of your life, you are also curious about what they want for themselves, their lives, and your life together. In a DREAM SCENARIO, JUST WHITEBOARDING OVER HERE, when you’ve managed to woo your soul mate, you navigate your shared life respectful of the pace at which they’re comfortable moving, both physically and emotionally. You talk. You listen. You process. You’re partners. Just in a perfect world, ya know.
He grew up following that chivalry playbook — his proposal shows us as much. But that playbook didn’t include listening, vulnerability, accepting that sometimes you love her more than she loves you, therapy, boundaries, self-esteem that’s based on your inherent worth as a human being and not on your ability to “win” at social situations, the value of an intimate relationship with an equal who challenges you and disagrees with you.
And girls and women don’t often hear that they don’t need a reason to say no, or rather, that as human beings, they have the right to say no for no reason at all. “Because I feel like it” is enough, or should be. That’s not something I understood as a young adult, unsure about which voices in my head were the trustworthy ones. I still believed that the loudest voices were the most correct, when in reality, the loudest voices were simply the ones that I’d heard the most, and were, in fact, often the least concerned with my health, happiness, and safety.
What I did hear, early and often, and what was then the loudest voice in my brain, was that when a young man opens doors, it means he was well-raised and is probably trustworthy. Let him open doors for you and treat you to dinner. Doing those things is his job; letting him do things is yours.
When he proposes, you accept. Honestly, I’m hella proud of her for saying no, under all that pressure. That was not in our playbook, but it should be. It will be. So help me, it will be.
Please don’t mistake this essay for a full-blown assassination of gallantry. I’ve met my unfair share of manipulative little turds practicing mutant chivalry who probably have some 4chan fiefdom about how nice guys finish last.
But I’ve also experienced beautiful and meaningful acts of genuine, respectful gallantry, both big and small. I’ve been treated with respect and curiosity, with thoughtfulness and care, and that was romantic as hell.
A surprise public proposal is NOT ROMANTIC. It’s a consent-free, high-pressure snapshot of the toxicity of chivalry, the way it has colonized the entire body of our social norms when it comes to how men and women relate to each other.
Chivalry is a habitual, practically invisible, everyday expression of how our deeply-rooted patriarchy hurts both men and women, by forcing men to be forceful and forcing women to comply.
TL;DR:
When it comes to surprise public proposals, treating the people you love like props in your own personal mythology, unquestioningly upholding outdated gender roles that fertilize patriarchy and have never, not ever, not once given a single shit about the authentic happiness and safety of anyone who pours their lives into its service:
NO.