It’s not a matter of wanting a society where I can’t be friends with guys, it’s accepting the lesser of two evils. I’ve had plenty of male friends over the years. Some of those friendships have ended badly because no matter how long we had been friends or what we had experienced together, some of it quite horrific, they just could not accept the concept that my body was absolutely, irrevocably off-limits. The few long term male friends I have all come from cultures were it is understand if you respect a woman (and she is not your wife or a blood relative) there can never even be the appearance of physical contact with her.
Yes, but do you understand that we do not all agree on this? I don’t mind touching or being touched by the few close male friends I have. I don’t even mind if sexual thoughts have crossed their minds. They have never acted on them, and I don’t have a problem with casual physical contact.
This.
In the right circumstances, I appreciate a hug from a platonic male friend. I am comfortable shaking hands with anyone (even a dog) unless they have a scary rash or something. I don’t care whether my male (or lesbian) friends have had sexual thoughts about me, so long as they know that it’s not going to happen, and respect my boundaries.
I hope that your friends, and ZPG Zealot’s friends, respect your respective boundaries, too, realizing that each person has slightly different boundaries, and sometimes very different boundaries. And in turn, we each owe it to our friends to be somewhat clear about what our boundaries ARE, especially if we come from different backgrounds.
I agree with Anaamika and puzzlegal. As long as my friends respect my boundaries, i don’t mind whatever thoughts they have. Casual physical contact is not the horror you seem to be implying it is. I’m not a very physical person as a rule, but a handshake or a hug is not harassment nor is it rape.
You are proposing a “solution” for everyone in response to a problem only you have. A more reasonable solution for your problem is isolating yourself, not segregating the sexes.
And regardless of the circumstances, I know many women that would not appreciate any touch whatsoever from a platonic male friend. And if the man is actually that a platonic male friend he will respect it. Unfortunately, I have learned too many men claim they want to be friends when what they really want is sex. You know, the professional “Nice Guys.” I have always made it very, very clear as in within seconds what my boundaries are. Most of the women I know do. The problem is we get ignored.
When a man continues to try to touch a woman having been warned multiple times (or quite frankly more than once should be sufficient) not to touch a woman it is definitely harassment with any Human Resources Department I have ever worked with and in most courts of law it’s assault. It’s humiliating and a way of wearing down her resistance against further violence that is part of a the continuum of violence against women that should never be tolerated.
“Professional” Nice Guys? Someone will pay be for it? Where do I apply?
And really, is your standard introduction, “Hello, my name is ZPG Zealot. Don’t touch me, ever.”?
Most men respect boundaries at least in my experience. Those who do not are the problem, not the norm. That is why hr can and should act on it - and courts of law as well. If your boundary is no physical contact ever, i fully support you not being touched ever. But i can’t support your beliefs defining my boundaries.
You have to consider that ZPG Zealot believes that a male attempting to shake hands with a woman is a fairly reliable indicator of an intention to rape.
In some situations, it has been, though I wouldn’t bother adding Hello in the beginning.
Please keep in mind that your experience is not universal. It is certainly not the norm for any woman among the thousands I have meet.
Then way is it that you are the only woman in this thread making these assertions?
Possibly a refugee camp? Rape is certainly much more common in war zones.
So you can remove yourself from having to interact with men, and more power to you. Just don’t suggest i can’t interact with men.
Where do you live, if you don’t mind saying?
I completely agree that if a man has been warned multiple times and continues to touch you in ways you object to, then it is harassment and legal/HR, etc. should help you. But that has never happened to me. And outside of dating-relationships-gone-sour, I don’t think it’s happened to my friends, either.
I do know men who have accidentally shaken hands with a woman who didn’t want that. My husband did it once. The woman looked taken aback, but shook his hand. She didn’t actually say “please don’t do that” (or anything like it) but her facial expression was quite telling, and he was upset that he’d done that to her, and certainly never did it again. I really think most men I run into are like my husband, though, and would make a mental note “don’t do that” and not like the men who have harassed you and your friends.
You could be right! The women of New York City may be too hesitant to question male privilege! Or stupid enough to need a little consciousness-raising to spare them from being victims of males!
I’ll go right out and propose this to the first ten women I meet on the street. Would you mind following fifty feet behind me with bandages and iodine and a piece of raw beef for my eyes?
There was a time when Texas wasn’t overrun with redneck culture?
In some cases old fashioned ‘gentlemanliness’, as much as it a holdover of the evil patriarchy and white male privilege etc (long live the revolution!) can come in handy. It says not to shake hands with a lady unless she offers her hand first. Nowadays it’s very common IME for women to extend their hand (the lady is likely to be the one thought odd not to in a ‘professional’ type business situation) so easy to forget that rule, along with general ‘Right Think’ dismissal of anything traditional, of course.
In this case, it was an Orthodox Jewish woman, and he was offering her congratulations on something. So it was his role to offer his hand, except that as an Orthodox Jew, she didn’t expect to touch a man she wasn’t related to. Really just a case of clashing cultural expectations.
When it was still Mexico?