Hmmn. I actually consider myself enough of an adult that speaking with a stranger doesn’t make me particularly vulnerable, a target, or more likely to be taken in by a con-artist. And I don’t look at what I stand to gain when I chat. What a strange world you live in - it bears pretty much no resemblence to mine, and I live in what many people would consider a slum, but work in upper middle-class environs. So we’re not talking socio-economic differences here.
Actually, I’m surpised having a stranger compliment you creeps some of you out. Some 30 years ago, it occurred to me that if I thought something nice about someone else (usually a stranger), it did me no harm and potentially them some good to tell them about it. I’ve been doing so ever since. Now granted, I’m a woman, and I don’t think other women feel I’m a rape threat, but aren’t men allowed to be complimentary as well? I’m not talking about the obvious “line” here, but a sincere, well-meant compliment? “You have a lovely smile!” - how could anyone take offense at that?
Miss Manners most definitely does say exactly what I wrote. It was on page 254. I will have to go check it out again at the library. And I have read all her books and do so every year.
I follow this mostly based on my experiences I generally don’t talk to strange men because they sometimes do things that scare me, or they are too aggressive.
Is there any evidence that talking to a stranger makes one a potential target?
I have heard both that it does, and also that talking to a person makes them consider you human which makes it more difficult for them to dehumanise you or treat you like an object.
I like to give flattering comments on peoples clothing choices, but am careful to do it when the person won’t feel in any danger (not when alone with a person I don’t know, or where the person might feel vulnerable.)
I’d be most grateful if you could quote the exact and entire passage when you get the book out again. Which one was it, if you remember? I can also check my own books at home tonight, although I only own three or four (even though I’ve read all of them).
It was both a lame attempt at humor and my way of saying I do acknowledge nice tits/ass/legs comments, especially if they’re delivered in a humorous, witty manner.
Not really. I just want to be treated as another person, and not be sized up physically. I am uncomfortable and threatened by that because some men will be enouraged in a bad way by someone accepting a compliment. And since the person is a stranger, how do I know he’s not one of that type?
Because there’s no reason for it, unless you are someone I know and it’s appropriate for you to try and make me feel happy.
It’s like certain words which some people consider slurs and others don’t. Err on the side of not using them with strangers; assume the most constricted rules are in effect unless you know otherwise. And if you know otherwise, then you’re not a stranger.
I would have answered completely opposite of what gigi posted. As long as I’m not wiping your drool off my tits while you say it, compliment away, gentlemen. A nice compliment goes a really long way in making a gal’s day, from my experience.
Ah. (Whoosh!!). I don’t mind if it’s friends being playful, but when it comes from Mr. Creepy Bar Patron, I tend to recoil. It’s all in the delivery I guess.
It’s fine for a man to compliment a woman, but he shouldn’t get offended if she doesn’t want to stand there and chat. I say thank you to compliments, but I don’t always act warmly towards the man. Depending on the situation, it often makes me uncomfortable and it doesn’t always feel like a harmless little comment. Some “compliments” make me feel defensive and like I have to hide myself somehow. I don’t think men always know how their compliment is being interpreted, especially coupled with the look in their eye.
Context and setting is everything. Lots of compliments that are perfectly harmless and well-meant in one situation are creepy and weird and intrusive in others. And it doesn’t mean the guy is leering or making obvious sexual remarks. Unless a man is very very sure that his intentions aren’t going to be perceived as odd, or worse, he should just keep his mouth shut. Nobody’s going to notice that they didn’t get any compliments from strangers today and get all upset over it.
Within reason, I usually try to make at least eye contact and smile at strangers, if not speak, ever since I was a teenager and heard a black friend complaining about how angry it made him for people to constantly treat him as a potential thug(and before you ask, no, he didn’t dress like a ‘gansta’). I put myself in his shoes and decided ‘yes, it would piss me off to have people act like I was going to jump them’. I don’t know that this has made me more vulnerable to con artists. A ‘hello’ may open a conversation but it doesn’t require that you don’t tell them you have to go or they should go if they start getting pushy or rude. Honestly the only problems I can think of because of my friendliness is that some men from more restrictive cultures decide that ‘friendly = easy’ and I’ve had to evade and or discourage them.
I don’t mind a nice compliment when it’s genuine, but there are too many guys who say “Nice necklace” and I know that’s not what they’re looking at. If it’s someone you know casually, you can gauge their intentions better, but perfect strangers and compliments just don’t sit well with me.
There have been times I admired some aspect of a person, but I rarely approach them. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever given a male stranger a compliment, but I have to a female stranger. If I receive a compliment from a female, I tend to take it more to heart. A female who compliments my necklace is most likely *actually looking * at the necklace, whereas, IME a male isn’t.
Maybe you are referring to this passage from Miss Manners. Mind you, this is the last paragraph of a three-paragraph answer to a question:
“…Miss Manners is disturbed by your reference to the compliments of strangers. Strangers have no business commenting on one’s looks one way or the other. A truly harmless stranger–say, an old lady who says, “My, you’re a pretty thing,” before she thinks about it–may be acknowledged with a slight bow of the head and a distant smile. A strange man who makes such a comment should be pointedly ignored.”
The writer of the original letter to Miss Manners identifies herself as a 15-year-old girl who is very modest.
Along the same lines, a very interesting question and answer appear on page 309 of Miss Manners’ Guide to the Turn of the Millenium, 1st Fireside Edition.
Ok, bear in mind I do have some issues that make me more wary than usual about dealing with strangers.
Like, for example the time I struck up a conversation with a bouncer while waiting in a queue for the ladies’ toilet and ended up having my drink spiked by him and being sexually assaulted.
Besides, I seem to be the person who always manages to sit beside the guy who smells hair/masturbates or tries to feel me up on the bus, not the guy offering me access to a ski lodge!
Define “stranger”. If a store clerk asks if you need help, I presume it is OK to say no or ask a question.
If a firefighter pulls you out of your burnbing house, it is OK to answer the question “was anyone else in the house”
etc
(note:I’m not adressing the compliment issue, just the speak issue)
Brian
If a firefighter pulls you out of your burning house and you are not already acquainted with him, the correct response to any conversation on his part is “I am sorry, but I don’t believe we have been introduced.” If you can sniff and peer over your lorgnette without your eyes watering too much from the smoke, it’s even better.
Seriously though, as far as I am aware even the most formal etiquette may be suspended in the case of an emergency!
A young lady should ascertain the agency for whom the firefighter works. If the firefighter belongs to the fire department which has an established and written obligation to respond to fires at the location of the young lady, then a woman that is so inclined may freely engage in discussion of other people remaining within the burning building at her perogative, or else she should respond with a slight nod of the head of either affirnative or negative along with a concise, “good day,” if the lady does not feel inclined to a discussion of other occupants of the burning building at that moment.
However, if the firefighter requesting this personal information is attending to the fire on a mutual aid basis and does not request an inroduction to the young lady before asking for this information, then the young lady should provide no more than a curt, “good day,” and walk off and engage herself intently and immediately in some other activity so as to provide a strong message of the social inapproporateness of the forward request of this firefighter.