We place a ridiculously high value on handshakes.
A handshake is the go-to greeting in almost every conceivable setting. It’s how we introduce ourselves. It can make or break a job interview. Every aspect of a handshake is under scrutiny in the handful of seconds in which it takes place. Shake hands too hard and you appear to be hyper-aggressive. If your grip is too relaxed, you come off as week and aloof. The same can be said for eye contact. Clearly, I’ve been thinking about handshakes a lot lately. What sent me down this line of thought? I’m glad that you asked.
Most of the above rules typically apply to men. Being at an all-male school, I try to ensure that all of my handshakes are the right mix of friendly and bone crushing because 80 percent of my handshakes are with guys. I might have been acutely aware of this, but, as with most quirks of an all-male institution, I was not even aware of it until a female perspective was tossed into the equation.
Last week, I shook hands with a professor who was considering coming to Wabash. Being an English major, I made sure to attend her lecture and talk with her afterwards. Naturally, I shook her hand at the end of our conversation and followed the typical handshake rules. Plenty of eye contact, firm but not bone crushing, it should have been a pretty straight forward, but it wasn’t. If it were, I would not be writing this article, nor would you be reading it.
I almost immediately noticed the disparity in our grips. In the few seconds of that handshake, I became slightly paranoid that I might have squeezed too hard. It felt more like my hand was wrapping around hers instead of the same mutual embrace to which I have become accustomed. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this. If I had shaken hands with a man, I probably would have felt oddly about it, but for different reasons. If I had shaken hands with a man, I would have written off the handshake as a “dead-fish” and thought nothing of it. Instead, I was worried that I might have hurt a potential professor.
This got me thinking about differences in gender in our society. As I stated before, this is something that crosses my mind quite often at Wabash. I consider myself a feminist and I believe that equality among all people should not be open to debate. Despite my self-proclaimed enlightenment, this handshake incident made me realize that there are fundamental differences in our society’s attitude towards men and women.
On an unconscious level, I must be aware of these attitudes. Our society tells us that masculinity is rooted in strength and domination. Likewise, we are taught that the women are more delicate than us. These implicit biases rattling about in my skull are likely what caused this feeling of paranoid remorse during that infamous handshake. I’ve likely encountered these attitudes my entire life and have only just now became aware of their influence on the way approach the world.
Despite any of our best efforts, we are all susceptible to these societal attitudes. The collective unconsciousness of our culture conditions us to absorb and internalize certain concepts which can be hinder our progression as a society. If we are truly to progress past the myriad of “isms” plaguing our culture (racism, elitism, sexism), we must first acknowledge that most of us have unconsciously absorbed these toxic ideas to some extent. Once we are aware of these attitudes, we must consciously work to amend the way that these ideas are approached. We must focus on our similarities, rather than our differences.
“I see now that the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.” – Mewtwo, circa 1998.
