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It was this aspect of this social situation that I experienced when I visited the carriage roads in
Hyde Park [a female social re-searcher states]. The deserted appearance of the footpaths and the
apparent purposefulness of any woman who did walk along them
((footnote))
65. Edgerton and Sabagh, op. cit., p. 267.
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were not only sufficient to announce my purpose to the public, they also forced upon me the
realization that this area was reserved for prostitutes  it was a place set aside for them and
would lend its colouring to anyone who chose to enter it . . 66
This partitioning of the individual's world into forbidden, civil, and back places establishes the
going price for revealing or concealing and the significance of being known about or not known
about, whatever his choice of information strategies.
Just as the individual's world is divided up spatially by his social identity, so also is it divided
up by his personal identity. There are places where, as is said, he is known personally : either
some of those present are likely to know him personally or the individual in charge of the area
(hostess, maitre de, bartender, and the like) knows him personally, in either case assuring that his
having been present there will be demonstrable later. Secondly, there are places where he can
expect with some confidence not to `bump into' anyone who knows him personally, and where
(barring the special contingencies faced by the famed and ill-famed, whom many persons know
of without knowing personally) he can expect to remain anonymous, eventful to no one. Whether
or not it is embarrassing to his personal identity to be in a place where, incidentally, he is known
personally will vary of course with the circumstances, especially with the question of whom he is
`with'.
Given that the individual's spatial world will be divided into different regions according to the
contingencies em-bedded in them for the management of social and personal identity, one can go
on to consider some of the problems and consequences of passing. This consideration will partly
over-lap with folk wisdom; cautionary tales concerning the
((footnote))
66. Rolph, Women of the Streets, op. cit., pp. 56-57.
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contingencies of passing form part of the morality we employ to keep people in their places.
He who passes finds unanticipated needs to disclose dis-crediting information about himself,
as when a wife of a mental patient tries to collect her husband's unemployment insurance or a
`married' homosexual tries to insure his house and finds he must try to explain his peculiar
choice of beneficiary.67 He also suffers from `in-deeper-ism', that is, pressure to elaborate a lie
further and further to prevent a given disclosure.88 His adaptive techniques can themselves give
rise to hurt feelings and misunderstandings on the part of others.89 His effort to conceal
incapacities may cause him to display other ones to give the appearance of doing so :
slovenliness, as when a near-blind person, affecting to see, trips over a stool, or spills drink down
his shirt; inattentiveness, stubbornness, woodenness, or distance, as when a hard of hearing
person fails to respond to a remark proffered him by someone ignorant of his shortcoming;
sleepiness, as when a teacher perceives a student's petit mal epilepsy seizure as momentary
daydreaming;70 drunkenness, as when a man with cerebral palsy finds that his gait is always
being misinterpreted.71 Further, he who passes leaves himself open to learning what others
`really' think of persons of his kind, both when they do not know they are dealing with someone
of his kind and when they start out not knowing but learn part way through the encounter and
sharply veer
((footnote))
67.Suggested by Evelyn Hooker in conversation.
68.In regard to concealing mental hospital commitment of spouse, see Yarrow, Clausen and
Robbins, op. cit., p. 42.
6g. On the deaf being inadvertently gauche and snobbish, see R. G. Barker et al., Adjustment
to Physical Handicap and Illness, New York, Social Science Research Council Bulletin No. 55,
revised, 1953, pp. 193-4.
70.S. Livingston, Living With Epileptic Seizures, Springfield, Charles C. Thomas, 1963, p.
32.
71.Henrich and Kriegel, op. cit., p. lot; see also p. 157.
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to another course. He finds himself not knowing how far information about himself has gone,
this being a problem whenever his boss or schoolteacher is dutifully informed of his stigma, but
others are not. As suggested, he can become subject to blackmail of various kinds by persons
who know of his secret and do not have good reason for keeping quiet about it.
He who passes can also suffer the classic and central experience of exposure during face-to-
face interaction, betrayed by the very weakness he is trying to hide, by the others present, or by
impersonal circumstances. The situation of the stutterer is an example :
We who stutter speak only when we must. We hide our defect, often so successfully that our
intimates are surprised when in an unguarded moment, a word suddenly runs away with our
tongues and we blurt and blat and grimace and choke until finally the spasm is over and we
open our eyes to view the wreckage."
The epileptic subject to grand mal seizures provides a more extreme case; he may regain
consciousness to find that he has been lying on a public street, incontinent, moaning, and
jerking convulsively  a discrediting of sanity that is eased only slightly by his not being
conscious during some of the episode.73 I might add that the lore of every stigmatized
grouping seems to have its own battery of cautionary tales of embarrassing exposure, and that
most members seem able to provide examples from their own experiences.
Finally, he who passes can find himself called to a show-down by persons who have now
learned of his secret and are about to confront him with his having been false. This
((footnote))
72.C. van Riper, Do You Stutter?, New York, Harper & Row, 1939, p. 6o1, in von Hentig,
op. cit., p. o.
73.Livingston, op. cit., pp. 3o if.
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possibility can even be formally instituted, as in mental health hearings and the following :
Doreen, a Mayfair girl, says that court appearances are `about the worst part of it [i.e.
prostitution]. You go in through that door and everyone's waiting for' you and looking at you. I
keep my head down and never lookIon either side. Then they say those awful words: "Being a
common prostitute . . ." and you feel awful, all the time not knowing who's watching you at the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]