I was just thinking about when my dad will touch me in ways I don't like to be touched like putting his arm around me or putting his arm on my back. Without having a clearly defined rubric, I guess my deal is that with most people, what I want from physical contact is something brief--really tight hug and let go, squeeze hand and let go. I don't like to have to go a long time with someone's arm around me, especially if they are bigger than me.

Sometimes I have just sat in movies having my enjoyment of the movie dampened by my dad's arm on my back. Sometimes I have managed to come up with excuses to move away supposedly to do something else but really just to get away from contact. And sometimes especially lately I just immediately move away, stiffen to an extent that my dad can't ignore, pull my shoulders in away from his arm, or shrug him off. When I do those things, it's obvious that I am saying NO.

What I think is interesting is that when I do things that say NO, a)my dad looks offended, and b)my mom tells me, "That was mean."

Even though I am disabled and a woman and those are two groups of people who aren't supposed to say no to touch, I don't really think this happens because I am disabled or a woman, I think it's really normal. But it's kind of messed up and I think people should think more about touch!

Should someone have to accept touch that they don't want, especially for a long period of time? Is it mean to display nonverbally that you want someone to stop touching you? I don't think so.

some touch rules

My New Years' resolution is to be really super rude if other people touch me in a way I don't want to be touched.

Here's the situation as I see it:

Touching someone in a way that makes them feel less than good isn't a favor to them that they should have to appreciate and act nice about. It's not the same as a present, where if they don't like it they have to thank you anyway.

Touching someone else isn't a God-given right so if you touch someone and they move their body away from you, you should not have the same reaction you would have if someone yanked a book away from you that you were trying to read. No one is being mean or denying you anything that you deserve.

I get that you might be confused because sometimes I let you touch me even after I was saying that it bothered me, but it is hard for me to say no because I believe a lot in compromising and being polite and making sacrifices to make other people comfortable. I probably stopped stopping you because I didn't want to have a fight or make you feel weird about the fact that you were trying to force physical contact on someone who didn't want it.

But ultimately I just don't think this is the same as compromising on what to eat for lunch. It's a person's body. You shouldn't want to touch someone who doesn't want to be touched. If it makes you feel bad that this is what you wanted and what you were doing, then you should say sorry because you were doing something bad, instead of wanting me to say sorry because I made you feel bad by pointing out what is going on.

So I've just officially decided to be a terrible person, when it comes to this one thing.