(January 2, 2014 at 10:07 pm)Aractus Wrote: I had a customer I've never met before pat me on the back today - was it awkward? No. But if it was, if it made me feel uncomfortable - well that would have been my problem not his - some boundaries are to be expected, however everyone has to deal with uncomfortable situations, and people who have different boundaries should also understand and accept that.
Nonsense. Physical contact is not something that people have to allow from strangers as an incidental cost of social interaction. And just because everyone has to deal with uncomfortable situations doesn't mean that others are allowed make people uncomfortable with something that is unnecessary.
It is totally the person that initiates the contact's problem, as they are the ones responsible for making the other uncomfortable with a gesture that has an intimate nature to it. There are even people that have suffered rape and abuse that can't tolerate being touched because it reminds them of the abuse. But even if there wasn't, that doesn't give people the right to physically touch someone.
They're called boundaries for a reason.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
