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Biden and the Problem of Touch
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
— William Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5
Joe Biden’s explanatory video in response to stories of his sometimes overly exuberant physicality was well-played. He seemed relaxed, sincere, unscripted, and above all, not supine.
The matter of physical touch is, well, touchy. One person’s affectionate hug is another’s creepy, unwelcome invasion of personal space. Biden does seem to have stepped over the line at times. Free advice: inhaling the aroma of a woman’s hair and kissing her head when you’ve just met is not recommended. But most of the time, it seems that Biden’s hugs, shoulder rubs, and Eskimo kisses were well-received. He is physically demonstrative with women, but also with other men and particularly with children.
“Social norms are changing,” Biden acknowledged, assuring viewers that he “gets it.” But before we close the books with the MeToo-inflected conclusion that touching is “problematic,” we might want to consider some other evidence currently in the news that suggests we aren’t touching enough.
According to the General Social Survey, the huge study of America’s cultural patterns that has been conducted for decades, Americans are having less sex now than they did 30 years ago. Some of that is the consequence of an aging population. But even among Americans aged 18-29, nearly a quarter reported that they had been celibate for the previous year, compared with 14 percent in 1989.
It is well known that married adults have more sex than single, divorced, or even cohabiting adults, and that married people report higher levels of both sexual satisfaction and happiness. The trend away from marriage thus virtually guarantees that more people will be isolated and vulnerable to the diseases of loneliness, which include drug and alcohol abuse. Marriage rates are plunging for those with only a high school degree or some college, and though college graduates have high rates of marriage, they tend to marry later in life. That leaves many young adults without romantic partners. And it turns out that screens make very poor substitutes.
There is no delicate way to say this: Screens can deliver orgasms but they are completely unable to provide the other benefits of human contact. People who are not romantically involved or who lack close friends or family are also missing out on the kind of touches that Mr. Biden sometimes inappropriately delivered — back rubs, head kisses, hand holding, and bear hugs.
There is a wealth of psychological literature showing that skin to skin contact is critical for the normal mental development of human infants. All but the most fragile preterm babies do better when cuddled in their mothers’ arms than in incubators. Studies have shown that babies in Romanian orphanages who were provided with nutrition and clean diapers but were rarely held or spoken to, grew into emotionally stunted children.
In childhood too, physical contact is critical for children’s wellbeing. When fathers roughhouse with their young children, the kids are better able to regulate their emotions, including aggression, and are found to be more popular with their peers than children who lack this kind of play.
Our need to touch and be touched never subsides. Chronic loneliness has been found to be as harmful to health as smoking. Studies have found that hugs don’t just relieve stress and release oxytocin (the bonding hormone), they can also reduce susceptibility to the common cold, lower blood pressure, and diminish pain. And when humans pet animals, both experience physiological benefits. Even just holding hands with a loved one while enduring a painful medical procedure has been found to make the experience more bearable. When close couples hold hands, their heart rates and brain waves tend to synchronize.
Most of us just aren’t designed to live the kind of solitary lives that excessive entanglement with technology is encouraging. We are social and also tactile creatures. Our recent social trend away from marriage and toward silicone companions is the equivalent of taking people away from a roaring fireplace surrounded by loved ones and placing them in solitary steel and glass pods. Let’s not lose sight of our affective natures even as we police the excessively handsy amongst us.
Published in Politics
Biden used to be creepy/pervy. Now he is lying creeper. “I just shook hands…” Show me the videos of Creepy Joe cupping the pecs and sniffing the hair of some guys and I’ll cut him some slack.
A person who is “handsy” is definitely sending a message to the recipient: “I am free to put hands on you whenever I want to.” That wouldn’t play well with me, and I can’t imagine how women would react.
OK, now do the nude swimming in front of the Secret Service.
Mona,
I think Biden should hire you for his campaign. You’ve come up with every vague apologist argument in the book. I think Biden is just what he appears to be. A guy who has been using his power to get what he wants and is so used to it that he just forgets himself from time to time.
Biden has never appeared to me to be a warm guy. Rather he appears as a small-minded Scranton guy who discovered the magic of left-wing politics when he was young and climbed aboard the gravy train. If he had any integrity he could never have sat still and played second banana to the Marxist/Jihadist sympathizer President. He knew full well that Clarence Thomas was a straight arrow and that Anita Hill was nuts. However, you know, the party and all, Clarence takes the fall.
Creepy Joe is now an intimacy coach. Ahhh…I don’t think so.
Regards,
Jim
Let’s cut Mona some slack. I don’t think she wad defending Biden, but using this controversy to make points about widespread social isolation, which may be a reason people use social media tribalism as a substitute.
TA,
That’s a little too much slack. Why would you use this politically charged nonsense to start such a discussion? I’m sure I’d be glad to read Mona’s take on the current state of sex, the current state of relationships..etc. in America without having to have Creepy Joe stuck in my face.
Don’t worry Clarence will take the fall. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Regards,
Jim
Mona, Even back in the day, Slo Joe’s antics were thought to be creepy. While your overall defense of his behavior may be applicable in a general sense to the general population and to the over-sensitivity of touching in today’s politically correct climate, this kind of behavior was always subjectively judged and I think most people’s ( by a wide margin) subjective judgement would be, irrespective of their political leaning if judged without bias, that Joe Biden clearly crossed the line far too many times in a most appalling way to be excused.
Unfortunately, many a man’s life has been destroyed by behavior far less reprehensible.
Snickering over the thought of the Orange one being handsy like old Joe. Surely Mona would cut him the same slack. Hahahaha
This column went into a completely different direction than I expected in reading the first graf, and that’s fine. But I don’t think the genuine human need for touch or the serious issue of loneliness have anything to do with Joe Biden’s creepy behavior over the years.
I was a premature twin weighing 3 pounds 8 ounces at birth and spent the first 7 weeks of my life in an incubator. This was in 1953, long before volunteers were brought in to cradle preemies. Later, in the 1980s, wanting to consider some issues I was having related to companionship, I went to three therapists. Not one of them thought my tenure in the incubator had anything to do with my difficulty committing to relationships. It was my father’s alcoholism. Or I had been sexually abused as a child and just didn’t remember. Never was it an issue of the lack of human touch during the period when bonding is so crucial. So, yes, I could not agree more with this point.
And, FWIW, I’m also glad Biden’s video was not “supine.” But that does not mean that his “sometimes overly exuberant physicality” was okay touch, with or without the noxious MeToo hysteria. Whether sex is intended or not, it is inappropriately intimate to place your hands on the shoulders of a woman or girl you do not really know, lean down into her hair, and essentially breathe down her neck. Frankly, I’m surprised no one lurched from being tickled.
I notice that the picture here is of the wife who found Biden’s affections comforting. Good for her. But the way things are, it doesn’t matter if she was comforted; others he touched in the same way weren’t so uplifted, and that belies the inherent problem of MeToo: there is no agreed upon sense of what’s okay and what’s not okay, or any meaningful consideration of time limitations on bringing up complaints. Only the individual woman’s reaction to touch is what matters.
This is not what I, a seventies feminist, wanted for feminism. I wanted feminism to help women find enough belief in themselves that they would be able to work alongside men and handle such touchy issues with self-possession and a formidable response, i.e., with a swift slap across the face. This possibility was kind of lost in the sexual revolution. Until the 1970s, the ability of women to assert the sanctity of their personhood was predicated on whether she was a good girl or a bad girl, i.e., sexually active or not. A “good girl” could drive a man to sexual distraction without worry, whereas a “bad girl” could be slapped around and feloniously overpowered without the man having to face any consequence. As badly limiting as that was, MeToo is possibly worse, since it shows how little has been gained for women and how very very much has been lost.
The relevance of sex frequency among adults, married or not, to Biden’s creepiness eludes me. Mr. Biden is married, so according to the data alluded to, he should be getting plenty at home. Mention of screen-delivered orgasms seems weirdly out of place in the discussion.
In any case, Biden’s touching is supposedly not sexual. I’m sure everyone has a different level of acceptable touching but Mr. Biden should have understood long ago that his level may be unwelcome to many; their body language should have told him. “Social norms are changing” has no explanatory power: even 20 or 30 years ago, he was way too touchy for plenty of people. The only thing that has changed is the advent of #metoo, which makes Biden’s creepiness newsworthy. But his behavior was no less creepy in 1980 than it is today.
Or, maybe he has a perversion where gets sexual pleasure by invading the intimate space of young women during public events where they cannot react. Here’s an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia:
Possibly, that’s why I wrote supposedly.
No. The people who say they were fine with Biden’s touches… knew him.
He touched complete strangers, and children like his lovers. It was an abuse of power, being played out in front of crowds to show he was so powerful he could fondle strangers, and no one would stop him. It was and is an abuse of power. A giant EGO, that thinks he has a right to fondle strangers.
It has never ever been okay to treat strangers like lovers. He was just so powerful no one would stop him. It is sick. WE ALL KNEW IT EVERY TIME WE SAW IT, IT MADE OUR SKIN CRAWL, BUT HE WAS TOO POWERFUL TO STOP.
If a man on the street did that to you, you would call the police and the man would be arrested. This is not a display of affection, it is an abuse of power.
Yes! This.
I’ve come across my fair share of creeptastic touchers. I grew up in 90s church/youth group culture, for crying out loud. Lots of unsolicited hugging.
I’m not a toucher. Ironic, as it’s my love language, but therein might be my reason for not liking touch by others! It’s for my family. Not strangers. Not casual and gratuitous touching.
However, I get it that not everyone has those hang ups. Still, I thought that even socially, we had an expected and cultural touch policy, like the French have kissing. Professional touching, acquaintance touching, dancing touching… we even have rules about stripper touching!
And handsy joe violated them all.