Oh I think you’re missing something pretty simple on the physical touch thing. In my model of the world the potential for violence or other form of seriously invasive acts (e.g. sexual assault) is why physical touch has gained the norms whereby unwanted touch is considered relatively more important to police boundary violations around than most unwanted behavior (which typically doesn’t have as much consent-focus).
In contrast, sometimes strangers try to engage me on conversations about national politics in a way I find a complete waste of my time and soul-sucking; sometimes I am relatively high status in a room and people talk to me in a sycophantic way that I find very tedious to put up with. But this doesn’t cross a line into “perhaps this person should be socially ostracized” because there isn’t an underlying threat in the unwanted speech, so I just find it a bit annoying.
If someone were to regularly push me around in ways I didn’t want, or touch me sexually in ways I did not want, I would make some move to have them socially ostracized, because the boundary here is much more important and it would be a sign that this person may indeed be violent or commit sexual assault. It’s a really important part of why unwanted physical touch norms are more sensitive than unwanted speech is (though to be clear there are many kinds of speech that are well worth policing too).
Oh I think you’re missing something pretty simple on the physical touch thing. In my model of the world the potential for violence or other form of seriously invasive acts (e.g. sexual assault) is why physical touch has gained the norms whereby unwanted touch is considered relatively more important to police boundary violations around than most unwanted behavior (which typically doesn’t have as much consent-focus).
In contrast, sometimes strangers try to engage me on conversations about national politics in a way I find a complete waste of my time and soul-sucking; sometimes I am relatively high status in a room and people talk to me in a sycophantic way that I find very tedious to put up with. But this doesn’t cross a line into “perhaps this person should be socially ostracized” because there isn’t an underlying threat in the unwanted speech, so I just find it a bit annoying.
If someone were to regularly push me around in ways I didn’t want, or touch me sexually in ways I did not want, I would make some move to have them socially ostracized, because the boundary here is much more important and it would be a sign that this person may indeed be violent or commit sexual assault. It’s a really important part of why unwanted physical touch norms are more sensitive than unwanted speech is (though to be clear there are many kinds of speech that are well worth policing too).