It Seems We Don't Touch Enough. I Wonder Why?

There was a recent article by Paula Cocozza in the Guardian called No hugging: are we living through a crisis of touch?

Oh man.

In countless ways social touch is being nudged from our lives. In the UK, doctors were warned last month to avoid comforting patients with hugs lest they provoke legal action, and a government report found that foster carers were frightened to hug children in their care for the same reason. In the US the girl scouts caused a furore last December when it admonished parents for telling their daughters to hug relatives because “she doesn’t owe anyone a hug”. Teachers hesitate to touch pupils. And in the UK, in a loneliness epidemic, half a million older people go at least five days a week without seeing or touching a soul.

Half a million people cannot be an epidemic is a widespread infectious disease. If it’s confined to older people it can’t be widespread. And loneliness isn’t infectious. Sloppy writing and using mainstream media tropes is, however, infectious, and Paula Cocozza has caught it bad. Start her on David Hume’s Treatise on Human Understanding stat.

Doctors were were recently advised by the Medical Defence Union, which provides legal advice to doctors, to 'err on the side of caution' regarding physical contact with patients. Which is what an organisation dedicated to litigation defence would and should say. Since foster children actually belong to the local Council, not the foster parents, I can imagine some Councils advising against touching foster children for the same reason: 'err on the side of caution'. Teachers work in permanent fear of being sacked and replaced by someone younger and cheaper, or of displeasing the all-powerful Head Teacher, and any flimsy allegation will do. That’s been going on since at least the 1990’s. I have a lot of sympathy for the American Girl Guides saying “She doesn’t owe anyone a hug”. To awkward and insecure teenagers, old people can be smelly, feel odd, and generally be icky. I feel much the same way about almost all of the human race.

So this is two issues: one about the legal hazards of dealing with people in these crazy times, and another about the fact that many people find many other people icky and don't want to touch them. Ms Cocozza actually quotes someone saying as much:

“Of course we are moving away from touch!” exclaims Francis McGlone, a professor in neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores university and a leader in the field of affective touch. He is worried. “We have demonised touch to a level at which it sparks off hysterical responses, it sparks off legislative processes, and this lack of touch is not good for mental health.” He has heard of teachers asking children to stick on a plaster themselves, rather than touch them and risk a complaint. “We seem to have been creating a touch-averse world,” he says. “It’s time to recover the social power of touch.”

Does Ms Cocozza's suggest we deal with the cynical misandry masquerading as 'feminism' which is the source of all this, and with the legal profession that enables it, and the click-seeking media which gives it all publicity. Nope. This is the Guardian: misandry is not the problem, but men: after all, no men, no misandry. The answer is to bring on the private sector and the science. The science is essential. It proves that touch is just a drug like, oh, Prozac, and therefore that hugs and touches can and should be transactional within a managed environment. One of those businesses describing itself as providing...

a structured event which explores affection, intimacy, boundaries and verbal/non-verbal communication… strictly non-sexual so that you can relax and meet new people in a fun and warm-hearted environment...You'll have the opportunity to rediscover nurturing touch and affection, let go of hidden agendas, gently explore any challenges around touch and gain tools for more satisfactory touch in your life”,

(No link. This is a blog, not a billboard.)

Sadly, that doesn't "recover the social power of touch", but on the contrary privatises it. I don't think that's what the good Professor McGlone had in mind.

One point slips by in the article like a thief in the night. “Even stranger touch, when it’s wanted, is pretty good,” Linden points out.” When it’s wanted. There’s everything right about the condition, and everything wrong with the reality in which that condition applies. Because the reality is that the number of people whom we want to touch is almost zero. A random man who isn’t one of the hot 1% can safely bet that the next woman he passes will not under any circumstances want him to touch her. This applies even if she’s his wife and double if they’ve been married for more than three years. Equally, a random woman can safely assume that the next man she passes will be repulsed by her touch, unless she’s one of 2% of women who have the looks or personality to make it a pleasure.

It gets worse. Just because you had touching rights yesterday, doesn't mean you do today. If you have to ask if you do, you fail the confidence test. If you assume you do, but you aren't wanted today, well, then, you're now her bitch, because she can use this against you at any time over the next forty years. Just ask Garrison Keillor.

How the heck did we get here?

Well, cynical misandry, an enabling legal profession, and click-seeking media is part of the answer.

Another part is that the majority of the human race is just gross and icky and should keep its hands to itself. Men who are not confident, exciting, good-looking or wealthy (pick 'confidence' and one other) should keep their hands to themselves. I'm serious. Women don't want them, but they might settle for them. I'm also serious when I say that women who aren't feminine, charming, and under an old-money size 12 should pretty much keep their hands to themselves as well. Those women have known forever that men are prepared to settle for them, but who wants to be settled for? Nobody wants to settle for who their touch comes from. That touch has to be wanted.

Also, significance is inversely proportional to frequency. The fewer touches we get, the more significant each one is. A woman who is down to one slight touch a week is going to be fairly irate if her weekly ration is an accident from some featureless dork. Better nothing than that. If she's getting some hot guy tingly-touches every week, then the odd featureless dork is bearable.

Then there's the fact that touch is not an unadulterated good. It can be and is routinely used to deceive, manipulate, placate, distract, mislead and seduce. That's why children wriggle away from Mommy's cuddle when they are cross and want to stay cross: they don't want Mommy hug-drugging them into a stupor. That’s why women who have stopped caring, don’t want to hug their partner: they don’t want to be made to feel good about him by some cheap hormonal circus trick. It's why you should be very suspicious when anyone puts their arm around you: they are probably setting you up for something. It's why PUAs talk about 'kino'. One of the 243 reasons women have sex is to manage their partner, to keep the poor dolt reasonably happy. Adult-on-adult touch is all about the agenda. That's because adult life is all about the agenda.

Set aside the hormonal natural highs, and what am I supposed to do with a hug? When it’s over, I’m still in the same bad position that made someone think a hug might be in order. I don’t need hugs-'n-drugs, I need actual help. In other words, a suspiciously large proportion of touch may not be given for the benefit of the receiver, but for the benefit of the giver. They hug the suffering-us so that they will feel better about us feeling bad. It’s like tossing a coin into the charity bucket and having the coin bounce right back. The doctors weren't touching you reassuringly so you would feel better: they were touching you so you wouldn't get emotional or make a scene. And actually, both of those can be true at the same time.

Capitalist, managed hugs might have no past and no future, like a visit to a hooker in a foreign town, but a genuine hug is not in the singular: it’s one of many in the past and in the future. Real hugs are part of a relationship. The hug is a symbol, and the reality is the relationship that hug confirms still exists now, and so opens the possibility that it may exist tomorrow. When the hugs, the sex, the touches, stop today, the relationship is dead tomorrow. It's what the touch means that matters: the drugs are just a boost.

It’s not the lack of touch from his wife and children that is bad for a husband and father. It’s what that lack of touch means: that his wife hasn’t been attracted to him for years and his children don’t find him a source of strength and assurance.

It’s not the lack of touch in our lives that is bad for us. It’s that we don’t know or even see anyone whose touch we want. It’s being surrounded by people whose physical presence is bearable only if they don’t come into contact with us. If they stay quiet, shower frequently, don’t eat smelly food, or stink of drink or drugs. Day after day, month after month, with no object of desire in sight.

That's not a crisis. That's the human condition.

So maybe you civilians should pay for the hugs-'n-drugs. I’m at disadvantage: the injunction to avoid ‘mood-altering chemicals’ includes hormones. Sunshine is okay. Also chocolate. Random blasts of some chemical with a Greek name and a complicated structure whose operation is not well understood are discouraged.