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And I'm pretty much sick of this whole thing, but there are some thoughts it's brought up in my mind...
That Open Source Boob Project thing* was a very poorly designed social experiment and I'm amazed at the amount of kerfluffle that it's produced. I mean, yeah, it's odd that touching someone's breasts or butt is different than touching their elbow, or that touching a man's chest should be different than touching a woman's breast, but this taboo is so tricky that it's really going to be impossible to design an experiment that won't offend someone by it's very existence, or scar someone emotionally.
It's something we have to deal with at work all the time - we use the back of the hand for touching certain areas and there's varying opinions as to whether the slide or the pat is less offensive. The instructions we get keep going back and forth on that, because as soon as you institute slide or pat someone complains and it gets changed to the other. And we don't get choices around which areas we think are 'sensitive' - in cleavage and jollop areas we have to use the palm of the hand.
Perhaps the thing I find most odd is numerous women's insistence that their female friends NEVER HAVE and NEVER WOULD grab their breasts unexpectedly, unasked, etc, etc. I'm starting to feel like a pervert, a fiend and a evil, horrible person, because I have at least once grabbed a female friend's breasts unexpectedly and in semi-public. It didn't seem like such a big deal the moment before I did it, because I touch women's breasts every day at work, and she did the same job for years, and we've had to practice on each other numerous times. But then I used the front of my fingers. The moment after it was done I worried a little about the look she gave me. And now I haven't had the opportunity to interact with her for months, and have begun to worry more and more that it was a bad idea, and now after this whole thing I really feel quite convinced she'll never talk to me again, and probably nobody else will, either, after I post this. I won't do that ever again.
On the other hand, I'm weirded out by guys grabbing the crotch of their own pants. They do it all the time (the husband of the woman who's breast I grabbed does it in an ironic, goofy way when he's dancing) and these guys very often seem to not even think there's any problem with it, just like very small girls who's parents dress them in short skirts don't realize there's any problem with them sitting splay-legged on the floor. The other day a fourteen year old boy came walking through the metal detector toward me holding his way too baggy pants up by the crotch and his mother, standing behind him, had this faint, vague look of "I can't do a thing with him." I suspected she was actually so very embarrassed that she couldn't even think of how to say anything to him about it. I wondered if I should, but I let it pass on the grounds that she might consider it sexual harassment of her boy if I said, "Don't walk around in public like that - people will think you have to wee and they'll direct you to the nearest bathroom."
Speaking of bathrooms, though, I once felt I had to tell one of my co-workers that people in Maine find it distressing to see him walking down the hall still doing up his pants and belt after coming out of the bathroom, because having grown up in California he was just used to people dressing in public, coming off the beach. But the fact that most people in Maine find dressing/undressing to be distressing if not confined to certain areas was something I had to learn by noticing their expressions, because my parents never worried about states of undress and then in high school I worked in a theater with a communal dressing room. I had the advantage of him because he's not good with reading people's expressions, so I figured someone had to say something directly or he'd never notice. But, he's a geek, I'm a bit of a geek. I'm slightly better at noticing expression than he is, so I assumed I had a duty to let him know. (ETA: Not meaning to say I'm naturally better at it, but I have 20 years more experience.)
And when we're talking about the people who came up with this ill-conceived breast experiment at the con, they're probably geeks pretty much by definition. I'm sure they had no clue this would be a problem for people. I'm just really surprised to see the kerfluffle considering most people online are some variety of geek. I'd think most would realized it was mainly a case of confusions over taboos. Especially since they're so different in different countries and even with different people and ages. (Really old people are pretty much one in the attitude of "It's all fine - I've been touched and prodded in hospitals so much that I really don't care.")
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*Because I believe in going back as close to original sources as I can, I'm pleased that I've finally found a post by A Woman Who Was There
and
a conversational thread off that post between her and another person who was there who is a friend of The Woman Who Made The Buttons.
*'jollop' was the term the Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade came up with years ago for the side of the breast, which is often displayed in tank tops and bathing suits.
That Open Source Boob Project thing* was a very poorly designed social experiment and I'm amazed at the amount of kerfluffle that it's produced. I mean, yeah, it's odd that touching someone's breasts or butt is different than touching their elbow, or that touching a man's chest should be different than touching a woman's breast, but this taboo is so tricky that it's really going to be impossible to design an experiment that won't offend someone by it's very existence, or scar someone emotionally.
It's something we have to deal with at work all the time - we use the back of the hand for touching certain areas and there's varying opinions as to whether the slide or the pat is less offensive. The instructions we get keep going back and forth on that, because as soon as you institute slide or pat someone complains and it gets changed to the other. And we don't get choices around which areas we think are 'sensitive' - in cleavage and jollop areas we have to use the palm of the hand.
Perhaps the thing I find most odd is numerous women's insistence that their female friends NEVER HAVE and NEVER WOULD grab their breasts unexpectedly, unasked, etc, etc. I'm starting to feel like a pervert, a fiend and a evil, horrible person, because I have at least once grabbed a female friend's breasts unexpectedly and in semi-public. It didn't seem like such a big deal the moment before I did it, because I touch women's breasts every day at work, and she did the same job for years, and we've had to practice on each other numerous times. But then I used the front of my fingers. The moment after it was done I worried a little about the look she gave me. And now I haven't had the opportunity to interact with her for months, and have begun to worry more and more that it was a bad idea, and now after this whole thing I really feel quite convinced she'll never talk to me again, and probably nobody else will, either, after I post this. I won't do that ever again.
On the other hand, I'm weirded out by guys grabbing the crotch of their own pants. They do it all the time (the husband of the woman who's breast I grabbed does it in an ironic, goofy way when he's dancing) and these guys very often seem to not even think there's any problem with it, just like very small girls who's parents dress them in short skirts don't realize there's any problem with them sitting splay-legged on the floor. The other day a fourteen year old boy came walking through the metal detector toward me holding his way too baggy pants up by the crotch and his mother, standing behind him, had this faint, vague look of "I can't do a thing with him." I suspected she was actually so very embarrassed that she couldn't even think of how to say anything to him about it. I wondered if I should, but I let it pass on the grounds that she might consider it sexual harassment of her boy if I said, "Don't walk around in public like that - people will think you have to wee and they'll direct you to the nearest bathroom."
Speaking of bathrooms, though, I once felt I had to tell one of my co-workers that people in Maine find it distressing to see him walking down the hall still doing up his pants and belt after coming out of the bathroom, because having grown up in California he was just used to people dressing in public, coming off the beach. But the fact that most people in Maine find dressing/undressing to be distressing if not confined to certain areas was something I had to learn by noticing their expressions, because my parents never worried about states of undress and then in high school I worked in a theater with a communal dressing room. I had the advantage of him because he's not good with reading people's expressions, so I figured someone had to say something directly or he'd never notice. But, he's a geek, I'm a bit of a geek. I'm slightly better at noticing expression than he is, so I assumed I had a duty to let him know. (ETA: Not meaning to say I'm naturally better at it, but I have 20 years more experience.)
And when we're talking about the people who came up with this ill-conceived breast experiment at the con, they're probably geeks pretty much by definition. I'm sure they had no clue this would be a problem for people. I'm just really surprised to see the kerfluffle considering most people online are some variety of geek. I'd think most would realized it was mainly a case of confusions over taboos. Especially since they're so different in different countries and even with different people and ages. (Really old people are pretty much one in the attitude of "It's all fine - I've been touched and prodded in hospitals so much that I really don't care.")
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Because I believe in going back as close to original sources as I can, I'm pleased that I've finally found a post by A Woman Who Was There
and
a conversational thread off that post between her and another person who was there who is a friend of The Woman Who Made The Buttons.
*'jollop' was the term the Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade came up with years ago for the side of the breast, which is often displayed in tank tops and bathing suits.
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Also,
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And, ugh, I agree with you about the 'worthy of being touched' bit too. That sounds like an excerpt from Sci-Fi Conventions of Gor or something.