Challenging Male Restroom Etiquette Essay

The folkway I chose to focus on is regarding restroom etiquette for men. According to the unwritten laws that every man knows, under no circumstance do you use the urinal directly next to another person. When entering a bathroom, the rules state that the gentleman should choose the urinal farthest away from any other man and at very least leave a one urinal buffer between them. It is very simple, if there is no option but to break the buffer zone, you should wait. This folkway, in essence, urges men to avoid using the facilities next to each other at all costs. In efforts to study this phenomenon, I intentionally went against it. In order to observe mens reactions, I went to different locations on campus that were home to urinals and purposefully chose the incorrect one. I found multiple restrooms which had numerous urinals, waited until someone chose a space to occupy, and proceeded to use the one directly next to him. Initially this breach produced minimal results and so I took it a step further I began starting up a conversation with the neighbor. Prior to adding the conversational aspect however, I made the prediction that the targeted man would react much more drastically and become observably more uncomfortable.Being a man myself I tend to abide by the rules set forth by this folkway so as a result intentionally breaking it came very unnatural to me. In the beginning trials of the experiment I found myself feeling awkward and very uncomfortable as all my life I have done my best to avoid the very situation that I now aimed to put myself into. Acting in a deviant manner started out being difficult and troublesome for me but as I performed more trials it started becoming easier and I started to feel more at ease. Conversely, as the actions became more natural for me, the subjects tended to show increased levels of awkwardness. As...

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