by Kate Fox
There is also still an element of stigma attached to ‘organised matchmaking’. Singles’ events and dating agencies are regarded as somehow unnatural, too contrived, too artificial, lacking in the serendipity and spontaneity that ought to characterise romantic encounters. Many people are still ashamed to admit to ‘resorting’ to dating agencies or organised singles’ parties: they feel it is undignified, an admission of failure. The truth is, of course, that there is nothing at all unnatural or undignified about organised matchmaking. It is a practice that has been the norm throughout human history, and is still customary in most cultures around the world. But the English obsession with privacy makes us even more reluctant than other modern Western nations to accept the need for such practices.
Cyberspace – and the Liminality Effect
Online flirtation is a different matter. Cyberspace technically ‘fails’ the Alcohol element of the SAS Test, in that booze is not actually supplied, but cyber-flirts can easily provide their own. The internet scores increasingly highly on the Shared-interest factor – and, above all, very highly indeed on Sociability. In cyberspace, unlike most ‘real-space’ public environments in England, striking up conversations with complete strangers is normal behaviour, indeed actively encouraged. Shared interest can be ensured by joining a suitable community or forum on social media sites, or an online dating agency catering to a specific social or cultural group113 – or just choosing a prospective partner with similar interests from a more generic online dating-agency portfolio. The ‘liminality effect’ of cyberspace – the perception of the internet as somehow separate from the real world, as a place where normal social constraints and restrictions don’t apply – gives it disinhibiting powers equal to those of alcohol, making it an ideal environment for socially challenged English flirts. So, the internet passes the SAS test with flying colours, which is probably why three in five of us are now happy to flirt and meet our prospective partners online, and about 17 per cent of marriages now start this way (a figure that is bound to increase, and may well be out of date by the time you read this).
THE COURTESY-FLIRTING RULE
One of my English informants observed that: ‘You can have a sort of platonic flirting with people who are married or attached. In some situations it is almost expected – almost like you have to flirt to be polite.’
This comment refers to an unwritten rule prescribing a special form of ‘safe’, ‘recreational’ flirting that I call ‘courtesy flirting’. This is mainly practised by men, who engage in mild flirtation with women as a form of politeness. (Women do it to some extent as well, but tend to be more cautious, knowing that men are a bit inclined to misread the signals.) Courtesy flirting is common throughout Continental Europe as well as in England, but there are some subtle differences: English men tend more towards playful teasing, Continental Europeans towards gallant compliments. Both forms can be confusing for Americans, who often mistake courtesy flirting for the real thing.
THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE
Even when English males are genuinely interested in a female, they may often be reluctant to convey their interest in any obvious or straightforward fashion. We have already established that the English male is: (a) not an accomplished flirt, tending to be either awkward and tongue-tied or crass and boorish, and (b) somewhat uncomfortable with the whole concept of ‘dating’. Defining an encounter with a female as a ‘date’ is a bit too explicit, too official, too clear-cut and unambiguous – the sort of embarrassing ‘cards on the table’ declaration of intent that the naturally cautious, indirect English male prefers to avoid.
Even when full of Dutch courage, he is unlikely to use the word ‘date’ in his drunken amorous advances, generally opting for ‘shag’ (or some equivalent expression) instead. This may seem strange, as ‘shag’ (or ‘bonk’, ‘hook up’, ‘pull’, etc.) might be regarded as rather more explicit than ‘date’, but it makes sense in the context of beer-sodden English male logic, where asking a female to have sex with you (or just clumsily trying to kiss or grope her) is somehow less personal, intimate and embarrassing than inviting her out for coffee or dinner.
Ideally, the English male would rather not issue any definite invitation at all, sexual or social, preferring to achieve his goal through a series of subtle hints and oblique manoeuvres, often non-verbal and either so understated as to be almost undetectable or so sexually (but not romantically) explicit that they can easily be dismissed as a meaningless drunken mistake or joke if they backfire. This ‘uncertainty principle’ has a number of advantages: the English male is not required to exhibit any emotions; he avoids entangling himself too soon in anything that could possibly be described as a ‘relationship’ (a term he detests even more than ‘date’); he does not have to do or say anything ‘soppy’, so he maintains his masculine dignity; and, above all, by never making any direct, unequivocal, verbal request, he avoids the humiliation of a direct, unequivocal, verbal rejection. Somehow, being shoved away or even slapped during a vague beery lunge at a female is regarded as less humiliating than having one’s invitation to coffee politely turned down. (It’s all about the post-mortem with one’s mates the next day, where ‘I tried to get off with her but she wasn’t having any’ at least sounds cocky and laddish, whereas ‘I asked her out for coffee but she said no’ just sounds pathetic.)
English females are accustomed to this rather hazy, ambivalent form of courtship – although even we sometimes find it hard to read the signals accurately, and may spend inordinate amounts of time discussing the possible ‘meaning’ of some obscure hint or ambiguous gesture with our female friends. The uncertainty principle has its advantages for English females as well: although less emotionally guarded than our menfolk, we are easily embarrassed, and prefer to avoid precipitate declarations of amorous attraction. The uncertainty principle allows us time to gauge the suitability of a prospective mate before expressing any interest in him, and we can ‘reject’ unwanted suitors without having to tell them out loud that we are not interested.
Foreign females, however, tend to be confused or even seriously irritated by the elusive, uncertain nature of English courtship practices. My non-English female friends and informants constantly complain about English men, whose protean behaviour they attribute to shyness, arrogance or repressed homosexuality, depending on their degree of exasperation. What they fail to understand is that English courtship is essentially an elaborate face-saving game, in which the primary object is not so much to find a sexual partner as to avoid offence and embarrassment.
The offence-avoidance element of this game is yet another example of English ‘negative politeness’ – politeness that addresses other people’s need not to be intruded or imposed upon, as opposed to ‘positive politeness’, which is concerned with their need for inclusion and approval. Many of the seemingly bizarre courtship practices of English males – the wariness, ambiguity and inhibitions that foreign females complain about – are characteristic features of ‘negative politeness’. The embarrassment-avoidance aspect of our courtship game may seem rather more selfish, but it is also to some extent a matter of courtesy. The uncertainty principle, whereby neither attraction nor rejection is ever made verbally explicit, and advances and retreats are a matter of vague hints rather than direct invitations and refusals, allows both parties to save face. The courtship game, like other sports, is governed by the fair-play principle.
THE RULES OF BANTER
In most other cultures, flirtation and courtship involve exchanges of compliments: among the English, you are more likely to hear exchanges of insults. Well, mock-insults, to be precise. ‘Banter’, we call it, and it is one of our most popular forms of verbal interaction generally (on a par with moaning), as well as our main flirting method. The key ingredients of flirtatious banter are all very English: humour, particularly irony; wordplay; argument; cynicism; mock-aggression; teasing; indirectness – all our favourite things. And banter specifically excludes all the things we don’t like and that m
ake us uncomfortable: emotion, soppiness, earnestness and clarity.
The rules of flirtatious banter allow courting couples to communicate their feelings for each other without ever saying what they really mean, which would be embarrassing. In fact, the banter rules require them to say the opposite of what they mean – something at which the English excel. Here is a verbatim extract from a typical flirtatious encounter, recorded on a bus, between two teenagers. The exchange was conducted in full view and hearing of a group of their friends.
‘You gotta licence for that shirt? Or are you wearing it for a bet?’
‘Huh! Look who’s talking – I can see your knickers, you slag!’
‘It’s a thong, you nerd – not that you’d know the difference. And that’s the closest you’ll ever get to it.’
‘Who says I’d want to? What makes you think I fancy you? You’re such a slag!’
‘Better than being a sad geek!’
‘Bitch!’
‘Geek!’
‘Sla— Oh, that’s my stop – you coming out later?’
‘Yeah – come round about eight.’
‘Right.’
“Bye.’
From the conversation among their friends afterwards, it was clear that this pair had been attracted to each other for some time, had just started ‘sort of going out’ together (in that rather vague, non-dating way the English do these things), and were expected to become ‘an item’ in the near future. Even if I had not heard this subsequent discussion, I would have recognised the exchange of insults as a typical flirtation – perhaps not the wittiest or most articulate flirtatious banter I’ve come across, but a normal, unremarkable, everyday English courtship sequence. I only recorded it in my notebook because I happened to be doing a study on flirting at the time, and was collecting examples of real-life chat-up routines.
I also noted that English teenagers sometimes conduct a special form of ‘group courtship’, in which a small group of males will exchange banter – consisting mainly of sexually charged insults – with a small group of females. This group-courtship banter is most common among working-class youth, among whom I have even seen male and female groups hurling flirtatious abuse at each other from opposite sides of a street. English teens and twenty somethings can also be seen indulging in this peculiar form of collective courtship at holiday resorts abroad, where bemused local inhabitants must wonder how such raucous taunting and heckling can possibly be a prelude to love and marriage. (Although I can confirm that it is, I have some sneaking admiration for shrewd local males in Spanish and Greek holiday resorts, who rightly suspect that young English females might be susceptible to more conventionally flattering approaches, and often succeed in poaching them from their loutish English suitors.)
Among older adults, I found that flirtatious banter is less overtly abusive than in these teenage examples, but that the same basic rules of irony, teasing, mock-insults and so on still apply. English females of all ages might very well prefer a more chivalrous, less perversely oblique form of courtship – but the banter rules, like the uncertainty principle, are tuned more to the sensibilities of the emotionally constipated and socially challenged English male than to those of his somewhat less inhibited and more socially skilled female counterpart. We females are, however, accustomed to complying with these rules, and generally do so unconsciously. We know that arguing is the English male’s primary means of bonding with other males, and that banter is thus a form of intimacy with which he is familiar and comfortable. We know that when a man persistently taunts and teases us, it usually means he likes us, and that if the sentiment is reciprocated, taunting and teasing back is the best way to express this.
As with the uncertainty principle, foreign females do not have this instinctive, in-built understanding of English male peculiarities, and so tend to be baffled and sometimes offended by the banter rules. I find myself having to explain to them that ‘silly cow’ really can be a term of endearment, and ‘You’re just not my type’, uttered in the right tone and in the context of banter, can be tantamount to a proposal of marriage. I’m not saying that English men never pay straightforward compliments or formally ask women out on dates. They often do both of these things, albeit rather awkwardly, and they even propose marriage; it’s just that if they can possibly find a more vague or circuitous way of achieving the same end, they will.
MALE-BONDING RULES – AND THE GIRL-WATCHING RITUAL
The English male may not be an accomplished flirt, or adept at the finer points of pair bonding, but when it comes to bonding with other males, he’s in his element. I’m not talking about homosexuality, repressed or otherwise, but about the universal human practice of male bonding, of men forming close friendships and alliances with other men. Every known human society has some form of male-bonding practices, usually including clubs, organisations or institutions (such as the London ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ for which the English are famous), or at least special rituals, from which women are excluded.
It has been said that men’s need for such bonding is as strong as their need for sex with women. In the average Englishman’s case, it may be stronger. There is nothing wrong with the heterosexual English male’s sex-drive, but he does seem to show a marked preference for the company of other men. This is not about the alleged closet homosexuality of English males: if anything, gay Englishmen tend to be more at ease in female company, and to enjoy it more. But it must be said that many of the English man’s male-bonding rituals appear to be devoted to proving his masculinity and heterosexuality.
Foremost among these is the ‘girl-watching’ ritual – the English version of that time-honoured and probably universal male pastime of exchanging comments on the physical attributes of passing females. You can – if you are interested in such things – watch variations on this ritual in pretty much any pub, bar, café, night-club or street-corner on the planet. The English variant is, as you might by now expect, conducted in code. Very few of the set phrases used are intelligible without some interpretation. The code is not, however, difficult to decipher, and most of the stock phrases fall into one of two simple categories: approval (that female is attractive) and disapproval (that female is not attractive).
The most quintessentially and convolutedly English of these stock girl-watching remarks is my favourite: ‘Don’t fancy yours much!’ This is a standard comment on any pair of females, one of whom the speaker considers to be less attractive than the other. As well as demonstrating that he can tell the difference (and has a healthy, red-blooded interest in attractive females), the speaker is ‘laying claim’ to the more desirable of the pair, by designating the less pretty one as ‘yours’. Although technically reserved for commenting on a pair of women, ‘Don’t fancy yours much!’ is often used to draw a male companion’s attention to the unattractiveness of any passing female, whether or not she is accompanied by a more fanciable alternative. On one occasion, in a pub in Birmingham, I recorded the following exchange:
MALE 1 (glancing up as a group of four women enters the pub): ‘Don’t fancy yours much!’
MALE 2 (turning to look at the women, then frowning in puzzlement): ‘Er, which?’
MALE 1 (laughing): ‘Don’t care, mate – take your pick: they’re all yours!’
MALE 2 laughs, but somewhat grudgingly, looking a bit put-out, as a point has been scored against him.
Another somewhat cryptic English girl-watching phrase, this time of the ‘approving’ variety, is ‘Not many of those to the pound!’ This comment refers to the size of the observed female’s breasts, implying that they are rather larger than average. The ‘pound’ means a pound in weight, not in sterling – so the phrase literally means that you would not get many of those breasts balanced like fruit on a grocer’s weighing-scale against a pound weight. In fact it is an understatement, as large breasts would probably each weigh more than a pound, but let’s not get too technical. In any case, it is a favourable judgement: large breasts are officially A Good Thing amo
ng English males; even those who secretly prefer small ones usually feel obliged to express approval. The ‘Not many of those to the pound!’ comment is often accompanied by a gesture suggesting the weighing of heavy objects in the hands: the hands are held out just in front of the chest – with palms upturned and fingers slightly curled in – then bounced up and down. Here is another overheard exchange, this time from a pub in London. It sounds like a comedy sketch, but I swear it is real:
MALE 1 (commenting on a very well-endowed nearby female): ‘Cor! Not many of those to the pound, eh?’
MALE 2: ‘Sssh! You can’t say that any more, mate. ’Snot allowed any more.’
MALE 1: ‘What? Don’t give me that PC feminist crap! I can talk about a girl’s tits if I like!’
MALE 2: ‘Nah – it’s not the feminists’ll get you, it’s the Weights and Measures lot. We can’t use pounds any more, it’s all metric now. You gotta say “kilos”!’
From his self-satisfied expression, I suspect that Male 2 rather fancies himself as a comedian, and had been waiting for an opportunity to use this gag, which he spoilt somewhat by laughing uproariously at his own wit, and labouring the point with: ‘Heh heh – new regulation from Brussels, right? We gotta say, “Not many of those to the kilo!” Geddit? Kilo!’
‘I would!’ is a rather more obvious generic expression of approval, the message being that the speaker would be willing to have sex with the observed female. ‘Definitely a ten-pinter!’ is a derogatory remark, meaning that the speaker would have to consume ten pints of beer – that is, be very drunk – even to consider having sexual relations with the female in question. When you overhear a pair or group of English men saying ‘six’, ‘four’, ‘two’, ‘seven’ and so on, while surreptitiously scrutinising nearby or passing females, they may not be awarding the women ‘marks out of ten’, but referring to the number of pints they would have to drink in order to contemplate having sex with them. The fact that none of the women would be likely to give these self-appointed beauty-contest judges a second glance is immaterial. The girl-watching ritual is a display of masculine bravado, performed entirely for the benefit of male companions. By reciting the stock phrases, participants in this ritual affirm their status as macho, active heterosexuals. By tacit agreement, the assumption that they are in a position to pick and choose among the observed females is never questioned – and conspiring to promote this collective delusion reinforces the social bonds between the girl-watchers.