rivka | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.

From:

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.