An Example

On Rudeness:

Dr. Helen (whom I only just realized was also the InstaWife) has this post on the importance of promoting increased harmony between the sexes:

Every once in a while, I make a crack about women--I might call a particular woman a jerk or a bully or some other name. I often do it for effect as much as anything else. Why, you may ask, would she say something negative about someone of her own gender?

Because I believe that women can take it. Men, for the longest time, have been the subject of jokes, putdowns and just downright rude expletives, mainly by women, but also by men.... Joking about people and making crass comments is seen as the weapon of the minority against the majority. You can do it if you are the right gender or race. The psychological reason that society lets women and certain minorities get away with it is that they are seen as the underdog--they are viewed as weak and not able to tolerate a joke or a negative comment for fear they will crumble. But I think women and minorities are stronger than that. I do not see women as people who are weak--but rather who are strong and autonomous--those types of people do not need the government to intervene on their behalf everytime a negative word is said. In a free society, we should have the right to make offensive remarks and jokes without fear of punishment--even of so-called minorities.

Dr. Helen cites a number of examples to reinforce her point about society's treatment of men. Although I have argued against her position that men are suffering from society in the past, I will grant it for the purpose of this particular argument. What I'd like to take issue with today is her proposed remedy, and the reasoning behind it.

Allow me to suggest that the last thing America needs is more public rudeness. If we succeed in "making the playing field level" at the cost of making it acceptable to be rude to anyone at any time, I will consider that we have damaged rather than improved society.

The discipline that is needed is not the discipline of being ready to challenge others to accept rudeness, but the discipline of etiquette. Part of this is learning to assume the best of people. I imagine that if a gentlemen should open the door for Dr. Helen, she would assume that he is demonstrating a desire to show a kindness to a fellow person, rather than suggesting that he assumes she is too weak to open the door. We can better improve society, not by making it easier to make fun of women and minorities, but by raising the threshold at which "offensive" behavior becomes actionable. A great deal of that is learning, personally, to forgive and assume the best when there is any doubt about the other person's intent.

Etiquette also includes the ability to defend yourself, kindly. Miss Manners demonstrates the way to do this regularly, which is one reason her column deserves more attention than it gets. Consider this academic example:

Dear Miss Manners:

As an educator in a graduate professional education program, I frequently invite guest lecturers. I've had two dilemmas:

The first lecturer informs the class that certain research has been cross-culturally "universally" validated. I know that the research was done only with males. Is it rude for me to bring it up? What if I won't have the chance to correct the information with the students on another occasion?

The second lecturer, an African American female, presents views of her social reality that are disturbing to two white male students, who challenge her views and ask for statistics to verify them. When the lecturer cites her PhD, one student calls out, "I don't care about your PhD" and leaves the room. Should I, as host educator, have intervened, or would that have been paternalistic?

It would be paternalistic to treat an African American female professor more protectively than you would any other guest lecturer. This brings us back to your underlying dilemma, which is that you feel torn between maintaining decorum and permitting debate.

Miss Manners is afraid that you, like many others, believe these goals to be incompatible. On the contrary, it is decorum that allows dissent to be aired, and it is your job to ensure both. Academic lectures should always allow debate, and decorum should always prevail, there as elsewhere.

In the first example, your own dissent was suppressed. There would have been nothing rude about your using the question period to ask for a demographic breakdown of the research.

The second was characterized by neither decorum nor debate. The request for statistics was reasonable, and the lecturer was rude in dismissing it by citing her credentials. At that point, you could have intervened by saying, "Of course, but we would all be interested in hearing your data."

Instead, the student turned rude. What you could have said after the student left was, "I apologize for the outburst. Now we would all be interested in hearing your data."

As Miss Manners points out, the elevation in rudeness ends the debate -- it doesn't further it. Dr. Helen appears to regard this as a psychological problem rather than a problem of manners; as such she advocates what would appear to be a sort of aversion therapy. That will tend to destroy the atmosphere in which a serious consideration of the problem could be made. It will ruin any hope of actual improvement.

I respectfully suggest that it is also rude to assume that people who behave in ways you don't like are sick, and in need of treatment. They may simply be in need of a good example. Even if they do need treatment, though, they have every right to resent it being diagnosed, prescribed and administered without their consent. Involuntary treatment of patients ought to be something undertaken only under the most rigorous ethical guidelines, if only because of the unreliable quality of psychological diagnoses. Even as society would be improved by more rather than fewer manners, psychology would benefit from more rather than fewer ethics.