I had super long hair in high school and if I wore it down people I didn’t know would walk up behind me and start playing with it. It always made me feel so awkward especially since I couldn’t even see the person.

I offer my hand in the ‘kiss my hand’ type position, because then people usually just lightly clasp my hand. It’s safer for me.

I also tend to flinch away from hugs, because they might dislocate my shoulders.

Explaining this to people stinks, because saying ‘I don’t shake hands’ makes people think you have some opposition to shaking hands with THEM. So I end up telling them why I can’t shake hands, and oh how I love gratuitous explanations of my disability. My favorite thing to do. *rolls her eyes*

~Kali

I’m also quite aware that some people hate being touched, so I ask people if they’re hug people, rather than assuming they want to hug me. It’d be presumptuous to assume everyone wants to touch.

But, ugh, there are just some kinds of touch that scream WRONG. I about decked a guy who decided he could do the “hand on the lower back” thing that feels all proprietary. NOT OK DUDE, I BARELY KNOW YOU. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It should be shifted to the toucher, which is another part of rape culture – the victims are responsible, we must protect ourselves. But no one teaches people *not* to rape, to take no as no, to respect bodily autonomy.

Babysteps

And the food in the cleavage thing? So creepy.

Another thing analogous to rape – the guy who, it seems, molested you at the club. “What do you expect?” It was your fault for objecting.

But babysteps. Don’t touch me, and respect my request when I ask you to stop.

I meant that rape culture sends us a lot of messages about how it’s okay for privileged groups of people to ignore the bodily autonomy of non-privileged groups. I’m not suggesting those rape culture messages are at all right, but they are very much present. Leg-touching, back-massaging, shoulder-hugging, etc., as mentioned in the original pose, are “moves” that many guys are taught they can and “should” make on women.

I can remember a couple of instances in college where, in the dining hall, guy acquaintances of mine threw pieces of food into my cleavage. They joked that I must have been “asking for it” by wearing something low cut. Regardless of how I felt and regardless of the actual moral rightness, their actions were reinforced as normative and permissible — because the people sitting with them and the people sitting with me laughed with them and at me.

Similarly, a few years ago, I was at a bar and had a guy grind his groin against my ass. (There was dance music and a dance floor, but we were not on it.) I asked him to stop; that worked for about 10 minutes. When he repeated the action, I complained to security. Security told me, “You don’t come to a bar unless you want a little bumping and grinding.” Again, as a separate issue from actual morality, social code reinforced to The Penis Grinder that he was right and I was wrong.

A lot of the population is unobservantly immersed in rape culture. Many folks haven’t critically examined it and may not even have a term to name it. Many of the bodily autonomy messages they’ve internalized — consciously or not — is that people in less privileged groups (women, PWDs, queer folk, etc.) do not have a right to bodily autonomy and/or that it’s okay to disrespect personal boundaries. I mean, yes, that’s wrong — but right or wrong, it’s still hard to fight against: a) social norms; b) people with power.

And that’s what I mean when I say it’s accurate to call my reactions sort of unconventional. They shift the responsibility to the touch-er to process hir actions, possibly — if the conversation gets to continue that long — from the point of view of the person who received the unwanted touch. To folks who’ve internalized but maybe never recognized or criticized some of the messages sent by a rape culture, that shift may be a pretty revolutionary thing.

Does that clarify?

“That said, it also gets me plenty of reactions like I am unconventional or out-of-line. And really, given that we’re all immersed in a rape culture, I kind of am. Not that I think my reaction is at all inappropriate — but it does go against a lot of the other messages people have learned about bodily autonomy. I’m not going to stop doing it, but I understand how it will be confusing to some people.”

Why does it go against other messages about bodily autonomy to say, no, I don’t want to be touched? I would think it would be a good thing to do, immersed in rape culture as we are. (And because it’s hard to tell online, I’m really sincere.)

Making offers for hugs by holding your arms open reminds me of romantic movies, where the woman (always the woman) makes it to the man, and he stands there, arms out, and she runs the last 10 feet into his arms.

Also, we should just substitute the namaste for handshakes. Put your hands together, and make a slight bow, almost a bob of the head. Though that may cause the same physical problem for people who can’t shake hands, but it would be easier on those of us who don’t know how to shake hands the right way (for our culture).