Abstract
Ever since the appearance of Henley’s ground-breaking study on sex differences in touch, textbook writers and many others have spread the word that men touch women more than vice versa, a difference said to be caused by the disparity in men’s and women’s social status (Henley, 1973). Henley (1973, 1977) provided a syllogistic analysis of the relations of status, touch, and sex that has seemed compelling to many: Higher status individuals have a touching privilege that they exercise in order to express and maintain their status advantage; men have higher status than women; therefore, touching between the sexes is asymmetrical in quantity, with men touching women more than vice versa.
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Hall, J.A., Veccia, E.M. (1992). Touch Asymmetry Between the Sexes. In: Gender, Interaction, and Inequality. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2199-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2199-7_4
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