The Scuttling Nature of Men and Women, or Lack Thereof

I am in a Women's and Gender's Studies class. We had an 'observation assignment' and this is what I found.


The Frog and Peach Pub, in downtown San Luis Obispo, California, was my place of observation for the gender observation assignment. On a crowded Tuesday night, otherwise known as Pint Night, the task of moving through the mass of beer-drinkers in order to get from one end of the pub to the other, was no small task. While in the ever-moving sea of young adults, I noticed a difference in the way men pass other men, men pass women, women pass men, and women pass women. Thus, I took a mental note of the differences in the actions of each gender and why this may be.
The most common theme of my observations was that women were much more physically aggressive when trying to make their way through a crowd than were men. Typically, when a girl was forced to make physical contact with someone in order to move, they would travel at high speeds with a shoulder leading the way. This, to me, was rude and obnoxious; however, it led me to quickly move out of a traveling woman’s way so as to not get a shoulder in the face, or even worse, a spilled beer. Of course not all women were so aggressive in their actions, but I am sad to say that it was the way of most girls. Additionally, women tended to move past both men and women in the same way. Men, on the other hand, moved through the crowd in a much more careful way. Men would often move in a scuttling motion with a hand out in front at around shoulder level, so as to touch a person on the shoulder or between the shoulder blades to let him know he was there. There were definitely outliers in the observations, such as those men who would have their hands dangerously low on my back or even the front of my leg. So too, were men who used a more bulldozing method; these men, I believe, were looked down upon by others for that. The men typically touched other women with their hand more than they touched other men.
The conclusions I draw from these observations are ones in the matters of respect. I believe women do not get as much respect as do men, therefore generally we must be more aggressive in getting what we want. That is why I think women tend to be more ruthless and rude when passing people in a crowded area. They feel they will not get what they want while acting passively, so they must act aggressively. Additionally, I believe many of them did not care about beer as much as men, so they paid no heed to their own beer they were spilling nor others’. I think men were more civil in this pub because they know of their ability to be physically over-powering and it could send the wrong message such as bumping into a man for wanting to start a fight or hitting a girl hard on purpose to be rude. I think men also care about beer more than women, and therefore move more carefully. It is more socially acceptable for a woman to be pushy in this situation than a man, much like it is not so terrible for a woman to slap a man yet for a man to slap a woman is abominable. Furthermore, I believe women are more comfortable with physical contact which is why they touch men and women the same when passing; however, it is not acceptable for a men to be physical with another man thus they pass men and women differently.