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Urban politeness.
Vignette 1: I am sitting on a bench along the sidewalk, eating a sandwich. At the other end of the bench, a middle-aged man is talking quietly on his cell phone. I catch phrases here and there - benign ones, at first, but then he starts repeating, "Why you got to say that? Why you got to talk like that?" His tone remains mild.
Suddenly, he gets up from the bench and walks over to stand about ten feet away from me, still talking into the cell phone. It's still close enough for me to hear him, because he's gotten much louder: "Listen, bitch, you better remember who you're talking to!"
I was a bit taken aback, but pleased that he was considerate enough not to disrupt my lunch or make me nervous by shouting obscenities right next to me.
Vignette 2: I get onto a very crowded bus. There are no seats at all, even in the front section that's reserved for the elderly and people with disabilities, so I brace myself to stand. A frail older woman who looks to be about seventy catches my eye and starts to rise.
"Miss, would you like to sit down?"
"Oh no, ma'am, you don't have to get up."
Immediately, two middle-aged, apparently able-bodied men fall all over themselves to get up and offer me their seats. They'd be the right age to be sons of the older woman, although they obviously don't know her. "Here you go, miss, my stop's about to come up." "You can sit right here."
I thank them as I sit down, and then thank the older woman - who seems quite satisfied with the response to her etiquette lesson.
Suddenly, he gets up from the bench and walks over to stand about ten feet away from me, still talking into the cell phone. It's still close enough for me to hear him, because he's gotten much louder: "Listen, bitch, you better remember who you're talking to!"
I was a bit taken aback, but pleased that he was considerate enough not to disrupt my lunch or make me nervous by shouting obscenities right next to me.
Vignette 2: I get onto a very crowded bus. There are no seats at all, even in the front section that's reserved for the elderly and people with disabilities, so I brace myself to stand. A frail older woman who looks to be about seventy catches my eye and starts to rise.
"Miss, would you like to sit down?"
"Oh no, ma'am, you don't have to get up."
Immediately, two middle-aged, apparently able-bodied men fall all over themselves to get up and offer me their seats. They'd be the right age to be sons of the older woman, although they obviously don't know her. "Here you go, miss, my stop's about to come up." "You can sit right here."
I thank them as I sit down, and then thank the older woman - who seems quite satisfied with the response to her etiquette lesson.
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And I continue to be amazed by the difference between your part of the world and my part of the world with respect to that latter example. That would never happen here.
-J
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-J
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I find that over time I'm more often just keeping my face deeply enough in my book that I don't notice the people getting on. :( I don't know that I like that compromise very much.
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I've also had a few observations with respect to people who might be considered borderline cases -- people with a small stroller, or people carrying lots of stuff, or people who are only mildly disabled or just starting to show in their pregnancy. What tends to happen there is that people will look at each other, with the unspoken message of "are you gonna get up?" If one person gets up, then, everyone does, since nobody wants to be perceived as impolite. But someone has to make the first move and declare that person someone whom it's necessary to stand for.
Incidentally, your solution with the book would absolutely not work here -- people are far too obsessive about standing for anyone they deem it necessary to stand for. If I were absorbed in my book, people would poke me and make me get up. (This has never happened to me, but I've seen it happen to other people.)
-J
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-J
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The problem with the back-half-of-the-bus solution for me is that I'm a big guy, so more often than not, even if it's plausible to do so, people won't sit next to me. :( I normally don't really let it bug me, but it does mean that me sitting anywhere but in the highly-sought-after single seats near the front of the bus results in a very sub-optimal arrangement where one seat just goes unused. That's one of the few times I feel REALLY self-conscious about my weight -- when there's a packed bus with one empty seat next to me that nobody wants to take.
the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
(Anonymous) 2005-03-08 07:15 am (UTC)(link)The thing is, the said colleague does not look neither old nor sick - middle aged, yes, but nothing more. But I feel sorry for the boys for getting poisounous stare for accidentally touching the fear of sickness and mortality and the fear of her troubles being an open book to total strangers inside this woman.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
No one expects you to get every "edge case" right, or to accurately diagnose invisible disabilities - I'm sorry, but people with invisible disabilities who need to sit down also need to learn to ask for a seat. But I think it's much worse to hide in your book and avoid offering a seat to someone who uses a cane/crutches/walker, or is white-haired and physically frail, or is enormously pregnant (not just sporting a small belly bulge), than it is to occasionally give offense by offering a seat to someone who doesn't think they need it.
I feel sorry for the two prepubescent boys in the anonymous commenter's example, because the first thing that leaps to my mind is that they might have been raised to offer their seats to an adult woman regardless of health. I'm fairly sure that
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
I try to offer my seat in most non-edge cases, but I'm over time getting more worried about edge cases in general. It's a difficult time in many ways to be an adult man and decide what's proper conduct. Many of the standards of behaviour we were taught as children are now considered somewhere between intolerably sexist and hopelessly gauche, regardless of the intention. Unfortunately, most of the change has been through negative reinforcement -- pointing out what's wrong -- rather than positive reinforcement. It leaves a real void in behavioural expectation, and a lot of people after they get burned several times, either by doing something which comes around to bite them in return or by causing hurt to someone else in a situation in which they had no expectation that their behaviour *could* cause hurt, end up feeling like they're feeling their way in the dark in a room filled with traps. The result is that it feels best sometimes to just do nothing than to risk doing the *wrong* thing.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
This is where being a stiff-necked Southerner is helpful, because it's given me the confidence to rest on the assurance of my own good intentions, and not worry about someone else's drama. :)
Seriously, though, I think the problem comes from people who make more out of an offer than is actually there. You make the offer of the seat, you accept the answer no matter what it is, and you then let the other person have their privacy. The biggest problem comes from folks who abuse the privacy part -- giving up your seat to a woman doesn't give you the right to hit on her, or stare down her cleavage, or make a condescending remark. You don't get to ask personal questions or to make comments, and you haven't incurred some obligation on the other person's part (besides the obligation to politely respond to polite communication, which doesn't necessarily include small talk).
Making the offer doesn't give the recipient the right to criticize me and my manners, either -- they can accept or decline as they see fit, but any response flavored with hostility or meanness should be reacted to like the person started spewing random obscenities about insect infestation. They don't get to inflict their personal drama on me, and I refuse to accept delivery of that package, thank you very much. Folks who attempt to discern the "true motivations" of others, and who insist on "educating" people who are only attempting to show some courtesy, deserve to have their efforts rebuffed as firmly as needed. Those are the people being rude, not the people following the rules.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
I've become very sensitized during the last 12 years or so and especially over the last year or two to upsetting other people. While I believe it's possible to go too far into the, "Own your own emotions," camp, it's probably the case that I've strayed too far into whatever the opposite camp is called because of various life experiences. Maybe it's time to do some re-centering.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
In my experience, when women resent chivalrous behavior, it's because they've run into too many situations like this - where a man thinks that offering his seat entitles him to a conversation, or he expects more of a deferential/flirtatious/personal response to opening a door than a simple "thanks" or polite nod. You'd be surprised - or I don't know, maybe you wouldn't - at how quickly politeness can turn into open hostility, if the guy thinks you haven't been appropriately grateful in your response.
For a certain kind of man, "treating her like a woman" equals "treating her like a sex object." It's not surprising that, eventually, a lot of women decide that they would rather just be treated like men.
It should go without saying, I hope, that you don't give off even the teensiest vibe of being that kind of man.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
yes, someone with a sense of entitlement might see being politely helpful to me as entitling them to something...but that adheres to that person, not the behaviour in my world.
Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"
Mom wasn't much for public transport -- then again, in Memphis in the 70's and 80's, there wasn't much public transport to consider. Still, she was pretty definite about teaching me to hold doors and offer assistance, and had the situation come up, I feel certain that she'd have made her expectations crystal clear. My father would have had similar expectations, but he'd have led by example instead of instruction. I don't remember it ever really coming up -- by the time I was old enough to remember, it was effectively ingrained in me that there were just things you were Expected To Do.
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I'd be interested to hear more about the context in which your seminar looks at politeness - not to mention how it interacts with your personal feelings about etiquette!
An interesting "politeness and language" sidenote, which I didn't think about until after I wrote up the story: within the culture in which I was raised, it seems to me that there would be impolite connotations to addressing a pregnant woman as "miss," because it would mean implying that she wasn't married. In the culture in which I'm living now, "miss" is much more of an age-related term.
So in Baltimore it was perfectly polite for the lady on the bus to call me "miss" and for me to call her "ma'am," because she was my elder by quite a bit. And that's how I read the exchange, so I wasn't bothered. But a tiny corner of my upstate New York heart had the niggling feeling that it would have been more proper for her to say "ma'am" to me, as well as me saying it to her.
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Mine too, and I noticed that right away in your story.
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The other thing that occurred to me is that, forty years ago in Baltimore, I would have been making a strong political statement by calling that woman "ma'am." And probably the men would've been making a subtler political statement by not jumping up to give me their seats. Today, general rules of politeness apply regardless of race, so hooray for progress in etiquette.
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On the other hand, I know women my age who take offense on being addressed as "Ma'am", because they feel like "Ma'am" is only for old ladies. Go figure.
I agree about the social progress that you mention.
Where you at?
And it is invariably vital information about a bra and panty sale.
Or something...
Re: Where you at?
"Where you at?" bugs the hell out of me, though. Makes my inner pedant scream.
Very interesting that it took someone acting like their mother to remind those men to be considerate.
Re: Where you at?
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I can understand that latter ... PK has intermittent problems with his knee and while he looks superficially fine, standing for long periods is agony. But he feels totally unable to ask for a seat because he doesn't look obviously disabled. This is partly why I insist he uses a stick when he's got problems, simply as a visible reminder to others. However, on one magnificent occasion on the Underground, a member of the Underground staff saw him come limping along the platform and get on the train, somehow noticed he was having to stand and got on the train to demand that someone give up their seat for him. I think he came from the same set of moulds as your older woman. Interestingly, I notice in London that it's almost invariably young women who get up to offer other women seats.
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When I was more disabled than I am now, for a long time I found it impossible to ask for a seat. Carrying a stick probably does help, but I have found that it's not always sufficient. Eventually I was so unable to stand that I had to figure out how to get up the guts to ask. But it was hard.
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I frankly have my doubts about its efficacy. We shall see. I'm occasionally offered a seat on the Underground, though I can't determine whether it's because I'm female, look pregnant or deathly ill; I usually accept if I'm going a long way as I figure it doesn't hurt people to exercise that politeness thing, but actually I'm usually quite happy standing.
I was actually quite shocked at how people treated PK when we were out, during the period when he was having to use a stick quite heavily.People, usually men, would just barge past us on the stairs, when it was obvious that he needed space and to go slowly, while older people would always make room, step round and so on. In the end, I took to acting as a human shield, taking his arm or keeping pace with him on the stairs so people had to slow down and take notice. It made me very angry.
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This supports a conclusion I've reached from how people treat my sister with lupus, which is that most rudeness like this to people with physical problems is due to ignorance, and in our culture most people who don't themselves have physical problems are blissfully ignorant of the whole issue. When my sib went back to grad school, none of her twenty-something fellow students had the dimmest notion of how someone could just be unable to work long hours, stay out late, etc. I mean, my sib would say that about themselves, and it had no impact on the fellow students, because there was no place for it in their mental landscapes.
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Anyone who hasn't learned this is a barbarian. Any culture that doesn't teach this to its children is not civilized.
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People here are often very good about it, though it seems to be inversely proportional to how much I'm carrying -- if I have a lot of shopping, I'm clearly judged fit enough to stand.
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seats on London Transport
(Anonymous) 2005-03-08 12:14 am (UTC)(link)In later stages of later pregnancies, in Sydney, it was always women who stood for me on trains. Men would take the 'bury head in paper' option.
Emma
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I've seen it work that way lots of times.
B
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