Welcome to the Harlan Ellison Memorial Personal Boundaries Club

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sad male fan capitalizes on way to be even more creepy to female fans.

As seen on a wide variety of LJ accounts. I have to say there's a clear consensus on the idea of treating women's bodies as public commons and it's not heading in the direction of commutarian touching. Who could have predicted that outcome?

Comments

[julesjones]

So what you're saying is that you understand that breasts might be viewed as more intimate than buttocks by some women, and even that some women may feel that female breasts are more intimate than male breasts, but that in this case the hierarchy of intimacy still goes

buttocks -> male breasts -> female breasts -> testicles

and thus the appropriate level of intimacy at which to draw the line where it becomes too much to ask for is the one where it is more intimate for women than for men, rather than the level at which it is equal, or the level where it is more intimate for men than for women.

The physical corollary is *not* a man's chest. Because
a) it does have all the cultural baggage where men's chests are not widely regarded as an erogenous zone and women's chests are,
b) whatever you choose to believe, the experience of many women is that at some times (and for some women, most or all times) breasts are tender and may hurt with even gentle physical handling. Breasts are physically vulnerable. Yes, the amount of physical agony I could be placed in with my breasts is less than a guy might feel with his testicles if someone decides that grab-and-squeeze is included in touching, but it is not non-existent, and it is a good deal more than a man might feel with his chest.

In a week or so you'd have to squeeze moderately hard to make my breasts hurt. Four days ago, the level of gentle squeezing that many guys seem to think feels good on their testicles as long as they trust the squeezer to keep it gentle would have caused *me* to react violently, and quite instinctively, no matter how unperturbed I might normally be by a specific individual doing so.

And this is before I get to the assumptions inherent in suggesting that "a woman might not fondle a guy's testicles until they've had sex a number of times" to explain why it is a far greater harassment to ask to touch a male stranger's nuts than to ask to touch a female stranger's breasts. Because a woman might, and indeed has, fondled a guy's testicles as one of the first parts of the body that gets included in petting as a couple gets intimate. Getting *more* intimate involves getting to stick hand down trousers instead of doing it through clothing.

And of course, my suggestion was that a guy do it to a guy, not that a woman do it. This has the advantage for the touchee that the toucher, being a guy himself, will understand that the nuts are delicate objects and will of course not do anything that might hurt them. Obviously this same-sex touching would eliminate any fear caused by that difference in physical vulnerability between the genders.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's a really nice explanation.