Why Do Men Spit?
A week or so ago, I was stuck behind a long line of cars and trucks, waiting to merge onto the freeway. We sat there for quite awhile, feeling the bounce and buzz of traffic in the opposite lane speeding by.
The driver in front of me stuck his head out the window of his pick-up truck and spit on the tarmac. Then a funny thing happened. The driver in front of him—who had not observed the first expectoration—leaned out of his own sedan and spat too. During the ten minutes or so we sat there, edging minutely forward, they took turns spitting, perhaps half a dozen times in all.
Why do men spit? I thought about it as traffic got moving. I was still thinking about it when I exited to get gas. About a block and a half ahead of me, a solitary man strolled with his dog. I stared absently in their direction, not really focusing my eyes. Suddenly the man bent toward the curb…and spat.
Still pondering, I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air. Zack Hample, the guest, was a professional baseball fan (he writes books telling people how to improve their own fandom). The interviewer, Dave Davies, asked him why baseball players spit. It went with chewing tobacco, Hample said, a deeply male activity. Even though relatively few players chew these days, the habit of spitting lingers. Sort of a memento, I guess.
Last night two of my women friends visited. One is a great runner. I posed my question. “Yes, why do men spit?” she replied, equally perplexed. “I stopped running the Bay to Breakers [a San Francisco marathon] because of it. I’d be running between two of them and I kept getting hit in the eye. Yuck!”
My other friend had her mind on different things. She’d had a confusing experience with a man she’d known for a while. When she asked him what it meant, he’d given her a long, complicated, and completely uninformative answer.
“Isn’t that frustrating!” I said. “I don’t get men at all.”
“Neither do I,” she said.
As soon as I began to get exercised on her behalf, it popped right out: “I mean, why do men spit?”
Now this icky image is stuck in my head as the symbol of everything I find incomprehensible about so many of the opposite sex. Help!
I don’t want everyone to be the same, really I don’t. There are so many things I like about men: the way they bend down to a child’s height and make their voices gentle, the way they offer to help you with something heavy, or the way so many of them selflessly take on brutal work as an expression of love and support for their families—not to mention many things inappropriate to a G-rated blog. But there are other things I can’t begin to comprehend, and the more I think about them, the more the gap between Venus and Mars doesn’t seem big enough to contain my bafflement.
So help me out: what is it? Why do men spit? (Not all men, of course, but more than enough.) Do they have more saliva than women? Does something distasteful gather in their throats? Are they marking territory? I really need to know.
August 17th, 2007 at 12:03 am
I suppose they’re just conforming to others’ expectorations.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I don’t know but I think it is discusting in this day and age. Also, I believe the protein it the $**? also stains the sidewalks. I see black marks all along the nice sidewalks and have come to the conclusion that maybe they do mark their territory.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
ps.
My Dad used to use a hanky and so did my grandfather.
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I think some do it to assert their maleness, like women sucking in their guts. You see it’s like a bird preening during mating season, or someone strutting to show off their mental state. Like notice when there are a lot of glass windows, women watch themselves all the way, tossing their heads, especially if they are something to look at. Fat women won’t look at their views as often. Men seem to spit more when they feel their territory is being invaded or perhaps to impress a female. Weird, but this is only my perception. I’ve noticed you can tell what the person thinks about themself just watching them walk. Gangbangers sort of strut stroll, and women who think they are hot, kind of have a lot of body motions that make them noticeable. A spitter might be doing that too, howeve disgusting as it is.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Thank you, for the information about . “Why men spit” Sure is a silly habit.