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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1824 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 21, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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"Gentlemen" of the motte. What do you expect in return for... being a gentleman.

I was reading a post in my cities subreddit asking "Do you give up your metroseat for women?".

Most responses were along the lines of "no unless they are pregnant". But some were really making an attempt to claim the moral highground. "My mom raised me to be a gentlemen" from the males to "there are no more gentlemen!" From the females.

I was left thinking thats well and good. But no man is actually taking a purely raw deal just because right? He must expect something in return, not from the individual woman, but the social structure as a whole. I dont know.

What is that something?

I probably wouldn't give up my seat for a random female, unless she's old or pregnant or somehow visibly in need of rest. But if I decided to do it, I wouldn't expect anything in return. For me, being a gentleman means doing the right thing is its own reward. What is the right thing for you is up to you to find out.

My thinking on social niceties is that they make social interaction and pro-social behavior more common between strangers and generally encourages people to be nicer. Things like saying please and thank you, calling someone sir or ma’am encourages the person you are speaking to to be more friendly and helpful and to trust you more. Seeing others do pro-social things builds social trust an$ encourages more of that sort of good behavior.

At this point, social expectations and shaming/threats of violence from Big Baz.

I sometimes wish it was still in style to. I'm in a purple metro and took public transportation for quite a while.

I never had anyone be outright rude when I offered a seat, but I did have women refuse to take it until another man would sit down, so I stopped offering.

I've also only ever had one rude door-opening experience in my life. I think the secret is to, with body language, ensure the person knows that the open door or vacated seat is provided without any expectation. As @raggedy_anthem mentioned, a polite thank you or smile is awesome, but mentally expecting those things will be picked up by anyone you're being a gentlemen to.

My wife got a noticeable uptick in this behavior when pregnant which I think is most appropriate.

The bottom line is I think that the "mean, ungrateful feminist bitch" is still mostly a boogeyman in my neck of the woods. But in NY or Cali I don't know what the balance is.

I give up my seat for elderly, weak, and pregnant people, but not women.

There are lots of reasons why, but the biggest reason is I want to be the kind of person that I like.

pregnant people, but not women.

Doubleplusgood duckspeak! I do bellyfeel.

I also give up my seat for elderly men, so ending that phrase with women would have been incorrect.

Don't do this.

What benefit do I get? The itch of how I would feel if I were sitting down and a woman/older man were standing up goes away.

I could reason out that it trains one to courtesy, to think of others, to consider oneself in relation to others in a certain way. I could speculate that training causes one to carry oneself in a certain way, which will cause people to treat you well.

But I'm not sure I really buy that project. It's kinda cope. It just is how I was raised, and what I think is right, and if I don't I'll get itchy.

From the Stoic perspective, it is an opportunity to undertake a discomfort, for the purpose of greater appreciation for the seats you occasion to enjoy. In this sense, being able to go without is a privilege that wards off ingratitude and unhappiness.

"You will not be punished for your sins, you will be punished by them"

Conversely, a good deed is its own reward, and a good conscience can really bring a lot of pleasure intrinsic to it.

In return for protecting women you don't know you theoretically get a culture where strangers will protect your wife or daughter when you aren't around. That bargain doesn't hold any more and women would be insulted at the idea that they need protection but I think it was a nice idea while it lasted.

Is any women who isn’t pregnant/disabled/very old actually going to be flattered by you offering her your seat? Surely the vast majority would find that really awkward and borderline demeaning?

Not in Japan; they'd think it quaint and exotically foreign and tell their family about it at dinner. I still don't do it. My commute is long, to which my posts here attest.

As an American guy I would think it’s extremely bizarre. The two women I just surveyed on it agreed.

I am also American. I don't go back much but I'm from the south originally. I have also spent a small amount of time in southern California. In the south there are no trains to speak of but if you were, say, in a waiting room, standing room only, and gave up your seat to a female, it might pass unremarked, assuming you were of more or less equal social standing. In California I would expect a sarcastic reply or a bewildered expression followed by a refusal of the seat.

I don't give up my seat for women. Like the responses you mention, i do give up my seat for expectant mothers, the elderly, the infirm, just like the sign on the train windows suggests. Anyone who seems distressed by standing i might offer my seat. People then refuse and we do the dance and i insist.

As for being a gentleman in the sense you're describing, i don't expect anything. I don't expect anything from taking my cap off indoors either, or removing my shoes at the door, or eating with my utensils instead of my bare fingers. I don't put my feet up on public furniture. I don't cut in line or spread all my stuff out on the train seat. I hold the door for women, but I also hold the door for whomever is walking after me, even if that someone is Dwayne Johnson (so far it hasn't been.) I do help women with heavy things, carrying heavy loads, etc. I don't expect any recompense, though a smile or a thank you is nice. I have never thrown my coat over a puddle of water for a woman to tread on. I do open the door for my wife, except for the times when I don't.

I do these things because I was raised to do them and because they seem benign and probably net positive behavior.

A healthy soul. It's not a transaction, it's axiomatic. You don't do it because it delivers good results, you do it because it's good to do.

I would argue that it only appears axiomatic because it was useful for the millennia humans lived in tribes where a small action to a neighbor or stranger benefitted the group’s sum total good (including expansion of lands and progeny down the line). If the well-being of my descendants is inherently tied to the well-being of the person down the street, which it is in pre-modernity, then the rule of always helping neighbors or strangers is optimal for the group’s good. Today, spending even an iota of thought on a stranger is worse for your own group’s interest, unless you are picking and choosing who to help.

Perhaps an equivalent example would be how there’s a difference between doing extra help in a group project, and then secretly helping a competing project.

Right, but doing little things like this don't require any thought at all. Very likely you are spending more thought here, arguing over these trivial rituals of etiquette, that it does to enact them.

If I’m a person who rides the bus daily, the thought is not trivial

what you've just described is an axiom of "humans are animals and human behavior is nothing more or less than the expression of evolutionary drives." Having applied that axiom, you then find that the question answers itself. The thing is, the axiom is itself a choice, or more accurately a composite of a large number of smaller choices made over time. Different choices result in different axioms, which result in different self-evident answers.

You could claim that it's really biology at the base, not axioms. You can even argue that there's no such thing as free will, that choice is impossible, that we're all deterministic or pseudo-deterministic machines winding slowly down. The thing, though, is that none of these statements actually generate meaningful predictions; if I act in a way evolutionary theory wouldn't predict, you'll either claim that my evolutionary drives are misfiring ala the beetle that tries to mate with beer bottles, or else claim that there's some indirect benefit. Meanwhile, some groups really do act as though they believe that we're just animals, and others act as though they believe we are not, and the predominance of those beliefs correlate with changes in population-level behavior.

Today, spending even an iota of thought on a stranger is worse for your own group’s interest, unless you are picking and choosing who to help.

...You understand that your appeal to scientific rationalism here isn't actually grounded in science, fact, or objective truth, right? Like, at all? What do you think the rate is for people getting stabbed in fights over bus seats, versus the rate of people getting stabbed for offering someone their seat? How close do the rates of those two need to be for the increased risk of not giving a seat to be offset by the "resource advantage to the community" of keeping it?

Maybe evolution selects for the sort of person who just adopts a simple, hard-and-fast rule, and it's the obsessive search for loopholes that's the misfire? Alternatively, maybe my community is better off with the sort of person who is aware of and cares about others, rather than focusing all their attention on seeking selfish advantage?

Alternatively, maybe my community is better off with the sort of person who is aware of and cares about others, rather than focusing all their attention on seeking selfish advantage?

It’s not at all clear to me that “selflessness” is actually the operative virtue here. The OP wasn’t about giving up one’s seat to a person who is infirm, elderly, or pregnant; in those scenarios, it is credible to claim that the “selfless” act would be to give up one’s seat, since the other person would very obviously benefit more from sitting down than you would, and would be harmed more by being made to stand than you would be.

But, you’re not suggesting that every person is obligated to give up a seat to every other person; this would lead to wacky and madcap scenes of people endlessly rotating seats, each one eagerly vacating the seat as soon as it is occupied. The OP was about whether it’s gentlemanly for any man to give up his seat to any woman; since the average healthy young women is only negligibly more harmed by standing than the average healthy young man is, it’s unclear why a man giving up his seat to a woman is an obligatory act, let alone a “selfless” one. I’m not even disagreeing with you that axioms in general are useful, nor even that this particular axiom is maladaptive; I’m merely questioning the justification you’ve provided to support the continued existence of said axiom.

It’s not at all clear to me that “selflessness” is actually the operative virtue here.

"Selfless" might be the wrong term, but I was aiming for an antipode to the sort of merciless winner-take-all competition implied by: "Today, spending even an iota of thought on a stranger is worse for your own group’s interest, unless you are picking and choosing who to help."

it’s unclear why a man giving up his seat to a woman is an obligatory act, let alone a “selfless” one.

The idea is that men should inculcate self-sacrifice toward the worthy, and while individual women might not be worthy, women collectively are. Women are, indeed, wonderful, or to put it a bit more precisely, good women are of incalculable value. Cementing this attitude is well worth the minimal deadweight loss from minor sacrifices granted to the unworthy; given the triviality of the sacrifice, attempting more than the most minimal gatekeeping is probably a net-negative.

The counterargument, implied by the OP, is that a substantial percentage of the woman one is likely to encounter in an urban American environment today is not a good woman, and is therefore unworthy of the sacrifice. And that furthermore, by continuing to reward women despite their doing nothing whatsoever to merit that reward - and in fact, in many cases, actively doing harmful things and displaying harmful attitudes that are the opposite of the things that ought to earn the reward - we are allowing women to become utility monsters and auto-defectors.

Now, again, I’m not saying I fully buy this line of reasoning. I don’t bear anywhere near the level of ill will and distrust toward random women that some commenters here do. Also, if other respondents are correct that average women seem to react poorly to being offered seats, perhaps it is because those women are cognizant of precisely the web of reciprocal interpersonal obligations and standards of behavior which your preferred social regime would enforce, and they have decided to opt out, precisely because they are unwilling to take on the expectation of living up to the standards necessary to merit the reward in the first place.

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