I just finished reading Yes Means Yes!,
an anthology of essays regarding female sexuality and rape culture. One
of the essays, titled "Reclaiming Touch: Rape Culture, Explicit Verbal
Consent, and Body Sovereignty" by "Hazel/Cedar Troost" is about
assumptive touch. If I could link to it and make you read it I would,
but since I can't I'll summarize.
Other people make lots of assumptions about how and when they are allowed to touch you, and you make lots of assumptions about how and when you are allowed to touch other people, that are supported by all of society. Trying to assert personal control over how and when people touch you is extremely difficult. But restoring personal control over how and when other people touch us at all times, not just sexually, and giving other people personal control over how and when we touch them, would be a big step toward ending rape culture.
Two quotes:
This essay made me break down in tears. I've reread it three times and finished it through tears every time. I've wondered for so very long why it bothered me so often when people that I am close to touch me without warning, and apparently I was not the only one. It's because I don't automatically connect intimacy with touch that way. I don't assume that because I have kissed you that I can wrap my arm around you whenever I want. I almost always wait for other people to touch me to know that they are okay with touch. I don't reach for hugs, I wait for hugs. And it's because I am not always okay with all touch at all times even from the people that I am the closest to in my life. I know that sometimes I just don't want to be touched, even if I still like you, and I try to give other people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they might not want me touching them, even if they like me. The touch is a thing in and of itself, which I might want or not want on its own merits. Maybe I like you a lot and think you're really groovy, but I just really don't want to be hugged right now. That's about the hug, not about you.
But our culture links intimacy and touch on a completely one-way street, and links intimacy and touch personally, so that if I reject a certain touch from a certain person at a certain time then I am attacking them personally and threatening our intimacy. Not just rejecting that particular touch because that particular touch is just not what I want right then. With touch and intimacy so tangled up in the minds of the populace, I don't have any way of rejecting touch I don't want without rejecting people I do want.
So I have always had to figure out how to consent "the right amount", to plan ahead, to keep someone at just the right distance because even though I might be okay with kissing them now and would really like to, I can't imagine being okay with kissing them in the future when they assume that they can kiss me again because I kissed them before. And that sucks!
The human brain is a very glitchy pattern recognition machine.
Troost talks about going to a conference on sexuality where the house rules were that everyone had to get explicit verbal consent before they touched anyone else. They had to ask to hug, to shake hands, to pat each other on the back. And a refusal was to be taken as a refusal of that particular activity, not of that person. After that conference, Troost decided to take that rule into the rest of zir life, to ask for explicit verbal consent before ze touched another person and to ask that everyone who wanted to touch zir ask zir permission first.
I've never been this organized about it, but I've been more likely than many of my friends to reject touch, not out of unfriendliness but out of a lack of desire for that particular touch at that particular moment. And I've hurt a lot of people's feelings rejecting their touch when I didn't want the touch and they felt that I was rejecting them as people. The same occurs when I am reticent about giving touch without a clear understanding of consent. I don't offer hugs and am seen as standoffish or spiky because people assume that I should just know that touching them is okay and that I am choosing not to for some reason associated with them as people.
Troost mentions this as well. Ze talks about the backlash ze received from friends, who believed that "...as my 'friends,' they shouldn't have to ask." And ze says, "It felt eerily familiar to hear that somehow I was the offender and they the victim, or that I was 'accusatory,' that it wasn't ill-intentioned, and so on." Eventually ze gave up, and only required those closest to zir to ask permission for all touch, and those ze wasn't as close to ze only required to ask permission for sexual touch.
Even so, I am still giving serious thought to trying this in my life. Assumptive touch has made me feel desperately powerless, especially when I know that even trying to explain what was wrong would be met with confusion and offense. I'd like to think that the people I've surrounded myself with would be understanding if I did start asking for explicit verbal consent. And I would love to be more comfortable in the touch I give others, having asked their permission first and knowing that I wasn't assuming. That bothers me almost as much as having others touch me. The thought that I am making someone else uncomfortable by touching them in a way they aren't comfortable with, that somehow I'm just supposed to "know" what I'm allowed to do with someone else through body language and personal history and other such difficult things.
How sad it is that it never even occurred to me to just start asking?! I mean, who does that?!
Strike that. I even have friends who do this. I just never made the connection. I know that at least one of my friends, a very touchy friend even, does this simply because ze thinks that asking for permission is better than assuming. I just thought ze was a little weird. How sad is that.
A very, very glitchy pattern recognition machine...
Troost challenges zir readers at the end of the essay to start asking for explicit verbal consent before they touch, and to require it of others, even for an hour, or a day, just to see what it's like, and then to figure out some way to keep that feeling going in their lives.
This is going to happen. I can't say how long it might actually work well enough that I can stick with it. I can only imagine how very hard it would be to keep up constant explicit verbal consent. If only because of how time consuming it would be to always have to remember to stop and ask. It would take me a long time to get into the habit. But I'm thinking it would be worth it. I'm thinking about not having to put up with touch I don't want because I don't have a socially acceptable way of rejecting the touch without rejecting the person. And I'm thinking about never having to worry that the person I'm touching is regretting not having a socially acceptable way to tell me to stop. If making that way is to make myself that weird person who always asks before she hugs someone and makes other people ask before they hug her, I think I can live with that. More pondering necessary. But I am enamored with this idea and I can't imagine that it's going to go away.
Other people make lots of assumptions about how and when they are allowed to touch you, and you make lots of assumptions about how and when you are allowed to touch other people, that are supported by all of society. Trying to assert personal control over how and when people touch you is extremely difficult. But restoring personal control over how and when other people touch us at all times, not just sexually, and giving other people personal control over how and when we touch them, would be a big step toward ending rape culture.
Two quotes:
- "The first question, of course, is to ask ourselves: How much of our bodies do we truly own, subconsciously, legally, and socially? Do we own every inch of our skin? Do we own a six-inch bubble? What do we have to be asked permission for? Fucking? Kissing? Hugging? When we think about owning our own bodies, rather than rape culture specifically, we have to wonder: How do we distinguish between what requires consent (and when) and what doesn't? Or do you ask permission even to hug someone -- every single time? / I do. Or, at least, I do my best."
- "Assumptive touch always involves some kind of map. A map of consent assigns different "difficulty levels" to different kinds of touch, a la the "base" system: Consent to one form of touch implies consent to all forms at its level or below (i.e., if groping is fine, hugging will be, too). These maps are based on relation to intimacy -- they gauge not how much a person likes a particular activity, but how close that person is to the other person, how trusted by them -- and as such inherently creates pressure to consent "the right amount" (not too much or too little). Because maps do not allow touch to be evaluated on its own or judged for how it feels at the time, touch as a symbol of intimacy is incompatible with real ownership of sex and touch -- and thus ownership of the body."
This essay made me break down in tears. I've reread it three times and finished it through tears every time. I've wondered for so very long why it bothered me so often when people that I am close to touch me without warning, and apparently I was not the only one. It's because I don't automatically connect intimacy with touch that way. I don't assume that because I have kissed you that I can wrap my arm around you whenever I want. I almost always wait for other people to touch me to know that they are okay with touch. I don't reach for hugs, I wait for hugs. And it's because I am not always okay with all touch at all times even from the people that I am the closest to in my life. I know that sometimes I just don't want to be touched, even if I still like you, and I try to give other people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they might not want me touching them, even if they like me. The touch is a thing in and of itself, which I might want or not want on its own merits. Maybe I like you a lot and think you're really groovy, but I just really don't want to be hugged right now. That's about the hug, not about you.
But our culture links intimacy and touch on a completely one-way street, and links intimacy and touch personally, so that if I reject a certain touch from a certain person at a certain time then I am attacking them personally and threatening our intimacy. Not just rejecting that particular touch because that particular touch is just not what I want right then. With touch and intimacy so tangled up in the minds of the populace, I don't have any way of rejecting touch I don't want without rejecting people I do want.
So I have always had to figure out how to consent "the right amount", to plan ahead, to keep someone at just the right distance because even though I might be okay with kissing them now and would really like to, I can't imagine being okay with kissing them in the future when they assume that they can kiss me again because I kissed them before. And that sucks!
The human brain is a very glitchy pattern recognition machine.
Troost talks about going to a conference on sexuality where the house rules were that everyone had to get explicit verbal consent before they touched anyone else. They had to ask to hug, to shake hands, to pat each other on the back. And a refusal was to be taken as a refusal of that particular activity, not of that person. After that conference, Troost decided to take that rule into the rest of zir life, to ask for explicit verbal consent before ze touched another person and to ask that everyone who wanted to touch zir ask zir permission first.
I've never been this organized about it, but I've been more likely than many of my friends to reject touch, not out of unfriendliness but out of a lack of desire for that particular touch at that particular moment. And I've hurt a lot of people's feelings rejecting their touch when I didn't want the touch and they felt that I was rejecting them as people. The same occurs when I am reticent about giving touch without a clear understanding of consent. I don't offer hugs and am seen as standoffish or spiky because people assume that I should just know that touching them is okay and that I am choosing not to for some reason associated with them as people.
Troost mentions this as well. Ze talks about the backlash ze received from friends, who believed that "...as my 'friends,' they shouldn't have to ask." And ze says, "It felt eerily familiar to hear that somehow I was the offender and they the victim, or that I was 'accusatory,' that it wasn't ill-intentioned, and so on." Eventually ze gave up, and only required those closest to zir to ask permission for all touch, and those ze wasn't as close to ze only required to ask permission for sexual touch.
Even so, I am still giving serious thought to trying this in my life. Assumptive touch has made me feel desperately powerless, especially when I know that even trying to explain what was wrong would be met with confusion and offense. I'd like to think that the people I've surrounded myself with would be understanding if I did start asking for explicit verbal consent. And I would love to be more comfortable in the touch I give others, having asked their permission first and knowing that I wasn't assuming. That bothers me almost as much as having others touch me. The thought that I am making someone else uncomfortable by touching them in a way they aren't comfortable with, that somehow I'm just supposed to "know" what I'm allowed to do with someone else through body language and personal history and other such difficult things.
How sad it is that it never even occurred to me to just start asking?! I mean, who does that?!
Strike that. I even have friends who do this. I just never made the connection. I know that at least one of my friends, a very touchy friend even, does this simply because ze thinks that asking for permission is better than assuming. I just thought ze was a little weird. How sad is that.
A very, very glitchy pattern recognition machine...
Troost challenges zir readers at the end of the essay to start asking for explicit verbal consent before they touch, and to require it of others, even for an hour, or a day, just to see what it's like, and then to figure out some way to keep that feeling going in their lives.
This is going to happen. I can't say how long it might actually work well enough that I can stick with it. I can only imagine how very hard it would be to keep up constant explicit verbal consent. If only because of how time consuming it would be to always have to remember to stop and ask. It would take me a long time to get into the habit. But I'm thinking it would be worth it. I'm thinking about not having to put up with touch I don't want because I don't have a socially acceptable way of rejecting the touch without rejecting the person. And I'm thinking about never having to worry that the person I'm touching is regretting not having a socially acceptable way to tell me to stop. If making that way is to make myself that weird person who always asks before she hugs someone and makes other people ask before they hug her, I think I can live with that. More pondering necessary. But I am enamored with this idea and I can't imagine that it's going to go away.
