Got some gentle sympathies in donation message, but again, barely anyone has been suggesting topics to write about.  Makes me wonder if I should be running a different incentive scheme.  Anyhow, Hugs.

When is a hug appropriate?  The USA is one of the more physically removed countries in the anglosphere.  Broadly speaking, people here don’t hug anyone they don’t know outside of full-on emergencies, like consoling a person whose baby got blown up in a car accident.

And the people who are allowed to hug?  Women.  It’s gendered.  (Queerness definitely complicates the picture, but bear with me.)  Men can’t express physical affection for each other outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger / Carl Weathers arm-wrassles.  One can get unused to physical contact.  That was me, for a long time.

If I’m not expecting to be touched, I jump.  If that happened to me when I was a kid, it was going to be violence.  As an adult, it’s my boyfriend being affectionate, not noticing that I wasn’t noticing his approach.  Then he feels bad about it, and I’m like, aww no boo, it ain’t you.

So I got to where the only way I wanna be seen, when I can control the circumstances, is lady-presenting.  I don’t do it at a grocery store or the office, but I do it at remote meetings, the FtB Poddish Sortacast, and my pics around the internet.  This being what people see of me, I find some people are treating me the way they might treat a lady, which is kinda cool, but also can make me jump when I don’t expect it.

Pay it no nevermind.  Hug on.  Especially cyber-hugs.  Why should I balk at that?

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