Two Warnings on Touching

Joe Biden's propensity for touching is in the news -- much of it completely at odds with contemporary standards. I don't want to run down the movement to protect women and girls from predatory behavior. I do want to repost two relevant older posts that call into question some of the assumptions we as a society seem to be operating under, and then raise two warnings about things we should try to avoid.

First post: Pulling Pigtails, which questions whether or not the assumption of male power is baked into the governing analysis. "Couldn't it be that there is a corresponding female power, one that gives them license to touch others without permission in ways that men are simply forbidden to do? Or are we obligated to cash this out as five-out-of-six expressions of male oppression of women, even though four-out-of-six appear to be choices made by a woman?"

Second post: Ah, the Patriarchy, which points out that extant law perfectly adheres to the self-described "feminist" statement of principles. That being true, how seriously should we take the assumption that our society isn't already feminist, at least in this regard?

Now, the two warnings.

First, as regards male to male touching, American society has long been entirely too restrictive of anything that might be misinterpreted as homoerotic. This was true to the extent that, when I was a boy, it was essentially inappropriate for any man to touch another except to shake hands in a firm fashion -- the mutual firmness displaying a strength that would to some degree serve as a warning-off, a display of power. Only extraordinary occasions allowed exceptions. You might slap another man's shoulders when he fathered a child or got married. I don't recall my father hugging me until I left home at 18, and he expected not to see me again for a very long time.

In fact, touch is human and healthy. I discovered that I enjoyed the experience when I started jujitsu, which by nature involves grappling. It's not a sexual experience, but it is the experience of touching others you like -- the mutual experience of pursuing the art builds a bond, and the touch is an affirmation of it. Grappling, fighting, learning to feel the other through the sword in the bind and play, those things require and reward physical contact. As an adult I've gravitated toward modes of manhood -- biker, horseman, strongman -- that are sufficiently confident to dispense with fears about touch.

So the first warning is: don't extend to heterosexuality the kind of fear of touch that arose out of American fears of homosexuality. There are fit and proper boundaries, I agree. If it becomes the case that we are afraid to touch each other, though, we lose something human and important.

Second, as much as I sometimes miss certain aspects of youth, it's already very hard to navigate that period of life without new impositions forbidding expressions of tenderness. Run a search on "Young people aren't having sex" and you'll see that the trendlines suggest it hasn't gotten easier since our day. Let's take some care not to set up standards of appropriateness (especially in law, but also in behavior codes at institutions like colleges where the young gather) that make it harder for them to navigate what are already anxious waters.

It should be possible to avoid those problems without derailing the good that is to be had from the current moment. I raise them only as considerations, not as roadblocks.