I’m on both sides of this issue. In some domanes my persoal boundary is way inside the soicially accepted one, and if I don’t get “benign boundary violations” I get low level depressed. But in other domanes my personal boundary is way outside the socially accepted one. There have been many occcations where I’ve told people that they crossed my boudary and they have refused to adjust or even not belived me at all.
My personally prefered social norm solution to this would be:
Forgive first violations, but also make sure they learn form thier msistake. If they seem uninteressted in learning, maybe be less forgiving.
Severly punich people who don’t back off when told to.
Convice everyone that there exist peopel who are radicall diffrent from them, or something. I’m so fed up with not beeing belive when I explain how I’m diffrent. (This is not a problem amoing LWers.)
I can survive boundary violation if I can trust that people back off when I tell them to. In the current culture, if somone violates my boundary I often start to panic, or just run off, becaus I don’t know if I will be respected or even belived if I tell them to stop. More often than not, telling people to stop just escalates the situation.
(If you run into me in reall live and worry about crossing my boudaries, just let me know that you can respect a “no” and I’ll be fine.)
Another thing that bothers me about our current consent culture is that there is so much focus on verbal concent, and almost no acknolagement of other ways to comunicate consent. Verbal consent is a powerfull tool, but it is also very inprecise. If you ask if you can ask me a personal question, how personal are we talking here? If I ask for a hug, what level of intimacy are we talking about? We could spend 15 minutes discussing exact what kind of hug, but most likely we would get nowhere.
On the other hand. I have danced contact improvisation for may years. This dance involves a lot of touch. And becasue the dance is compleetly imrpovised (we sometims role around on the floor, inclugin roling over other people) there is no naural boundaries in the dance format. Also, usually we don’t talk on the dance floor. You don’t even ask peopel to dance with you. Instead you just find others on the dance floor and from there everything is comunicated non verbally.
Not verbal consent is acctually not very hard, even with people you don’t know. You might already instinctivly know how to do it. For conversation it works like this: You start by asking a “small talk” level question. If the other person engages in your conversation (i.e. gives more than the most minimal answer) this is consent to keep talking. After that you slowly up the level of personall-ness of the conversation, while paying attention to the other person. As long as they match or go above your level you can keep going. If they start to avoid your questions, then you hit the boundary, this means you should back off a bit.
For touch you start with some light touch (maybe you need to get the blunt verbal consent for this). If they respond to your touch (e.g. squese back, or in other ways lean into your touch) then this is concent to continue this level of touch. Now you can increase the level of touch slowly while paying attention to consent.
If a person give no response at all to your toch (netiher avoiding or leaning into your touch) then this is not concent. This is no information. Maybe they are super unconfortable and froze. Maybe they didn’t notice your touch. Maybe they did notice and even liked it but don’t know how to respond. In this situation you should either back of or ask verbally.
Noticing other peoples boundaries is a skill that you can train. But I think just knowing that this is a thing you can do, helps a lot. I definatly met people who don’t seem to know that they are supposed to pay attention to this.
If you are att all unccertan at you skills of noticing non verbal consent: Make sure you are not allways the one increasing the level of intimacy. Ever now an then you should puse at the curent level and let the other person take the next step. And if they don’t you shoul’d either. Another test you can do is to lower the level of intimacy and see if the other person raises it back up.
Meeting people who are skilled at non-verbal consent i great. It’s provides a similar safety to hanging out with somoene who knows me well.
When I toch someone who is experienced in contact impov (or have similar skils from elswhere) I can feel that I am safe. I can feel that they notice me and I know that they will not cross my phyical boundaries.
I have had a similar experience when talking to someone trained in circling or other authentic relating. I know I don’t have to tell them where my conversational boundaries are. I can notice them noticing me and adjusting to me from moment to moment.
Convince everyone that there exist people who are radically different from them, or something. I’m so fed up with not being believed when I explain how I’m different.
I’d note that there is a big difference between deeply believing that other people are radically different from me, versus believing people when they tell me how specifically they’re different. The former was hammered into me by experience from a pretty age—my mind is a pretty-obviously-poor-model of other peoples’ minds, so I definitely expect on a gut level that other people are radically different from me.
But most people are pretty delusional about themselves in general, and the ways-in-which-they-are-unusual are included in that. We have more evidence than others about our own peculiarities, but also much more severe biases in perceiving our own peculiarities. So if someone tells me that they’re unusual in some particular way, that’s not necessarily strong evidence. It mostly depends on priors about how common it is for people to think they’re unusual in that way, and how much that correlates with the actual trait.
I agree that it’s not necessarily strong evidence, but it should in most cases focus your attention pretty heavily on a narrow subset of [hypotheses which would tend to produce that claim], one of which is usually [that claim being true].
You probably already agree with that, but I wanted to spell it out.
Forgive first violations, but also make sure they learn from their mistake. If they seem uninterested in learning, maybe be less forgiving.
Severely punish people who don’t back off when told to.
Convince everyone that there exist people who are radically different from them, or something. I’m so fed up with not being believed when I explain how I’m different. (This is not a problem among LWers.)
is almost exactly the Duncan-culture solution as well.
I’m on both sides of this issue. In some domanes my persoal boundary is way inside the soicially accepted one, and if I don’t get “benign boundary violations” I get low level depressed. But in other domanes my personal boundary is way outside the socially accepted one. There have been many occcations where I’ve told people that they crossed my boudary and they have refused to adjust or even not belived me at all.
My personally prefered social norm solution to this would be:
Forgive first violations, but also make sure they learn form thier msistake. If they seem uninteressted in learning, maybe be less forgiving.
Severly punich people who don’t back off when told to.
Convice everyone that there exist peopel who are radicall diffrent from them, or something. I’m so fed up with not beeing belive when I explain how I’m diffrent. (This is not a problem amoing LWers.)
I can survive boundary violation if I can trust that people back off when I tell them to. In the current culture, if somone violates my boundary I often start to panic, or just run off, becaus I don’t know if I will be respected or even belived if I tell them to stop. More often than not, telling people to stop just escalates the situation.
(If you run into me in reall live and worry about crossing my boudaries, just let me know that you can respect a “no” and I’ll be fine.)
Another thing that bothers me about our current consent culture is that there is so much focus on verbal concent, and almost no acknolagement of other ways to comunicate consent. Verbal consent is a powerfull tool, but it is also very inprecise. If you ask if you can ask me a personal question, how personal are we talking here? If I ask for a hug, what level of intimacy are we talking about? We could spend 15 minutes discussing exact what kind of hug, but most likely we would get nowhere.
On the other hand. I have danced contact improvisation for may years. This dance involves a lot of touch. And becasue the dance is compleetly imrpovised (we sometims role around on the floor, inclugin roling over other people) there is no naural boundaries in the dance format. Also, usually we don’t talk on the dance floor. You don’t even ask peopel to dance with you. Instead you just find others on the dance floor and from there everything is comunicated non verbally.
Not verbal consent is acctually not very hard, even with people you don’t know. You might already instinctivly know how to do it. For conversation it works like this: You start by asking a “small talk” level question. If the other person engages in your conversation (i.e. gives more than the most minimal answer) this is consent to keep talking. After that you slowly up the level of personall-ness of the conversation, while paying attention to the other person. As long as they match or go above your level you can keep going. If they start to avoid your questions, then you hit the boundary, this means you should back off a bit.
For touch you start with some light touch (maybe you need to get the blunt verbal consent for this). If they respond to your touch (e.g. squese back, or in other ways lean into your touch) then this is concent to continue this level of touch. Now you can increase the level of touch slowly while paying attention to consent.
If a person give no response at all to your toch (netiher avoiding or leaning into your touch) then this is not concent. This is no information. Maybe they are super unconfortable and froze. Maybe they didn’t notice your touch. Maybe they did notice and even liked it but don’t know how to respond. In this situation you should either back of or ask verbally.
Noticing other peoples boundaries is a skill that you can train. But I think just knowing that this is a thing you can do, helps a lot. I definatly met people who don’t seem to know that they are supposed to pay attention to this.
If you are att all unccertan at you skills of noticing non verbal consent: Make sure you are not allways the one increasing the level of intimacy. Ever now an then you should puse at the curent level and let the other person take the next step. And if they don’t you shoul’d either. Another test you can do is to lower the level of intimacy and see if the other person raises it back up.
Meeting people who are skilled at non-verbal consent i great. It’s provides a similar safety to hanging out with somoene who knows me well.
When I toch someone who is experienced in contact impov (or have similar skils from elswhere) I can feel that I am safe. I can feel that they notice me and I know that they will not cross my phyical boundaries.
I have had a similar experience when talking to someone trained in circling or other authentic relating. I know I don’t have to tell them where my conversational boundaries are. I can notice them noticing me and adjusting to me from moment to moment.
I’d note that there is a big difference between deeply believing that other people are radically different from me, versus believing people when they tell me how specifically they’re different. The former was hammered into me by experience from a pretty age—my mind is a pretty-obviously-poor-model of other peoples’ minds, so I definitely expect on a gut level that other people are radically different from me.
But most people are pretty delusional about themselves in general, and the ways-in-which-they-are-unusual are included in that. We have more evidence than others about our own peculiarities, but also much more severe biases in perceiving our own peculiarities. So if someone tells me that they’re unusual in some particular way, that’s not necessarily strong evidence. It mostly depends on priors about how common it is for people to think they’re unusual in that way, and how much that correlates with the actual trait.
I agree that it’s not necessarily strong evidence, but it should in most cases focus your attention pretty heavily on a narrow subset of [hypotheses which would tend to produce that claim], one of which is usually [that claim being true].
You probably already agree with that, but I wanted to spell it out.
Yeah, it’s a really good example of getting just enough bits to privilege the hypothesis.
I was mostly thinking of situations where someone thinks that if something is not a problem for them, it can’t possibly be a problem for anyone else.
If everyone have an above zero prior on “this other person might be very diffrent from me”, that would be a great improvment.
Strong upvote because:
is almost exactly the Duncan-culture solution as well.
From what I’ve read of your facebook posts, I think I would be happy living in Duncan culture.