It’s time to eliminate promiscuous hugs

GENTLE READERS: What is your immediate association with the word “inappropriate”?

Criminal sexual activity, right? Before that, it was used as a euphemism for “wrong” and “rude.”

But Miss Manners hates to give up using the word entirely, because there are actions that may not be bad in themselves, but are so in the wrong context.

Hugging, for example. Sure, go ahead and hug your partner — and your children. And hug anyone else with whom you are on mutually intimate terms.

But stop thinking that you are conferring a blessing on anyone else and exhibiting your own warm feelings about your fellow creatures by thrusting yourself on others.

Clearly some of this activity is illegal harassment. But there has been so much pop-psych nonsense going around for decades about the benefits of putting everyone in everyone else’s arms that Miss Manners is half-willing to believe some people just don’t get it.

They cast the gesture in terms of the target’s presumed feelings. Their intention, they assure themselves, was not to gratify themselves, but to make those who are hugged feel comfortable, accepted, relaxed, included, validated — not violated.

But one person’s idea of being a tactile humanitarian is another person’s idea of a creep.

Throughout the touchyfeely era, Miss Manners has tried to expose the premise as a hoax. If a hug is welcome, as a sign of affection, empathy or solidarity, it is because it is the physical expression of a genuine emotion. Believing that it represents that when coming from anyone not previously close surely requires a stretch.

How is it possible to detach the gesture from one’s feelings about the person who is making it? And if touching is so important, shouldn’t the person being touched have some say in whether to allow it?

If that all sounds too difficult for a supposedly spontaneous gesture, the solution is to save the hugging for those who have shown it would be welcome.

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

I have a friend who gets irrationally mad when you respond to a text invite with “pass” — or any variation of declining the invite that includes the word “pass.”

Is this a proper (polite) term to use to decline based on the informal method of the invitation?

GENTLE READER: Your friend is rational. “I’ll pass” is a proper expression when you have a bad bridge hand, but insulting when you have received an invitation.

Submit your etiquette questions to Miss Manners at dearmissmanners@gmail. com.