Women's Day Streets

[Jeremy Roussak]

Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.

Have a care, please.

Jeremy

[amolitor]

While the mechanics of social change remain pretty mysterious, one of the underlying elements is "what is normal" -- people want, generally, to be normal, to be, to think, to behave in the ways that "normal" people, or "average" people in their society do.

Take one small instance of a behavior that is relevant here. Consider an attractive woman who works in a retail or retail-like context frequented by men. Perhaps she sells shirts. Perhaps she's the marketing director at a high tech firm, who staffs the booth at the trade shows. Invariably this woman will be able to tell you endless stories of men who felt it appropriate to touch her. Usually something benign like placing his hand on her shoulder or in the small of her back.

These men are doing this, mostly, because they want to touch her. They know they can get away with it because she wants to keep her job and sell them a shirt, so she's unlikely to create an awkward scene by requesting that the hand please leave even, though, as a general rule, she would prefer to not be touched. You can argue that it's her fault for taking a job selling shirts, but a) your argument, whatever it is, is silly and b) that's a different discussion.

This is not "frequent", this is not "common", this is universal.

Ok, so, how does this change? It changes when men, as a general rule, feel that such behavior is "icky" or "just not done" or "simply not cricket" or whatever. They still want to touch the pretty girl, but they don't, because it's abnormal, it's what weirdos do and the one thing they're sure of is that they're not weirdos. Or at any rate they don't want anyone to think they are.

How does THAT change? That perception of what "normal" is?

That's a bit mysterious, but people acting out on the street probably has a non-zero impact.

Interestingly, photography and art play a role. If people are constantly touching shopgirls in movies, in adverts, in magazines, in books, then the standard for "normal" is arguably that touching shopgirls is fine. Do photography and art merely reflect the current zeitgeist? Are they merely a record of what is currently "normal"? Or do they actually affect the social consensus? I think it's a bit of both, but you can certainly find arguments on either side of that.

[RSL]

Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.

Have a care, please.

Jeremy

Well said, Jeremy. Please take note of where guns entered the discussion.

[Rob C]

Chaps, this topic did not begin with any connection to guns or gun ownership and should not have drifted into that area.

Have a care, please.

Jeremy

Jeremy, life is not about tight little boxes; tight little boxes are precisely what people wish to escape, and that a site such as LuLa can provide that escape is to be celebrated, not restricted.

I began this thread, I think, (but that's hard to determine on my little iPad at this juncture) and I feel not in the least offended that it drifts this way and that. Some may have obsessions about getting close up and personal with shop assistants, but hey, in the day of Internet sales and vanishing real shops, their time is short and getting shorter.

Guns and the like are, fortunately, not of immediate concern to me, though I'm happy the local cops have them, and as long as I behave in the so-called normal manner of the good citizen, they probably won't be pointed my way.

That said, I'm intrigued by amolitor's claim that 'normal' people desire to emulate the rest of the pack. I have never felt like that in my life! And I do consider myself normal as compared with abnormal. Mostly, I hate the friggin' pack and do my utmost to keep a safe distance between it and my dear self. Good grief, normal sounds as exciting a lifestyle as life in a bowl of cold chicken soup. Too long in that, and you would just pull your head below the surface and inhale deeply.

Heysoos, I might as well have taken up knitting as career if I craved normal - if knitting is morally normal that is. That might need official clearance...

:-)

Rob

[RSL]

Rob's got a point, as usual. But I'm going to drop out of this one so I'll have time to petition the UN to declare International Bullshit Day, a day upon which we can celebrate threads like this one.

[amolitor]

There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.

While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.

More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.

See, for instance:

https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22

[Robert Roaldi]

There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.

While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.

More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.

See, for instance:

https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22

Thanks for that link.

[Rob C]

There's actually pretty good hard science on this, Rob.

While the punk rocker with the pink mohawk and the safety pins through everything fancies himself a violator social norms, he still follows 10,000 different ones a day. He drives on the defined side of the street, pays for his pints, does not swear at the old lady crossing the street, and so on. Or at any rate, for every one of those he breaks today, he follows 100 others without even noticing it.

More importantly, there is excellent research on how stated "social norms" can direct behavior in the large.

See, for instance:

https://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/index.cfm?ArticleID=248&ArticleTypeID=22

Well, I have now read the link, and the conclusion to which I came was this: to think people get paid to do this stuff!

It represents part of what I think has gone crazy with today's society. I see an almost direct link to the world of art writers and the totally artificial priorities they have made it a paying profession to pursue. It seems to me that it finds a natural, perfect home in the world of corporate-speak, team-bonding classes and days at the golf course for senior company executives to, well, you know, forge unbreakable links of everlasting corporate love. I'm led to believe that shooting fellow workers with paint balls achieves the same love. Accountants note: probably cheaper than the day at the links.

What's wrong with a nice picture of an angry, hungry bear, or of the bleached skeleton of an intrepid off-trailer? Clean graphics can't be beaten.

:-)

[Robert Roaldi]

Well, I have now read the link, and the conclusion to which I came was this: to think people get paid to do this stuff!

It represents part of what I think has gone crazy with today's society. I see an almost direct link to the world of art writers and the totally artificial priorities they have made it a paying profession to pursue. It seems to me that it finds a natural, perfect home in the world of corporate-speak, team-bonding classes and days at the golf course for senior company executives to, well, you know, forge unbreakable links of everlasting corporate love. I'm led to believe that shooting fellow workers with paint balls achieves the same love. Accountants note: probably cheaper than the day at the links.

What's wrong with a nice picture of an angry, hungry bear, or of the bleached skeleton of an intrepid off-trailer? Clean graphics can't be beaten.

:-)

What an odd statement. The differences in behaviour that were discovered seem to imply that the topic was worth studying. Proper signage on highways, for example, probably saves lives, so why wouldn't it be valuable to study what kind of signage works best? You may assume that you already know, but why do you assume that your assumption is correct without testing it.

[Rob C]

What an odd statement. The differences in behaviour that were discovered seem to imply that the topic was worth studying. Proper signage on highways, for example, probably saves lives, so why wouldn't it be valuable to study what kind of signage works best? You may assume that you already know, but why do you assume that your assumption is correct without testing it.

Why odd?

If you want odd, then come to Spain and look for the "no left turn" sign for a road where you must not make a left turn, whilst you are already driving along a narrow one-way road. The sign is not to be found facing you, on the road on which you find yourself; the sign is waiting for you, edge to you, on a pole in the mouth of the prohibited road itself, far too late to be sensible, but it certainly keeps you hunched forward, hugging the steering wheel, the better to see further into the corner you mustn't take. You only see it fully as you pass it if you haven't make the mistake of going up that street. But cyclists can and do go up any street, even if not legally.

The signs themselves are perfectly clear and internationally understandable, as with the beware the bear genre ones; just the location is loco. One would not normally place the bear sign invitingly distant from the recommended trail, would one?

Normal traffic signs and correct placement of same have been established for decades; there's no probability about it: they do save lives. It's not about my assumptions or beliefs but about a system learned (and required to be learned) in order to get a driving licence. No need there for the splitting of hairs nor of fantastical objectives!

[amolitor]

This has the potential to be an interesting discussion,  I regret that I will not be taking part in it any further. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any specific questions or remarks, though!