I (male) am reminded of an incident as I was leaving from work one night. It was raining at least moderately, and I had an umbrella with me. There was a (female) coworker who was leaving right behind. (She works at a different office location, but we see and greet each other occasionally.) She did not appear to have an umbrella or other rain gear, and in any case was carrying a decent amount of stuff and had both hands full. I asked if she wanted to share my umbrella and she declined; we talked for a bit until we parted ways but I didn’t push the issue further. I felt a little bit guilty afterwards, but brushed it off eventually because she made her choice.
Did I make the correct choice by asking? I cannot picture myself asking if the coworker had been a man. I can only speculate reasons she might have declined… She was suspicious of me? She likes the rain? Would you do anything different if you were in her situation, or mine?
Speaking only for myself, I think asking whether help is welcome and taking rejection politely is a good combination.
Any thoughts about whether the world would be a better place if men were comfortable offering each other that sort of help and accepting it some of the time?
Now I’m starting to wonder whether there might be cultural differences. ISTM that where I am (Italy), offering to share an umbrella with someone you know is just politeness, and people do it pretty often regardless of gender. (Likewise, people of either gender hold doors open for people (including strangers) of either gender all the time, and it would have never occurred to me that this might have anything to do with sexuality if I hadn’t read that on the internet.)
I can’t imagine it would be a /worse/ world, in any case. If it were raining harder, I would theoretically be more willing to offer help, regardless of gender (and despite at least one personal anecdotal experience agreeing with Alicorn’s comment). It just seems “wrong” (cold, unfriendly) if I hadn’t offered, in my situation, regardless of whether aid was accepted or not.
I asked if she wanted to share my umbrella and she declined
If you ask and she agrees, it appears to create an implicit favor she was probably uncomfortable with. The term “share” also conveys an uncomfortable connotation of closeness. I bet that if you simply held an umbrella over her head matter-of-factly, she would not have objected and possibly even thanked you later.
(I don’t remember my exact phrasing of the question.) Your view is interesting, because to me that action would fall into borderline-creep behavior—intruding on personal space without asking.
The “creepyness” rules are not formulated to make one effective at social interaction, they are formulated to prevent creepy behaviour. Those goals may conflict.
More cynically (not necessarily my opinion), the stated rules are damaging to people who follow them, because when people think them up, they think of someone they wouldn’t like, and then think of rules that they would like such a person to follow. No incentive to think of the misliked person’s best interests.
I suppose some women could misinterpret it this way. But given that “we see and greet each other occasionally” she should be brave enough to refuse your unsolicited umbrella if she felt uncomfortable. But yes, you would be running a bit of a risk.
A non-sudden matter-of-fact move with a few words can help reduce the chances of that, especially if it’s all done in a certain Notice ->BeginHelping / ShowYouCanHelp → GiveAnEscapeRoute+OfferMoreHelp pattern.
If someone is carrying heavy bags and looks like they’re about to fall a flight of stairs, I put up my arm to help and then ask if they want help, or some other signal of offer-for-assistance that gives some kind of opening to say “No thanks” or walk away.
If your actions and/or words pattern-match to this kind of intervention, then the vast majority of people will look positively upon it, IME.
If you ask and she agrees, it appears to create an implicit favor she was probably uncomfortable with.
I guess that would depend, among other things, on what tone of voice you use and on which ways you’ve interacted with her so far. (I’ve had people who I’m sure beyond reasonable doubt they’re not sexually attracted to me offer to share their umbrella as recently as this week.)
Anyway, I remember being offered to share an umbrella by a complete stranger of the gender other than mine when I was in my teens (and I understood pretty much f***-all about gender dynamics) -- I declined mostly because I was in a hurry and didn’t want her to have to walk as fast as me.
It does, and the fact that I have implicit gender norms/behaviors like that bothers me. There’s also other factors to take into consideration; all things being equal I’d prefer to associate with people in my age group (I’m on the low end of the age scale here—edit: I mean at my workplace, not on LW), and if she wasn’t at a different site but rather a direct higher-up over me, it would be extremely awkward to offer the umbrella.
My thought is that it would be best not to offer in the particular situation you gave. That is, it was night, and presumably there was no life-threatening danger to her from the rain.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being generous, but there are always other factors to consider. If, for example, you want to hold doors open for people or offer to carry heavy things, that is fine, as long as you do that for everyone consistently and don’t take offense if anyone refuses. Also, you may want to consider the context. Even if you are not a scary person, offering to help somone with a minor task if the area is dark and/or deserted can be perceived much differently than in a more typical context.
I would advise you to continue to make the effort to recognize when you may be conforming to undesireable cultural norms, as you have been doing here. That is the first step to taking action on this extremely pervasive issue.
It depends on how big the umbrella is. Some are large enough to cover two people without them even touching each other. (A pocket umbrella, on the other hand, I’d only share if the other person is someone I’m OK with hugging, or if it’s raining so hard that getting wet would be even more uncomfortable.)
I agree with shminux (about the analysis, not about the recommended action). This is something I didn’t fully understand until I read Cialdini. There’s a section in there about reciprocation that really helped me grok the basic idea that people generally feel that they should return favors, and some people in some situations don’t want to receive favors because they don’t want the corresponding debt. This is particularly the case for women receiving favors from men, where the debt is usually at least implicitly sexual in nature (e.g. buying a woman a drink at a bar).
I think you just shouldn’t have said anything. If she wanted to make use of your umbrella she could’ve initiated that instead.
People can be atrociously and remarkably bad at asking for help, or even noticing that they need or could use some help.
This is independent of and multiplied by all the social complications and signalling factors involved. As per schminux’s explanation, asking for help (use of the umbrella) in this case would socially be interpreted as even more of a favor-debt, and possibly even as a signal of implicitly-romantic-interest (like a woman asking you to buy her a drink at a bar).
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good idea to point this out. Let me put it in more LW-friendly terms: when a woman sees an unfamiliar man offering to help her in some way, she assigns nontrivial probability to the hypothesis that the man is offering to help her for sexual reasons, and she assigns nontrivial probability to the hypothesis that the man is going to be angry and possibly violent if she rejects the sexual advances she expects, with nontrivial probability, to occur later if she accepts that help. This situation has sufficiently negative utility that it is worth avoiding even if the probability of it happening is not all that high.
My point is only that, to the same woman, it’s my understanding that many cases of initiating the interaction will look even worse.
Thus, the real problem to find a solution for is “How does one credibly signal need or offer for help while optimizing the chances that it will have a positive result and avoid social failure modes?”, or something close to that, and the solution definitely doesn’t look like “Do your own thing and don’t ask for help or offer help”.
I (male) am reminded of an incident as I was leaving from work one night. It was raining at least moderately, and I had an umbrella with me. There was a (female) coworker who was leaving right behind. (She works at a different office location, but we see and greet each other occasionally.) She did not appear to have an umbrella or other rain gear, and in any case was carrying a decent amount of stuff and had both hands full. I asked if she wanted to share my umbrella and she declined; we talked for a bit until we parted ways but I didn’t push the issue further. I felt a little bit guilty afterwards, but brushed it off eventually because she made her choice.
Did I make the correct choice by asking? I cannot picture myself asking if the coworker had been a man. I can only speculate reasons she might have declined… She was suspicious of me? She likes the rain? Would you do anything different if you were in her situation, or mine?
Speaking only for myself, I think asking whether help is welcome and taking rejection politely is a good combination.
Any thoughts about whether the world would be a better place if men were comfortable offering each other that sort of help and accepting it some of the time?
Now I’m starting to wonder whether there might be cultural differences. ISTM that where I am (Italy), offering to share an umbrella with someone you know is just politeness, and people do it pretty often regardless of gender. (Likewise, people of either gender hold doors open for people (including strangers) of either gender all the time, and it would have never occurred to me that this might have anything to do with sexuality if I hadn’t read that on the internet.)
I can’t imagine it would be a /worse/ world, in any case. If it were raining harder, I would theoretically be more willing to offer help, regardless of gender (and despite at least one personal anecdotal experience agreeing with Alicorn’s comment). It just seems “wrong” (cold, unfriendly) if I hadn’t offered, in my situation, regardless of whether aid was accepted or not.
If you ask and she agrees, it appears to create an implicit favor she was probably uncomfortable with. The term “share” also conveys an uncomfortable connotation of closeness. I bet that if you simply held an umbrella over her head matter-of-factly, she would not have objected and possibly even thanked you later.
(I don’t remember my exact phrasing of the question.) Your view is interesting, because to me that action would fall into borderline-creep behavior—intruding on personal space without asking.
Indeed, and yet it may also work.
The “creepyness” rules are not formulated to make one effective at social interaction, they are formulated to prevent creepy behaviour. Those goals may conflict.
More cynically (not necessarily my opinion), the stated rules are damaging to people who follow them, because when people think them up, they think of someone they wouldn’t like, and then think of rules that they would like such a person to follow. No incentive to think of the misliked person’s best interests.
I suppose some women could misinterpret it this way. But given that “we see and greet each other occasionally” she should be brave enough to refuse your unsolicited umbrella if she felt uncomfortable. But yes, you would be running a bit of a risk.
A non-sudden matter-of-fact move with a few words can help reduce the chances of that, especially if it’s all done in a certain Notice ->BeginHelping / ShowYouCanHelp → GiveAnEscapeRoute+OfferMoreHelp pattern.
If someone is carrying heavy bags and looks like they’re about to fall a flight of stairs, I put up my arm to help and then ask if they want help, or some other signal of offer-for-assistance that gives some kind of opening to say “No thanks” or walk away.
If your actions and/or words pattern-match to this kind of intervention, then the vast majority of people will look positively upon it, IME.
I guess that would depend, among other things, on what tone of voice you use and on which ways you’ve interacted with her so far. (I’ve had people who I’m sure beyond reasonable doubt they’re not sexually attracted to me offer to share their umbrella as recently as this week.)
Anyway, I remember being offered to share an umbrella by a complete stranger of the gender other than mine when I was in my teens (and I understood pretty much f***-all about gender dynamics) -- I declined mostly because I was in a hurry and didn’t want her to have to walk as fast as me.
Why wouldn’t you offer to assist a male who had no umbrella? That seems rather uncharitable of you.
It does, and the fact that I have implicit gender norms/behaviors like that bothers me. There’s also other factors to take into consideration; all things being equal I’d prefer to associate with people in my age group (I’m on the low end of the age scale here—edit: I mean at my workplace, not on LW), and if she wasn’t at a different site but rather a direct higher-up over me, it would be extremely awkward to offer the umbrella.
My thought is that it would be best not to offer in the particular situation you gave. That is, it was night, and presumably there was no life-threatening danger to her from the rain.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being generous, but there are always other factors to consider. If, for example, you want to hold doors open for people or offer to carry heavy things, that is fine, as long as you do that for everyone consistently and don’t take offense if anyone refuses. Also, you may want to consider the context. Even if you are not a scary person, offering to help somone with a minor task if the area is dark and/or deserted can be perceived much differently than in a more typical context.
I would advise you to continue to make the effort to recognize when you may be conforming to undesireable cultural norms, as you have been doing here. That is the first step to taking action on this extremely pervasive issue.
I wouldn’t share an umbrella even with someone I’m perfectly comfortable intersecting space with. It’s hard and awkward and you get rained on anyway.
Well the trick is, the offerer holds the umbrella over the recipient’s head and gets wet.
It depends on how big the umbrella is. Some are large enough to cover two people without them even touching each other. (A pocket umbrella, on the other hand, I’d only share if the other person is someone I’m OK with hugging, or if it’s raining so hard that getting wet would be even more uncomfortable.)
I agree with shminux (about the analysis, not about the recommended action). This is something I didn’t fully understand until I read Cialdini. There’s a section in there about reciprocation that really helped me grok the basic idea that people generally feel that they should return favors, and some people in some situations don’t want to receive favors because they don’t want the corresponding debt. This is particularly the case for women receiving favors from men, where the debt is usually at least implicitly sexual in nature (e.g. buying a woman a drink at a bar).
I think you just shouldn’t have said anything. If she wanted to make use of your umbrella she could’ve initiated that instead.
People can be atrociously and remarkably bad at asking for help, or even noticing that they need or could use some help.
This is independent of and multiplied by all the social complications and signalling factors involved. As per schminux’s explanation, asking for help (use of the umbrella) in this case would socially be interpreted as even more of a favor-debt, and possibly even as a signal of implicitly-romantic-interest (like a woman asking you to buy her a drink at a bar).
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good idea to point this out. Let me put it in more LW-friendly terms: when a woman sees an unfamiliar man offering to help her in some way, she assigns nontrivial probability to the hypothesis that the man is offering to help her for sexual reasons, and she assigns nontrivial probability to the hypothesis that the man is going to be angry and possibly violent if she rejects the sexual advances she expects, with nontrivial probability, to occur later if she accepts that help. This situation has sufficiently negative utility that it is worth avoiding even if the probability of it happening is not all that high.
Haha, that’s an awesome way to word it.
But yeah, I was already agreeing with that part.
My point is only that, to the same woman, it’s my understanding that many cases of initiating the interaction will look even worse.
Thus, the real problem to find a solution for is “How does one credibly signal need or offer for help while optimizing the chances that it will have a positive result and avoid social failure modes?”, or something close to that, and the solution definitely doesn’t look like “Do your own thing and don’t ask for help or offer help”.
Fair. I don’t know a great solution to this problem, and “do your own thing” is at least not as bad as various other possibilities.