Jesus, how offensive can you get, suggesting I refer to a woman as “Miss”? Which goes to illustrate, you can’t completely avoid offending everyone. The risk is ALWAYS there. (And “Ms.” won’t work, because there are some anti-feminists that despise that term). And of course you only suggest asking that question of women: you’re still insisting I treat women differently from men, something that risks offense to many feminists. FWIW, I have never in my life heard of a feminist objecting to men offering to shake: can you cite a single feminist (besides possibly yourself) objecting?
If you’re trying to avoid being touched, then the simple solution is for you to say, “Oh, no thank you, I don’t shake hands.” This way, instead of 99.9% of the time the interaction having some confused awkwardness around it (“Of course I do, what a weird question, why would you even ask?”), in the 0.1% of cases in which it’s a problem, it’s handled quickly and gracefully by the person for whom it’s a problem.
This is really quite simple.
An analogy: I’ve got a deathly fear of needles, to the extent that my phobia has earned me an ambulance trip due to a concussion from passing out on an occasion in which I wasn’t going to get a shot. I am confident that my discomfort around needles surpasses your discomfort at shaking hands. And if someone knows about my phobia and talks about their painful shots around me, and does so after I ask them to stop, I think they’re a jerk, and I leave.
But if someone talks about painful shots without knowing about my phobia, that’s on me. The phobia is my problem, for me to deal with. It’s something that very, very few people have to this degree, and I need to manage it. Someone who talks about shots around me, knowing that someone MIGHT be afraid but not knowing that I actually AM afraid, isn’t remotely being a jerk.
I don’t remember the details, but I seem to recall her saying something about her culture doesn’t do adoption, particularly not of non-relatives. That doesn’t qualify as “abusive”, and it’s not beyond belief that there is a culture that doesn’t hold with adoption.
Yes, she’s a bit… fanatical but hell, she has the word “zealot” in her username, what do you expect?
Actually, I think quite a few people would be offended if you asked if they fucking shake hands. That’s pretty culturally insensitive of you, ignoring the hand shaking cultures of the world.
I think most people are just going to go about raping with abandon (for certain definitions of rape). Besides, most women say they don’t want to shake hands when they really do. I’m only giving them want they really want. Besides, most of them are asking for it, walking around with revealing gloves, or sometimes with bare hands.
Not that I want to agree with ZPGZealot’s level of offense (shaking hands is NOT rape), but the prohibition of physical contact between women and unrelated men is by no means restricted to the Roma. Some Jewish groups and quite a few Middle Eastern cultures have this prohibition, and undoubtedly there are others as well.
For those living in Western nations, a good rule of thumb might be that if a woman is attired in mainstream clothes and engaged in mainstream business occupations assuming handshaking is OK is probably alright. If, however, she is in ethnic attire it might be better to say “I would like to shake your hand”, thereby giving the women an opportunity to either extend her hand, or to say “in my culture women do not shake hands”.
If you are a woman of a group that has this prohibition then a simple statement of “in my culture women do not shake hands” in a calm and non-confrontational manner should be all that is needed.
Needless to say, Western Man should not insist but should withdraw his hand with minimal fuss (if he has extended it at all) and state that he did not mean any offense.
That really should take care of the problem 99% of the time, don’t you think?
Yeah, that’s totally reasonable, for someone aware of this issue. In many areas, however, encountering a woman for whom it’s an issue is a vanishingly rare occurrence, and they may be excused for being ignorant of the issue.
Of course not - any violation of a cultural norm, even unintentional, is a crime. That why, as a Jew, if someone were to offer me a BLT, I’d assume he was a Nazi and shoot him.
Did you check first to see if the person you offered it to comes from a culture that considers virtual high fives to be offensive? Did you ask them if it was okay to offer it?
Get serious, the term is very common in American culture and net message board culture. Women highfive each other all the time. In meat space I would be just as comfortable doing so with a man if we were both wearing gloves. And like any other sort of physical contact it is perfectly polite for a woman to extend an invitation for a man to engage in it with her. What is not acceptable is for a man to demand the right to have physical contact with a woman against her express wishes. See the difference? Probably not. The idea that women have the right to say no about having their bodies touched seems to be alien to so many men. You know, I am beginning to wonder if most of the controversary over the Maria case couldn’t be traced to the fact that it was her mother (you know, the woman) who seems to have made the decision to place the child with the D family. I suspect that if her father announced he gave the child to the D’s a lot less people would be so concerned.
I’m going to assume that this “against her express wishes” is an elaborate typo, since you’ve not been talking about expressed wishes, but rather about what should be assumed. You probably meant to type “unexpressed wishes.”
As such, if you think it’s okay for a woman to engage in the behavior but not the man, you’re sexist scum. There are men who are uncomfortable touching women, and for a woman to get to operate according to standards men don’t is obnoxious and perpetuative of patriarchy.