Depends on the norm. Some, like common courtesy, manners and respect, I try to adhere to strictly. Others, like the way people dress, music they listen to, who they hang out with, not so much.

(I was raised by a mother who was obsessed with appearing 'normal.' Her having me is proof that the universe has a sense of humor)

Dame, that's a pretty open-ended question, and it sounds like there's a story or two behind it. Can you supply some examples of what you're thinking about?

Okay, well, hmmm. A story. Partially it's in my mind because of the porno MeTa, but that's not really it. Mostly, it's that many many times in my life I've come across situations where people are like, "You should do X." And I'll say, "Well, I don't like X, so I'm going to do Y." And then some people say, "But X is the social norm. You have to do that way." And then I say, "Well, yeah, and I considered that, but still I like my way better and I know some people will think it's weird, but I like it." And then it goes, "But you can't. You *have* to do it the other way because that's what people decided." I think that's weird.

Does that help?

Yeah, I'd say that's just pushy behavior similar to the sort I engage in far too often.

Back in the day, my beautiful Barbie looking roommate went to this bar so often, that when she walked in, everyone would yell "NORM"!!!!! She was a social Norm. He he, I chuckle.

Seriously, I am all for flouting any given social norm if it is a well thought out decision. This sounds like what you are talking about.

People who act like none of the rules apply to them because they are so important or so special or so artistic or whatever? They can rankle.

Hmmm. I'm still not sure I get what you mean, Dame. I don't think I've ever had anyone say that to me, or at least not those words, so I'm having trouble coming up with an example that suits your story. But then I've always been pretty socially norm.

I think in very general terms it's good to have certain social norms, such as etiquette (which I've always had trouble spelling), but I also think things can be easily carried too far. Do you perhaps mean something along the lines of, say, the idea that it used to be considered "not the thing" for women to travel alone? There I would agree with you -- that was a wrongheaded "social norm."

This reminds me of the following:
ORGANIZER: Uh...o.k., you're checked in. Here's your AIDS ribbon.
KRAMER: Uh, no thanks.
ORGANIZER: You don't want to wear an AIDS ribbon?
KRAMER: No.
ORGANIZER: But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.
KRAMER: I have to?
ORGANIZER: Yes.
KRAMER: See, that's why I don't want to.
ORGANIZER: But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon!
KRAMER: You know what you are? You're a ribbon bully.

Mullacc, kinda like that.

Hm, JanetLand. Here is an example. I don't think is the best, but it works: When I was little, I wasn't really down with the idea that all adults deserved respect merely by virtue of being adults or teachers or whatever. (Yes, I was a holy terror.) There were adults I respected, but I respected them because I thought they deserved it. I especially didn't respect adults who thought kids should just shut up and do what they said. So I had many run-ins. And you know, no one could ever tell me why I should respect those adults other than "Kids should respect adults, so do it."

Now, if someone had said, "Well, you should at least pretend to respect them because then things will go easier," then it would have been fine. But it's just "because you should." And I find that still happens a lot, in spirit.

Oh, how funny you posted this today.

I was just thinking about this. Last night I was out with a (new) friend. She sneezed. I said, "Bless you." IMMEDIATE reaction like I had just insulted her deeply.

It's a group where that response is very much out of line. I have to constantly remind myself *not* to say bless you when someone sneezes (note: I'm an athiest, so are they.)

To me it's a minor social courtesy, no different from saying "Excuse me" when I burp. To them, it's a sign of being "programmed", of not thinking about what you're saying, etc. etc. V. big faux pas.

I can understand being offended by the religious aspect (although it's not like I'm trying to convert them or anything). But it made (is making) me feel crappy about a two-second interaction where I intended no disrespect.

Which is worse?

Have you considered saying, "You're soooo good-looking" when people sneeze?

I kid, but yeah I would bristle at someone getting bent out of shape like that Fuzzbean. Like dame, I think the only reason that some social norms should be followed is because they lubricate the dealings of life on occasion. If I feel disinclined, and willing to bear the burden, I don't bother with them. If I don't care, sure, I will appear to be one of them if it'll make it easier on me.

Plus it more fun to be subversive sometimes.

I think the social norms make things easier, and a lot of people don't ever stand back and think about them, so they seem "true". Then you have people who are all about resistance and refuse to fit into a particular social norm. I'm specifically thinking of a conversation today about a person who refuses to identify as male OR female because they don't feel that they fit as either, so would prefer that you alternate he/she pronouns when talking about them. I'm not saying that this person shouldn't, but that it really messes with people when you fuck with a norm like this. It causes a lot of confusion, because we suddenly don't know the social rules for this situation.

I think, with the porno AskMe, people are coming from places where the social norms are slightly different (OMFG vs. meh), so it's interesting to see them clash like that. We take them for granted a lot of the time, so it can be a bit of a jolt when other people have different norms.

Yeah, I get it now Dame, thanks. Sounds like we're all close to the same page.

I do remember now something close to a time when I was obliquely told I "should" do something, and that was when I didn't change my name after I got married. Nobody came right out and told me I "had" to, but I got a lot of questions like, "does your husband mind?" and "did you have to get permission [from the gov't I guess she meant] not to change your name?" and "how will people know you're married?" And then the insurance company made me send them proof of our marriage before they would allow him to be on my health insurance, proof they wouldn't have requested if we'd had the same last name. I didn't think it was all that odd not to change your name but apparently a number of people felt otherwise.

Interesting you mention the last name changing, JanetLand- that's always struck me as being one of the "norms" people try to force for reasons that don't make sense. Like that the "kids will be confused" if their parents have two different last names. WTF?

so would prefer that you alternate he/she pronouns when talking about them

Really? I think the he/she pronoun debate is interesting, though I've never heard this wrinkle before. It sorta makes my head hurt.

There's a continuum here. Without any social norms, we'd all be something like sociopaths, behaving at the whim of self-serving impulse all the time. But early in human history, that was found not to work, because most human needs are terribly hard to fill in isolation. So, in order to be part of a civil society with a structure capable of meeting our needs, we have developed arrays of social agreements on behavior, kind of like scripts for how the most common interactions and relationships are handled. Which we call culture.

Certainly people can and do deviate from cultural norms, sometimes willingly, sometimes not. When they do deviate, it requires the others around them to also depart from the script. That can make people feel uncomfortable, surprised, confused, maybe even judged or rejected, maybe even delighted or titllated. Reactions vary. Some handle it well, some poorly.

But in general, I wouldn't want to live in a world with no social norms. I appreciate courtesy, personal space, relationship structures, and all that. Having certain behaviors or roles largely 'settled' in society frees us to think about some other things.

I appreciate social norms for the reasons Miko outlined above, but I'm happy to deviate from them in general if asked. For example, I think if I met someone who wanted me to alternate he/she pronouns when talking about him/her, I would say, "Fine, be glad to, but you'll have to forgive me if I mess up and forget to from time to time, because I'm not used to it." The only thing that would be annoying is if he expected me to do that without telling me, and then got mad when I didn't, and then told me my ordinary use of pronouns was insulting to her.

There's a continuum here. Without any social norms, we'd all be something like sociopaths, behaving at the whim of self-serving impulse all the time.

See, I think that's not really the case. Or more to the point, a lot of social norms are just as cruel to people as other possible ways to do things. Sometimes worse.

I guess it's like Richat said

I think the only reason that some social norms should be followed is because they lubricate the dealings of life on occasion. If I feel disinclined, and willing to bear the burden, I don't bother with them.

Also, to call personal space into it is intersting, because, of course, for many people it isn't the norm.

Maybe because they have a lot invested in X? One often adopts a norm as a shortcut; unfortunately "shortcut" is antithetical to "periodically examining in detail and reassessing" because there are so many of them that it would take forever to do that. That's what makes it a shortcut. On preview, what Miko said. Whenever you deviate from the script, you are asking something of the person, cognitively. The further off the script you are for a given person, the more pronounced their reaction will likely be. Some people are exhilirated by the challenge; most are quite put off that you are actually making them think on their feet. Someone who is never on the script has to be locked away as insane or "sociopathic" (bad for society) because they ask everyone around them to be on, all the time (which is bad for society). Contrary to whatever conceit humans have concocted, we are animals and creatures of largely automatic behavior, just with proportionally large brains and well-developed vocal tracts.

Personal space just illustrates the continuum aspect of the whole thing further. It's a give and take, and you have to find out what a particular person's personal space is (for you; because everyone has their own 'rules' for who gets to come how close). So it's a negotiation, which may seem circuitous and slow initially, but over time and many interactions speeds up everyday life quite a bit. Can you imagine having to go through all the social aspects of puberty every time you met someone?

To this day, I still wear hats indoors because the best reason I've been given not to is "it's rude". As for sneezes, I say "Gezhundheit" which is just a wish of good health.

And where is this porno thread?

Regions, classes, age groups, families, subcultures of all kinds -- even the most iconoclastic and aggressively casual -- all have their own conventions. As Miko says, those conventions can be useful: they supply default behaviors so we can collaborate without constantly having to reinvent the protocol for every interaction.

Problems arise, as heatherann said, when conventions clash, and what's courteous or respectful or appropriate in your environment looks like apathy or hostility or meddling in somebody else's.

Plus there will always be times when the prevailing default is a lousy option, and you really do have to invent a protocol.

Oh, and dame? Everyone has some idea of personal space. Some people travel in enormous bubbles, others in shrink-wrap.

Personal space (proxemics) is one of those cultural values has been studied a lot by ethnologists and their ilk. You can even find tables of how far apart, on average, people in different nations will stand or sit from one another when uncrowded. (Americans are among the most distant cultures, having the a very large average personal space requirement)? Here's kind of a cool teaching web page that talks about that.

I really do appreciate the social utility of norms, which Richat, Eideteker, and Tangerine have all expressed really well. But just to go on record, dame, I don't believe in slavish devotion to them where they don't make sense. Some are simply archaic conventions. But in general, I think life can be rough on people, and when we all make a little effort to subsume some of our own will to the larger group, we can all be a bit happier.

Which is why when I go to an outdoor concert, I want to tackle and beat on people who stand in the front rows. If they would sit, so could the rest of us!

If you're sitting down, the concert is broken. I have a rather long story of someone who tried to get me thrown out of a concert for standing, while I was in the midst of a very emotional experience (my father and I's favorite band, right after his death) and my gf was able to explain the whole thing to the security guard (while the concert was blaring at 140dB all around us) and ended up getting us about 7 rows back from the stage. So suck it, sitters!

What's nice about society/humanity is that we're like a big distributed computing project. So we have people like dame who are very vocal about reevaluating archaic norms, and people who stick to them stubbornly. The people in the middle get to make up their own minds, and you get a continuum of behavior that itself is continuously shifting one way or another. It's overly simplistic, but it's one of the cool things I love about being alive. Because as good as it may feel to generalize that "people are crazy/stupid", the psychology of the mass can be an inspiring thing when an idea emerges in two or three heads and then spreads like wildfire to the public imagination. And yet, even more impressive is that other people will do the exact opposite, as antibodies against potentially bad/suicidal ideals. Which is why I defend to the death your right to disagree with me.

Rock shows should have no seating.

And... the older I get, the more important I think social norms are. The social contract is a very fragile thing already, as anyone who lives in a diverse community already knows.

When you break them, there should be a thought-out reason for doing so.

Yeah, you know, I'm talking about New England summer on the town green concerts. Not rock shows, where I agree everyone should be standing.-

Whoa, I see the porn thread now. This is why I always check MeTa first.

I think of norms as guidelines, not hard rules. I don't check porn at work because I respect the people I work with (also, I need the check.) I'm polite enough to keep people out of my hair. It doesn't mean I love them, or even like them. Hell, I'm polite to some people I fucking detest.

But if you try to press/peer-pressure me into doing something I'm just not going to do, fuck that.

"You aren't giving blood today? Why not? Everyone else is."

"I'm using it." - followed by a hard stare until the other party broke eye contact.

Just pick your battles.

I think that while reasons like "It's rude" may not be the best reasons for doing someting, "because everyone else does" is also a silly reason for not doing something. Rebellion for the sake of rebellion is no different, at heart, than mindless following.

We've been talking a lot about independence vs. interdependence in my yoga classes this week, and I loved what my teacher said today when she said that American ideas of independence remind her of a teenager rebelling, with any admonishments about the effect of that behavior on others considered to be threats or restrictions; adults realize that we're all connected, that we all affect each other, and see that interdependence as the basis for true joy, growth, and love.

It's funny, because I just went out to dinner tonight with my aunt, and I asked my aunt how long she had been married (she has an eleven year old and has been with the same man since college). She looked at me funny and said, "Well, we've been together for 20 years, we never bothered to get married." I said "You guys aren't married!!!?"

Then I had to backpedal and point out I wasn't really invested in her being married or not, it was just one of the things I'd always assumed. She said that some people give her a lot of grief about it, especially people she doesn't know too well. The weird thing is, out of my dad's side of the family, this is the case with three of my aunts and uncles. We always grew up calling my aunt's partner "uncle" and the same deal with the other two couples...it just strikes me as odd that I didn't find out about these things until recently. She explained that when we were kids no one figured we needed it explained to us.

funny how the first thing I thought about when I saw dame's comments was marriage - same for others, it would seem! I've been thinking about this lately, as various friends are marrying, including my best friend whose bridesmaid I am being tomorrow. I've started thinking that I would like to marry my boyfriend but that I wouldn't want an engagement ring (matching wedding bands for him and me yes; rock just for me, no). And I'm wondering how I can make myself fit into the social structure around me, which consists partly of several women who are very happy with their diamonds. It's confusing me a lot, because it's one thing to make up my own mind about what I want, and another to insert myself into a social structure in which others do differently, and I find I care about this more than I expected to before I started thinking about myself in the context of marriage.

Oh, and dame? Everyone has some idea of personal space. Some people travel in enormous bubbles, others in shrink-wrap.

I don't know if you'll see this, tangerine, but I would argue there is a preference for personal space that is so tiny it doesn't really count as space any longer. But I can see the other side of that. It was a comment that didn't say it very well.

But in general, I think life can be rough on people, and when we all make a little effort to subsume some of our own will to the larger group, we can all be a bit happier.

I suppose this is the big difference. I don't. I think that only works if you agree with the larger group on a signnificant number of things. And if you don't, then you're just making yourself miserable, because the things you prefer *won't* come up as the things people sublimate themselves for, you know?

People always choose which things they want to compromise on, and when we do, we choose our degree of either connectedness or isolation from the community we live in. I mean, we have a social norm that you wear clothing, even when it's really too hot for clothes. You can ignore that norm in daily public life, but if you do you'll be shunned (and probably arrested). If it's really really important to you to be naked, you become a member of a community that shares that norm and go to the nudie camp, because most other communities would isolate you for that behavior. Some people are really highly conforming, others are more iconoclastic. The further you go away from highly conforming, as a broad rule, the less reinforcement you get from the general community. (Celebrities may be a big exception to this).

The fundamental question is what balance you want to/are willing to strike between being an individual and being a community member. On some issues it might not matter to you that much. For instance, like altolinguistic, I don't care about diamond rings (jewelry-company manipulation), and I've never been the least bit interested in changing my name when I get married (holdover of patriarchy) - if that isolates me from some portion of the married community, I'm not worried about it. Some of our norms have value and build community by encouraging respect for others, others are survivals of culture past whose useful life is ending, and still others are the petty expectations of a rather bloated consumer culture. If asked about on my choices, I'd be happy to explain as respectfully as possible why I made them. It might or might not help people understand. And if more and more people do that then maybe over time the norms will change.

I'm more respectful of norms that build community as I get older. I'd say this is because I've learned about so many tough things that can befall people, and discovered exactly why and when it is that we need to rely on our communities. When you need to be part of a social structure, and it's not there because you haven't participated in it, the pain of life's difficulties is multiplied.

*flags miko's post as "I agree absolutely"*

The whole earning respect thing is something that I find interesting. Over the past decade or so, I've switched from "you must earn my respect" to "you must do something to lose my respect" as my default position when dealing with people I don't know. I think it's made me a very different person.

Yeah, I don't really trust "society" to help me out regardless. Groups of people just seem to tend towards cruel as far as I've seen: even most social norms are, in their own ways, facilitators of cruelty. So I guess there really isn't a motivation there to me.

I mean, and I hope this was always clear, I don't have a great urge to do X *just because* everyone does Y. But none of the motivations to sublimate are very convincing. I mean, when things go wrong, the people who are going to help me are going to be my family and friends. And they don't tend to be terribly attached to norms, you know?

the people who are going to help me are going to be my family and friends

I dig what you're saying, dame, and I don't disrespect your basic argument that norms are often BS. But you might be surprised on this point as life continues.

I haven't lived in the same state as my family for more than ten years. When my car breaks down, when I need fifty bucks right now, when I need a ride to the ER, when I need somebody to watch my cat so I can travel, family can't do it. My friends can and do, of course, but even friends aren't always enough.

So I've been consistently surprised by the helpfulness of the broader community when shit has really hit the fan in my life. When my dad was seriously ill several years ago, and my whole immediately family was basically living at the hospital for weeks, it wasn't always the people I thought of as 'closest' to me who were the most helpful. It was often people who were more casual friends, and just knew what needed to be done and were generous enough to do it. Those people cooked for us and drove us around and made phone calls for us - thank God. We couldn't handle it. In these situations you need people who are less emotionally tied up with what's going on and who can think and be calm. And we would never have asked because we didn't think they were 'close' enough - they offered. I was a waitress and student at the time, and my co-workers got together to cover all my shifts and called me and said not to worry about anything. People from the classes I was taking photocopied their notes for me and dropped them at my house. These weren't people I would have expected or even wanted to rely on; but because we shared communities, they did the part they could.

When my family's house burned down when I was eleven, we were left with just about no possessions. People showered us with all kinds of help (restaurant gift certificates, clothes, school supplies, etc.) until the place was rebuilt a couple months later. Nobody wants to be the needy one like that, but our family - small, scattered across the US, and not wealthy - could not have provided the degree of immediate support that our friends and neighbors could and did. Even the neighbors we didn't really like. As a result of the help we got at that time, my parents later started volunteering for the local First Aid squad. So what goes around comes around.

It's great if you have a personal network strong enough to sustain anything and give you everything you might need. If there's a big extended family and they live pretty close, maybe that's possible. But even then, I don't want to just be part of a circle of family and close friends; I also want to be part of a co-worker community, a town and city community, a local arts community, a professional commmunity, a music community, etc. etc. These are folks who might collaborate on projects with me, give me a job or a gig, be my rep on town council, introduce me to other important people, and so on. So it helps me to build bridges to people.

That has nothing to do with norms though. I'd help people I hated if their houses burned down, too. Only total psychos wouldn't help their co-workers, even if those co-workers were kinda weird and did things differently. That has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about. But then again, you think people are only not sociopaths because there are rules, so we clearly interpret things so differently that any agreement is impossible.