Smoking (and commenting on strangers choices)?

[SwimmerGirl40]

I did a charity walk up Helvellyn at the weekend. I was standing with the group before we started and one of the group moved about 10 metres away and started smoking a cigarette. I don’t know him too well, he’s a friend of my friends husband, I know he plays rugby and is healthy looking. A woman walked past and shouted, in a very posh voice, “all this fresh air and you’re SMOKING?”. She almost spat the words out. I was quite taken aback, is it normal to walk past a complete stranger and try to publicly humiliate them for their lifestyle choices?

I’m not a smoker now, I quit about 15 years ago. I know attitudes to smoking have hardened in the last 15 years but I was still shocked that she felt that she could speak to him like that.

I don’t like smoking but agree she shouldn’t have said anything. Smoking outside isn’t illegal, it’s arguably anti-social but he’s still allowed to do it, his choice.

I would have been really ashamed to be part of a group who thought it was ok to start a pile on of a lone woman on the back of one comment. Aside from just being a woman who enjoys her own company (the horror!) she could also have been recently bereaved or just escaped a horrible relationship or maybe just lonely and struggles socially. To use that to pick on her for making one passive-aggressive comment about smoking is awful, bullying behaviour.

@Deuxcaggages

An example of a typo would be when you used where, rather than were, in your 12:30 comment.

Accusing my (non existent) DH and his friends (who weren’t even present) of being unpleasant is just lying, in a vain attempt to create a foundation for your argument.

Pumper equally, how would she know that the man hadn't recently suffered something terrible? Goes both ways, this over reaching and over analysis. Nobody would have said anything if she hadn't been so rude and judgemental.

I agree Pumperthepumper.

But what we have to understand is that according to the OP a very posh woman walked passed someone and made an unwarranted and rude comment about smoking to a man.
The general consensus over the first few pages was that she was rude and out of order but it did not justify the pack attack from this group of men.
By page 3 the thread developed is she was posh, both confrontational and aggressive and walked out of her way to approach the man to make this comment.
Then later, she probably only made the comment in the first place to get attention (but of course those of us who are pointing out that comments about the woman being alone wouldn t be directed at men are the sexist ones now).

It's a textbook 'I want everyone to agree with me so I'll add bits in as I go'.

I would feel thoroughly ashamed if I was out with a group of friends (whom so ever they belong to) and they started verbally attacking a lone female and I stood back and did nothing.
The op would appear to feel the same, but in this instance she is trying to tackle the dissonance by starting a thread on MN and exaggerating the lone women's behaviour when challenged, presumably to justify her own passivity in the situation.
Hope that helps OP.

What the fuck has her speaking in a POSH VOICE got to do with anything

My guess would be that we were all supposed to think ‘Stuck-up cow, thinks she’s better or more important than everyone else; good on him for calling her out on it’. When a significant number of posters actually said ‘Yes, she shouldn’t have said anything, but your absolutely-not-a-friend-who-you-barely-know and his mates were just as bad, if not worse’, the woman suddenly morphs into the lovechild of Bluto from Popeye and Big Mo of Eastenders, marching up to Mr Rugby - now recast as a cowering seven-stone weakling - with her rolling pin, screeching ‘Put yer fackin’ faaag aht or I’ll ‘ave yer!’

Pumper. I appear to have cross posted my first sentence with you.

I agree the woman should keep her opinions to herself, but the op is trying to justify the pile on by group of men, by making the behaviour out to be progressively worse with each challenge to her commentary.

StillCoughingandLaughing
Quite.
I'm not sure the general consensus of 'she was rude and out of order but the behaviour of the group of men was nasty and uncalled for' was the desired outcome of this thread.

Though the more the story was embellished, the more we got the 'stupid woman shouldn't have started something if she can't handle being called out on it / as if some people think people should be able to say what they like because they're a woman' responses.

Smoking threads always end up ridiculous on mn.
She was rude, they weren't rude in telling her to wind her neck in but the personal digs were completely out of order.

@Deuxcaggages

You do have a fantastic imagination.

I was there, I saw how confrontational and aggressive she was to someone who was just standing there smoking as unobtrusively as he could. You weren’t there yet you’ve imagined all sorts of things that didn’t happen.

Pumper equally, how would she know that the man hadn't recently suffered something terrible?

So assuming they were both bereaved, do you think one woman saying ‘all this fresh air and you’re SMOKING?’ has the same potential to hurt as a group of men saying ‘any wonder you’re alone’?

As a smoker of 22 years I would have the odd person say "stunts your growth that" type stuff and I just laughed it off. I'd be absolutely horrified if my friends went and followed the person to have a go like that. I'm not friends with arseholes though.

I quit two years ago due to a non smoking related health condition. Dh still smokes and is also a "big rugby type" he it his friends don't act this way either. Read your posts out to him and he said they sound like a bunch of bullies, and pointed out that if she went off track to approach the smoker then does that mean his mates went off track to go have a go at her? Or did they stand and watch and wait for her to get back on track to have a go?

Yes she was rude, but the big bloke and his mates massively over reacted and come off worse. A woman being a bit rude to one man doesn't make their actions ok. It all sound like "she was asking for it" type attitude.

I'm an ex smoker now. (Thank you Alan Carr) Was diagnosed with a chronic lung condition (not caused by smoking btw) and in the three years since I've quit I've breathed in someone else's smoke outdoors where I've not been able to avoid it (outside pub door ways type and I'd have to walk in traffic to avoid) and I've had a coughing fit bringing up blood as I walk past and called "uppity" and laughed at. They probably think my coughing was fake and a judgement and that I deserved it too.

@pumperthepumper

We don’t know if either or both of them are recently bereaved. There is a lot of exaggeration and extrapolation going on in this thread.

We don’t know if either or both of them are recently bereaved. There is a lot of exaggeration and extrapolation going on in this thread.

Exactly, we don’t know. But we can surely agree that one passive-aggressive comment about smoking from one woman, by herself, is not the same and does not warrant, a group of men then approaching her and saying ‘any wonder you’re alone’. You can’t possibly think it does.

Q

@pumperthepumper

It wasn’t passive-aggressive it was aggressive.

I said in my first posts that the men’s comments were nasty, however you are trying to minimise the woman’s actions and exaggerate the men’s actions to suit your argument.

I said in my first posts that the men’s comments were nasty, however you are trying to minimise the woman’s actions and exaggerate the men’s actions to suit your argument.

I’m responding to the post you’ve written. I don’t understand how what she said was aggressive, could you explain that a bit more? Did she swear? Or get right in his face? Or kick something? Or jab angrily at him?

The men over-reacted, and exhibited bullying, pack-mentality behaviour against one loan woman. Explain to me how that’s a reasonable response.

So assuming they were both bereaved, do you think one woman saying ‘all this fresh air and you’re SMOKING?’ has the same potential to hurt as a group of men saying ‘any wonder you’re alone’?

Would depend on a thousand different factors really, wouldn't it?

She's claimed to have done so in a very unpleasant manner. I already said the comments were clearly mean, but it all comes back to the same damn thing: nobody would have said anything if she hadn't chosen to start being rude to a total stranger for no reason.

Did I imagine the bit where a group of men disproportionately started verbally attacking a lone women in response to ‘all this fresh air and you’re SMOKING’ comment ?
There are so many twists and turns in this tale it’s hard to keep up.

Would depend on a thousand different factors really, wouldn't it?

Would it? Name ten of them. Ten examples of one unreasonable comment by a woman by herself having the potential to hurt the same as a group of men then picking on that lone woman and using her personal circumstance to deliberately upset her. Ten factors, out of the thousands you can think of.

I never once said anything about a 'group' in this context, just about the man she was rude to. The point obviously is that any made up or imagined trauma or special circumstances applied to her could in theory have equally been true of him, for all she knew. It's really not tricky. Perhaps we could stick to the reported facts instead of making stuff up.

I already said the comments were clearly mean, but it all comes back to the same damn thing: nobody would have said anything if she hadn't chosen to start being rude to a total stranger for no reason.

Oh god, actually, don’t bother replying to that last message. If you’re the kind of person who could stand by and watch a group of men be spiteful to a woman who was by herself and said one fairly innocuous, although unreasonable, comment and not say anything, and actually JUSTIFY why she deserved it then I pity you.

@Pumperthepumper

Passive aggressive behaviour is the AVOIDANCE of direct confrontation.

So, how is a woman suddenly stopping what she was doing (walking down a path) changing direction and walking towards a man (doing something that she disagrees with but is perfectly legal) and spitting out the words “all this fresh air and you’re smoking” in any way passive aggressive? She was directly confrontational, not passive aggressive.

why cant she say what she thinks. it was right for her to say something so she did.

She is right anyway why would anyone smoke so antisocial and bad for your health, no good reason to smoke. Perhaps it will shame them into giving up,