How common is enforced hugging and is it always blokes trying to hug women?

[2rebecca]

We currently have the Ted Baker founder and now the office party strangler "hugger" in the news. I'm glad I've never had to cope with enforced hugging at work. If anyone does hug me it's usually a patient with dementia, learning difficulties or going through an emotional crisis. Not a colleague and don't recall a male superior trying to hug me when I was younger.
Is this common in offices? How is it still acceptable for men in positions of power to force women to be hugged? Do women ever force themselves on their employees or colleagues like this?
Maybe the Ted Baker company was alone in being stuck in a sexist creepy time warp. I hope so and that this isn't common in offices.

Betty

I know two hugging offenders, one male, one female. I grimace and bear it as I don't see them very often. God it annoys me. When did our society get so huggy and kissy? It wasn't always this bad. Getting the number of kisses wrong is the thing I hate the most, when you get grabbed back again because you haven't completed the set.

I successfully enforced a handshake on my serial hugger when I saw him at the weekend. I literally had to step back and say "stop right there - a handshake is fine thanks" though.

I've never been hugged at work except when I was a teenage waitress and this old male cyclist in lycra always wanted a hug (we were a village pub and he was a regular, it was on his bike route I guess). I remember I would always stand on the opposite side of the table so he couldn't get too close.

Outside of work a couple of times I've been with my husband, father-in-law and brother-in-law (i.e. all men) and we've been chatting to either a male stranger or this one particular acquaintance. The guys all got a handshake as a "goodbye" so I go in for the same and got literally yanked into these guys unwelcome embraces. I hate it!

If it's a side by side arms round me situation I can duck out of it but a full on hug, short of making a scene I don't know what to do.

I didn't answer the question! For me, enforced hugging has always been perpetuated by a man but that's probably because I don't mind a hug from a woman as much as I see no sexist/sexual undertones to it (real or perceived on my part).

I used to work for a charity which had a lot of older male volunteers and some of them were absolute buggers for trying to hug and kiss the female staff as a form of greeting. They would play the "harmless old giffer" card more often than not so that you'd feel petty or unreasonable if you didn't like it, and the management would brush aside concerns (of which there were a few during the time I was there) by saying something like "Oh, that's just what Mr X is like, he's just old-fashioned." Because they were volunteers, I think they could basically have flounced off if anyone had challenged them, and management didn't want to lose any so they got away with it on the whole.

Betty, are you in full-time employment? If so, how would you feel about freelance consulting work during your evenings, weekends and holidays?

I'm reasonably certain there's a series of instructional videos and highly successful seminars to be marketed there. I'd buy, for one!

In the UK I had far more not-really-wanted hugs from women than men, but from women, they never have the feel of being a sort of socially sanctioned copping a feel that some men give off. I had far more men (and pretty much all of them much older men) trying to get a kiss when they hug, though.

I currently live somewhere where hugging is the normal greeting by everyone, for everyone. It still catches me by surprise but I've never had that creeped-out, sexualised feeling I get in the UK from some men.

A senior manager at work was a hugger. No-one ever said anything because he was OK otherwise. But the day he retired he was walking down to the lecture theatre and hugging every woman in his path but not a single man. Made it very clear what he thought of us and our boundaries. Lots of women were promoted in the department after he left as well.

I am a hugger. But I will also accept others boundaries. Most people I work with are not huggers so we have fist bumps . Having admitted to being a hugger I don’t always feel comfortable getting hugs from some men. It feels creepy sometimes.

That's the problem with men who hug, they usually just want to hug women. They usually keep a respectful distance from other men. Even some men in my extended family are like that. Why do men get a handshake but women have to have their personal space breached by a hug? We aren't frigging teddy bears.

I work in a very huggy environment, it's mainly women doing the hugging although sometimes it's the men. I loathe it (don't even like my family hugging me) but feel like I can't say anything because they might think I'm stand offish or precious.

My embarrassment about not wanting to upset anyone has led to an awkward situation with stakeholders though. I work in a regulatory role within the civil service, and one (male) chief executive of an organisation hugged me the first time we met. I was taken aback, as it's not really appropriate, but was too polite to say anything. Now every time I meet him, he hugs me, and so do all his (female) colleagues and his lawyer. I don't know how to stop it without damaging the positive professional relationship we have built between my organisation and theirs, which was shaky before I started working with them. It's a minefield.

Can't recall ever receiving unwanted hugs from men, only women.
I think men read the vibes I give out :) whereas women don't care and enforce the hugs anyway.
Have had a few crushing handshakes from men though.

Do they hug the men as well or just you or are there no men?
Even if no men all this hugging just seems unnecessary. Awareness of many folk with autism hating most physical contact is an awareness campaign I support unlike most of them which are virtue signalling nonsense. .

It's just me. The men are greeted with handshakes at these meetings. I always offer my hand but am then pulled into a hug. Ugh.

I remember years ago back in my first job I’d worked a stupidly long week 7 x 13 hour shifts and I got shouted at on the phone and I cried. My boss said he wasn’t allowed to hug the trainees but could offer me an elbow rub. I declined.

To be honest was more creeped out about what might have gone before to cause him to say that. It did make me stop crying though!

Have occasionally shared hugs with colleagues after particularly traumatic deaths/arrests/situations. I don’t think any of it has been inappropriate but maybe have read it all wrong! Am often genuine friends with those I work with though.

Often get hugs from patients and relatives.

I work in a male dominated Industry, I noticed at events the males from other companies tried for the hug/kiss greeting as a method of dominance.
They were very confused at the next event or meeting when I initiated the hug/kiss - took the wind out of their sails so to speak and exerted my equalness to them

Thankfully I never worked anywhere with a "hug culture". A handshake is the only appropriate physical contact between strangers or colleagues.

Of course there are few colleagues who became friends, but that is quite different.

I'm reasonably certain there's a series of instructional videos and highly successful seminars to be marketed there. I'd buy, for one!

Ha! I might be able to rustle up a how-to video in the new year

In short though, you just have to block the upper incoming hugging arm with a flat palm - I tend to ham it up with a verbal ‘Yay! Hi-Five!’

I need to work on a block technique for bear huggers too.

Maybe Betty an upward knee swing would work

Oh yes, definitely!
And a good old ‘Glasgow kiss’.

Useful for a strangle-y chef but less so with great aunt Maude...

My husband used to be the padded-up fake bad guy for women’s self defence classes (he’s too old and brittle now 🙊) maybe I can get him to help me work through some ideas for blocking hugs?
The principles are pretty much the same (ideally you’ll act so effectively that they won’t know what you actually did - they’ll just be left wondering what happened as you make a hasty exit).

I used to work with a guy who pretended to be all 'new age hippy' and would always be giving shoulder massages. Bleuccch.

He would come up behind and then go 'OOh you're really tense!'. I am NOW.

Never had enforced full hugs, but I did have a boss once who would come and stand at my desk and put his arm around my shoulders for a squeeze. He never did it to my male colleague who sat opposite me. At one point I think I flinched so obviously that he got the message and never did it again.

I fucking hate the shoulder-massagers.

It’s always the hippy SJW types who do it, the ones who spend half their time bang on about respecting diversity and extolling the virtues of consent culture...

Why don’t they respect people who dislike being touched? Why don’t they seek verbal consent before they start rubbing on you?

Respect diversity and promote consent culture but fuck you if you are neurodiverse/sensory challenged/an uptight frigid bitch?

Is it Lang who says ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’?

Unwanted shoulder-rubbers should be shot at dawn.