Men are always touching me

The right to touch someone else in our society seems to go hand in hand with status. Those people who are richer, older, and male have the social right to touch the ones who are poorer, younger, and female—at least this was the conclusion of a study by psychologist Nancy H. Henley of Harvard University.

Observing about one hundred public incidents of hand-to-shoulder, elbow-to-ribs, or any other touching pattern, Dr. Henley found that there were far more cases of men laying hands on women than there were instances of women touching women, men touching men, or women touching men.

Once touched, Dr. Henley found, women were less likely to return the touch. Most men grabbed at a chance to touch back when a woman touched them.

She also found that older people touched younger people more often than the younger touched the older, and richer people were more apt to touch poorer. 

Young men rarely touched back, but if they did, it was always a woman they touched.

Outdoors, twice as many men touched women as indoors. Were they counting on easy getaways if rebuffed?

Women who touched men did it indoors as often as out. What it all boils down to, Dr. Henley believes, is that men consider themselves superior to women and so see themselves with the right to touch them. The reason it happens more often outdoors, she explains, is that indoors a man can more easily show power with other body language gestures such as eye movements, gestures of the hands, and voice shifts.

Appalled that something as human as touch can be perverted to a symbol of status and power, Dr. Henley sadly admits that just as food, shelter, and clothing are unevenly distributed throughout the world, so it is, too, with the socially-doled-out right to touch.