Hi all,
I sure do hope we can truly reduce the occurrences of sexual harassment in
the workplace and in society generally. But I also hope we don't go too far.
(see below).
Bob Hachey
The power of touch, good and bad . By Roland Merullo . I come from a family
of touchers. Grandparents, parents, a multitude of aunts, uncles, cousins -
we hugged and kissed without reservation. Often, when we spoke, we'd put a
hand on the listener's shoulder or forearm. There was nothing strained or
affected about this: It was as natural as making eye contact, as shaking
hands, as reaching out and straightening the crooked shirt collar of someone
we loved. This comfort with physicality occasionally got some of us into
trouble. A cousin of mine went to see a new priest at the local church,
needing to speak with him about a difficult matter. After an hour-long
face-to-face, my cousin thanked the priest, reaching out to squeeze his
upper arm as he did so. "Don't touch me! the priest shouted, recoiling. My
cousin left the church wondering if he'd ever step back inside. In an
unpleasant encounter with a local police officer, after a traffic incident,
I happened to reach toward him - not in a threatening way, but as a gesture
of reconciliation. I wanted to touch him on the shoulder and refine the
point I was trying to make, offer an avenue to agreement. He responded,
loudly, fiercely, just as the priest had done. "Don't you touch me! In
Russia, where I've spent a lot of time, it's common to see two male friends
walking along the sidewalk arm-in-arm. The same is true in Italy. It doesn't
mean they're lovers; it's not sexual, simply human. But in certain American
circles, touch between straight men is all but forbidden, as if the Puritans
are still casting their long shadow over us. One of the things I enjoyed
about having young children was the almost continuous physical contact. You
lifted them up when they were tired. You sat them on your lap when reading
to them. You touched them a hundred times a day, and each of those touches -
like those between my cousins and parents and aunts and uncles and me - was
a wordless "I love you," an assertion of a bond of trust. The touch of adult
lovers is the epitome of this wordless acceptance. We all remember our first
kiss, our first hand-holding, even our first slow dance. It is touch,
ultimately, that keeps the species going. And so it's particularly
distressing to me, as someone who takes joy in physical contact, to witness
all the recent revelations of what must be called a perversion of that
contact. If allowing a friend or loved one to touch you speaks to a wordless
trust, then putting your hand on someone who doesn't want to be touched
speaks to a poisonous rupture of that trust. It's a violation, perhaps the
prototypical violation. As much as it troubled me to hear my cousin's tale
of his bad moment with the priest, and as unpleasant as it was to have the
police officer feel threatened by what was obviously a slow and
unthreatening gesture, I believe people have the right to decide when and
how they want to be touched, or if they don't want to be touched at all. I
was discussing this with a young woman recently, a bright 22-year-old, no
stranger to unwanted attention. We were wondering if the flood of recent
revelations would actually lead to better behavior - at least on the part of
some men. "It might change things," she said guardedly. "I just hope it
doesn't mean that nobody touches anybody anymore. In almost every case I can
think of, the intent behind physical contact is unambiguous. You know when
it feels wrong, and when it doesn't. Grown men know when they're giving a
co-worker a friendly embrace - in moments of congratulation or deep
sympathy, say - and when they're angling for some illicit sexual thrill, or
asserting a weird dominance. Even children can often sense when someone is
creepy or not. Like my young friend, I hope the revelations by women who've
been assaulted give the creeps pause and lead to an atmosphere of greater
respect. And, like her, I hope we also find a way to continue to be able to
touch each other, when it feels right - for both parties. Roland Merullo's
latest novel is "The Delight of Being Ordinary: A Road Trip with the Pope
and Dalai Lama.