This is so far below the threshold of what constitutes a serious debate that I’m not even going to contemplate putting it in GB.
I was watching a chat show recently and it hit me as I watched the guess come on and greet one another that our culturally accepted forms of greeting are sexist - that is they are differentiated on the basis of sex. The men kissed the women hello, the women kissed the women hello, and the men… shook hands, and occasionally hugged. I’m not claiming anyone is being discriminated against or oppressed or anything ridiculous like that, so I’m not using sexist in this manner. But still, it occurred to that is another example of how our culture is inherently sexist without our realising it.
What if two men wanted to kiss as a greeting? Maybe they’re from other cultures (like the middle east or somewhere equally alien, like France), or maybe they personally couldn’t give a shit about gendered cultural expectations and like one another, or maybe they’re gay… or who cares why but they choose to kiss? I doubt anyone is going to try and set them on fire or arrest them or anything but it’d probably be remarked upon. Is this something we want in our society?
Yes it’s Sunday and I’m bored enough to be asking these kinds of unimportant questions, please play along.
I’m gay and I never kiss my friends hello. It’s all about cultural norms.
Maybe at some point in the far fledged future, people will grab each other’s genitals to say hello, and people who DON’T do this will be seen as rude or antisocial.
Same here. I especially hate the “air kiss” where they smack their lips about six inches away from your face. If you’re that worried that I taste bad, just shake my hand or hug me.
Okay, I’m slightly confused. What style of kiss is this? My French friends do the kiss-oh-the-cheek thing, my Anglo friends do not. Is this something else?
Did you miss the part of the OP where he explicitly stated he did not think it was harmful or are you just trying to make a point about how you view the word sexism?
There’s a guy in one of my social circles that is a hugger. He usually greets me with a big hug. Not an issue for me but it really bothered some of the other males and has apparently lead to near fights. He’s just a big friendly guy. On occasion he has kissed me on top of my bald head. He’s tall enough to do it mid hug. Again, it didn’t faze me in the slightest but it would cause a fight for sure if he did that to the guys that had a problem with hugging.
It might have bothered me more when I was young and worried more about whether people might question my heterosexuality.
I have a hard enough time with shaking hands, kissing would ensure I’d never leave the house.
I so wish a simple bow was the default. If others want to shake, kiss or grab crotches that’s fine, but for me, no thanks. And I don’t see anything sexist about which way you go.
It’s also sexist for women to wear dresses, but men can’t do so without widely held negative association.
It’s also generally expected for men to have short hair, and women long hair. Obviously loads of people do not adhere to this convention, but it’s still a common expectation.
So all the tv hosts who greet female guests with a kiss and male guests with a handshake or a hug are what? Choosing randomly and just supernaturally lucky?
I wouldn’t take the affectations of TV talk show hosts and their guests as reflecting any kind of reality. I certainly know that if I tried to greet any of my female co-workers or customers with a kiss at my work, I would (at best) be facing weeks of sexual harassment rehab and could probably kiss any possibility of career advancement good-bye.
I remember one episode of a talk show where one of the guests was a super-model. Of course she did the kiss-kiss with the host and with the male celebrity guest who was sitting on the couch. As a comedy skit, the show earlier that day picked a random male at a shopping center, gave him some money, told him he was going to meet the model, and told him to buy the model a present. A film crew followed him as he was shopping. After they showed the film, they brought in the shopper and he attempted to kiss the model on the cheek and was sternly pushed away.
One female guest on the Jay Leno show once said that what she really liked about Jay was that he knew how to make it look like they kissed without actually touching her and ruining her makeup.
Before they came out on stage, the guest was probably in her dressing room yelling to her agent on the phone “You better get that fat a-hole to agree not to ask me about my divorce again or you’re fired” and the host was probably in his dressing room yelling at the producer “Why do I have to pretend to love another schlock movie by some washed up starlet? Can’t you get me any decent guests?” But when they come out on stage it’s all smiles, kisses, and hugs.
I am expected to kiss the cheeks of both parents of my italian and russian friends. Also bizou’s are totally expected for french female friends. Cultural norms, and all that. I have a hard to getting behind your jihad.
I’ve known gay friends who will kiss each other hello when they are within their own circle - e.g. at a house party - but might not if they met each other in Waitrose.
But context is everything - I have (female) friends in my industry who I’d kiss on the cheek if we met socially (e.g. in the bar after a conference), but we’d shake hands if we met in a board meeting.
I think this comes down to what you want the word “sexist” to mean. If you mean “differentiated by sex”, then, yes, it’s sexist, as are many other sex-specific cultural norms, like the aforementioned long hair or dresses.
Many people instead think of the meaning of “sexist” as “unjust different treatment based on sex”. By this definition, I’d argue that it’s not really. Social norms of dress or greeting are hard to cast as being unjust. Sure, there might be men out there who wish they could have the kind of casual intimacy in greeting that women more easily have. But there might also be women who wish they were greeted with a chest-bump and a punch in the arm.
Personally, I wish that cultural norms for American men were a bit more open to physical affection. It’s not at all uncommon for a woman I just met to hug me goodbye, yet I still greet men I’ve known for years with a handshake. I also think the cheek-kissing thing is really fun, but that might be because I have few European friends and it’s still a novelty to me.
I’d rather not kiss anyone, male or female, except my wife. But if two attractive women want to make out upon greeting each other, I certainly wouldn’t complain (yes, it’s sexist).