Tags
culture, everyday activism, everyday oppression, normativity, not fitting the heteronormative paradigm, social attitudes
Who gets to determine what constitutes politeness? In whose favour are the rules of politeness made?
I’m thinking about rules in my context like
- Asking after someone’s health as part of a greeting.
- Asking what someone’s job is when you meet.
- What determines who stands up for whom on public transport.
- Asking women about their husband/boyfriend and kids, and asking men about their wife/girlfriend.
- How it’s polite to address someone using their title, but these are generally gendered along binary lines.
It seems kind of normative, no? If one responds by saying that one’s health is bad, people usually freeze up, because they’re not used to a response other than “fine, thanks”. I’ve met way too many stay at home mums who have to respond awkwardly when they get the “what do you do” question. I’ve heard of kids being treated with shocking rudeness for simply taking up space on public transport because “they don’t pay for their tickets”. Women are assumed to be the ones looking after the kids, and everyone’s supposed to be partnered and straight, which is just painful. And there’s seriously nothing title-wise I’ve encountered for people outside the gender binary apart from things like Dr., which really doesn’t help most people.
These politenesses are designed to boost certain kinds of people. But they’re embarrassing for people who lie outside the default. That’s quite the opposite of the purported intent of politeness!
I think ground rules are good. I think it’s useful to have certain baselines so we know when someone is trying to be respectful towards another person. I think the problem comes in when filling those forms, showing that you have mastered this set of social skills, becomes the important thing. The important thing ought to be displaying kindness and respect to a given individual, which means adapting particular politenesses for particular situations.
Well, hang on. How does one know when to do that? After all, the bulk of the regulations are saved for interacting with new people – part of intimacy is that you get to relax certain rules and find your own. I think the trick might lie in the balance, in adapting politenesses to probabilities, and to cause as little potential embarrassment as possible. I ask “how’re things?” or “tell me about yourself” until I get a feel for the zones that might be no-go. These are open-ended questions that both show interest in the other person and allow them to direct the conversations along lines that are comfortable for them. I talk about neutral things instead of assuming intimacies. It saves everyone – I hope! – a bit of awkwardness and pain.
Previously: How are you?
Oh this is a huge bugbear of mine!
I like courtesy. It makes things run more smoothly. But so many of our ‘manners’ are so classist — the idea that those of higher status (age, employment) are always introduced first was taught to me as a child. Horrid.
Other requirements for ‘good manners’ boil down to more work for women (who is expected to write the thank you notes, issue the dinner invitations, purchase the gift for a child’s teacher, bake for the neighbor home from hospital, welcome the new family to the area… etc) Yet apparently, the most gender-fraught and difficult to navigate area of manners is whether men ought to open doors for ladies? Sigh.
great post Chally. My mother always taught me that politeness was “Making other people feel at their ease”. She used the example for me that it is not polite to eat with cutlery if everyone is using their fingers, because that would make other people feel uncomfortable, even if tiny forks and napkins and such and such are considered ‘extra polite’. (Of course, thats not a be-all example, but it’s pretty helpful when you’re 8). What I took away from that was that is it not polite to hold doors for women and not men, to comment on any aspect of a person’s appearance they cannot control, to ask personal questions and on and on. Actually, writing this made me put together another piece of advice mum gave me a lot – which I now see was very similar. “Use the context. Use your head.”
Yes! And if I am feeling mean I tell people how I feel when they ask, just to watch them cringe. And then feel a tad guilty.
My rule for politeness is don’t ask a question if you are only ready to hear the one (size fits all) answer.
Yes, I find asking what someone’s job is as soon as you meet them very problematic, because I’m currently on the Disability support pension and unable to work due to illness (chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis and more.)
But, I don’t want to have to disclose my illnesses within minutes of meeting someone!
Because then
a) they’ll pity me and/or
b) they’ll think or say, “But it’s not really that bad, is it? Have you tried taking tumeric/comfrey/snake oil/prayer/trying harder?” and/or
c) there will be all this social awkwardness.
If I’m not using my power-wheelchair I look healthy, and it is nice to be able to pass as healthy/not-disabled for a party etc.
Well, there’s a can of worms to open! I grew up with rather an emphasis on “good manners” which is closely related to politeness, except I noticed after a while that one of the major reasons for learning “good manners” was to quickly identify who knew them and who didn’t, i.e. who was a certain kind of middle class like us and who wasn’t.
In other words, it was very much classist, in the same way that much politeness is, as you identify, sexist or ablist or ageist or heterosexist or …
I would also point out the “tone argument” i.e. the magical ability of the able-bodied paid-employed middle-class straight white cismale to stay calm and detached in any online discussion and how the rest of us are supposed to aspire to that.
I agree with you and Aqua, a lot of the norms or “good manners” are just in place to a) make people who don’t conform to the standards of society feel uncomfortable and b) to check who is as “worthy” as you and who isn’t.
I think you can basically go with two rules: 1) Treat everybody with respect and think about what kind of influence your words can have (i.e. like Nance said, don’t make people uncomfortable) and 2) when having a discussion, don’t derail and try to avoid logical fallacies – above all, avoid ad hominem arguments.
Aqua, what exactly do you mean by this?
“I would also point out the “tone argument” i.e. the magical ability of the able-bodied paid-employed middle-class straight white cismale to stay calm and detached in any online discussion and how the rest of us are supposed to aspire to that.”
You don’t have to be detached in a discussion, but I don’t think it is wrong to ask people to stay calm, and I don’t think it is some sort of oppression to ask people to not be rude (I think that is what you are saying?).
Also, I have made the observation that it is often the straight white males who have the most trouble staying calm, especially if it is a discussion about privilege.
I completely understand the reason to go for questions like ‘how are things’ or say stuff like ‘tell me about yourself’, but I can’t be the only person (autistic? It may be more common here but I wouldn’t want to say that it’s all autistic people or only autistic people) out there who royally hates questions like that because they’re too open and I don’t know what to do with them: they get my brain stuck in a very frustrating loop and if there was any kind of talking going on, then everything just sort of stalls right there. In the former case I can usually manage a rote ‘fine’ because I trained myself to it and maybe move on before I begin processing the question, but the other one isn’t one you can say ‘fine’ to.
I generally prefer people ask me things as specifically as possible, which is not to say I want them to ask after my job or my health. But I understand why people comment on the weather to be polite.
Cluisanna: the example that leaps to mind was an online argument where a man seriously argued that the reason there were fewer women’s toilets in many engineering and computer science buildings at universities was because women were less good at those subjects.
I found it really hard not to get ragingly angry, and the guy refused to continue the discussion with me because I couldn’t be “reasonable” about it.
Sure, discussion about privilege (and lack thereof) in well-informed spaces often result in the white men behaving badly, but in the entire rest of the universe (and sadly, spaces well-informed about privilege are vastly outnumbered by spaces that aren’t) it’s those of us arguing against privilege who appear “badly mannered” because privilege defines what is “normal” and “acceptable” behaviour.
Here’s a couple of links to discussions of the tone argument:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument
http://racism-101.livejournal.com/29935.html
https://plus.google.com/113460946096069722041/posts/TcvXfnwcdDk
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I was recently talking to my great-aunt and she was saying how annoyed she gets with shop assistants asking her how she’s feeling and how she always smiles and says “I’m fine, thanks”, even though it’s not true. Because imagine the awkwardness if she answered truthfully: “Not so good actually – I’ve just been diagnosed with brain cancer”.
Excellent post.
And the burden of politeness is just placed on her, where it really shouldn’t be. My best to your great-aunt.
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