Claiming local host status legitimizes a stranger’s approach to a woman

Evidence

A young woman is seated in the very last seat of a bus; the seat extends the entire width of the bus. She has been on the bus since it started out from the depot and took the seat she now occupies at the time she boarded. After the bus has been traveling for some five minutes, it stops at an intersection and a working class middle-aged male comes aboard. After paying the driver, he moves toward the rear, and as he is about to reach the back seat, he looks at the woman seated there and says, “This is my favorite place. Will I be in the way?” The woman smiles and replies that of course he will not. He seats himself on the same seat but somewhat to the left of her, next to the window. During the next twenty or thirty minutes they engage in on again, off again conversation. Finally, they begin to talk and do not interrupt their conversation until the male leaves the bus. … The important thing to note here is that despite the not infrequent concern of females with keeping themselves aloof from surrounding males, this young woman was quite willing to engage the older man in conversation. With the words, “This is my favorite place,” he made it very clear that he was the host and she the visitor. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1006

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors Cole’s unreliable-observer theme: the young woman’s willing talk depends entirely on the man’s clever recasting of territorial roles, an act of reading strangers.
• QUESTION: How generalized is this ‘host/visitor’ frame, and when does it fail against genuine threat perception in women?