Access Information: Public Lies and Private Peril

Author(s): Carol Brooks Gardner

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Social Problems, Vol. 35, No. 4, Special Issue: Language, Interaction, and Social
Problems (Oct., 1988), pp. 384-397
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems
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Access Information: Public Lies and Private

Peril*
Carol Brooks Gardner, Indiana University,Indianapolis
Access-in Goffman's sense of opennessto and availabilityfor interaction-is an especiallysalient conceptfor
gender relations. Accessinformationis a relatedconceptdefinedas informationgiven in public that can be used
to locate an individual at somefuture time. The 25 women and men interviewedas part of this field study
reportedthat rules and practicesfor disclosingaccessinformationare notgender neutral amongstrangers. Women reportedconflictingpressureson them: theydesireto remainaccessibleto othersin the limitedways possible
to them, and they sometimeswant to sparkacquaintancewith men; but they will always want to remain crimeconsciousand not divulge a name or address to a potential criminal. These women also reportedthat such
pressureshavegiven rise to the developmentof presentationalstrategieswhen interactingwith strangemen. The
contingenciesand relativesuccessof these strategiesare examinedhere.

In this paper I draw on Goffman (1963) and my own fieldwork to propose the concept of
access information to help us understand the particular experience of women in public places.
Access information is information disclosed in public that can be used to locate an individual
at some future time. Knowledge of a person's home or place of work clearly can function as
access information, as can knowledge of one's full name, phone number, neighborhood, habitual routes, and hangouts. Access information between the acquainted is normally not
problematic, as such relationships presume willingness to present oneself as accessible. It is in
encounters between the unacquainted, usually in public, that such information can be
contested.
Although access information is pertinent to understanding encounters between a wide
variety of social categories, it is particularly relevant to understanding the experience of women in public because rules for disclosing such information are gender asymmetrical. Mensometimes playfully, sometimes as harassment or as a preface to crime-seek access information about women in order to intrude, to some degree, on their privacy. My observations
suggest, and women's and men's reports confirm, that access information is a significant element in public life and that women have developed strategies for dealing with possible incursions on their privacy by men. Individuals, wittingly and not, supply access information as
one element of identifying themselves. They often use it purposefully and strategically toward a variety of ends.
In what follows I describe how women, because of site or status, are especially "exposed"
to incursions on their privacy (Goffman, 1963:125-28), compare the situation of women to that
of other exposed groups and to that of men, describe the various strategies for evaluating,
presenting, and restricting access information that women from my research developed, and
suggest that these disclosure rules are one example of the enactment of women's inequality in
everyday life. An implication of this is that sociological theories of behavior in public places
can never be gender neutral.
* I am grateful to the following individuals for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper: Robert
Emerson, Erving Goffman, William Gronfein, Douglas Maynard, Melvin Polilner, Emanuel Schegloff, and anonymous
reviewers. As well as at those points where I specifically note it, this paper clearly owes more to Erving Goffman's
sociology than can be shown by footnotes alone. Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, Indiana University,
Indianapolis, IN 46202.

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SOCIALPROBLEMS,Vol 35, No. 4, October1988

Access Information

Data and Method

The data in this paper come from a field study in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a small city of
about 50,000. The focus of that study was gender relations in public places (Gardner, 1983).
Throughout the 18 months of fieldwork, I made it a point to observe in all areas of the city, in
semipublic sites like restaurants, stores, and bars as well as on city and residential streets, and
in large gatherings like rodeos, operas, and movies. I observed during the day as well as at
night. I observed both alone and accompanied by a woman, man, or child; I was present for
the routine life of the city and for its special moments, such as festivals and parades. The
observations reported here come from a wide variety of contexts rather than just those where
securing and restraining access information is stereotypically central for women and men, for
instance, in bars. I also interviewed 25 Santa Fe residents, 15 women and 10 men, all but five
of whom were Anglo in a city that has considerable Hispanic ethnicity. These interviews also
dealt with access information in a wide variety of contexts. Women interviewed ranged in
age from 23 to 59, with 12 of the 15 aged 35 and under. Eight women were married; 7 were
not. The women's occupations included homemakers, an art gallery owner, a graduate student, store and motel clerks, a university professor, lawyers, secretaries, and a psychotherapist. Men ranged in age from 21 to 61, with 8 of the 10 aged 35 and under. Five were
married, five were not. Their occupations included a member of the clergy, lawyers, doctors,
store clerks, an auto mechanic, a graduate student, and a bartender. It is the attitudes and
actions of these interviewees I report, along with my own observations.

Public Places and Access

The Experienceof Women
General concern about gender inequality in everyday life has given rise to a number of
studies that document asymmetries in the treatment and experience of women and men,
particularly in public places. In these studies, elements of men's behavior reflect an empowered position vis-A-vis women of just the sort described by Henley (1986) in areas of interaction like eye contact, language and paralanguage, and touch. For example, West and
Zimmerman (1983) demonstrate that men interrupt women more in speech in public places,
which is a way of "doing gender" as well as of "doing power." Vrugt and Kerkstra (1984) show
that both genders accord men more space in public places; Lamb (1981) indicates that men use
gaze to maintain status and power over women. Interviews and observations with young
urban women and men sometimes show women as deeply offended by some behavior that
men commonly find neutral or playful, such as in street remarks men make about women's
appearance (Gardner, 1980). In fact, women--especially young women-find many reasons
to see public places as sites of sexual harassment in everyday life (Wise and Stanley, 1987).
Women also feel substantial fear of public places as possible sites of crime, especially rape, and
have good reason to feel so (see Bart and O'Brien, 1984, 1985).
Yet, as other researchers point out (Starr and Carns, 1972), fear of strangers in public
places is tempered by the pressure or desire that young heterosexual women feel to form
acquaintances with men, pressures Taub (1982) notes in the gay male population as well.
Popular advice sometimes even counsels women in the big city to pretend to need information or directions or help in a physical task in order to meet men (see Hanson, 1982). To young
women, then, public places can seem both sites for the exercise of male privilege and places
where they believe they must project a friendly openness toward men to stimulate
acquaintance.
There are rules for polite behavior that prevent the exploitation of access information,

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exemplified in the nineteenth century by an intricate introduction and calling-card etiquette
(see Young, 1882:31-41, 52-83). In our own time, an individual realizes that he or she is expected to phone before visiting a friend and that, furthermore, he or she must phone only at
certain hours. Likewise, perhaps especially in small towns, the location-for at least part of
the day--of each individual in town may be well known to the town as a whole; but here
again, consensual rules for handling access information issues will have been worked out by
custom and etiquette.
In general, however, today's urban requirements for the public disclosure of access information are different than these requirements. First, they are gender asymmetrical; women
are expected to disclose such information less readily than men, and men are cautioned to
cooperate, for example, by "Never call[ing] out a woman's name in public places" (Vanderbilt,
1972:247). Second, because strangers not acquaintances are involved, persons can see disclosure of access information as possibly leading to crime, and often as leading to annoying, even
frightening, incursions on privacy. Women will be at a special disadvantage vis-A-vis men.
Required more stringently to withhold access information, they will also at times seek out
men as potential acquaintances.

The Experienceof Men and Others

In contrast, male-to-female access information may be more readily divulged, often with
a speed and readiness that may make it difficult for the female to know how to react since
such behavior is as plainly an invitation to become better acquainted as the female's reluctance to provide information is a cut-off from further acquaintance. The readiness with
which males provide females such access information, even of the limited sort contained on
business cards, is suggested by the reminiscences of those who meet businessmen in the
course of their own trades (see the example of stewardesses in Kane, 1974; and of waitresses in
Donovan, 1920). One man interviewed reported going around town sporting a specially
printed T-shirt disclosing his name, address, and phone number. "And what's yours?" its tagline read. Another man reported managing to work his home address into most public conversations he had with women; he felt it conveyed a warmth and openness on his part, to be
matched, he hoped, by a similar attitude from them.
Of course, women are not the only category of individuals who must treat disclosure of
access information as potentially incursive on privacy. Celebrities will also suffer. Fans or the
curious can show craft and dedication in seeking access information, by, for example, noting
an address on a celebrity's check and then going to her home (see Monroe, 1974:68-71) or
trading rumors of celebrities' addresses and gathering at the presumed homes (see Sheppard,
1974:372-73). Fans' behavior, when access information or actual access is gained, could be
unobjectionable; it is their numbers that threaten to overwhelm the celebrity. To make sure
access information remains undisclosed, celebrities take measures such as registering to vote
at the correct address but under names that are not quite their own or directing that Christmas gifts from friends be sent to the office (Kalter, 1987).
People who have reason to fear crime or the authorities will also want to restrict access
information, recast for them as information that makes the individual available for mayhem
or arrest (see Sutherland, 1967). For instance, one woman interviewed had a boyfriend who
was active in organized crime. She worked in a store that was a front and felt she had reasons
enough to fear both the law and crime to lead her to use several different names and addresses
and carefully to monitor her conversation with friends as well as strangers. Likewise, battered women, originally isolated in their homes by the special "spatial dynamics" of the violent family (Gelles, 1974:93-118), escape and find that their lives become a sequence of false
names and speedily changed addresses and jobs.
Men, of course, are also subject to certain requirements to restrict access information.

Access Information
They too need be wary of releasing access information in public since a criminal might use
this disclosure for purposes like burglary. This general prohibition against giving strangers
access information insures that strangers will not be able to make criminal use of information
gained in public and, ironically, enables us to trust strangers to the extent that we do.
If there are categories of individuals guaranteed to be at risk by disclosing access information in public, then there are also categories of people whose occupation or preoccupation it is
to uncover and exploit access information: devoted fans and paparazzi, professional detectives and skiptracers, and urban men. A thief also does this when he asks what neighborhood
a stranger lives in, not necessarily wanting to gain access to the stranger's home but only to
judge if the stranger is wealthy enough to be worth robbing (see Sedgwick, 1982:37); a man
does the same when he asks a woman stranger if she is married or has a boyfriend. He does
not want access to her at this point, but only needs to judge if she is a reasonable candidate.
Men say they may at first feign disinterested curiosity about a woman; once they determine
that the woman is eligible, they can proceed in trying to gain access information.

Women in Public: Access, Invitation, and Respectabilty

For women, "access" primarily means actual or threatened access to their persons. In
some cultures, the mere presence of a woman in public can be seen as a clear invitation to
access. Middle Eastern cultures especially restrain women's public accessibility because it is
seen as a clear signal of sexual availability. This belief has led to a virtual appropriation of the
public sphere by men and of the private by women (Abu Saud, 1984:25-36; Mernissi,
1987:13747; Minai, 1981:20-67; Dorsky, 1986:53-73), but this split has not always necessarily
been negative from the point of women's self-development (Abu-Lughod, 1985). In peasant
cultures in general, the separation of the daily round of women and men accomplishes much
the same thing (Harding, 1975; Reiter, 1975). The high prevalence of agoraphobia for AngloAmerican women-statistics show as many as 95 percent of its sufferers are women-is a
functional equivalent, closing off public places for women who are too neurotically frightened
to enter them (Clarke and Wardman, 1985).
The association of a woman alone in public with sexual invitation is certainly not unfamiliar in the West. For example, Goffman (1971:20-22, 272) describes the "incomplete" role of
the woman alone in public as one that every man may imagine he has a chance, if not a right,
to rectify. Seeing a woman alone as being out of role, a man will judge her as an accessible or,
as Goffman (1963:126) says, an "open person." Men can seek to gain information from women without compunction, in part because the male view of public places defines her as at
least marginally out of role in the first place. At certain times and in certain cultures, to be
present in public places was to proclaim oneself a prostitute (see Cohen, 1980:20-21). So that
respectable women might go out and not be mistaken for prostitutes, some cultures have
designated special badges or costumes for prostitutes (see Walkowitz, 1980:23-26; Otis,
1985:80) or restricted them to segregated areas in shops or theaters (see Goldman, 1981:14243).
Women in public have their respectability to preserve. They may be in public but they
are not supposed to be part of public life, not supposed to be out to strike up an acquaintance.
If acquaintance happens, it must be under circumstances that do nothing to suggest that the
woman has initiated it, though she is expected to indicate a certain openness for overtures.
One interviewee said that, as a young woman, she had been taught never to sit alone in a
restaurant booth, but to choose a small table or the counter instead, lest she seem to be "inviting" male company. Another reported that her parents had told her never to sit anywhere
but on the aisle at a movie theater in order to leave the fewest possible spots available to a
strange man and also to demonstrate in a more general way that she was not "out to get a

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man." It is important to appreciate that avoiding the appearance of accessibility is routinely
important to women in public places, not only to women attempting to prevent crime. Every
woman I interviewed said that she understood it to be important to appear to restrict access to
her company as well as access information about her destination or home. One woman said,
"If I don't actively look like I want to keep men away from me-it doesn't matter if they want
to look at me, join me, or follow me-then I'm issuing them an invitation." In this spirit, a
woman writer observed that her original joy over receiving her own handsome business cards
turned to dismay as she realized that to present them to men appeared "an unwelcome solicitation" (Jakobson, 1987:306).
Women interviewed felt that fashions available to them sometimes proclaimed a general
accessibility that then could become difficult to manage. One woman interviewed said that
she attempted to cover with a coat a necklace that displayed her first name; otherwise, it
made her feel as if she sported a "signplate." Another woman said that, in her youth, longer
skirts and high-necked long-sleeved blouses ensured her "personal privacy" in public; current
revealing fashions made her feel as if she were "out on the street on a platter," where anyone
could do what they wanted with her. In the same way, Muslim women who reside in the
West often say that they retain native clothing in public places to reduce visual access to their
bodies (Wise and Stanley, 1987:172); and, of course, in Islamic countries institutionalized
clothing like the veil is a means of signifying women's inaccessibility even when they do
venture into public places (Abu Saud, 1984:37-61; Waddy, 1980:110-39).

Preventing Crime
In popular literature on crime prevention, women are advised to curb all speech to stranit is said to signal accessibility and "invite" crime (Hair and Baker, 1970:32-33, 40;
because
gers
Mandell, 1972:30-33; Barthol, 1979:18). A wise woman will be acquainted with the dangers of
divulging access information: "Never give intimate details about yourself to strangers, women or men, with whom you strike up a casual acquaintance. It's one thing to be friendly
and cordial, but indiscriminately mentioning your address or phone number, or describing
your home may be dangerous" (Hair and Baker, 1970:165; see also Krupp, 1978; Arnold,
1975:111; Field, 1980:112,120). The women interviewed all said they felt male strangers were
more likely to use access information to harass them on the phone later, trail them to their
homes or workplaces, or plot some crime against them; 10 of the 15 women had experienced
crimes that began in just this way (one rape, seven obscene phone calls, one burglary, three
robberies, one attempted assault with a deadly weapon). Significantly, most of the men interviewed said they felt that women who believed access information had criminal potential
were "paranoid," "suspicious," or "not very trusting people."
In fact, young urban women who try to "prevent crime"-that is, who try to avoid being
selected as victims-are cautioned never to appear so suspicious of crime that they damage
their appearance as open and feminine persons (see Burg, 1979:12). As one young woman
noted, "I'd feel a lot better if I could carry a hand grenade when I walk down the street;
unfortunately, they're not in fashion." Moreover, young women will sometimes want to indicate an appropriate degree of openness to men in order to allow a modest degree of invitation
in return. Some popular advice for young women, in fact, exhorts them to exploit every small
opportunity for interaction in public places in order to prepare the way for "suitable men" to
issue invitations (see Hanson, 1982). Also, in some of the sites where women are expected to
seek acquaintance, they understand that they are expected to maintain a careful balance between appearing too accessible and not accessible enough (see Laermann, 1978; Murray,
1985).

Almost all the men interviewed said the reluctanceof the woman in public to disclose

AccessInformation
access informationwas coyness or false modesty. And so it is, from the perspectiveof a male
constrainedto appear to desire access information. For women, however, disclosing access
informationcan signal an unbecomingavailabilitythat has overtonesof sexual loosenessand

can alsoseem to be an invitationto crime.

Hierarchies of Risk and Strategies of Disclosure

All women interviewed had established a hierarchy of risk associated with disclosing
various kinds of information. For example, upon reflection,some women had decided that
revealing their firstname alone was a safe procedure. It suppliedthe implied warmth of firstname acquaintanceand the assurance that there were many Jennifers, Julies, or Sarahsa
man would have to sift throughin order to find her again. Women said, on the other hand,
that disclosingboth firstand last names might enable a man to gain knowledgeof her address
and phone number simply by consulting a telephone book or city directory. Similarly,they
felt that revealinga phone number left a woman in less peril than if she revealedher address,
the phone being less invasive in that calls may be answered or not or abruptlydisconnected.
A phone may even be left off the hook or a number changed. However,a particularhorroris
the possibilityof the name and phone numberbeing scrawledon a bathroomwall or near the
phone in an unsavorybar. Here, the woman's fear is not only contact with undesirables,but
the implicationof moral turpitudethat comes when advertisementby others is mistaken for
advertisementby self.
If a work or home addresswas accuratelytold, women felt, there would be fewer options
for willful avoidance. The workplace, women said, was not as dangerousin some respects,
since others are likely to be there to supporta woman disturbedby an importunateman. Yet
knowledge of the workplaceis dangerousin a way that knowledge of home is not, for, if an
unwanted man turns up at a woman's workplace,her coworkersand superiorsmay deduce
informationabout her private life and personalhabits that she wants kept separatefrom her
business life. Her home addressdoes not carry with it this contingency.
Maritalstatusor the existence of a boyfriend,women said, was one item of information
that they readily manipulated to their advantage. This information,of course, is not truly
access informationbut rather gatekeepinginformationa man asks to discover, as one man
said, "if she's somebody whose phone number I'd want in the first place." Women said that
they sometimesofferedmaritalor boyfriendinformationeven when men did not ask for it in
order to preclude further conversation. Thus, if a woman wished no further contact or
wished to limit an encounterto the currentconversation,she simply said she was marriedor
was seeing someone. Introducingor inventing a husband or boyfriend,then, protectsrather
than endangersa woman, though she also appreciatesthat once again she dependson a man,
even if only verbally. Nor need a man ask a woman if she is married to have a husband
introduced. "What'syour name, hon?" a middle-agedman asks a young woman in a bar.
"Mrs.McIntyre,"she replies. "Oh,"he says, her point taken. Inventing a husband or boyfriend can be especially useful to lesbian women who, when approached,decide to let the
man down gently without revealing too much about their personal lives. Finally, women
report,besides a hierarchyof risk in disclosingitems of access information,there is a hierarchy of contexts in which women say that access informationmay be divulged more or less
perilously. They felt bars or bar-cafeswere the most dangerouscontexts for disclosure.
Public Names
Women have their own folk practicesconcerninghow to avoid giving one's name. One
practiceis to be evasive. A woman may give her firstname only, give her approximate area

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of residence but not her address, give the type of work she does but not her place of employment, or indulge in verbal technicalities. For example, one young woman was asked by a
man who struck up a conversation on the street, "And what might your name be?" "It might
be Christie Brinkley," she replied, "but it's not."
Another practice is to give a public name, that is, a false name for use in public places. To
do so is to create a different self-a "situated self," as Goffman would call it-to whom reluctance to disclose information can be attributed. Spirited women-usually young, since women report that the fun involved may wear thin with advancing years-may make a game
out of this, coming up with especially unlikely names (see Peck, 1978:32). Similarly, prostitutes will use fake names and phone numbers so that clients who have considerable access to
them physically and to damaging information about them will not be able to link their lives
as sex workers with their private lives (Barrows, 1986:71). In just this way, many of the
women interviewed said that they had used public names as a shield against intrusions into
their "true selves," as armor behind which they could flirt or simply "act braver than they
felt," or as opportunities for linguistic play that would test how amusing a name they could
concoct or how outrageous a name a man would appear to accept. These all are relatively
positive readings of the public name, suggesting that it provides an involvement shield
(Goffman, 1963) of a very substantial sort; the person with whom one thinks one is interacting
is in fact someone else.
A woman's cleverness can, in effect, destroy her disguise, however, if she is with women
friends who play a too appreciative or poorly controlled audience. Women who tried to pass
off a public name or other false information in the presence of female friends occasionally
reported that, although they themselves had the expressive self-control (Goffman, 1959) to
bring off the deception, their friends did not.
Further, the public name is a valuable shield for out-of-role behaviors and may even be
carefully chosen and planned as such. Some women say that, when using a public name,
they dress more daringly, initiate pickups, or simply talk more to male strangers. Sometimes
names are planned out beforehand or may lie at the back of the mind, a resource to be retrieved and employed if needed. "I'd been dying to use that one," a young woman said about
a currently popular name she despised. Its use, she said, was her only high point in an otherwise dull day at the ski lift.
With unlikely names, a factor may be the absurdity of the name, expressing, not merely
creativity and humor, but just how far the real self is from the errant prankster. Insofar as the
woman's fictitious public name contains clues to her legal name, she signals a link between
the selves, though it may be unappreciated. This may be done when the woman gives a
public name with the same initials as her true name, for instance. Three women interviewed
suggested that they gave either their real first name attached to a bland and, they hoped,
forgettable last name. Two said they gave both elements of the real name transmuted somewhat (the last name Garber became Garfield, for example). Two said they were careful to
preserve their real initials. An older woman reported that in her youth she would provide
her own first name with her mother's or aunt's, or grandmother's maiden name; and an Hispanic-surnamed woman simply translated her name into English.
For women in public places, however, there is more than merely a playful aspect to
arriving at a public name. Many women interviewed, especially younger women, felt that
for a man to know their right name was in effect for him to have the ability not just to find
them again but somehow to control them. One woman said, "If they know my real name, it's
somehow like they've got me forever." To name correctly is to control at the most, to comment on the propriety of at the least, as it may be also in other cultures (see Lauterbach, 1932;
Fortune, [1932] 1963; Price and Price, 1972).

Access Information

Undermining Contingencies
If a woman in a public place replies to requests for access information accurately, she
may find herself thought too easily obtainable, as well as being saddled with a possibly unwanted companion. As I have described, many women in Santa Fe solved this dilemma by
manipulating the information they knew they were expected to provide. They would provide
only partial or incorrect information, complying with both the requirement for respect toward a role player in a superior position and the requirement that a woman in public limit
her accessibility to strangers. The irony in this solution is that it must be one that the man
cannot appreciate, lest the game be up; in other words, she must deliver the misleading access
information with sufficient conviction and authenticity for the man to believe her.
Women reported a number of possible underminings of this solution. The first was that
the man accepted the misleading access information but sooner or later discovered it was
false, which led either to anger or chagrin on his part. Speaking of stewardesses, who are
asked for this information regularly, a flight captain reports that one stewardess gives insistent
male passengers the phone number of Dial-a-Prayer (Ashwood, 1974). In Santa Fe, one woman observed told a man she worked at the florist's in the La Fonda hotel complex, to which,
after a moment of deep thought, he accurately retorted, "There is no florist in La Fonda."
Another woman reported that she had told a man she worked for the Governor and she
had to get back to work to take dictation. After some minutes, it occurred to the politically
astute man that the Governor was currently out of the state. Other men found women out by
being given telephone exchanges or addresses that they knew did not exist. In such cases, a
man may eventually discover the correct phone number (or other access information) for
contacting the woman, to whom he will then express his indignation. One case reported to
me concerned a young woman who gave a young man the phone number of a rape crisis
center as her own, then encountered the same young man again the next night in another
restaurant bar. The provision of misleading information, then, is not a dodge to be undertaken lightly.
Another possible undermining occurred when a woman spoke or acted her misinformation in such a way that a man knew, or suspected, that he was being led astray. Unlikely
sounding information was usually a contributing factor. Here the man was left with three
options, all of which were realized in situations reported to me. First, some men chose to act
as if nothing special had occurred. Of course, it is also true that, by acting tactfully, the man
has saved himself the emotional outlay that would ensue were he to make a scene or the
possible complexities that could result were he to signal more forcefully his disbelief or disillusionment. This quite generous move on the man's part must, for the most part, remain unnoted by the observer, however, since, if it is performed correctly, secrecy is what defines it.
Again, sometimes a man gave the impression of accepting the information but did so
with a wise private smile or some other small show of amusement that let the woman know
that he realized he was being misled, yet he planned to do nothing more about it than communicate that fact. This might be coupled with a remark that consolidated the knowledge
otherwise communicated. Here men preserved for themselves the definition of perceptive
player and still let the woman off with a resolved set of role requirements.
Finally, some men chose to confront the woman openly with what they knew or suspected was her deception. Men revealed this in varying degrees of amusement, amazement,
or hostility. In particular, unfamiliar information might be mistaken for deliberate misinformation-as perhaps it was. For example, when a young woman appeared to have to think for
a moment before stating her name to a man in a bar, he thanked her sourly and asked for the
return of the drink he had bought her.
A woman who has intended to mislead may find that the man signals that he understands her reasons for doing so. These are, in fact, confrontations of the most satisfying sort,

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for they signal the man's acceptance of a woman's necessity to deceive. One woman reported
to me that, after providing a naively false phone number, the man to whom she was speaking
in a store challenged her. "It is not!" he said with good spirits. "No," she said simply, "it isn't."
"You know," he said easily, "a girl's got to be careful." She heartily agreed, both apparently
forgetting that it was he she must be careful of.
The most disagreeable choice for the woman may be how to act when the man suggests
or even points out overtly that she has misled him. If he does so humorously, she may still
exit the encounter with some grace, especially if she is able to give an equally humorous
reply. One woman reported that she exchanged pseudonyms with a man at a bar; both chose
the names of movie stars and agreed happily that they had loved each other's latest picture.
These deceptions, once accepted, seemed to bring them closer, he having recognized and
respected her need for concealment and having signaled his respect by employing a cognate
"deceit" of his own.
When access information is not received sympathetically by the man, women sometimes
say that they are not so upset as they might have thought and meet male anger with confidence. I once watched a man in a hotel lobby reassure a reticent woman that he was not, in
fact, an ax murderer. She smiled, sighed, and said, "No, I'm sure you're not." But she offered
no substitute name and number. When a man protests, he has, from a woman's perspective,
exposed his ignorance of the social situation that has made her deceive. The man has shown
that he does not appreciate the dilemma in which she finds herself and, furthermore, that he
does not appreciate that he is the direct agent of this particular dilemma. Instead of being
chagrined at being caught, a woman may very well ask herself, if not the man, what he could
have expected her to do.

Following: A Related Issue

Following a woman is one method of denoting the desire for access. In some sense, following constitutes a kind of bastard introduction, the desire expressed to interact with an
individual even though the actuality is never achieved. Celebrities, for example, regularly
find that fans will trail them along the streets with seemingly very little idea of what to do
when they actually catch up with the celebrity. The act of following communicates enough,
apparently (see Hill and Weingrad, 1987:311-12). Similarly, men in public places can try to
gain access to a woman by following her, either temporarily or to a final destination. Following may be done with no word exchanged, or it may be accomplished as part of a street
remark (Gardner, 1980) or greeting, or a shop conversation, or may have begun as the exchange of bus-stop pleasantries (see the extended analysis in Wise and Stanley, 1987:151-57).
Every woman interviewed said that she had been followed at several times; one had been
followed home and raped. Significantly, every man said that he had at some time and to
some degree followed strange women in public places. One had had the interesting experience of following an attractive woman for several blocks and then discovering her to be his
wife. Thus, the practice of following women for long distances on their errands or to their
destinations may be looked upon as an attempted inroad into where the woman lives or
works.
Some men in Santa Fe reported attempts to turn trailing into acquaintanceship or, at
least, conversation either serious or playful, by practicing pickups-themselves, again, either
serious or playful. Others said that they had nothing more in mind than continuing to admire
an attractive woman by keeping her in sight longer, an attitude that one man, who in his
youth habitually followed women in public places, writes of as an admiration for their "blazing femaleness" (Kazin, 1978:20). Sometimes trailing involves street remarks that simply do
not end on schedule, turning temporary breaches of civil inattention into breaches of greater

AccessInformation
durationand demonstratingto women who resent these briefbreachesthat they may, in fact,
be the lesser of two evils. A young woman at a fiesta food booth, for instance, heard two
youths compliment her looks. She ignoredthem, and they silently followed her to her car a
half block away, then resumed talk with proposalsof companionship. A young woman reportedthat her stepswere doggedthroughoutthree storeswhere she determinedlycarriedout
her errandswhile a man followed her at a distance of a step or two, occasionallyofferinga
commentary on her actions or suggestinga date. For many other men, however, it was
enough simply to follow women and let them know that they were being followed. This in
itself was sufficientto frightenwomen or annoy them. A young woman sat at a librarytable
trying to "readin peace,"but was joined-though there were other empty tables-by a young
man. She changed her table, and once again he joined her; he moved with her again and
again until at last he left. A young woman reportedthat she was followed at a supermarket
by a young man through successive aisles and finally to the same checkout line, but she
managed to leave the store with no furtherinterestby the man.
Women often say that being followed "routinely"by men in public places,inasmuchas it
is not done subtly, is unlike being followed by criminals,whose intent is truly malicious. Yet
they also reflect that they have never met "real"criminals (if they are lucky), so that they
would not know malicious intent if they saw it. The popularadvice on urban crime prevention for women counsels them that serious consequences may follow what seem mild
breaches of etiquette by men in public places. Again, women say they suspect that men
sometimes follow them in order to denote appreciation,but it is an appreciationthat a woman cannot successfullyacknowledge. If she does, she ratifiesa breachof etiquetteand initiates face-to-faceinteractionwith the man, and neither act reflectswell upon her.
Discussion
Restrictingaccess information,I have argued,is an intended control of access. Imposed
restrictionson accessinformationmay be undermined,however, by the woman'sappearance
and by male strangerswho imply that the woman who controlsaccess informationsignals
inappropriatedistrust.Yet women often combine fears about disclosing access information
with fears of rape or murderat the hands of some male stranger. Both women and men can
deal with access informationstrategically,and these strategiescan become playful;yet even
in playful instances,there remainsa fearby women of men in public placesand the suspicion
that access informationdisclosurewill, at least, reducetheir privacyand, at most, make them
victims of crime. I would now like to suggestthat accessinformationis partof a more general
supply of informationthe individualcarriesaroundthat is to be distributedor to be withheld
judiciouslyfrom othersin public places.I will referto this more generalsupply as a knowledge
preserve.
The usage of "preserve"as a metaphor for information given off by the individual is
derived from Goffman's(1971) discussion of different territorialconfigurationsas reflecting
the self, as, for instance, one's spot on a queue is, as one's space on a restaurantseat is, with
the "right"to that seat marked with a coat or hat that stands in for the absent self Access
informationis a concept pertinent to these public preserves,both as it can representdistant
spatialpreservesand in that its existence arguesfor anothersort of preservethat the individual may experience, a preservecomposedof knowledge about the individual.
No doubt the canonical varieties of personal preserve evident in public places are spatial-a person'splace in line, his or her seat at a place of business-as Goffmanpresentsthem,
and no doubt the individual will experiencestrongemotions in connection with violation of
his or her spatialpreserves. Yet the various aspectsof knowledge preserveslike access information, invisible for the most part,also play, as I have shown, a deeply importantpart in an

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GARDNER
individual's life in public. The elements of access information and the practices associated
with seeking and disclosing them symbolize significant issues for their possessors and crucial
problems of the social self. One such problem is the difference between the individual's "real"
and "situated" selves (Goffman, 1959, 1963).
In a society where women find that they must manage and conceal information in different ways than men, they are bound also to feel under greater restrictions to conceal their true
selves. What restrictions on items of importance such as the name suggest are emphasized by
the restrictions on more prosaic items of information like address and workplace. Here, the
real self has no choice but to erect a barrier against others that embraces even quite basic
information; less palatable still may be the necessity of lying about this information. The felt
necessity to deceive rather than to communicate directly lack of interest in a man also perpetuates the "nice girl" as a social type and therefore imposes its own element of control (see

Fox, 1977).
Thereis the relatedquestionof what sortof socialpersonalitytypes the situationof access
informationrules and practicesentail. If both men and women disbelieve the information
given in the pursuit and divulgence of access information-indeed, if both dissemble-it is
not likely, for example, that mutual trustbetween the sexes will be encouraged. In this case,
one of the everyday enactmentsof gender inequality,a familiarstereotypecan be seen: the
appetent male seeks something of the withholding female, and both are obliged to exercise
whatever devices may be at their disposalto foil the other'squest. Insofaras this is so, access
informationpracticesreinforcesocietal requirementsfor gender stereotypy.
Access informationpracticesalso expressthe vexed position of women in public, a position with which they will be faced elsewhere: when encounters are attempted, when
breachesare committed,when servicedealingswith men go subtlyastray. Perhapsthis study
will serve in part to remedy the fact that women have been ignored in the study of public
places in general. It may fill the need some researchershave noted for studiesof interaction
that document the use of power in specific situations and with specific contingencies(see
Kramaraeet al., 1984;Sherzer,1977).
Recently,CarolA. B. Warren(1988)has written of the importanceof genderas a variable
in field research,not only as a variablethat must be taken into accountwhen judginginteractions, but as a force that enables us to test the theorieswe generate. In this context, I suggest
that the sociologyof behaviorin public places is not and cannot be genderneutral. Certainly
female and male perspectives on access information practices-just as on sexual harassment-reflect differentexperience. To help balance the male perceptionof access, I might
suggest-parallel to what Crosthwaiteand Swanton (1986) have suggestedfor the different
perspectiveswomen and men have on sexual harassment-a view that objectsto accessinformation incursionsbecause they involve inadequateconsiderationof the interestsof another.

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