.. I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not by that first paragraph, so I’ll assume you’re serious.

I understand where you’re coming from. You know what irks me? The trend of guys pulling down sweatpants in the back so that their underwear is in full view. If you haven’t heard about that, yeah, it’s a thing, at least where I live. I don’t like it, I don’t understand it, and I wish people who do it would stop.

But I’m not going to stop them and tell them they need to straighten their clothing because I know how that will end: “It’s none of your business.” We often forget there’s another implicit rule most of us have is that we don’t let strangers judge us. Hell, some people don’t let their friends judge them.

Now, that doesn’t mean I will never question them, but I’m rarely going to do that outside my circle of friends (some of whom does do the sweatpants thing). And I’m not going to make some kind of coalition against it because that’s really petty. And I’m not going assume that it’s objectively bad, because that’s the quickest way to losing the interest and ear of the people who has that undesirable behavior.

As for manspreading, I say let the guy have his space as long as nobody is using them because almost everyone agrees that one should not spread their legs into someone else’s space. If there is plenty of free space and you’re scolding them for it, on which I assume you don’t like how they’re publicly spreading their junk area, they’re going to refer to you looking at their junk area in the first place. Point is, they won’t feel an obligation to take you seriously unless they are indeed infringing on someone else’s space. They will probably treat anything else as unasked criticism, kind of like scolding them for bad posture like you’re their parent or elder.

As for this comic and the hand-petting, the first time, I saw it as a light gesture of comfort for Alison who needed it and appropriately moderate considering their teacher-student relationship. The second time was Alison, in a sense, repaying that gesture. To me, It was fitting and actually heartwarming.

You say that we need the intimation of physical contact to be a dire social faux pas lest consent is given or a deep and long lasting relationship enables one to infer it without risk. An impressive sentence, but let’s word that more simply: it should be very awkward for people to touch someone else in any way without an ok given or that they’re close enough that one doesn’t need to worry about it becoming awkward.

Isn’t that already true? What intrigues me the most is the phrase “without risk”. Considering how the “dire social faux pas” known as awkwardness work, we shouldn’t expect someone to calculate that kind of risk within a crucial moment of decision because, well, that itself is awkward. So the point seems to be that people shouldn’t do it unless it feels right. I think it made sense that Alison and Guwara would feel that it was the right move to make. The question then becomes, are you saying that Alison and Guwara should not have felt ok with the other person patting their hands, or are you saying you’re not comfortable with it?

This is of course if you were referring to awkwardness. If you were not, I would be interested in what punishment you think someone deserves for making an unintentional mistake.

Is that something we should expect someone to calculate within a crucial moment of decision to pat or not to pat? But isn’t trying to calculate the risk introduce that risk?

Or does that someone simply does it because it feels right?

Or is this just a way of saying people shouldn’t touch another at all? Because to me, what Guwara and Alison did was not creepy.

Yeah I wasn’t serious.

I think mostly it comes down to cultural attitudes. We sophisticated French people value the kind of social restraint granting the breaking of these shackles in the intimacy of two’s (or more!) bonds all the more savor. You gross Americans grossly scrub each other for any and all reasons because when the slavers in wigs drafted your constitution and were banishing class they inavertedly overlooked that it also meant excellence and grace and your country has been filled with patting apologists ever since.

Veuillez désormais m’excuser pendant que je retourne à la lecture dévorante et galvanisée des écrits de Jules Verne et Jean Cocteau.

I… still wasn’t serious
(But I still kind of deserve it okay)

The joke about how I’m playing a snobbish chauvinist with no sense of his own ridicule is entirely at my expense.

The comment that it’s a cultural thing is sincere though. Can I ask what’s your experience of physical contact as a social phenomenon in Korea? I think I’ve read it’s very pronounced and not at all discouraged between young boys.

Oh, come on!

::grumbles off to fire up GoogleTranslate™ again::

::falls over in a giggle fit::

“No-one is going to want to pat you on the hand when you’re coughing, sneezing and congested. Canolsupic, available at your local pharmacy! See your doctor if symptoms persist.”

Yeah. Which means that this isn’t remotely creepy. It’s not overly intimate – he patted her hand, she patted his hand. Neither touch seems to be unwanted. It might disturb someone else who is watching, but… isn’t that what homophobes say when they complain about Public Displays of Affection? “What am I supposed to tell my kids!?”

I personally don’t enjoy being touched by anyone I’m not intimate with- and that includes relatives. I’m weird, I know. I don’t mind if other people touch, but when people touch me without an express invitation, it tends to wig me right the heck out.

Weird may be the wrong word, under the circumstances; within my own circle of friends, it is a fairly neutral term that tends to positive, but most people do view it with a distinctly negative connotation. I suppose a better word would have been “unusual,” but that’s always seemed to lack flavor. What can I say- word-nerds get it wrong, on occasion. :p