Urban politeness.

[rivka]

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.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

In the city I live in, if someone who's pregnant or disabled in any visible way (even mildly) or who could at all be called "old" walks into a bus, the entire front half of the bus will absolutely fall over themselves to give up their seats. It's certainly polite, but it's also a little pathological, almost "typhoid Mary" in its extremity. I've often wondered what it would feel like to be the sort of person who doesn't think of herself as needing to be offered a seat, and have that sort of experience.

-J

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I try to offer my seat to folks who appear to me to need the seat more than I do, but I'm becoming increasingly aware that this is a difficult path to walk. First, I'm obviously ignoring all the people with "invisible disabilities" -- people who might look young and hale but who may be low on "spoons" for the day and such. Also, I'm treating people as if they have a disability of some sort based solely on their appearance, which even if I'm careful to not make snap judgments, may still fall short of a complete assessment (especially in the time it takes a person to pass my seat). I've also heard a number of people rant in their journals about how offended they were that somebody offerent them a seat.

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.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I've thought about some of these things, too. Mostly I try to solve those problems by not sitting in seats in the front half of the bus. Heh.

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

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Yeeps! Where is "here"? (I'm in Toronto.)

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I live in Edmonton.

-J

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I guess this proves the whole, "Toronto, home of cruel-hearted Canadians," reputation, then. ;)

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)]

My colleague, who is 38 and has cancer (but who also has been a teacher), once returned angry and nearly in tears. Two pre-pubescent boys, she told, had insulted her in the bus. As it turned out the insult was giving up their seats after looking my colleague over.

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"

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

And that's exactly the thing -- while you might have perfectly good intentions, there's just no way of knowing what impact your actions will have upon someone. It seems sometimes easier to just risk being perceived as rude rather than causing someone else injury or offence. :(

Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"

[rivka.livejournal.com]

...but it can also cause injury or offense to leave a person with a disability standing. I was once left standing on the subway while I was using two crutches - an unmistakable sign of a physical inability to stand, one would have thought. The people sitting down all avoided my eyes.

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 curiousangel, as a child, would not have been permitted by his mother to sit while a woman was standing.

Re: the offence of "wow, you look OLD and SICK"

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The offering of seats to an adult woman regardless of health was a fairly widely accepted standard growing up around here, but is less common now. To some degree, I think rightly so, in that the same people wouldn't imagine offering their seat to an adult man who seemed healthy -- it would just be a bizarre think to think of doing. I could see a blanket "younger folk should offer their seats to people older than them" thing being much fairer.

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"

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

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.

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"

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

This is probably sage advice in general that I'll try to take. It sounds like a good approach, anyway.

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"

[rivka.livejournal.com]

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).

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"

[lcohen]

you know, i wish this didn't get read as sexism to the extent that it does. *i* was taught to hold doors (not car doors, but you can bet i help my mother with her car door these days) and yield my seat, too. if someone is having any sort of trouble, i'll help them into their coat although i seldom do that automatically. the chair thing--i actually often find that more unhelpful than helpful.

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"

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

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 curiousangel, as a child, would not have been permitted by his mother to sit while a woman was standing.

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.