Why innuendo
Via Jean Kazez via a commenter with a squiggly name, Steven Pinker explains how “do you want to come to my room for coffee?” keeps knowledge individual rather than mutual and thus saves face.
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Via Jean Kazez via a commenter with a squiggly name, Steven Pinker explains how “do you want to come to my room for coffee?” keeps knowledge individual rather than mutual and thus saves face.
I could only see how that would apply to non-strangers. Then again I am autistic.
I feel like that analysis misses something. Surely in the innuendo example, both parties know what the other party knows… or at least suspect it strongly enough to be confident. There’s definitely a difference between “known but unacknowledged out loud” and “known and acknowledged out loud,” and that difference definitely has to do with how easy it is to pretend that you or the other party doesn’t actually know. But I doubt its whether or not you think the other party knows, because… you do, don’t you? At least most of the time?
When my old boss phrased orders as requests, and insisted that I could do it “when I had the time,” I knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, and he knew I knew he was lying… at least after the first time I didn’t immediately drop everything to do what he asked, and he criticized me for it. So both sides knew what the other side knew, including the recursion… but that didn’t stop him from using the same innuendo about orders. That seems more the situation with most innuendos.
hmm That might explain why i got fired a lot from jobs. I take people at what they say and even if I suspect they mean something else I ignore it and just do what they say. (I don’t recommend this as it has caused me considerable grief)
I knew Pinker was a good guy ever since “The Blank Slate” where he explained that it’s natural that women get raped because they dress like sluts.
And how trying to narrow the wage gap between men and women prevents women from fulfilling their natural destinies.
A few years back when I was at university a friend of a friend who was a psychology student decided to run a little survey of his own in this area.
He decided to walk down the main street of the city and directly proposition every young woman he encountered whom he found to be attractive. It was not a matter of an elliptical invitation in broad daylight to a total stranger to come back to his place for coffee; to see his collection of etchings or whatever. He came straight to the point, so to speak: “How about a fuck?” was his self-introductory question.
He reported informally that he was quite surprised by the number of acceptaces he got. Likewise the politeness of many of the refusals.
Needless to add, more research needs to be done in this area before any (even half-way confident) predictions can be made.
That term is related to “Have a cup of coffee.” as a kind of innuendo’ It’s a way of establishing the unreliabilty of the information offerred.
In his first example, ‘If you could pass…’, that doesn’t appear to be someone intentionally using ambiguity or innuendo. ‘if you could…that’d be great!’ is just an accepted way of saying ‘Would you please?’ (at least in the circles I travel and the tv I used to watch) Like saying ‘what’s up?’ is a an accepted way of saying ‘Hello’ or ‘How are you?’ We don’t just learn words when we learn to speak, we learn phrases and they too have associated definitions even if those definitions conflict with the words in them.
I’m either not following or coming into this piece missing stuff I should know to appreciate it.
Which is funny because research doing exactly what Omar Puhleez describes has been done. Well, maybe they didn’t say “how about a fuck?” but direct propositions from strangers were involved and the response rate of both genders recorded. I don’t remember the results, perhaps it’s on pubmed.
It literally was. I never actually met the psychologist. But second and third hand information has validity in that it is a source to follow up.
That is one reason I stressed that further (ahem) research on this issue was needed, and which Moewicus suggests has been done. This after all is the only way true science can advance.
The budding discipline might be called propositionology.
He did not. That’s a stupid lie.
Julian – Pinker’s point, although he does not make it explicit, is that we do not construct or make these utterances intentionally, nor do we have to intentionally interpret them. Among Americans (and I assume British, b/c the talk was for a UK audience) the forms and their functions are so widespread and so common, that we never have to think them through. Or, if we do have to think them through, it’s an unconscious process. Pinker just slowed it down for the little lecture.
In our native languages, at least, and probably in other languages we know well and use a lot, along with rules of grammar and the lexicon, we also learn the rules of conversation (e.g. Grice’s rules, like be informative, or save your interlocutor’s face). If an utterance violates one of these rules, another set of rules kicks in, which offer ways to understand the oddity. For example, “I really hate to say this but. . .” is over-informative, which triggers a rule that says “Interpret this as “I am thrilled to be able to say the following. . ” Presumably if a person genuinely hated to say something, she would neither introduce it nor say it.
I’d say that an introduction like “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but” is another trigger, at least in my mind, that is interpreted as “There is a right and a wrong way to take this, and I don’t want to be completely direct b/c that would express my goal of mutuality. And that is more than I want to be explicit about. But I really hope that you take the upcoming indirect proposition the “wrong” (that is, the direct) way.”
Anyhow, most of what we do with face to face language is not conscious – it happens too fast and it vaporizes once we utter it. And it is kind of silly to describe passing the guacamole as “awesome.”
Claire, you seem to be implying that efforts at tact are in fact devoted to exculpating the speaker from deserved charges of malice.
I know that when called upon to give advice, it is sometimes necessary to say things that, if unprefaced, could well be interpreted as offensive, because advice must sometimes take the form of criticism. Tact is real, sometimes.
Or I could just be over-reading. If you’re only talking about chat-up lines.
Nor did I, Omar Puleez, but I heard the same story about forty years ago- I can’t even say now if it was a friend of a fruend of mine or a friend of a friend of a friend of mine- which is why I’m sceptical about it now.
I read some years ago about swedish phrase usage in public. Allegedly it’s common to not acknowledge in words that there are persons in the room. Instead the clerk and the shopper, for the specific example used, might narrate the mysterious actions of inanimate objects, such as food items and money – or as if talking to oneself about items, merely letting the other overhear.
Wish I remembered more about it.
Roger,
There are a number of possibilities here:
1. The psychologist-in-becoming (pib) never existed, and the whole thing was an urban myth;
2. The pib existed, the event/s took place more or less as described, but the experiment was not written up, peer-reviewed or published;
3. Some women were directly propositioned in a public area somewhere, for whatever goal, and the whole thing lost nothing in the n re-tellings. You and I were both hearers, and I at least am one of the relay stations. This is more-or-less consistent with (2).
However the one thing you cannot say is that because you heard about it x years ago, it never happened, there can be no basis to it and it must be with 100% probability a case of (1) above. Remember also that the experimenter and the verbal publicists of the results were university students, and thus the very acme of responsibility.
But as I said, further research is needed. Some may have already been done. (See #8 above.)
I guess it’s never been socially acceptable to simply blurt out “can we have sex please?” to a stranger.
Thurber shows how it should be done. Notice that the conversation is outside the elevator.
http://www.cartoonbank.com/1930s/you-wait-here-and-ill-bring-the-etchings-down/invt/106061/
I do not say it never happened, Omar Puhleez; I am merely sceptical about the truth of the versions you and I heard. The basic anecdote- a man approaches women he does not know and directly proposes they have sex together- has probably happened many times. However, I don’t think it ever happened as a psychological or sociological experiment, though someone may have claimed as much in extenuation afterwards. As you say, the alleged experimenter and the verbal publicists of the results were university students, and thus the very acme of responsibility and dedication to academic truthfulness.
Modern or urban myths and legends are an interesting topic. Has there been any study of how they are spread and believed? I think that a certain credulity- a predisposition to believe- and a tendency to seek and find order even if there is none are innate human attributes, so there is no reason why sceptics shouldn’t be as liable to believe these myths as other people, but I would expect us to believe different stories and probably different kinds of stories.
@Egbert
What’s funny in all this is has people who are normally liberals acting as if “free love” between equals is something terribly old fashioned and conservative.
I’ve always seen innuendo and similar word-play as being at least occasionally an act of self-deception. Sort of a way to preserve the image of yourself that you have in your head. You don’t want to think of yourself as the sort of guy who asks for sex from strangers in elevators, so you say “coffee.” You don’t want to think of yourself as a racist, so you say “I’m not a racist, but…” and then feel like you’re covered. Same with people who self-describe as “straight talkers” who are really just “jerks who don’t filter themselves.”
At least when looking back. It’s much easier to lie about your intentions when you’re ambiguous or using innuendo to get your message across. Definitely one of the more popular mind games online.
Joe, what is wrong with asking a stranger for sex? Either in an elevator or outside of an elevator? And that’s not a rhetorical question I’m asking, I’m looking for a clear and straight reason why it’s wrong.
Egbert… I’m not sure your question is relevant to this discussion, and is probably larger than either of us really want to get into. The point here is that the social norms are what they are, and you violate them at your peril. The reason those norms exist is bigger than I can probably discuss, and I’m pretty sure I could never come to an explanation for them that would satisfy any questions about their objective correctness.
The point here is that once those norms ARE established, violating them puts you in the category of “bad person” and if you’ve got some sort of need to blurt out your random desires towards complete strangers, you go into that category.There’s actually maybe a good and simple and clear reason for that, since if you’re willing to ignore some of the social rules, you are more likely to violate others.
You can of course avoid the issue by finding various sub-cultures in which that behavior doesn’t violate the norms of that group, and you’re good to go. There’s that whole context thing again, right?
@Julian:
Seems to me like that explains a lot of the passive-aggressive nonsense from the accommodationists and various and sundry tone trolls and apologists (I see you De Dora! hahaha). They can be giant assholes without admitting to it, and then claim to be victims when people respond to them in kind. It is just ducking responsibility combined with maintaining a positive self-image without having to behave in ways that justify that self-image.
I like this. Probably because of confirmation bias.
Sex is generally viewed as a private matter and propositions are viewed as crass even by many individuals who are open to entirely NSA style sex. Mostly because it presumes a lot about what the individual being propositioned is or is not willing to do. When you invite someone to have coffee or a drink later you are trying to establish boundaries with that individual. (How comfortable are you with me? Are we compatible? Am I attracted to you? Will you make a good friend? You are getting to know them. Maybe what the two of you are most comfortable with is just occasionally meeting for coffee)
Also it falls in line with the widely held belief we should get to know our sexual partners because that’s sensitive and caring and those things are good. (My argument, as someone who’s been burned, is you don’t know your partner’s medical or personal history.) Asking for coffee/drink of choice is ‘not shallow’ so you if anything happens, it’s not on you. You are a ‘good person.’ (read: nice guy or not a slut)
Basically, yeah, people just want to keep whatever image they have of themselves preserved.
Are we not above social norms? It may indeed be justified as wrong to ask strangers for sex. What I would like is a rational argument for why. Also, I’m not exactly sure it is wrong, only that it may in fact be an irrational social taboo.
The idea that breaking social taboos are wrong because they lead to breaking social taboos does not make any sense to me.
@Egbert
A large part of why I consider propositioning random strangers for sex is because of how close it is to sexual harassment. It falls into the same category as cat calls, lewd comments and staring. “Damn you got a mean ass.” “Come on, baby, I know you want some dick.” While that may all be different from “That’s a nice top” and “Check her out…” if the desire and meaning the speaker is putting behind the words is more often then not the same, then both can be seen as harassment. (At least to me.) Regardless both create the same atmosphere which should be enough reason to be careful with what you say.
Sure it has! Between men.
We used to talk about this a fair bit when I worked for the Parks Department, especially with reference to cruisey parks. Parks work, I eventually managed to figure out after several summers working in one district after another so that I ended up knowing people in nearly all of the districts, attracts both gays and lesbians, so I could listen in on very informative-and-amusing discussions of why men like to cruise in parks and women don’t. There was no debate about the facts on the ground (as the saying goes) – men cruise, women don’t.
So what you mean is: it’s never been socially acceptable for a man to blurt out “can we have sex please?” to a female total stranger. (You forgot to make an exception for prostitutes.) No, you’re probably right, it probably hasn’t. Why’s that? Because women mostly don’t want sex with total strangers, and mostly don’t like being asked for it.
I know, that’s very essentialist. Nevertheless.
What julian said, except that he – both of you in fact – forgot to notice that you’re not talking about “people” in general, you’re talking about women and men, women v men. You’re noticing, without realizing that you’re noticing, that what works for men doesn’t work for women, and vice versa.
You’re noticing that women and men are different in ways that make heterosexual relations fraught with tension. Ironic, isn’t it – in many ways same-sex relations are vastly easier.
And Egbert – frankly – I think you’re being rather dense. You’re talking as if you’re stripping away the fluff of convention and getting down to the bedrock, but you’re doing it without even pausing to notice that not everybody wants what you (or people like you in the relevant sense) want. There’s more than one kind of fluff to strip away.
During the Spanish Civil War (or maybe it was just before it), the anarchists had a brilliant idea – pass a law saying everybody had a right to have sex with anyone.
Think about it.
It’s funny that you guys are managing to say it without spelling it out. julian look at yours @ 27 – you’re right but you’ve forgotten to say why you’re right. You’re talking about men hassling women, but you forgot to say so.
Joe @ 23 – no it’s not just arbitrary norms that you have to obey or else. It’s that most women don’t like it. Even after decades of sexual liberation, we still find that most women don’t like it.
Think about eggs v sperm if it helps. Think about pregnancy and nursing and dependent small children if it helps. Think about comparative investment if it helps.
wiz5 –
Nope. Clueless. Cf the Spanish anarchists.
@ Ophelia,
Where on earth did I ever say between a man and woman? I never said between a man and a woman. Who is the one jumping to assumptions here.
@julian,
You hit the nail on the head. The real problem and social taboo is because of the assumption that asking a stranger for sex is sexual harassment, and that does appear to be a contextual assumption from a feminist perspective. Is it sexual harassment? Or is it a bad assumption.
Egbert – pay attention. I said you didn’t specify. You have to specify if you want to say anything meaningful. You’re talking about sex involving more than one person; you have to specify, because it makes a difference. That’s my point. That’s why the second part of your comment, the one addressed to julian, is idiotic. It is not true that “asking a stranger” for sex is sexual harassment; you have to specify the sex of the stranger (and, slightly less urgently, the asker).
Don’t just ignore everything I said, please. Don’t talk to me as if I’m intruding on your private conversation with julian when what’s happening is that you’re ignoring the most basic aspects of what you’re talking about and thus talking nonsense.
No offense, but it sounds like (to me) that what you’re asking is the equivalent of ‘is slapping a woman’s backside sexual harassment (assault) or a bad assumption? After all, plenty of guys do it with each other and plenty of women don’t mind it. Why is suddenly nefarious when a man does it to a woman?’
Sigh.
Guys – can you please spell out the sex – the gender – of each person you’re talking about. Don’t just assume male, ok? It makes gibberish of everything you’re trying to discuss, plus…it’s assumed male. It’s pathetic to attempt to discuss this subject while being so confused about that very basic element. Jeez.
(In other words – in case that still isn’t clear enough – don’t assume that “I” is always male; don’t assume that “we” is always male; don’t assume that everyone is male unless otherwise stipulated.)
Sorry. Rephrasing my comment
It sounds like (to me) what you’re asking, Egbert, is the equivalent of ‘Why is it sexual harassment (assault) when a man slaps a woman’s backside? After all men do it to one another all the time and it’s seen as generally a friendly gesture, and there are women who don’t mind when a man does it. Why is suddenly nefarious because a man is doing it to a woman?’
Hope that was better.
I’m probably still missing something.
Thank you! :- )
It makes it so much easier for everyone to see where the tensions are, you see.
*sigh*
Ophelia, I was trying to keep my conversation with Egbert as non-specific and general as possible. When I suspect someone is being intentionally dense, in this case in defense of sexism, I find that it is sometimes useful to move the conversation to generalities first, find agreement, and then catch their hypocrisy and/or logical contradictions when they try to weasel out of their earlier agreement. Or you can simply show that they’re incapable of having a rational discussion, or some combination of the two.
Ophelia,
I am not ignoring you, please don’t ignore me, or ignore what I’m trying to get at. The original point I made @16 was deliberately general and non-contextual, for a point. Is it wrong? Really?
You were going in the right direction with your initial comment #28, then went and changed my original point.
Now you’re claiming you said you didn’t specify, which is not the case. You never said that above, not once. You just ignored what I said and went ahead and rewrote it, only then for you to knock it down later and call me dense.
My point was meant to provoke questions and discussions among everyone here, not to trap you or make you blow up into a personal exchange.
And I really do understand this is a touchy subject. But why is it? We’re not children here, we’re adults with pretty much the same liberal anti-religion agenda…or are we not?
This is the whole point, after all. In a perfect world both sexes would have exactly the same view of the matter (whether ‘hooray let’s do it! or ‘sex with a stranger is not fun’), but we don’t live in that world. That’s why the conventions exist. wiz and Egbert seem to be claiming that they’re arbitrary, but they’re also assuming male, which is just clueless.
Also, I don’t think you have to necessarily justify social norms in order to see the general benefit of their existence, and to see the harm in ignoring those norms.
Joe @ 41 – right…I mostly didn’t mean you. Still, I think it’s hard to discuss “asking a stranger for sex” at such a level of generality…
Joe @ 44 – really? I think I think the opposite – since some social norms are crap while others are not.
Sorry I didn’t mean to imply there was only one true liberalism/feminism. It’s just people are throwing around false stereotypes of their opponents with wild abandon.
I try not to discriminate against hetero and homo sexual relationships. When men slap each other on the ass, how do you know that one isn’t gay and is actually sexualising the others if the others don’t realise it is have they been harassed? (Do men do this all the time? not where I’m from.) I think ass slapping has become something of a symbol of misogyny and it is generally taken that anyone doing it will be labelled as such (not necessarily a bad thing of course).
Sorry, I’m not trying to be post-modernist or anything I just find human culture and intentions to be difficult to pin down and try to avoid overgeneralising.
Ah… the dangers of speaking in generalities! Yikes!
I was planning on bringing things around to the actual topic, which is about playing linguistic games… so I’ll just get to it. In this specific, this is people saying “I don’t see why we should respect any social norms about personal space and sexual propositions” when what they really mean is “I’m planning on violating other people’s personal space and their views about sexual propositions”.
… or when they say “Sorry, I’m not trying to be post-modernist or anything I just find human culture and intentions to be difficult to pin down and try to avoid overgeneralising” they might mean “I’m completely lacking in empathy and respect for others, so I’m going to try to do anything and everything I think I can get away with.”
Egbert @ 42 – I didn’t call you dense, I said “you’re being rather dense” – italics added. That’s different. It implies you can stop, which you couldn’t if you actually were dense.
Is your point in # 16 wrong? Well, if it is “it should be socially acceptable to simply blurt out “can we have sex please?” to a stranger” then yes, it’s wrong, depending on what sex the stranger is, and the context (it is socially acceptable in a singles bar, as far as I know).
@julian,
It is ironic that Ophelia rewrites what I had written only for you do exactly the same by exaggerating what I said and then somehow equivocating them.
This is what I wrote:
Now if that didn’t make sense, please tell me and I will try to clarify myself more clearly. If you were deliberately trying to twist what I said (for whatever reason I have no idea) then why?
wiz –
You mean “among,” right?
But for the purposes of this discussion that’s just silly, because it makes a difference.
Joe – :- )
@Ophelia,
Yes it is different, it’s a bit like innuendo. I didn’t mean to ask you for sex, I asked for coffee. I fully understand what you meant, and I read it the ‘being’ very clearly. The point is, you were not reading what I had written, you rewrote it for a confrontation instead.
And while we’re on the subject of changing what people said, why are you telling me it’s different, while you have done the very thing yourself by rewriting my points in your own way?
Egbert, I didn’t “rewrite” you – at one point I said what you meant, because you had failed to say it clearly, because of the failing to notice when you meant man—>woman as opposed to just stranger—>stranger.
Knock it off.
And of course that passage doesn’t make sense. There is no “feminist perspective” that sees a man asking a man for sex as sexual harassment.
Hey Egbert if you get into an elevator with one other person do you stand half an inch from them or do you stand a comfortable distance away?
Egbert, I don’t know what # 53 even means – I can’t parse it.
@#49
Seriously, I’m not trying to get away with anything, I’m not a touchy feely person, I’m quite uncomfortable when I go to my family in central Europe and get a hug and kiss greeting. But it is the norm there. If you can’t discuss hypotheticals why bother talking.
@#52 Yes sorry I meant among
Well maybe I’m projecting my own position but that maybe the source of disagreement with lots of people.
I agree with you. I think it can be wrong contextually. In fact, I will go further, it’s wrong entirely depending on situation and individuals. But it is not wrong in general, meaning it’s not unlawful (as far as I know) at least between consenting adults.
Notice I said ‘it can be’ meaning the matter of whether it is right or wrong can’t be generalized for everyone or all men. And that telling all men not to do it, is generalizing something out of context. Do you agree?
@55,
David, I suffer from a psychological problem (which I don’t wish to explain here) where I don’t feel comfortable in social situations. I would probably place myself at the normal distance that most people place themselves whenever being with a stranger. I think we all know that distance diminishes once certain social boundaries begin to fall away.
wiz – right – I think we agree then. It’s just that the norms can differ sharply between, say, straight men and gay men. (In the US at least, straight men seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time calling each other girls or gay in contrast to their own Muy Macho male straightness. That’s a norm, and boy do I wish it would die out.)
Not unlawful?! But we agreed on that days ago. I thought we were talking about conventions. “Not wrong” really doesn’t mean “not unlawful.” All sorts of things are wrong without being unlawful.
Try reading it over and over. Or simply stand back and realize we’re not enemies and I’m not out to trap you.
Egbert, I have a better idea: you realize that you haven’t been making yourself clear. To put it mildly.
Verbal clarity is all we have here. Without that we just get derailments and chaos. If you want to argue about something, you need to be clear. If you can’t do that, you should let it go.
Exactly, there are social boundaries, no one is suggesting making things illegal or punishing people for social gaffs. We all know the social boundaries even the guys cat calling women and saying “hey nice ass baby” know what they are doing is wrong. Pretending we don’t is insulting to those we are conversing with.
I am fully diagnosed with autism in many cases people think I am a jerk or rude it happen s to me daily. I physically can not say “excuse me can you please move” if someone is blocking my way I actually have to stand behind people who are blocking an isle until they either move or I get so frustrated and angry they I explode and scream at them. I know what I do is wrong and I actively try to avoid situations where things like this might happen. I do not pretend my behavior is just fine and i just don’t know any better.
For David @ #12 “Claire, you seem to be implying that efforts at tact are in fact devoted to exculpating the speaker from deserved charges of malice.”
Yes, that is what I am saying, although there are many charges beyond malice that speakers need to attend to. The speaker (according to analyses of conversation and discourse in spoken English in the UK and US, e.g. Grice, 1975*) must “save the face” of the hearer, by using tactful strategies. And the speaker also has to save her own face too, using protective strategies. If we compared the example of a man saying “Hey bay-bee wanna fuck?” to a woman stranger in an elevator v. “Please do not take this the wrong way but would you like to join me around 4 am in my hotel room to view the etchings?” we’d note that the former very direct request would typically elicit a direct response like “Hell no!” No room to save the speaker’s face. But the latter offers a selection of face saving strategies for the speaker, for example, the hearer might indeed take it the wrong way, so it’s her fault not the speaker’s if the conversation goes awry. Or, the hearer might dislike etchings, and that offers the speaker a way to save face when the hearer declines the invitation. Or, 4 am may be an inconvenient time. Again, nothing about the speaker’s face in that. Charges of malice are just one of many potential charges that we want to guard against in everyday conversation. Talking to each other is a bit about conveying content, as Pinker put it, but it’s much more about defining and constructing relationships and the contexts in which they play out.
“I know that when called upon to give advice, it is sometimes necessary to say things that, if unprefaced, could well be interpreted as offensive, because advice must sometimes take the form of criticism. Tact is real, sometimes.”
Absolutely – tact is real 98.75% of the time in my view, taking real to mean genuine and not fabricated to deceive. It is so real that in our everyday discourse with those around us, most US/UK women hardly need to think about it. Our social development trains us to be indirect. I don’t know about men since I am not one and had no brothers to observe during their development. My stepsons are polite in speech, but often not in actions, but they are very young and still learning. Men surely are taught politeness rules but there are many differences between the everyday discourse of women and the everyday discourse of men, and the nuances shift depending upon gender, power relations, etc among interlocutors. (I imagine that this is something you have learned to attend to with your conscious mind, right? I know a man with autism who has had to learn many social rules that people w/o autism assimilate w/o instruction).
I’m thinking that the “asking of advice” plays out differently in different contexts with different relationships between speakers and hearers. For example, the old “Do these shoes make my butt look big?” pretty much always requires a negative response. It’s an “intimate” type of advice-seeking, where the little white lie is useful for preserving the relationship. But if one were at work, asking one’s boss advice about a plan or a piece of work, the relationship is defined by power differentials, and seeking advice can have different functions. And the higher level person does not have to worry as much about saving the hearer’s face. The higher level boss (woman or man) has a right to get in the hearer’s face, in a way. Likewise, if my graduate student asks advice on her dissertation proposal, even though she may not want to hear it, she knows that I am going to advise her clearly and directly. In this case, saving her face will be a lower priority, although I will be tactful. (I hate when they cry, just as I hate when men grad students yell at me. Different loci of control between genders in US students, so different tactics among professors). It is possible to be tactful and direct simultaneously.
“Or I could just be over-reading. If you’re only talking about chat-up lines.”
Not over reading at all. Chat-up lines are one of many kinds of utterances that deserve our attention as relationship markers. I am guessing that Pinker would say that just about every utterance we can make to another person is worth considering as a relationship marker. So possibly you are under-reading. . . you can read more about the Cooperative Principle (in my view Elevator Guy violated the Cooperative Principle, starting all that trouble) in conversation, and Grice’s maxims of conversation, and critiques thereof at the site below.
I hope this isn’t too long and blabby or unhelpful. . . (See? Too much information. I know perfectly well that it’s too long and too blabby, and in this context – where the intriguing linguistic and social aspects of Pinker’s little lecture have taken a lower priority over much more poorly analyzed business of innuendo and sexual propositions – it may not be helpful).
*www.laurahughes.com/art/grice.doc
Hmm, if that is true, it could have much more to do with culture than anything else. I’ve known plenty of straight people who have no problem with one night stands in the right contexts and there does seem to be a significant sector of just about every community dedicated to that kind of thing. Gay and bi people don’t always have the same opportunities to meet up that straight people do, and because of the immense societal pressure against homosexuality and bisexuality they have historically needed discrete and/or anonymous locations like parks, restrooms, specific bars, etc. The whole no-nonsense approach to sex seems to have been kind of forced on gay and bi people. The lack of lesbians in parks might also have more to do with sexism making it dangerous for women to meet up alone in parks than with lesbians not wanting to meet other lesbians for sexual encounters.
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An aside, but I think this is one of the main reasons the military leaders in the US are so worried about the repeal of DADT, because being slapped on the ass for a gay or bi man would be more likely to be seen as sexual conduct than it would be for a straight man, so this culture of guys slapping each other on the ass is rife for sexual harassment lawsuits.
No it’s great, Claire. People who know what they’re talking about; hooray!
Which is part of what makes the Geico ad so hilarious.
Given Pinker’s point and the facts about sexual selection and sexual conflict Ophelia’s alluded to, I’d postulate generally it doesn’t work for a man to ask a strange woman for sex because it crosses from the reciprocal altruism relationship we have with strangers into a kin relationship – with a whiff of an authoritarian vibe if he’s (as is generally the case) stronger and in a position to make demands if he chooses. Or more than a whiff, in some situations. Context matters.
Female prostitutes are selling, so the whole exchange is businesslike. But random guy in the street is not a friend, and I’m not interested. If you were my friend, you might be able to become a sufficiently close friend to be a lover. But you’re sure as hell not being invited to dominate me. (Hypothetical “you” of course. One of the nicest things about turning 40 was that now I’m rarely considered prey these days.)
@David,
Perhaps you might understand why I too suffer from the same misconceptions and misunderstands. It is my experience that social etiquette are always being broken by men and women all the time (because such rules are generally stupid to begin with).
I am not aware when I have made someone uncomfortable unless I can read their mind (which I can’t do) or at least pick up on their body language. I am sympathetic and so I can understand how someone else feels, but that is far more difficult online. It is easier for people to confront each other in the online world, whereas we’d all scuttle away in horror in the real world.
Also, those boundaries are culturally contextual, or class contextual, or whatever particular identity someone has adopted, but our biological boundaries are basically territorial rather than a matter of manners. Everyone fundamentally understands those boundaries at a biological level, if they have developed normally. In society, we’re forced to ignore our biological boundaries and our urges and desires, which of course creates many of our problems to begin with.
It might, but for what it’s worth (anecdotal, so not much) the lesbians I knew while working in Parks were adamant that it doesn’t. Adamant. As in “I wouldn’t do that in a million years. It just does not appeal.”
And besides you’ve already euphemized the language here. Cruising isn’t meeting people for sexual encounters; it’s just sexual encounters, without the meeting part. Same with the one-night stands. We’re not talking about chatting for half an hour and then agreeing to have sex; the issue was “asking a stranger for sex.”
What Caryn said.
Ophelia,
I will bow out of this one, not because I think I am unclear, but because I don’t think you’re interested or sympathetic to what I have to say.
Well, Egbert, I thought # 69 was quite interesting, and clear. The previous comments, not. I’m not going to apologize for that.
Ophelia @70
There’s a weird sort of overlap in language/conception of certain social encounters, real or hypothetical, where the actual amount of time from when a man says “hello” to when he says “wanna see my etchings” can be a few seconds or a few days, and are all for some reason falling under the heading of “flirting with a woman” or “talking to a woman.” They are all radically different, and yet they are being conflated willy-nilly, depending on which point the man in question wants to make.
I think that when most people in this conversation are saying “ask strangers for sex” we mean it as in the “cruising” scenario or close to it. Conversations of very short duration that may or may not include exchanging names, maybe a quick question or three about STD status and/or use of condoms, and then right to the sex. The people on the other side of the conversation ALSO mean that, but they are then sometimes including dinner and a movie or other “getting to know each other” aspects in order to obscure their real intent.
Ophelia
I’ve been saying more or less this for a long time and many heterosexual males (hetero females slightly less so) seem to be uncomfortable with it, either its implications or in how I’m phrasing it. I don’t know.
Sometimes even I’m uncomfortable with it as it seems to violate some liberal ideal of equality between the sexes or is oversimplified or plays into the men from Mars women from Venus stereotype.
Egbert I was trying to get across to you that your coming across as deliberately dense. It may not be your intention but it is how it seems.
In a perfect world we could all just communicate what we want in direct terms without it being misconstrued or it being taken as a threat. But this is the real world and things do not work the way we want them to.
It would be wonderful if I could talk to a woman anywhere and say ” you have a body type that I like, would you like to come home with me for a quickie?” and if she was interested just say “yeah” or “no thanks” and have that be the end of it without her being pressured or feeling threatened in any way shape or form by the encounter. However we live in a world where men regularly abuse women and force them to do things they do not wish to do with physical, financial or societal pressure.
Again, though, this “cruising” is a highly pressurized behavior that might not happen simply because men are different from women but because there is so much societal pressure on gay and bi men. Anonymous sex certainly does happen for straight people, too, in venues other than parks. I wouldn’t discount culture and heterocentrism in all of this. Also, I really don’t think a half-hour conversation or payment makes much of a difference, either; it could have something to do with biological responses being different in women than men but it may be all due to a cultural tradition where that is acceptable and there is very little pressure on straight people to change how they do it.
Hmm I just thought of a situation where men might be able to relate a bit.
Your Boss who you are not friends with asks you for a favor helping him move this weekend (not offers to pay you just wants it as a favor). Is this appropriate?
Joe @ 74 – right – but for purposes of this discussion (the overall one, about EG etc) it should be as minimal as the elevator invitation, which really was asking a stranger for sex – at least, from Rebecca’s point of view, although of course EG knew a lot about her. In that sense a stranger asking Julia Roberts for “coffee” would also not be asking a stranger, from his point of view.
Aratina – but again – it’s not anonymous sex, it’s sex with a stranger. You’re saying that happens a lot for straight pairs? I don’t think that’s true. Can you give any particulars?
I don’t think it’s true because, given all the stated qualifications – not prostitutes, not after a drink and a chat – most women just don’t want to. I don’t buy it that it happens a lot, so I need a reason to think you’re right about that.
Ophelia, that conflation is what leads what seems like a thousand idiots to scream “Rebecca Watson says men can’t talk to women!!! How can I flirt if I can’t talk!!”
“Talking to a woman” to normal people involves something more than “hi” and “wanna screw” and “do you have a condom?” To a bunch of social incompetents, sexists, and rapists-to-be, verbalizing immediate sexual desire to a complete stranger counts as a normal conversation.
If some stranger walked up to their mom and said “wanna fuck?” at Cracker Barrel during Mother’s Day dinner, do you think they would shrug and say “well, he’s just asking, she can say no if she wants to, what’s the big deal?”
BTW, I’ve had a large amount of sex. Lots of it has been pretty casual, some of it has been in the form of a one-night stand, none of it has ever happened by walking up to a complete stranger and just asking her to follow me into a private place. I’ve seen it happen, in the context of a kink/BDSM party I was at, but that’s a pretty special and rare sort of environment with its own set of social norms.
Joe – right, about the conflation.
Congratulations about the lots of sex!
:- D
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Those days are LONG gone. LOOOOONG gone. I’ve also managed to be in a long-term monogamous relationship for the last… wow, 8 years. Been married 6 and change. Somebody buy me a gift basket!
Anyhoo, that wasn’t bragging, just establishing that I’ve got experience talking to women and making the transition from flirting to physical contact without creeping women out. It CAN be done. It helps to not drink so much that you can’t tell what you’re doing let alone how the other person is responding.
Congratulations. When I was a teenager I was over thinking everything.
My friend has an interesting strategy of saying an incredibly offensive thing ironically to break the ice (at least I think that’s why he does it). I don’t think he and Ophelia would get on.
I should clarify he does this in groups, not when people are alone,
@Ophelia,
Well, I don’t really understand why there is any difference between sex with a stranger in which you and the other person remain anonymous for the most part and anonymous sex that might play out over a slightly longer period than sex in a park. I wouldn’t discount prostitution or orgies or hook-ups at the bar while on vacation either.
I do really want to stress that gay and bi men were and are under constant threat in many places; in past times and in many places today their very lives were and are on the line if discovered. Sex with a stranger of the same sex for men could be seen as safer for everyone involved under these circumstances (if one person is caught, the other person won’t be identifiable through the captured person–pre-DNA testing of course), and a park would probably be easier to escape from.
Also, a little searching did turn up this thing straight people do called “dogging“.
Aratina – well because “asking a stranger for sex” is the subject at hand, not anonymous sex. We’ve been chopping the subject up fine, so small differences do make a difference, because they change the subject, however slightly.
I don’t find the under threat explanation very convincing. Cruising was very popular in San Francisco when I lived there (I kept stumbling on cruisey spots when I thought I was just walking in a park) in the 70s. There was certainly a thriving bar scene at the same time, to put it mildly, so I really don’t think gay men were forced to cruise in the parks because nowhere else was safe.
In fact (she continued) it was more like the bath house scene, and the stranger aspect was part of the glorious adventure. It may have been a forced choice once upon a time, but it wasn’t then.
This is what’s difficult for me. I put a lot of stock in not saying “it’s just different because they are women” or “it’s just different for gays”. I’m probably being idealistic and naive but I see it as a slippery slope.
I don’t say it’s just different, but I say it is. Why would that be a slippery slope?
@Ophelia,
I guess I see no real difference. “An anonymous person you encounter” to me is synonymous with “a stranger”. On that line of thought, one could look at cruising in parks as another example of the indirectness Pinker was talking about because being in a park keeps one’s true intentions individualized (they might want sex or they might really be going for a stroll through the park) and gives people a plausible out from an interaction with another person there. Park cruising could even be seen as less direct than what Elevator Guy did, considering.
According to Wikipedia, sodomy was illegal in California until 1976. Several states banned it until 2003. For gay and bi men, this meant that any sexual contact between them and another person of the same sex was illegal. And even after decriminalization there still existed rampant anti-gay discrimination in general that made being out very difficult (still does, PropH8 was passed in 2008). And of course there are always the closet cases who are ostensibly heterosexual men who go to great lengths to hide their sexuality.
I suppose anonymous does mean pretty much the same thing, but “a stranger asking for sex” just seems to do a better job of putting the emphasis where it belongs. You process “a stranger” and you already know (if you do know) that’s someone you don’t want asking you for sex. “Anonymous”…that doesn’t process that way. We could be talking about whistle blowers, bloggers, threats, lots of things.
Not the ones I used to see! They might as well have been carrying neon signs – CRUISING.
I’d interpret “anonymous sex” slightly differently from “a stranger asking for sex”. I’ve never asked a stranger for sex in the way we’re discussing, but I have had sex that was more or less anonymous, as in we didn’t know each other’s last names or how to locate one another after the fact. On at least one occasion I gave a fake name, and I know on at least one occasion the woman gave me a fake name. Meeting someone from the Internet for sex can be semi-anonymous while including multiple emails, chats, and even phone calls, and I wouldn’t consider the other person to be a “stranger” in the normal sense.
LOL Ophelia. Yes, it can be rather obvious I imagine. (For the easy out, I was thinking more along the lines of two guys who are both actively cruising where one wants to politely pass on the other without having to explicitly say so.)
By the way, Linda Grant is referenced in the Wikipedia article on glory holes as agreeing with you, I think, about how sex with strangers is more of a male thing than a gay or bi thing in her book Sexing the Millennium: Women and the Sexual Revolution (1994); have there been any studies on this topic? Also, I also ran across a slightly humorous heterosexual term for sex with a stranger: the zipless fuck.
Men in a park known as a pickup place for anonymous sexual encounters are doing something equivalent to the $50 slightly protruding from the wallet, aren’t they? Whereas someone who just happens to be in an elevator at 4am is, um, not.
@Ophelia
Because when you make the step from empirical generalisation to a general policy you interfere with the choices/aspirations of outlier individuals. There is also the IS-OUGHT issue.
If (entirely hypothetically) evidence found that most gay men were easily scared, would/should this affect consideration for military positions or intense business executive jobs or a police officer.
I’m not suggesting we stop research, just that we set up that barrier in our minds and consider people as individuals.
Oh and if anyone is thinking of a utilitarian (rate of rejections vs rate of acceptances) then it would be preferable for the women to proposition the men.
wiz – see post after this one. What you say slots right in to what I’m getting at there.
Ophelia’s right about the whole park/cruisy men and women thing. Or to be more specific, her understanding comports entirely with my experience. Men as a whole simply do tend to go in for extremely casual sex at a far higher rate than women. Cruising the parks, the bath house, certain sections of the city – this is sexual adventure for men and in many cases has been largely disconnected from the danger inherent in having gay sex that existed to a greater degree in the past. We can hardly claim that fucking in the bushes at a park is “safer” than picking up guys at a bar and bringing them home. The police are constantly watching said parks and looking for a chance to bust some homos.
Someone wrote—and I think it was Pinker quoting another researcher—that it’s not that gay men are fundamentally different from straight men. It’s that gay men are doing what straight men wish they could convince women to do. But women, largely, are uninterested easy anonymous hookups (of course there are exceptions).
Exactly. That was what I meant…but I thought (or assumed) it was so obvious that I didn’t spell it out. Men like lotsa sex, including casual sex, and women don’t to the same extent. Eggs v sperm. Few chances to breed v many many many chances to breed.
It is obvious, and it is sensible, Ophelia. Trouble is you point it out and people start screaming EVO PSYCH ESSENTIALIST NARRATIVE BLAAAAAAAAAAAA! It is nonetheless quite probably true.
@Josh Slocum
But there are some safety problems I can think of with a guy taking another guy home for sex, although going with a guy back to his house is one of the things that does happen for some while cruising in the park. Going home might be unsafe because your wife and kids are there or a nosy neighbor or landlord or your parents. Going home might be unsafe because you want to maintain the anonymous aspect in your sexual encounters. Or you might not have a home. There is also the flip side which is that a park is easy to escape from on foot and it provides a convenient excuse if one should happen to be identified by another non-cruising person (providing one isn’t too obvious about it as Ophelia noted). And the cops can’t very well arrest you for just being at the park. You would have to do something illegal first. So I think that safety concerns would be a reasonable area to look into for why park cruising emerged in the first place.The other thing I was trying to get at is that park cruising emerged during the great depths of oppression of gays; the fact that cruising as an activity continues to this day (just how many men actually do this, though?) could signal what you and Ophelia think (that this is a male thing) or it could be a remnant of darker times that hasn’t quite passed into obscurity or it could signal that the oppression continues to this day for many gay men, or maybe a combination of those things or others. An article on Dan Savage in the NY Times wonders about similar things, and it cites Judith Stacey, a sociologist, as agreeing with you that it is a male thing “right down to the physiology of orgasm”.