So it totally is “you dress funny and I wanna know why.” Ugh. I’m sorry, Arnold, because I really like you and respect you as a poster, but can’t you understand why it feels harsh to us? Why it’s always like “You are a furriner and I will never ever understand your ways”?
The world festival is totally different, IMO. You are there to be asked questions. If I am just walking around in a salwar kameez you would really think it was OK to ask me what my religion was? You’d ask a guy if he was a Sikh just because he was wearing a turban? Why, for heaven’s sakes?
It’s very simple. Handshakes have meaning. In some cultures people don’t do it casually and women especially may not want to shake hands in public with men she has just meet. Four little words, “Do you shake hands?” said pleasantly ends all the potential awkwardness. No one has to feel rejected. No one has to feel insulted. The woman doesn’t have to explain to anyone who saw the event what happened. It was a nonevent. It’s basic politeness in a multicultural world.
It’s been my experience, that a lot of people are blind to clues and obvious signals. Sometimes it’s simply their nature not to notice things. Other times I think it’s a willfull denial that other people have rights to practice their own religion and culture.
Apparently, infanticide is also appropriate on certain occassions.
ETA: ZPG Zealot – but in THIS culture, it’s NOT considered a big deal to hold out one’s hand for a handshake. If YOU find that “disgusting” and “grounds for termination”, that’s YOUR problem. “When in Rome” and all that.
If I saw you in a salwar kameez, I wouldn’t ask your religion, but I don’t think it would be taken amiss if I said “Wow, I love your outfit!” and asked if it were cultural, would it?
Why should it be grounds for termination for a person – native to and residentin a culture where handshaking is allowed – to follow his or her own culture in a harmless way? It’s not as if the person is forcing the handshake, after all, just offering it.
What you are really supporting, it seems to me, is the notion that immigrants be allowed to force their culture on the persons whose land they have migrated to.
It’s nuts to say that offering a handshake ahold be grounds for termination. Personally speaking, though, that’s one cultural feature that I would be happy to see disappear there are plenty of perfectly good ways to greet strangers that don’t involve touching them.
Why should it be changed? What makes the no-handshaking culture superior to hte handshaking culture? In particular, what makes the women-shall-not-shake-hands-with-strange-men culture superior?
I am not an immigrant. My family has been here for generations. Actually, until very, very recently it wasn’t an allowable practice for a man to ever extend a hand to a woman. Gentlemen waited until a woman offered her hand. And I have had one old money employer who did terminate men for that. She fought long and hard for her law degree in a time when very few women became lawyers and those that did weren’t viewed as ladies. And sticking out your hand is not necessarily harmless. In conservative religious communities it can damage a woman’s reputation by the implication that her relationship with the man who did it is sexual because he must think he has reached a level where public physical familiarity is acceptable (i.e., he’s screwed her). That can get a woman killed. Yeah, the real crime is on the shoulders of the family member who strikes the blow, but would you really want to go through life knowing that your lack of consideration for other cultures set that in motion. It also can be bad for a business reputation. I have a reputation for driving hard bargains which I’ve worked hard to get. In a world where a handshake means a deal, sticking your hand out immediately implies you think I am some silly little woman that’s going to cave at the first offer. Which translates with me to screw that asshole, I’ll go out of my way to cheat him. In the end, with so many different cultures in the global marketplace, isn’t it better to respect everybody and ask four simple little words?
It establishes a precedent that never under any circumstances should a man assume he has a right to touch a woman without her permission. If the woman offers her hand she’s signally permission to touch her. If she doesn’t it means leave her alone.
I don’t know, ZPG Zealot, I think if I don’t want to shake hands it’s incumbent on me to say, “No, I’m sorry, I don’t shake hands. It’s a cultural thing.” And then, yes, it should be on the other person to be polite enough to drop it.
Handshaking is prevalant here and it is the norm. It is for the person bucking the trend to make their wishes be known, not for everyone else to cater to the small percentage of people who don’t want it.
But as I said in the other thread, I will never give up handshaking. As I said there, it hasn’t been that long since women were ‘allowed’ to shake anyway.
If you really don’t want, you can borrow the Hindu custom of clasping your hands in front of you as though you were about to pray, executing a slight bow, and saying ‘Namaste’. You will be foreign everywhere you go, but not more than refusing to shake hands, I should think.
If you have a somewhat interactive relationship with your coworkers, the subject is bound to come up eventually, but I wouldn’t bring it up any sooner than necessary.
I once had a coworker who asked about my religious beliefs within the first 30 seconds of our introduction. Not only was that rude, but it made his religiosity (and my lack thereof) always there, beneath the surface.
I’m not sure what this is in response to, but I think my post was clear in expressing my preference that I just would prefer a cessation to handshaking, regardless of the gender of the people involved.
No, that’s not it at all. I haven’t given the details about what my work colleague and I were discussing. This OP was not about her issue. I was asking about a general issue - is it OK to ask someone at work what their religion is. The answer most people had was that religion is an incredibly private issue, and answering about your religion is going to expose you to all kinds of harassment. I don’t think that’s true, whenever the issue of religion comes up around me at work, I’ve always said that I’m an atheist, and I’ve never felt any repercussions. That is my experience.
But now that the issue in the OP has been answered, and I see that people really really really want to judge my co-worker and call her racist / prejudiced / culturally insensitive based on knowing 10% of our conversation, so I will relate our conversation, which is a totally different situation. That will give a second life to this thread, and with the handshake issue, and this new topic, maybe it will turn into one of those legendary SDMB threads that people will remember for years.
Our conversation with my work colleague was:
She has new neighbours right next door. A mother and two sons. They look like they could be from the Middle East. The sons dress “normally” for her neighbourhood, the mother wears a full veil that exposes only the eyes - even when jogging.
My co-worker says hello to her when she saw her in the street, and hello to the sons. They are not bosom buddies, but they greet each other like you would any neighbour.
A few days ago, the FBI came to my co-worker’s house and asked her husband about those neighbours - “How long have you known them? How long have they lived here? What do they do?” etc.
She was wondering “why would the FBI ask about my neighbours?” Security clearance for a job? Potential suspects of anti-american activities? Something else?
I said “tell your neighbours the FBI was asking about them, see what they say.” She said “I don’t know if I should do it.” I asked “did the FBI tell you not to mention their visit to your neigbour?” She said “no, they talked to my husband, and didn’t say if we could repeat their conversation or not.” I said “if you want to know why the FBI is asking, call the local FBI, ask them why they wanted to know about your neighbour, and ask them if you need to keep their visit a secret from your neighbour.”
The day after the FBI visit, or later in the same day, she was in front of her house and the neighbour on the other side asked her in a loud voice “did the FBI come to your house too?” The windows were open in the house next door and she was thinking that the people next door might have heard him. (This is So. Cal. where houses are very close to each other.)
A little later, her neighbour (the woman in the veil) saw my work colleague outside on the sidewalk and said “I’m making something (cake or something like that) and I’ll have extra, can I come by tomorrow and give you one of them?” Like a “welcome to the neighbourhood” gesture.
In the course of the conversation another work colleague said “People wearing a full veil like that are Shi’ites, not Sunni”. I said I didn’t think this was necessarily true, and also that not all Muslims fit in either the Shi’ite/Sunni dichotomy. My work colleague said “How can you tell if they are Shi’ite or Sunni?” I said “when she cames over with the cake, just ask her.”
What prompted my OP: My work colleague said “I can’t just ask her.” I said “Why not?” She said “Would you ask someone what their religion is?” I said “Sure!” My team leader was walking by, and I said “Hey, X, what religion are you?” He laughed and said “you shouldn’t be asking about that at the office.”
