I'm pretty lucky in that in my workplace, there isn't much in terms of gender differences, but there is one thing that I really dislike. Whenever someone leaves, there is the farewell, and that person will go around the team thanking everyone for working with them, and you get to pass on your well wishes. Then there's a handshake and a goodbye. Except if you're a woman. Then you get the awkward pause where you both try and work out if you should shake hands or go for the hug.
There is nobody on the team that I feel comfortable hugging, not even my friends. To try and alleviate the awkwardness, I usually extend my hand for a handshake. It works about 50% of the time, the other times, the person will use my extended hand to pull me into a hug. The last couple of farewells I went to, they went past the hug and into the kiss on each cheek. The first time that happened, I must have had a pretty shocked look on my face, because the kisser went on to explain that it's a "European thing". Grad Daniel later said to me that it might be a European thing, but people of the kisser's nationality don't tend to do the double-kiss, so I don't know, maybe he was drunk.
I really wish I could be treated like everyone else and just have my hand shaken. Before getting a job, I read a lot about handshakes, and how you shouldn't do the limp fish, and you should make sure that your hands aren't sweaty. I feel like I've put a lot of effort into my handshakes, especially as my grip has gotten a lot stronger since I started working out, and I may have accidentally crushed the hand of the head of technology in UK when he came to visit our team - but he seems OK now. It's a work-in-progress and I'd like to keep improving.
The other bad part about hugs is that you have to be careful how you hug someone. I'm always really conscious of hugging other people, especially other women, when you go for the boob-on-boob contact, and I worry that they'll think I'm weird, or that I'm forcing myself on them. So I try to do the inverted V hug as much as possible without it seeming too weird. Unfortunately, hugging each other as a greeting seems to be a social norm, so I'm just going to accept it and move on.
However, I did send an email out to a few of the wedding guests that I'm close to about this whole thing. I requested that instead of giving me a hug and/or kiss to congratulate us when MrMan5.5 go around talking to everyone, that they shake my hand instead. A couple of them replied that they'll give me high-fives. Much better for me on the comfort scale.
If I make any contribution to the equality movement at all, I would like it to be this: handshakes for all!
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Today I learned that Tasmania and Western Australia have an e-voting system that constitutes of you putting into a computer who you want to vote for, and the computer printing out your ballot paper marked in that particular way. Great for people who have difficulty using a pencil and paper.... quoted as a "$3000 pencil" for everyone else. I'm glad we are moving more into the digital age though.
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