City Life

12 Carol Brooks Gardner Passing By: Street Remarks,

Address Rights, and the Urban Female

False facts. The detour around the construction, the mud, the

planks, Elena walking carefully on one of the planks, and one of the men yelling at her. Cupping his hands to his mouth, yelling. Another man laughing. Another man laughing. Another man, stocky in his uforkclothes, throwing something at her that hadn't enough weight to carry itself to her—just a crumpled-up paper bag, a lunch bag.

False facts: they didn't really xvant to hurt her. Didn't hate her. Didn't want her dead. False facts: the recitation of the weather around the

country, the temperature recorded at all the airports. You believe it must mean something but it tuill not.

False facts: blood on instruments, no proof of pain. Proof onfy of blood.

—From Joyce Carol Oates's Do With Me What You WM

There is a norm of civU inattention between unacquainted persons in the large urban centers of America today, and the linguistic attendant of this civil inattention is sUence.* The norm of civil inat- tention and silence may be breached by citizens in a number of

S28

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 329

ways and for a number of reasons. This study treats the type of breach that occurs as a result of what may be called a "street remark," that is, a comment in public taking place between the unacquainted. The occasion of concern here is the male-to-female street remark. But before treating this kind of street remark spe- cifically, we should examine other occasions for street remarks in order to appreciate the context in which the male-to-female street remark occurs.

Not every contact between the unacquainted in public has a spoken feature, of course. There are possibilities for communica- tion by affording extraordinary or insufficient proxemic space, for example. Or there may simply be a breach of the customary pat- tern of gaze; for civil inattention, this is making eye contact briefly from a distance of eight or ten feet, averting the eyes once contact is made, then raising them once more with a middle-distance focus to rest on a point slightly to the side of the passerby. Breaches of the gaze pattern happen when eye contact is not promptly broken or when gaze lingers too long upon some part of the passerby.

The act of walking past another person in a public place often involves features that are not breaches of civil inattention but constitute mere markers of the act. No extended contact takes place, yet some small notice has been served that human has come close to human.' These communicative features are paralinguistic

Note: I am grateful to a number of people for aiding in the com- pletion of this study: Barbara K. Lynch, Ann H. Beuf, and Candace West helped through discussions and suggestions; Amanda Kirkpatrick and Jo Ann Early aided in recruiting interviewees; Charles Bosk and Elijah Anderson gave generously of their time and bibliographical knowledge on a number of related topics; and Erving Goffman provided a detailed cri- tique of an earlier draft. Comments from a workshop presentation of the paper at the Women's Studies Promam of the University of Pennsylvania on October 23, 1978, were useful as well. I am also grateful to Micah Dembo for providing a countervailing male spirit to that of the times, especially welcome when writing on a subjea such as this. Martha Rosso helped by typing more drafts of the manuscript than she would care to remember. Fmauy, I am grateful to twenty University of Pennsylvania stu- dents and teachers (ten male and ten female) who took part in the unstructured interviews that I speak of in the paper. My interviewees, I should note, were all white, so that this paper does not deal with black- mak-to-Uack-female talk in public; this involves arguably different types of speech acts participating in a different verbal triKlition.

330 Language and Social Interaction

and, occasionally, mechanical, and they occur with or without addi- tional eye contact. Such paralinguistic and mechanical markers of public passage happen when both males and females pass, yet women in big cities note that they occur more frequently and with greater elaboration when lone persons of opposite sexes pass each other. In such cases, it is usually the male who originates the marker. A young woman crossing a street in Manhattan, for exam- ple, finds her passage marked by the lone male occupant of a car: just as she comes level with the car, its horn gives two long, pierc- ing blasts. As a young woman walks down Seventh Avenue, a large truck keeps pace with her and emits an air-braked noise—which sounds quite like a lip fart—every few feet; male laughter from the cab is also heard. Two youthful Puerto Rican bicyclists are wait- ing at a red light on the Upper West Side of New York; as a young woman crosses the street in front of them, they jingle their bike bells to the rhythm of her walk.

In addition to the mechanical signals that another person is passing, there is a group of physiological signals that are usually considered as occurring involuntarily or without aware- ness. These, too, take place with greater regularity and greater force when male passes female; again, the male is the originator of the marker. Physiological necessity may indeed play a role in their origin, yet gender-role prescriptions undoubtedly do so too. A woman walking down the street in an elegant Manhattan neigh- borhood watches a well-dressed middle-aged man coming toward her; as he passes her, he spits. Coming flush with a crew of watch- ing construction workers, a young woman hears two of them belch heartily within a five-second period. A middle-aged white man gives the young woman approaching him an up-and-down glance of expressionless appraisal, rapidly takes out a handkerchief, and—as he comes within a foot or two of {>assing her—fruitily blows his nose.

Another class of the man-made markers of passage is differ- entiated from the previous class in that these markers are often contrived in nature. They are felt by passersby to be more "pur- poseful" or "intentional" than the preceding ones. For example, a young woman walking by St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York notes the four or five Puerto Rican youngsters who are seated on its steps and conversing in Spanish. Continuing their talk, they

Street Remarks, Addreu Rif^ts, and the Urban Female 331

watch her attentively as she passes, and two of them shuffie their feet, the heels plainly audible against the steps. Their talk has not been available to her; the noise of their shoes has. Another young woman in New York prepares to pass a white male on the way through Bloomingdale's revolving de>or. He meets her eyes, they both come through their respective dex)rs at the same time, and, as the male comes through, he drags his heels until he is a few steps past her. Passing a young hippie male coming out of a Fifth Ave- nue store, a young woman briefly notes him and his posture: his hands are stuffed deep into the pex:kets of his jeans. He gives her a brief up-and-down IeK>k and, as they pass, chinks the change in his pockets. A young white father wheeling his child in a stroller looks up and down at the young woman crossing Fifth Avenue opposite him. Eight feet away from her he gives stroller and child an extra hard push and lets it go—no hands:—and with one of his free hands he begins patting his thigh and, at the same time, begins to whistle, continuing both activities until he and the woman have passed. Other men rhythmically tap some object at hand—a walk- ing cane, a magazine, a gallery program—for a periexi demarcated by the civil inattention span, then cease their activity civil inatten- tion ceases. These types of markers of passage thus salute civil inattention by obeying its boundaries and simultaneously under- mine it by incorporating attention-getters such as gaze and noise into those boundaries.

Breaches of civil inattention that have a spoken component may occur on various accounts. One may confess ignorance and ask a stranger the time or for directions. One may request aid. The citizen also has the right to catch his or her fellow citizens out of role: lex}ks may be pointedly given, conversations started, com- ments thrown. The man or woman who ge)es down the street in wedding gear, hopping on one foot, or carrying a couch will be obliged to take almost any intrusive lex>k or comment in good spir- its; he or she, by being out of the role of properly comported citizen, becomes an open person for the time being. Citizens caught in out-of-role pursuits are also required, and often are anx- ious, to provide explanations or respond to the lex>ks and com- ments of passersby, thereby demonstrating that there is some reasonable gloss for what only appears to be an out-of-roIe pursuit or that there is an extenuating circumstance. In the cases just men-

332 Language and Social IntenKtioti

tioned, these three urban Philadelphians explained to passersby, who met them with broad smiles and quizzical looks, that they were, respectively, on the way to a costume party, performing a fraternity initiation rite, and donating their old couch to some newlywed friends a few blocks away.

Another occasion for breaching civil inattention occurs when some obvious similarity exists between one passerby and another. This similarity makes a fiction of the anonymity of public life, and remarks may ensue. Persons with cars of the same make, children of the same age, dogs of the same breed are all licensed to give and receive street remarks when confronted by their doubles. Other types of breaches of civil inattention are open to falisfication and exploitation (as, for example, the classical case of the young woman who drops a handkerchief or struggles when lifting a pack- age in order to gain male aid and, eventually, acquaintance), but that of similarity is especially so. Citizens anxious to meet other citizens of whatever desirable class, age, or gender may simulate the evidence of an interest that this class, age, or gender will also be found to possess. Sometimes a person need only display the "similarity"; walking through a neighborhood inhabited by persons expected to have the similarity will accomplish the rest. One may sp)ort a camera in order to suggest familiarity with photography, entitling one to speak to other camera-wearers and possibly receiv- ing comments from others without cameras but who have knowl- edge. This use of "badges," as they may be called, announces some characteristic of the possessor that is usually unavailable to the public but that, once displayed, becomes a resource for focused interaction and conversation. In years past, one such resource was to carry a bestseller on the assumption that at least some of one's fellow citizens would have read it and could be relied upon to announce the fact. Nowadays, the efliorescence of the printed T-shirt and the well-appointed public jogger provide similar resources.

Finally, civil inattention may be breached when the citizen is accompanied by a person or animal in di\ open category, for exam- ple, a child or a dog. Thosie who are demonstrably different in appearance from their fellow citizens—the fat,' the handicapped, the ugly—often constitute adult open persons. Blacks and other

Street Renuulu, Address Rights, and the Urban Female S33

racial minorities may also be spoken to as open persons, as may interracial couples, though their "openness" is said to have dimin- ished considerably from what it was in the past.*

Thus far, I have said that women receive more, and more vigorous, markers of public passage than do males and that they are less frequently the originators of such markers. Now I would like to suggest that a woman's public life is greatly different from a man's and that this difference comes in part from the manner in which she is treated in public by men. In urban areas women, especially youthful ones, are subjected to a free and evaluative commentary by men that is the lot neither of youthful men nor the prerogative of women to deliver if they so choose. This commen- tary does not deal solely with their appearance, though that is a common subject and a ready resource for men. There is evidence that women are open persons on the public streets, liable to receive street remarks at will, in much the same way that lower-status groups frequently are. It is not that these groups, women among them, are caught at being out of role and are reprimanded for it with public looks and comments. On the contrary, it is part of their roles as children, as blacks, as women, to be open to the public.

This is an important point to remember, since the force of many of the street remarks that women receive suggests that they are, in some way, acting out of role. A woman may not walk down the street carrying a couch, but she may as well be. Street remarks often accuse women of inferior looks, improper carriage or attire, inappropriate actions, and moral defects. It is not only unattrac- tive, sloppy women who receive these remaks; it is also comely and well-groomed ones. These remarks are delivered by all classes and races of men, singly and in groups; sometimes they are spoken jokingly, sometimes they are spoken with vehemence and even accompanied by punches, tweaks, or blows. Much of this state of things could be better understood by examining the gender-role prescriptions of both the men who make these street remarks and the women who receive them. Men on the whole do not seem to realize that street remarks may be offensive to women; truly, they may not always be so. Many women, especially those with raised consciousnesses, do find male street remarks offensive or, at the least, intrusive. An explication of these male-to-female street

334 Language and Social Interaction

remarks as instances of breaching civil inattention and attempting to initiate a state of talk will say something about the public nature of men and women—as well as about theories of symbolic commu- nication that presume accurate mutual understanding of meaning and intention between the sexes.

Positive Ck>n8truction8 of the Male-to-Female Street Remarks

In by no means all time periods and cases have women taken offense at the male-to-female street remark. Indeed, tradi- tional folk interpretations counsel women that street remarks are innocuously intended and flattering; they are the rewards due the woman who fulfills her female role requirements or they are the playful patter of the men she passes. The whistle is a type of short- hand street remark, and a 1961 newspajier column that asked women, "Do You Like to Be Whistled At?" received, for example, such positive answers as these: whistles are expressions of ap- proval, compliments, and "a perk-me-up to a girl" (quoted in Goff- man, 1963, pp. 144-145n.).

Some years ago a Glamour magazine test ("Do You Act Like a Beauty?" 1969, pp. 138-139) gave its readers lessons in how to act responsibly beautiful. One of the items reads:

You're walking along the street and a work- man whistles appreciatively at you. You:

a. Ignore him. b. Tell him he's being pretty fresh. c. Call a cop. d. Smile in friendly acknowledgment and

keep walking.

The correct answer is d. Sociologist have also analyzed the positive possibilities of

street remarks and whistles. Goffman (1963) writes:

[I]n some Western communities there is the practice whereby a male communicates regard for the attractiveness of a passing female with whom he is unacquainted by whistling at her or greeting her with some other expressive sign. What follows is up to her.

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female SS5

She can elect to act as if no relevant communication has occurred. Or she can elect to turn and ratify the comment by a friendly or hostile comment, in either case creating a momentary face engagement. (Appar- ently the more im{>ersonally appreciative the whistle, that is, the more it can be construed not as a pickup, the more accepting the girl will be of it.) But in addi- tion, she may smile visibly (so that the whistler knows his message has been appreciatively received), and at the same time look straight ahead so as not to allow for the collapse of separateness and the formation of an engagement. This latter tack represents, in effect, a collusion of both individuals against the rules of communication—an unratifled breach of communi- cation barriers. The breach is a slight one, however, since the person whistled at has been on the move away from the whistler and will soon be out of the range of engagement [pp. 144-145].

Goffman's analysis is instructive inasmuch as it places the responsi- bility for the breach on the woman, though it is in fact the male who is the invariable first mover. It is he who chinks the change in his pockets, whisdes, or utters, as Goffman daintily says, "some other expressive sign." In some sense Goffman's analysis is an accurate one, for the woman's appearance is actually a first move of sorts, although it is one she cannot choose to make. This fact, however, makes talk of the woman's choice in the street remark situation—however positively the remark may be construed— have a hollow ring.

The positive construction of street remarks is not a thing of the past, and many men can so state their street remarks to neu- tralize offense. A young woman crossing an urban Philadelphia street hears a male voice call out "Hey!" from across the street behind her; she does nothing, and the "Heyl" is repeated; she still does nothing and hears it repeated more insistendy. The speaker crosses the street after her at last, saying plaintively, "Hey there! I know you not lookin' at me, but you sure are one fine womanl" Again, a young woman walks down the street in a black neighbor- hood in Philadelphia. A middle-aged black man approaches h^r and lewks her over appreciatively: "Does your husband tell you

336 Language and Social Interaction

how pretty you are?" he inquires of the woman, who wears no wedding ring. "Not often enough," she replies, and they exchange smiles. In these two cases, the men have supplied other informa- tion that defuses the possible offense of a street remark. In the first case, the man demonstrated, by his persistence and sincere tone, that regard for the woman's appearance was "all" he had in mind. In the second case, the man demonstrated the same by incorporating reference to the woman's married—and thus already taken—standing.^

Men also offer evidence, when confronted by women who are offended or hurt by a street remark, that they meant no harm. For the woman who counters a crude comment on her appearance with a pained look at the speaker, there is sometimes an apologetic assertion that he was only kidding. Again, when a woman shows pain a man may go out of his way to demonstrate that the offense was meant but meant for someone other than the offended woman. A woman walking past a crew of Manhattan construction workers on a windy day sees a worker punch his buddy illustrative- ly on the arm and hears him call to her, "Lookit your hair! His hair looks better than yours!" She wheels and faces the speaker, speech- less and hurt; it is clear from the expression on the speaker's face that he knows he has hurt her, that he did not mean to, and that he does not know what to do. But he thinks of a way: seizing a third buddy, he says to the woman, "I didn't mean you, I was talkin' about Am." He was not. Another version of the male assurance of harmless intent is reported by a rape victim who classes street remarks with rape as uninvited intimacies that women must suffer: "I turned around, and there were three nice-looking, long-haired young men, and I said, "What are you doing?" [Then] they were quite crushed and seemed really put down. Then I said to them that when I walked around alone, I didn't want to have to worry about whether I was going to be attacked. I like being alone. I don't want to have to hold some guy's hand just to go down the street. They said goodnight to me very respectfuUy after that" (Russell, 1975, p. 168).' Respectful reversals of manner may also show the woman that male street remarkers, if they do not always envisage a positive response to their words, at least do not envisage a negative one.

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 337

Certain circumstances in the occurrence of the street remark offer male speakers the possibility for gallantry. If a street remark to an unknown woman is not always originally conceived of as a positive experience for the woman, there are sometimes ways in which a thoughtful male can make it so. Events of this sort often take place when a man looks appreciatively at or speaks ap- preciatively to a woman from behind—only to discover when he draws level with her that she is either not so attractive from in front or not so young as he had thought (and hence someone who has no right to be the possessor of an attractive posterior). A man so confronted commonly feels himself gulled. But his masking of this feeling may result in a positive encounter, if a brief one, for the woman and in the knowledge for the man that he has acted generously. An Englishwoman reports this case, which took place when her American mother visited Great Britain. Her mother, she writes, had lovely legs, "well-shaped with pretty ankles and neat narrow feet. The last time she was in England, a year before she died at sixty-five, she was walking across Grosvenor Square near the U.S. Embassy and an American sailor wolf-whistled at her from behind. She was pleased about this—'I'm afraid you're fifty years too late.' 'No, ma'am,' said the sailor; 'it's never too late with legs like those'" (Grenfell, 1976, p. 13).̂

It is possible, however, for women simply to experience the pleasures of public regard, street remarks being one of these plea- sures. When remarks can be construed impersotially, when they do not involve vulgar langtiage, when they are unambiguously com- plimentary, when the speaker makes only the first remark and does not attempt another—then a woman may feel positive about being spoken to in public by an unknown man. Her positive feel- ing presumes that she is willing to overlook the asymmetry of pub- lic life and that she does not resent being constrained from answering back or from initiating remarks to attractive men her- self. Her positive feeling also presumes that she can forget, at least temporarily, that this street remark is part of a class of markers that signals the passage of women more often than it does that of men and part of a class of utterances that are interactionally ambiguous for the woman and thus difficult to respond to. Still, some women do appreciate some public looks and remarks. This is

338 Language and Social Interaction

shown in part by the testimony of American women who travel to countries where civil inattention is breached less often than in the United States, for example, to Great Britain. Once deprived of male citizens who ogle, a woman may miss the attention and in fact feel ignored.

Characteristics of Street Remarks

By noting some features of male-to-female street remarks, it is possible to understand why women do not uniformly construe these remarks positively.

When women write about male-to-female street remarks, they may emphasize that they are made to feel like objects as a result of these remarks (Tax, 1973, p. 30);* that receiving these remarks constitutes a landmark experience in their coming-of-age; (Hennessey, 1970); that hearing male remarks may be the most memorable feature of some perieKl or place in their lives (Rossner, 1966, p. 16);* and that they consider rape analogous to what takes place in the male-to-female street remark.'" Men, as I will note, speak of playfulness, flattery, and the woman's provocation of public remarks. This disparity may in p>art be explained by the double-entendre nature of many remarks, which may seem a clever achievement to the male speaker but constitute an ambiguity impossible for the female recipient to respond to.

Cavan (1966) has written the obligation of the woman in a public bar to demonstrate that she is neither "open to all [n]or a se>Iitary serious drinker, neither role having much moral status" (p. 180). Women in public, then, are obliged to show that they are neither accessible nor preoccupied, that they cannot be approached by every male, but that they can be won by some male. The characteristic sexual freighting of male-to-female street speech reprexluces thb ambiguity: it supplies a respectful semantic line that presumes the female is inaccessible and a disrespectful semantic line that presumes she is accessible. Often, especially when a group of males is involved, double entendre takes the form of one male's speaking not directly to a passing female, but in a man- ner that clearly indicates she is the subject of the talk and is the intended overhearer. Eye contact inappropriate to a conversation

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 339

is used; the talk of the male is verbally to his fellows, but his gaze is focused on the woman.

There are obvious similarities between this kind of indirect speech and the black speech act of "signifying," but the main dif- ference for white female speakers is that they are not allowed to take part as proper interlocutors and still maintain role require- ments. For white street speakers, in fact, the woman is required not to ratify the male's attempt to gain the floor and initiate con- versation. This is especially so in cases where double entendre is used—for as only the covert subject of male conversation—a woman's attempt to become a ratified speaker in that conversation would be all the greater. Again, for white women, innuendo can, because of its veiled nature, be even more frightening than a direct sexual approach. A Southern woman speaks of walking in public past a group of observing men:

As I walked past them it began. "Shore would like to have that swing in my

backyard." "You want me to help you with your box, li'l

lady?" "Hesh up, Alvin, that ain't nice. Don't you talk

to her like that." "I just want to help her with her box, thass all." An explosion of mirth followed this riposte

but it was quickly shushed by the man who had appointed himself my protector. There is always one Good Ole Boy in the lineup who takes on this role. Just as the minstrel show has an end man and a vaudeville team a top banana, any collection of Good Ole Boys has a Shucks Ma'am.

"Shucks, ma'am, he didn't mean to insult you. He just thinks yore mighty sweet, thass all."" [King, 1974, p. 79].

Other cases of double entendre may make props of actual or elabo- rated characteristics of the woman: one woman, holding a cat carrier with two cats in it, hears passing males talk in loud voices about the good-looking pussy they see; another woman feels a male gaze on her breasts, and hears one of the men she

340 Language and Social Interaction

advise another that cantalopes are now good eating in local mar- kets. One effect of introducing topics taboo in polite conversation into public conversation is, and is meant to be, to embarrass the woman who cannot help but overhear them. Since the woman is only an overhearer and not a ratified speaker in the men's conver- sation, she is obliged to act as if she has not heard it in the first place; she is also obliged to act as if she had not heard it because there is a female tradition that to ignore male coarseness is a gen- der-role requirement. Finally, any clever reply a woman might make would open her to criticism for violating her feminine role propriety, since such a reply would be likely to include reference to, and certainly to ratify by recognition, sexual matters. The char- acteristic innuendo of many male-to-female street remarks also raises the more widespread sanction for males to assess female sex- uality and propriety at will, transforming what ostensibly are busi- ness or service encounters, for example, into face-to-face engagements with sexual overtones. More generally still, many women experience a double entendre of everyday life, in focused as well as unfocused interaction, and at times when they least expect it. The ix)tential for Judging a woman's sexual propriety is thus always present in social life when she is in the age range considered sexually active; the occurrence of thec^ot^^ entendre in public life is therefore not unusual but simply consistent with a woman's gen- eral experience.

Another characteristic of street remarks is that they are often evaluative, and, ostensibly at least, evaluative in a positive way. Thus, male, and sometimes female, folk interpretations hold that these remarks are compliments. A proper compliment, how- ever, is not given in public to the unacquainted, especially the un- acquainted of the opposite sex, as male street retnarkers do. Many men, moreover, prolong evaluations in ways that make it difficult plausibly to define the situation as complimentary: a man says "You're beautiful" to a young woman on a New York street, then follows her down the block repeating his evaluation every few sec- onds; a trio of Manhattan males clasp arms in a chorus line and break out singing "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" at the sight of a young woman. When a woman responds with "Thank you," as in compliment etiquette among the acquainted, a man sometimes es- calates into abuse. Or a man may speak of parts of her body that

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urhan Female 341

are normally not to be evaluated outside a bedroom, as reported in Babitz (1977, p. 15). Evaluations are not invariably positive ones, leading women who suspect that they are about to receive a street remark to fear it will be an insulting one. Then there are traditions of evaluation that encompass both positive and negative possibili- ties, such as the practice of rating women on a numerical scale. This emphasizes an aspect of street remarks that also leads women to fear them, namely, the variation between different street remarks within a certain time period. Receiving first a five then a nine from different men within one day—and this happens—can be confusing to a woman, who may be made unsure about whether she is upholding the standard of femininity or degrading it.

A woman's appearance is, of course, a different entity from a man's. It is a part of every situation in which she finds herself; there are, in some sense, no dinners for which she de)es not have to dress. More, a woman's appearance is public information, addressed, as Goffman says, "to whom it may concern." Women may note that men delivering evaluative street remarks—even if they are positive—often fall below middle-class standards of dress, tidiness, and hygiene themselves. Women say they can more easily construe a street remark as complimentary if it comes from a well- dressed, attractive male of their own social class."

An additional characteristic of street remarks is their con- struction of a woman's normal behavior as if it were out of role. As I have said, it is the right of every citizen, male or female, to remark in public upon the out-of-role behavior of persons not known to him or her personally. In male-to-female street remarks, however, men treat women acting within role as if they were break- ing role constraints; many women consider that to react with anxi- ety or confusion to this is understandable.^' For example: A woman walks down a Manhattan street with a Kleenex held to her nose, and a man says, "Whatsamatter, honey, you got a little cold? A w w . . . . " A young woman walks down a Philadelphia street on a windy day, her right hand held to her forehead to keep her head- scarf in place; the young man approaching her raises his hand to his forehead and gives her a smart salute—a parody of the posi- tion that he wants her to believe she imitates. A young woman out in Manhattan on a chilly day hears a man say, "Whatsamatter with you. No stockings on a day like this." A young woman bicyling

342 Language and Social Interaction

reaches down to roll up her pants leg and hears a passing motorist bellow, "Make sure you get it rolled up okay."

There is no sure way for a woman to pass down the street alone and not be commented upon. Accompanied by a man or a child, she furnishes evidence of proper in-role standing. But if she is alone, that standing is always in doubt and may be metaphori- cally spoken to by men. Indirect evidences of having, or having had, a man are also sometimes effective, such as being pregnant. Other types of accompaniment are ineffective, such as that of an- other youthful woman or women or that of an elderly male.

Still another characteristic of the male-to-female street remark is that it tests the woman's self-control. In form, many street remarks are attention-getters. Part of the ambiguity that re- sults comes from the conventional requirements for civil inatten- tion; that is, individuals are not supposed to be attentive to other individuals beyond certain limits. Too, traditionally prescribed fe- male role behavior forbids women to speak to "strange males." Yet the overt form of a summons or attention-getter makes a claim on them, though it is a claim by an unacquainted person. Also, strang- ers do indeed have the right to make claims in certain situations, as when help is desired or some alarm is to be sounded. Women are therefore confronted by different reasons for breaking and main- taining frame: if they do choose to break frame, they are likely to find that they are the butt of a street remark instead of the recipi- ent of a request for aid. A young woman walks past a New York stoop where she hears a man say sincerely, "Excuse me, miss." When she turns to see what he wants, he says, "You sure have got great boobs." A young woman sees a man roll down his car window and crackle a map with convincing helplessness; when she nears the car in response to his "Hey! Hey there!" he mutters obscenities to her. Passing a Philadelphia construction site, a young woman hears a slight cough, then a slightly louder cough, then a series of impressive coughs and a man say, "Hey! I'm dyin' of pneumonia— pneumonia I got!" She gives him a sheepish grin of sympathy and proceeds. A young woman walks past a group of young men, one of whom clears his throat lightly, then a bit more audibly, then a bit more audibly still, and, when she still does not respond, says, "What's the matter, you deaf?"'*

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 343

A final problematic characteristic of the street remark for women is the occasional involvement of a split of functions for the men who utter it. This takes place in both single and group remarks, and it echoes an ambiguity that I have said is involved in many aspects of street remarks. Often when there are two or more males as speakers, a division of labor is presented for the female target: one male gives a respectful greeting, the other an evalua- tion vitiating the degree to which the woman can tell herself that she has received a simple bit of politeness and no more. Walking through Columbus Circle, a woman hears two hippies speak to her: the first exclaims, "Good morning, miss!" and the second chimes in, "AwrightV and applauds softly. Walking by three weld- ers on a university campus, a young woman hears the eldest say, "Good morning." She returns "Good morning" and immediately the youngest groans and says, "Ninety-nine." Sometimes one man will encompass both functions himself; he utters a first greeting remark and follows it with a second, evaluative one. Passing a gro- cery store where men are unpacking crates, a woman is greeted with "Good morning" by one worker. She turns her head and smiles, and he says, "Nice smile." At times, there is a frankly good guy/bad guy split when two men are involved. Walking past a street construction project, a young woman trips slightly. One black worker says sarcastically, "Oh, you don' wanna do that, now." She neither smiles nor replies, and a second black worker says brightly, "And how are you today?" Still She does not reply, and the first worker says contemptuously, "Miss Snot."

This split of functions leaves some women feeling confused and gulled: the second comment shows up the first as a sham, even if a woman attempts to consolidate the first definition by replying to it what it pretends to be. Knowledge that a street remark may turn out to bie ambiguous in this way reduces a woman's opportu- nities for swift response, for she must choose the sense in which she is to take the remark, the gjreeting, or the evaluation. If she chooses the greeting, and if it has an abusive sequela, she has cho- sen to make the best of the man's rudeness; and this may happen not once, but ten times in a single day. Therefore the woman who tries to put the best face on street remarks may come to feel her good humor badly overworked.

344 Language and Social Interaction

Exploiting Breaches of Civil Inattention

The fact of the male-to-female street remark is in some respects an exploitation of the rules of civil inattention, since such remarks simultaneously require a woman (who is under greater role requirements to behave politely) to respond to an attempted opening and obliges a woman (who is also required to appear inac- cessible to the public at large) to ignore it. In lower-lever structural and formal ways, too, a woman becomes a participant in an exploi- tation of the rules of public order. I have shown, for instance, that there are tests of a woman's self-control in which a street remark masquerades as a summons for aid, information, or sympathy. There are many ways to work the situation that involve more com- plex tacks than an escalation to evaluative or second-move com- ments. For example, compliments are subject to certain rules in order to be taken sincerely within the frame of acquaintanceship in which they are customarily uttered. The parody of a compliment is not a compliment at all. Yet, in a male-te>-female street remark, the parody of a compliment may be precisely what is given (and ar- guably—for the male, who is originating the breaching—all that is possible). Thus, the following three street remarks: A woman walks across campus and notes three men observing her. The first lexjks her over, gives her a sincere smile, and says, "Nice nipples." She does not respond and hears his buddy say to him loudly, "I guess she doesn't like you." Again, a young woman walking in Philadelphia sees a young white approaching her from the oppo- site direction, watches him look her over approvingly and begin a traditional wolf whisUe, and notes its transformation into the tri- umphal march from Aida, which he continues to aim at her poste- rior for a full block. A black teenager approaches a woman in an underground subway passage. He is le)oking around sourly—his mind elsewhere, his expression says—and he is chewing the fin- gernail of his right index finger thoughtfully. With his free left hand he grabs the woman's breast as he passes, his eyes elsewhere, on more important matters. In these cases, the men violated three separate conditions—appropriate content, length, and degree of involvement—for giving a compliment.

In large urlKin centers, greetings are also only to be given to

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 345

acquainted others, so that any street remark that simulates a greet- ing necessarily violates this constraint. Some males perform other parodies of greetings. Walking in Philadelphia, a young woman sees a black male approach her and hears him say, with a smile, "How the fuck are you?" She does not reply and continues on her way, but hears him yell, "How the fuck are you?" at her for two blocks from where he stands, finally yelling it at peak volume. This man violated the usual conditions for greetings not only by employing an obscene infix but also by failing to retire gracefully when his greeting was ignored.

Faced with situations that seem ambiguous on many grounds, women say they react in various ways. "Blocking" or "repressing" is mentioned, as is attempting to act as if "nothing is happening." Observing a woman who receives a street remark, one may note an increase in muscle tension, a too-fixed stare, eyes directed anywhere but at the male speaker, preenings and body checks, or the initiation of side involvements such as smoking— actions that are sometimes then used by men as resources for fur- ther comments.** Politicized women may see the obligation to act as if nothing is happening in order to maintain role requirements as fraudulent and an imposition; one has written of it as an obliga- tion toward "autism" (Damrosch, 1975, p. 7 ) . "

Another strategy women say they employ to deal with street remarks is to avoid—sometimes for years—the place where a par- ticularly offensive remark has occurred. Women also say they avoid types of sites where they suspect street remarks are likely to occur and activities in which they feel remarks may ensue, such as bike riding. Or they say they may "be a block ahead of themselves" in terms of what is happening on the street Women also report donning sunglasses so that men have less access to their reactions; adopting what they feel are "tough" and "businesslike" walks; avoiding what they feel is either "provocative" or too casual dress;" and refraining from smiling while maintaining a seiious, even "grim," facial expression.

Other women state specific maneuvers for transforming the street-remark situation into a comparatively harmless one. All involve the pretense of helplessness or incompetence, placing the offending male in a position of tr^itional chivalry and calling

346 Language and Social Interaction

upon him to respond, out of his greater competence, with noblesse oblige. While this maneuver still relies on the male's being in a more powerful position, it is now the woman's initiative that has placed him there. A woman at an auto supply store who finds herself the target of pointed comments approaches a commentor and asks him for help, which she does not need, with her pur- chase; changing the footing of the situation, she finds the young man her willing adviser. Confronted by a leering attendant in a parking lot, a young woman trustingly approaches him and asks him the time; she receives a respectful answer and no further in- trusion of gaze or comment. A teen-ager is followed by a man who delivers a monologue about her hair; she feigns deafness by mak- ing what she believes are appropriate noises, and the man apolo- gizes to her. A woman approaching a construction site nods in a friendly manner to workers and greets them before they have a chance to speak. Male street remarks often put the woman in the position of ignoring what purports to be a greeting, a request for help, or a summons; women who use these tacks to defuse street remarks have effectively turned the tables on men and placed them in the very positions the women themselves fear. Exploiting breaches of civil inattention is thus a possibility for women as well as for men.

Men and Street Remarks: Socialization for Rejection

Women who answer back angrily to men who make street remarks often find that the man's next move is an escalation to a high level of verbal abuse. Male escalation after female reaction may in part be explained by the woman's having ratified an im- proper male attempt at getting the fioor; when she does so, she changes the level of interaction, makes herself also an improper speaker, and formulates the pattern for the next t u r n . " Retali- ation is not considered a feminine behavior. First, answering back constitutes a ratification of the interchange. The woman who has, up until that point, walked by as if she were unaware of the exis- tence of male onlookers, has Uiereby not only ratified their offense but also exposed her own previous behavior as a fiction. Second, though some women are wUling to dare a squelching remark, they

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the UrtMui Female 347

seem unable to deal with the fact that a subsequent squelching remark (and then another) may be needed if the male chex>ses to take up the gaundet. Small battles can be waged, then, up to per- haps one turn in length, but further escalation in this public con- text baffle the female verbal combatant. The reason for this may well be that, drawing again on traditional definitions of female privilege, she expects the male gracefully to withdraw.

Further, women are traditionally untrained for one of the ultimate consequences of verbal altercations, namely, physical altercations; when they cheK>se to make a first move in a contest that, were it held among males, might easily come to blows, they may find that they are not qualifled to make a second—and irre- mediable—one. Or they may make counterremarks more offen- sive than men would make. A final point is that the subject matter of a female remark to a male speaker would be, most appropri- ately, along the same lines of the male street remark, that is, a sexually humiliating remark or one that appraises his failure or success in achieving his gender-role expectations. In this case, how- ever, the remarks would be members of two different universes, since males are not traditionally able to be humiliated sexually, at least not in the same way as females. Also, such remarks and such subject matter are not considered fit coming from a woman's mouth in private, much less on public streets. Women who say they do answer back report doing so only when they consider them- selves in a safe situation where male retaliation is unlikely, when the remark is especially offensive, or when their mexxl is especially "bad."

Males thus serve notice that asymmetrical teasing (where the obligation to take the jest in goexi spirits can only be discharged by remaining silent or ignoring the remark) is the only possible form here. Furthermore, although asymmetrical teasing must be the case, the verbal content of the street remark often denies this. Women, allowed only nonresponse, are explicitly criticized for fail- ing to respond; "What's the matter? Stuck up?" are familiar words. The accusation that a woman is displaying conceit is, of course, also an effort to find a response where none has occurred. It turns nonaction into action; considers that an offense; and responds accordingly. Other exxasions may see men ignore women who

348 Language and Social Interaction

answer back, breaking the frame and ending the breach after the street remark; they thereby transform the woman who has ratified their attempted intrusion into herself a breacher of civil inat- tention.

One may say that there is more than one type of speech event taking place in the male-to-female street remark, depending upon whether one male or two or more males—a pair or group— is involved." When one man is the speaker, any response on the woman's part, even if it is not angry or contemptuous, may elicit an escalation to hostility or even blows. It is with men in groups that the woman who responds will frequently hear male laughter, no matter what the nature of her response. The laughter may be ana- lyzed as a relief move, and the need for such a move raises the question of what is at stake for males in street remarks.

The man who attempts to breach civil inattention by a male- to-female street remark is subject to as many definitional ambigu- ities as the woman who is its recipient. For him, the street remark may be a speech act whose function is to displace emotion toward women, and fear of rejection may be as relevant an emotion as hostility. There are several guards to a man's personal rejection when a woman resists the overture he presents. First, there is the impersonality of his remark—most remarks are stereotyped in nature, and all necessarily treat some aspect of a woman that is open to every other citizen in public. A man can therefore plausi- bly argue to himself, after a woman ignores him or sends him a withering glance, that, since he made no personal overture, he can have suffered no personal rejection. Second, there is the brief nature of the street remark and the fact that it involves a moving linguistic target. By the time the man has risked a remark, a wo- man will have already passed by. Third, there are female gender- role constraints that, as the man must know, make it unlikely that a woman will counter with a hostile or eml»rrassing remark. Fourth, there is the street remark's use of innuendo and doubk entendre; this enstires that a man may hedge his bets whenever he chooses.

Yet there are simultaneously several features that ensure that the man, though he may not risk losing in any dangerous way, will always be rejected by the woman. Just as women are unlikely to respond in a hostile way, they are unlikely to respond positively;

Street Renurks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 349

this too would violate their role requirements. By far the most frequent female reaction is ignoring the man or "acting as if noth- ing has happened." Men who make street remarks are thereby setting up the conditions for their own rejection. One possible positive reading of this ritual is its function as an informal means of socialization toward rejection by females. Street remarks may, in this way, furnish tests of expressive self-control for men as well as for women, socializing men for failure in more serious attempts to secure the attentions of women. The coda of laughter at the end of a street remark is not (or not merely) laughter at the woman, then, but also a sincere relief move for the man who has survived a mocked-up rejection with his ego intact. Too, the man who dis- places anger or hostility in street remarks toward women he does not know may be less likely to display it in real-life situations. This explanation also makes comprehensible the habit of the street re- mark to treat women's normal behavior as if it were out-of-role behavior. Not only does this mimic the rules of justifiable breaches of civil inattention, but it provides an understandable topic for men socializing themselves toward female rejection: a woman's failure or success in winning status as a person worthy of rejecting males in the first place.

I have examined one instance of breaching civil inattention, the male-to-female street remark and demonstrated characteristics of it that make it difficult for women to receive it positively. I have also argued that there are, for both men and women, possible functions of the street remark as tests of expressive self-control: women are taught to refrain from unseemly gender-role behavior in public and to accept the criticisms of men; men are socialized to mainuin calm in the face of female rejection. From an examina- tion of justifiable reasons for breaching civil inattention, I have concluded that the street remark is one that often treats women who are behaving within role as if they were behaving in an out-of- role fashion. That women are commonly so treated in public places, and that their appearance is a ready resource for public comment, demonstrates their very different public nature from that of men. Men, of course, are licensed to make the commentary and, in short, act as if public spaces were home territory for them in this respect. The presence of women on public streets thus has a

350 Language and Social Interaction

positive function for men, who may use their presence to reassure themselves that public places are, in fact, not so anonymous after all. Nor are address rights the only rights men have toward women in public, for I have shown that there are a wide range of nonlin- guistic markers that signal and comment upon a woman's pres- ence. Taken together, and taken in the volume in which they may occur in large cities, street remarks and markers of passage help to explain why some women reasonably regard the city streets with what seems to others paranoia: a constant series of announcements of female status always seems a possibility. Although women are often disturbed by street remarks—if not by all of them, at least by some—the ways they report dealing with these remarks reinforce traditional definitions of the male as chivalrous and the woman as manipulative. Even if women respond, they are still in a position that is more subject to breaches of public order than is a man's. Men do find street remarks unobjectionable, for the most part, or consider them the woman's just deserts, and this highlights that their positive function for the male—a socialization effort that tests his ability to receive rejection—can involve as much risk as its function for the female, which is to learn to accept criticism in a properly passive way.

Footnotes

1. The term civil inattention is Goffman's (1%3, p. 84 and p. 95), and my usage of it follows his own. A recent work of Goff- man's (1978) has supplied a careful statement of the assumptions and concerns of the solitary breacher of civil inattention, and a great many observations on more complicated breachings as well.

That talk is so warranted an event in large cities these days must be seen in light of other possibilities for behavior. First of all, life in smaller towns, in the South and Southwest, and in rural areas does not participate in the general haltness of speech of the big cities. If this is an American pattem, then, it is by no means generalized, and the American who travels even short distances can be sure of seeing variation. Second, certain neighborhoods within the large cities may themselves abide by different rules. Notable among these are black and Italian neighborhcxxls of New York and Philadelphia, where the street is conceived of as an

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 351

extension of the home (a conception well described Brown, 1965, p. 428).

2. Scheflen (1972, pp. 35-37) discusses such phenomena— though not specifically the signals I have spoken of—as markers of "territorial passage," concentrating more on the ethnological interpretation. I should also note that the examples I have gath- ered all involve a female as the recipient of the marker and a male as the originator. Markers, though more delicate ones, do take place when male passes male, and markers are given by females too; a study of these would be welcome.

3. Millman (1980, pp. 9-10, p. 79, p. 85, pp. 184-185) gives examples of fat people open to public commentary.

4. For examples of public commentary on interracial cou- ples, as well as on whites in black neighborhoods and blacks in the white South, see Gregory (1970).

5. It is noteworthy that both these examples involved black males. Some women are quick to say that they consider blacks in a different category when the question of feeling offense at street remarks comes up. Blacks are felt to be capable of remarks of greater offensiveness than whites but also of remarks that mitigate offense in ways that white males do not accomplish. It is arguable that, since street repartee is more a part of black courting behavior than it is of white, blacks may in fact possess the greater skills in these situations that some white women feel them to. (For an instance of black-to-black street repartee that results in a legitimate acquaintance between two theretofore unacquainted persons, see Cooke, 1972, p. 40. Abrahams, n.d., pp. 31-32, presents instances of black males well versed in the art of "signifying," that is, making pointed double entendres, in this case about women they observe on the street. Black women are assumed by both authors to take these practices euphoricaily, and their freedom to make remarks in return is emphasized, though some black women I know feel the obligation to engage in repartee in return more of a burden than an opportunity to show off speech skills.) More than simply skills at street remarks, the men in these two examples may have had at stake the defusing of offense not for the white woman's gain, but for their own protection. By showing that they considered them- selves no serious suitors, they thereby bypassed the possibility that they could be seriously refused on racial grounds or that they could constitute a racial threat to nearby white males.

6. Women's fantasies, when they have them, about the pos-

352 Language and Social Interaction

sible outcome of speaking back to male street remarkers often involve such immediate reversals of male affect. Several of these are presented in Medea and Thompson (1974, p. 73). The men that Medea and Thompson confront hypothetically always obedi- ently turn tail and apologize or simply cower. I will suggest later that this is by no means the case in real life and that the innocuous intent of males is not the case everywhere.

7. In this same category, in which the undeserving receive praise, are incidents such as that of the woman I interviewed who believed herself fiat-chested and reported as a compliment a man who passed her on the street and said in a heartfelt manner, "Nice tits!" A wheelchair-bound woman of my acquaintance counts each wolf whistle a compliment and an entre' into normality.

8. At least half of the ten young university women with whom I spoke used the "object" simile, one saying that being spo- ken to freely on the street made her feel as though there were a placard in the window with her name and number for all to read. Eight of the ten young women spoke of male-to-female street remarks as "invasions of privacy." An extended analogy is also offered in Shear's "Free Meat Talks Back" (1976, pp. 38-39).

9. Nine out of the ten women interviewed remembered either the first time that a male gave them a street remark or had a "worst" or "most memorable" street-remark story. Two of these women also offered street remarks that could be taken as compli- ments as "best" stories; in both cases, however, these were pre- sented as exceptions that proved the rule.

10. See Medea and Thompson (1974, p p . 49->50) and Russell (1975, p. 168). Eight out of the ten women interviewed mentioned rape as having similarities with male-to-female street remarks.

11. There is a class element here, since traditional folk wis- dom has it that only lower-class men deliver street remarks (in the interviews, men who admitted to making street remarks often charged this themselves). Women who believe that men of their own social class are delivering compliments when they deliver street remarks may therefore be protecting their class interests rather than their gender interests.

12. Men who treat women as if they were acting out of role thereby have also created a partial justification for their own be- havior, for they are certainly allowed to breach the rules for civil inattention when they note a citizen out of role.

Street Remarks, Address Rights, and the Urban Female 353

13. T h e entire category of required female self-control under male public attention-getters and summonses recalls those children's games where holding a pose or refraining from giggling is required; these are perhaps youthful training for purposeful adult ignorings of this sort. Inevitably, some women fmd that the attention-getter they have suspected of signaling a male-to-female street remark was actually sincere, as in the case of a woman who pointedly ignored a series of "Heys" only to discover later that the speaker was trying to return the fifty dollars in bills that had fallen out of her purse.

14. CoUett and Marsh (1974) speak of women's performing "physically more difficult avoidance movements than men" on public streets (p. 10). Such movements involve, among other things, breast protection by torso turning and arm crossing. Their findings present another sort of feminine behavior that simulta- neously achieves "nothing is happening" status and serves notice that women's bexlies are to be protected even from an uninterested public at large.

15. The advice literature in feminist sources is more active, even spirited. (The basic position is represented by Lesbian Femi- nist Liberation: 1974.) Some women recommend yelling back, answering back, throwing rexrks, copying down the names of mert in company trucks and reporting them (Goldman, 1974, p. 5). An article furnishes an official complaint form to send to employers ("Wolf Hunting: Plan of Action," 1976); it also reports the avail- ability of insulting cards to hand out to street remarkers ("This card has been chemically treated. In approximately 36 hours your prick will faU ofT'). Another woman reports throwing bags of gar- bage during New York's garbage strike; hawking phlegm from her threiat and spitting; staring contemptuously at the man's crotch (Letter in Ms., 1977, p. 12).

16. See Williamson (1971), where a feminist argues that women should affect "studied ugliness" in order to make their public life less traumatic. Her line of reasoning, however, is that clothes provoke disrespect and ill treatment by males in public. More careful sex:iole>gical analysis of clothing, such as Wax's (1965), emphasizes the social construction that this is, for it is socialability, rather than sexuality, that is at the root of what women are sup- posed to present by their grooming. Thus, they are supposed to argue with their clothing that they are accessible to some men,-but certainly not to all men, as Williamson's argument implies.

354 Language and Social Interaction

17. When men do not escalate to anger, they may use the woman's anger as a resource for still another remark. Colette and Willy's Young Lady of Paris reported an early example: "I've been out shopping for dresses and hats," her Claudine writes. "A man followed me and I had the unfortunate idea of sticking my tongue out at him. 'Oh, give that to me,' he said, and I'll know enough not to do that again" (1931, pp. 88-89). One woman interviewed reported that she and other teen-agers yelled back at cruising teen- age boys and were followed in turn by the boys for some time. Another woman reported saying, "Mind your own business," to which a man countered, "You're my business, honey"; she offered no topper of her own. That there is official male outrage at wom- en's answering back is demonstrated by the story of a woman who lost her job on a newspaper for giving some firemen the fmger after they had "made remarks about her legs, shouted 'Hey Baby,' etc." The official reason was that her reaction "casts a reflection on the objectivity of the paper" and that she "should have shown more feminine control" supplying informal support for the street remark as a test of expressive control. (Reported in Majority Report, Feb. 5-18, 1977.)

18. There is a considerable literature, both fictional and nonfictional, that emphasizes the sportive elements of the groups street remarks. Literature shows the street remark and "girl-watch- ing," its eye contact concomitant, as recreative. Examples can be found in Farrell ([1935] 1965, pp. 122-123); Pynchon (1973, pp. 32-34); Sillitoe ([I960] 1976, pp. 148-149). Factual writing shows it in a similar light (Cherry, 1974; Riemer, 1976). Sometimes sportsmen carry the imagery far, as in the case one of my male interviewees reported. The summer of the 1976 Olympics, male university students lined up on the roof of a fraternity house armed with a set of numeral ratings, which they held up in response to female students passing by on the walk below. A sec- ond audience of males on the opposite side of the walk then applauded or booed the decision of the "judges."

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