Why do people do this and when did it become acceptable?

[PrayforMallory]

Casual spitting has never been acceptable among well-mannered people in the civilized nations, but it is true that there has been a recent dearth of both well-mannered people and civilization generally. I advise that you keep better company, avoiding those places with a reputation for salivary flights, lest someone mistake you as a woman of tragic circumstances.

So far I've seen it in just about everywhere - from the parking lot of the upscale grocery store (Whole Foods) that I go to occasionally to the people walking down the street in my neighbourhood (which isn't super rich but is certainly solidly middle to upper middle class).

None of the people I have seen doing it are people I know.  Nor am I hanging out in areas of ill-repute.  These are normal middle class and upper middle class areas - not XXXX bars.

Dang. I didn't know you were gonna get all bourgy with this thread.
The southern bourgy folks are just as rednecky as the poor. They just have more money to invest in jet skis and trips to Destin. I'm sure the mayor of my hometown spits everywhere.

Pardon me?  What?  Can you repeat this in something resembling plain English?  I am clearly missing something very basic but I have no idea what "bourgy" means.

Oh wait - Urban dictionary to the rescue.  Apparently "bourgy" is the lazy man's version of the Marxist bourgeoisie.  It would seem that this is supposed to be insulting.  

Term used to describe someone of lower class origins who shuns his/her background as they ascend the class structure. The term originates from the Marxist word “Bourgeoisie”, which was a term used to define the minority upper-class that controlled pre-Soviet Russia.

Wow.  I am so insulted.  I just don't know what to do.  {Read the previous with as much sarcasm as you can possibly muster}

I was simply raised by a police officer in a time when one could actually be arrested for spitting in public - thus raised to believe that spitting in public was socially unacceptable, rude and rather disgusting.

Further as a former Medical Technologist who worked in microbiology and hematology I know just how unsanitary it is.  Which makes it exceptionally gross.

Aw come on. I was just playing around, you don't have to get all Aunt Bee on me.

[PrayforMallory]

I am a man.  I have never understand casual spitting.  I wonder if it is a habit like bitting your nails or cracking your knuckles.  Looks like the poster's experience with the man who almost spit on her shows that his lack of respect in general reaches way beyond spitting.

I'm sure it does.

The situation ought to not be shocking. It's just a bunch of rednecks standing around talking about womens' body parts and spitting. Pretty much par for the course in some regions.

[SouthernCatholic]

Aw come on. I was just playing around, you don't have to get all Aunt Bee on me.

Okay - try to remember that you're talking to someone who stopped using and keeping up with modern slang back when the word "grody" and the phrase "gag me with a spoon" were still in common daily usage.  What in the heck is that supposed to mean?

[SouthernCatholic]

I'm sure it does.

The situation ought to not be shocking. It's just a bunch of rednecks standing around talking about womens' body parts and spitting. Pretty much par for the course in some regions.

Is that supposed to make such behaviour acceptable?

[PrayforMallory]

Aw come on. I was just playing around, you don't have to get all Aunt Bee on me.

Okay - try to remember that you're talking to someone who stopped using and keeping up with modern slang back when the word "grody" and the phrase "gag me with a spoon" were still in common daily usage.  What in the heck is that supposed to mean?

Haha well,  keep in mind I'm almost never serious outside of the Catholicism threads.

No offense intended to you.

[PrayforMallory]

I'm sure it does.

The situation ought to not be shocking. It's just a bunch of rednecks standing around talking about womens' body parts and spitting. Pretty much par for the course in some regions.

Is that supposed to make such behaviour acceptable?

No it isn't acceptable. It's disgusting and I understand your anger at nearly being spit on. I agree with you in all seriousness. To me though, considering the massive epidemics of child abuse and crystal methamphetamine addiction down there, I wouldn't personally be too shocked by a XXXX spitting. Half-naked children being devoured by loose pit bulls, loaded guns sitting around on peoples' night stands, etc. have desensitized me to spitting, I guess. Average life expectancy being like 55 for men in some of those areas. Some of the parts I'm familiar with in Mississippi were like third world countries compared to northern cities.

Speaking of outrageous XXXX stories, have you ever been to the Memphis Zoo? One time I went and this guy with an Earnhardt shirt on was standing outside the tiger cage, cussing this tiger. He had the idea in his mind that the tiger had challenged his manhood and he started climbing up the bars, looking to get in the cage and fight a fully-grown male tiger. His girlfriend tried to call him down, but he said, "If they don't want me to kick this thing's *** they are going to have to throw my *** out of here." He almost made it in the cage before the police arrested him.
I tell that story as a joke but in all seriousness, he would have been eaten by that tiger.

[Credo]

President Geo. Washington's ninth Rule of Civility:

Spit not in the Fire, nor Stoop low before it neither Put your Hands into the Flames to warm them, nor Set your Feet upon the Fire especially if there be meat before it.

Source: http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/manners/rules2.cfm 

[ResiduumRevertetur]

I've noticed recently a lot of people (predominantly men) spitting. On the grass, in parking lots, on sidewalks, out of the windows of moving cars ...

Why do they do that? And when did it become acceptable in social settings to just casually spit in public?

The last time it happened I narrowly missed having someone's spit landing on my shoes. So I said, "Excuse me," rather loudly. The man said, "What's your problem?" So I told him that when he spit, without looking where he was spitting he nearly spit on me. His response? "Sounds like a personal problem. Move faster next time."

When did this become normal/typical/usual behaviour?

Just out of curiosity, was this prompted by my post?



I'm from Mississippi. I was raised by spitters. It never really caught on with me. I was just joking about spitting everywhere in the previous thread.

I don't know what the attraction to spitting is.

It's kinda awesome, though. I wish I was still in touch with my roots enough to be spitting everywhere, standin on a porch underneath a Confederate flag with the portrait of Bosephus on it, next to a fleet of ruined 20 year-old sportscars, Free Bird cranked on the radio, a la Jesco White.

Spitting is a pretty nasty habit. But if you know who Bocephus is, and Free Bird is anywhere to be heard, I guess I could overlook it.

[StrictCatholicGirl]

I've only seen boys and teens spitting. Never grown men..oh, except for professional baseball players.
 
- Lisa

[Robb]

People spit because they have a lot of phlegm in their throats that needs to come out.  I am a confessed habitual spitter who can be seen hacking up my mucus just about everywhere imaginable.  I would prefer to do this rather then swallow it and have the stuff get down into my lungs and cause infection.  Spitting is one of the oldest of human traits and will be around for a long, long time.

Bob