What was socially acceptable when you we're young, but now it's not.

I grew up in an era when smoking was ubiquitous and socially acceptable, with cigarettes prominently featured in advertisements, movies, and even hospitals. I even remember crowded restaurants filled with smoke and airplanes designated "smoking" and "non-smoking" sections near the end of the full on "No Smoking Everywhere" ban took effect

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FreddieUK · 70-79, M

I remember eating in a pub/ restaurant the week before the smoking ban came in. I couldn't wait for the opportunity to taste my food without the accompaniment of the blue death floating around me. Went back a week later and the place was only half full. However, within a month or so, it was not just business as usual, he place was difficult to get into because of the numbers who are pleased to come out and eat in clean air.

It was expected that I would hold the door open for women, give my seat up on the bus for old people and at the same time, socially acceptable to make sexist jokes about wives and girlfriends in mixed company. It was socially acceptable for any adult to engage in a conversation with a child without suspicion of ulterior, predatory motives. Each of us will have our own views on which of those socially accepted behaviours we are better rid of.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@FreddieUK I recall a somewhat similar conversation, in a mixed group.

At the time it was becoming unacceptable for solo male motorists to stop to offer assistance to lone women drivers whose cars had broken down. More accurately, becoming dangerous to do so. All we men present agreed we would somehow fail to spot the stranded driver, and the women in the group did sympathise with us.

I think a lot of this was being stepped up partly by the tiny number of serious attacks that do happen; but also by certain politicians and others, notably Harriet Harman (MP, and married) and her pal Roz Hepplewhite. Hepplewhite came over as a very cold-hearted, arch bureaucrat socially unfit to run the non-political Child Support Agency she was paid to oversee. These two women helped foment a widespread myth that all men are dangerous to all women and children. Never the other way round.

gandalf1957 · 61-69, M

@ArishMell yes i remember talking to someone at that time, now in his mid 80s, he told me whereas once he would have stopped to help a stranded woman driver now he would drive on until he could find a convenient parking place and then call the police by mobile to say he had passed a stranded woman driver at "X". Of course the police might then take 2 hours or so to go and investigate .....