| THE LESBIAN
HANDHOLDING PROJECT... ...and its Link to our Research with Prostate Cancer Patients |
| The
act of touching between individuals is an important means of expressing
intimacy. Touching may convey different messages or meanings related to
intimacy, status, and power. Touching also varies with gender, culture,
and age. Handholding is a little-researched yet major form of
reciprocal touch between individuals in public. Both men and women rate handholding as the most intimate and least dominating form of touch. While handholding has been characterized as a reciprocal non-verbal practice between sexes, the details of the act among heterosexual couples could be seen as demonstrating traditional male dominance; studies on hand-holding in those couples have shown that the man’s hand is significantly more likely to be the upper or lead hand, regardless of differences in height, age, hand preference, etc. The lead hand may thus indicate status or power difference (real or perceived) between partners. We are now studying same sex (lesbian) couples to explore whether handholding posture correlates with any measures of relationship dynamics when sex/gender difference is no longer a factor. If the individual who takes the lead hand correlates with anything in the relationship other than height, we hope to find out what that might be. We are testing this with an online survey accessible at http://tiny.cc/handholding. The questions in the survey explore some potential inequities in couples, for example, who makes more money or who “has the most say” in the relationship. We also ask about the duration of the relationship. Thus we hope to find evidence that correlates the stability of the relationship with the dynamics of the relationship (and possibly handholding as well). We hypothesize that fluidity in the power dynamic will be found in lesbian couples and, if we are correct, we see this as potentially instructive for heterosexual couples, where the hormonal status of the male has been made more equal to that of his female partner because of androgen-depriving medical treatments. If you are a lesbian in a partnership, please consider taking our SURVEY. It takes about 15 minutes to complete. Thank you! For a male version of this survey, go to http://www.adayinhand.com/news/internationalsamesexhandholdingsurvey |