Don't Hit Me
I have a knack for making people uncomfortable. Do you know how I do it? I tell them when they're making me uncomfortable.
At work today, I was checking our sales reports at the register's computers when one of my managers jokingly hit me on the arm. Just a friendly little tap, nothing particularly out of the ordinary or inappropriate, but it made me uncomfortable. As you may already know, I am often pretty wary of unsolicited physical contact, and this particular instance of it made me feel kind of weird. So I said "Please don't hit me" in a friendly but sincere way.
In a reasonable world, that would be the end of this interaction, and it would not escalate into anything worthy of Writing About on the Internet. But in this world, the actual world, people are not expected to express their personal boundaries in the open in a sincere way. People are expected to, ahem, "roll with the punches," and accept unwelcome (but well-intentioned) physical contact from other people with good humor and self-deprecation. So what happened was that my manager (who, I must stress, is a generally great person but who has a tendency to get very nervous and magnify awkward or imperfect moments to a hyperbolic degree) kept harping on the fact that I was really not kidding when I told her not to hit me and seriously wanted her not to do that anymore. She alluded to now being able to confirm with other people that when I say something, I really mean it! She nervously acknowledged that a lot of people will say things like I said in a joking way, or make such requests facetiously, and that it was good that I said what I meant in a direct manner. She also mentioned that, since she would now be thinking about the fact that I'd asked her not to hit me, she might subconsciously hit me again. I told her that I would really appreciate it if she didn't do that, and after a very strange and awkward conversation that lasted far too long, I think she now understands that I actually meant the thing I said.
To generalize: I really think people ought to say what they mean and say it in such a way that indicates that they mean it. I think that they ought to express their boundaries and discomforts with other people's behavior openly and without reservation, not even for a moment stopping to consider the feelings of the other person or the issues this declaration might raise in a social setting. Too often I have observed my friends respond to what I perceived (perhaps incorrectly, as I am very sensitive to these things) as gross invasions of their personal space by laughingly insisting that the perpetrator of these invasions should stop or cut it out or whatever. They then hit this person in a teasing way or roll their eyes at the person's continued refusal to respect their personal space or agency, and essentially encourage the behavior by trivializing their own resistance. Obviously, I would never blame the victim of a personal space invasion or unwanted (but well-intentioned) physical contact for what happens to them, but it is clear to me in many instances that if people are not called on their behavior in a decisive, direct, forceful, and unrepentantly public way, they do not think they are doing anything wrong. If I had not told my manager not to hit me today, or if I had failed to reiterate my desire upwards of a dozen times in the next twenty minutes or so, I have no doubt that she "wouldn't have gotten the message." This is not entirely her fault (though I do think people should be held accountable for being oblivious) - it is the fault of our society for telling us all that social norms of personal contact are more important than individual feelings. And the only way to change those norms is to fight for our feelings whenever the opportunity arises.