Gender Neutral Hugging Convention

May 19th, 2013
hugging
In the US whether you hug or shake hands depends on intimacy. If I'm greeting an old friend we'll hug but if I'm greeting a stranger we'll shake hands. It gets awkward somewhere in between where it's not obvious which is appropriate or where the two people have different ideas about their shared level of intimacy, but that's unavoidable in human interaction.

What I don't like about this system is that it also depends on gender. At the same level of intimacy two women are more likely to hug than a man and a women, who are more likely to hug than two men. If I meet a man and a woman who I know equally well, it can be normal to shake hands with the man but hug the woman.

We should have a convention for deciding whether to hug or shake hands that doesn't depend on gender. How can we get there?

Comment via: google plus, facebook

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Look! A therapy technique people don't already know!

via Thing of Things May 14, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

Impact, agency, and taste

understand + work backwards from the root goal • don’t rely too much on permission or encouragement • make success inevitable • find your angle • think real hard • reflect on your thinking

via benkuhn.net April 19, 2025

more     (via openring)