More on touch, hugs, and boundaries

I've had some great comments on yesterday's post about hugs; I'm very grateful. Jenell responded with an interesting post of her own. (And for the umpteenth time, let me say that I envy her graceful writing style -- dang, she's good!) Here's a lengthy excerpt:

Hugo writes about touch between males and between adult males and young females at his church. He's also a professor...what are the boundaries at school? Or in a special-ed classroom? Or on a playground? Or with other peoples' kids? Or other places?

I started touching students more this year, in part because of all the healing touch and affection I received this year. I use public and private space as an important boundary. I touch students on the arm, head, or shoulder in class or in the hallway. I use touch to emphasize my words - to be affirming, encouraging, or in greeting. I don't touch without words. I hug female students in the hallway frequently. I don't hug men, except at graduation (in front of their families and other profs). Hugging male students seems way too risky - I've had flirting and sexually-related manipulative behavior coming from men from time to time and I don't want to inadvertently encourage it. I don't touch women or men in private settings - if I go for a walk with a student, if my office door is closed, etc. I also don't ever close my office door when talking with male students - I close it for women if they're crying or if they ask for it to be shut. If men ask for it to be shut, I still leave it open a crack.

It is sad that touch is oversexualized. In our culture, any person represents a potential sexual encounter - youth, children, male, female, married... anyone. It's hard to form relationships when you must first ascertain the other persons' sexual intentions. And it's obviously tragic that we have to teach our children to be wary of whether or not they are being viewed sexually by others.

I like that bit about using touch to emphasize words. In any event, Jenell raises some excellent questions. Let me see if I can tackle a few of the practical ones:

In terms of my boundaries as a professor, they are obviously very different from my boundaries as a youth leader. Those are two very different areas of my life, and I am trying to meet two very different sets of needs. I don't generally hug my students at the college. I do so only when it is initiated by the student, usually at the end of the semester as a "goodbye" ritual. In my capacity as a professor, my first job is to teach, not to provide emotional support. That doesn't mean that I can't form friendships with my students, and it doesn't rule out serving as a nurturing mentor -- but it is different than caring for high schoolers. I have had students (usually female) cry in my office,and I have kept the door shut (my office opens directly on to a very busy hallway). I know it's taking a risk, but I have to weigh that risk against the importance of respecting the needs of an individual student. Fortunately, I share my office with another professor, and he is usually around when students are visiting.

I agree with Jenell that in our culture, any person represents a potential sexual encounter - youth, children, male, female, married... anyone. I agree with her as well that this is "sad... obviously tragic". With that in mind, I have come to believe that the key thing that those of us who work with young people need to do is commit ourselves to being deliberately counter-cultural when it comes to touch. This doesn't mean ignoring the power of sexuality. It means not allowing our fear of sexuality to hold us back from reaching out to those who need it. We have to find non-exploitative ways to hold each other -- and hold each other across lines of sex, age, and status. Obviously, that's risky stuff.

(On a related note, several of our volunteers who work with youth at our church are openly gay or lesbian. We have regularly sent gay male adult volunteers on overnight trips with our youth, and they sleep in the same bunk house as the boys and I do. I can think of a lesbian couple who have done marvelous work with our junior high-schoolers. Our kids don't bat a single eyelash, because they have been raised in an intensely inclusive culture. Heck, many of them have a gay or lesbian parent! To my knowledge, in the five years I've been working with the youth program, no parent has ever complained. But if we were to set up rigid gender-based boundaries, who on earth should our gay men be told to hug? Boys? Girls? Neither? Which bunkhouse should we put the lesbian youth leader in? This gets pretty ridiculous pretty quickly.)

The way to mitigate risk is to set boundaries, and to have touch happen publicly. In my youth group, just about everyone hugs everyone at the end of the Wednesday night meeting. These aren't those ridiculous "side hugs" either, they are full-on embraces. Now, not everyone is required to hug, and some kids do shy away -- at first. But once trust has been developed, we have to kick them out of the meeting room because otherwise they'd be hugging us and each other all night! I work under the supervision of a woman priest who heads our youth program at All Saints. When I'm hugging a girl, that priest is generally in the room. That's common sense. I have hugged boys when we've been alone. I have wiped away countless tears, had my shirts soaked with snot, and I've kissed a whole bunch of 'em (boys and girls) on their foreheads. I've done it, I've done it publicly, and I absolutely trust both my own motives and the motives of those whom I embrace. More to the point, I know all of the parents of my youth -- and they've seen me with their kids. I'm not trying to say that I'm unique or special! I'm trying to say that I've earned the trust of those around me, I have accountability to the staff and to the parents of our high schoolers, and it's only because that trust and that accountability is in place that I have the privilege of being able to express love through physical touch.

I am not blind to the reality of sexual abuse. I am not blind to the reality that most of that sexual abuse has been perpetrated by men in positions of trust and authority. I am not blind to the fact that so many young women have stories of inappropriately sexual contact with adult men whom they were supposed to be able to trust. And I'm not blind to the reality of human frailty -- including my own. But the way I see it, I've got three choices:

1. Get out of youth work altogether;
2. Continue in youth work, but set rigid boundaries that only reinforce the notion that touch is dangerous and something to be feared;
3. Continue in youth work, and with prayer and mentoring and with the support of others to hold me accountable, touch and hug and hold and wipe away tears and snot.

Trusting in God and grace and the wisdom of those around me, I'm taking option three.

Comments

[Joy Paul]

Hugo, Hooray for your posts and your determination to keep doing right. This is a sensitive area when gays are involved, so I was glad to see how you dealt with that subject. Most conservative churches could not be that open-minded, since they are so very fearful of gay people "recruiting" the young people. Most gay people I know don't recruit anyone else to the gay lifestyle, much less under the pretense of "hugging." Yet, all of your blogs about this had the undertone of the "gay disease" being spread through such action. I'll leave the subject to others from here on out, but thanks again for broaching that subject openly in this blog.

[John]

Good call. I take option 3 too-All those lean and hungry looks my lads give me mean I really don't have another choice.

[Hugo]

Amen, my brothers, amen.

[Lawrence Krubner]

"Obviously, that's risky stuff."

You wrote these 4 words, I'd like to make sure that I'm understanding them the way you meant for them to be understood. I read these words as you saying this:

"I understand that this is risky, and that by doing this I may one day lose my job or have my reputation damaged by false allegations or by misunderstanding."

That, to me, is risk. Is that what you meant? I guess I'm wondering, when you say it is risky, do you understand that it is risky?

I spent several summers working at a summer camp and I recall the staff talking about this issue many times. One thing I denied back then but see clearly now is that good intentions on the part of the staff person are not always enough to save that staff person in every situation. When I was younger, I believed that good intentions were enough security.

On another note, the other danger is the psychological harm that comes when you trip over an emotional trigger that you did not know the other person had - especially if they've been molested, you can trip some awful emotional landmines. And when those triggers get tripped, the results are not always immediately awful.

[Hugo]

Obviously, Lawrence, it is risky for all the reasons you cite and more. Good intentions are not enough. Those of us who work with kids have to be as attentive to perception as we are to our own intent -- and that is a heavy burden to carry indeed.

I do understand that it is risky! Tenure protects many things, but my status as a volunteer youth worker is not one of them! Still, because I am a volunteer (and not dependent on work with teens for my livelihood) I can afford to take risks that could, conceivably, cost me my position as a trusted volunteer. I'm quite certain I've never done anything to warrant that. I'd stake everything I have on it.

[Lawrence Krubner]

Oh, believe me, I wasn't questioning your integrity. I'm sure you've never done anything to warrant having your position taken away. I was just clarifying that you were using "risk" the way I understood it.

At the summer camp where I worked for so many years, about two years after I left there, there was an incident where two very well respected, much adored camp counselors got kicked out in the middle of the summer for no good cause, save that the folks back at headquarters, 300 miles away, heard they'd gone swimming with 3 kids in the nearby pond. Such informal practices had long been the rule at the camp, and the two counselors could generally get away with a lot because they were among the most trusted people there. There was never a question that anything bad had happened up at the pond, only that some people at headquarters thought it looked bad. Everyone at the camp, all the staff, thought the reaction from headquarters was extreme. The folks back at headquarters had only recently learned one of the counselors was "gay" (actually, bi-sexual, though actually that reduced to an encounter a few years before that he'd spoken about honestly). The whole incident seemed very sad, and said a lot about the growing disconnect between headquarters and the camp - headquarters was growing more and more concerned with possible lawsuits, while the folks at the camp were, as ever, focused on creating good experiences for the kids. For me, the incident reinforced some of the reasons why I'd walked away from the place.

Such dynamics are, on the one hand, specific to one institution at one particular time (the mid 90s) and, on the other hand, rather universal and we can see them play out in different ways all around us.