Australia Letter: Should Kissing Be Allowed in Professional Settings?

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SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Letter 123

Should Kissing Be Allowed in Professional Settings?

Libby VanderPloeg

The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week's issue is written by Isabella Kwai, a reporter based in Sydney.

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The man introducing the journalist and presenter Leigh Sales onstage at the charity dinner offered his cheek at first. Then in front of a crowd of 200, he kissed her on the lips.

Leigh, the host of the event, apparently screamed in surprise, and the audience let out an "audible gasp." She has said publicly that the incident deeply offended and angered her, and the man, Phil Newman, later apologized.

But the episode has ignited a wider conversation about consent and whether kissing of any kind should be banned in professional settings, given that in Australia women are often on the receiving end, while men shake hands.

"Being kissed is about agency. It is the first invasion of personal social space we experience," wrote Pru Goward, the former sex discrimination commissioner, who called kissing in social situations "a peculiarly Australian masculine maneuver."

But is that the best or only way to look at what happened and how to move forward? Below is an edited and condensed conversation between myself, Damien Cave, our bureau chief, and Jamie Tarabay, a correspondent, which is partly our attempt to make sense of it all.

Isabella: Damien and Jamie, what was your first reaction on hearing about the unwanted kiss?

Jamie: I was annoyed that this happened because of where we are in this day and age, and I say that as someone who's had this happen to me years ago. If this is still happening, are we only really hearing about this now because it happened to someone with such a public profile in a public setting?

I also think we have to delineate too where culture fits in — spending years in the Middle East, where everyone kisses everyone, kissing isn't a big thing, and I dispute that this is an Australian thing, as Pru Goward wrote in her column. Weirdly enough, no Australian man has ever done this to me, while I've had this experience with American men.

Damien: Australian or not, this was a man trying to make other men laugh by planting an unwanted kiss on a woman's lips. A lot of men (myself included) would not find that funny. It speaks a bit to the kind of arrogance that a lot of men just have but don't notice in themselves — the idea that what they see as funny or entertaining must be funny and entertaining to everyone.

Jamie: It is an instant separator between men and women when this happens, when it's a handshake for a man, and a kiss for a woman. On so many levels, it sends a message: you're different, so I'm not going to take you as seriously, and I'm the dominant one, and will invade your personal space whether you like it or not.

Isabella: In professional settings, I go in for the handshake, although kissing on the cheeks happens occasionally. If it does, I've noticed that both professionally or socially, it almost always involves women. I don't often see men kissing men as a greeting before business meetings.

This incident reminded me of sports reporters doing their job who often have to fend off kisses from zealous fans or players high on the victory of winning a game. As Jamie said, it's an instant separator in situations when you're not even thinking about gender — suddenly you're a woman first, professional second.

Damien: We can all agree that an unwanted kiss on the lips is wrong. But the divide between handshaking and a cheek kiss? I don't know. I don't feel that it always has to be about power dynamics. In the Anglosphere, where touching of any kind tends to carry a lot of weight, that may be true.

But I've also lived in Mediterranean countries and in Latin America, and there — though they have serious issues with sexism too — I'm not sure it is quite so heavy. The rules of the road are clearer: Cheek kisses between men and women (and women and women) are for people you know, and there's less a sense of dominance so much as warmth. Men hug more, men and women touch more just in casual conversation. Maybe the rules for these sorts of things need to adjust based on location and culture, and maybe we need to interpret each act with an eye toward intent rather than see every iteration of the act as wrong?

Isabella: Context is everything, isn't it?

Damien: It is. The problem seems to be when men (and it's usually men) can't or don't read the context and assume more power than they should.

Jamie: I'm thinking about it in the work context, where those dynamics send a lot of messages. Obviously in a personal or social environment that wouldn't necessarily be the case. But if you're in a meeting for an interview or a business lunch and everyone else gets a handshake and the woman gets a kiss, I just don't like the presumption behind it. And I also think it doesn't work the other way around, if a woman was doing the kissing either.

Isabella: It points to a certain entitlement too, that someone was willing to encroach on a woman's space for the sake of a "lighthearted" attempt at humor.

So do we think this reflects something about where #MeToo is here in Australia? Reportedly there was an audible gasp from the audience after it happened.

Damien: The reaction suggests that public perceptions have in fact moved — maybe #MeToo is further along than we think in Australia. I doubt those gasps would have been heard a decade ago.

But this is a subject that continues to come up in many places, in many ways. I'm reminded of the more recent controversy over Joe Biden and his touching and kissing, and the divided responses to that.

Jamie: That's a great point. I think we still need to have larger conversations about consent, which is at the core of what happened with Leigh Sales, and to me what unwanted kissing is really all about.

Damien: So if this happens to either of you again, what will you do? Has this incident changed anything for you?

Isabella: The problem is these things happen so quickly, by the time it's registered, the moment for rejection has passed. It's actually all the more shocking that even someone of Leigh's professional stature isn't immune from these kind of actions.

If there's any lasting impact on this, it might be that people will think twice about pushing on boundaries. Reflecting on it personally, while I'd like to think I'd put my foot down every time, the sad reality is it depends on the situation. For many young women, if you don't want to offend or start off on the wrong note, it's a risk to speak up.

Jamie: Thankfully, no one has done this to me in years. It could be because I'm older, or I'm more assertive, but I have also found that when I do meet men in off-the-record surroundings these days, they're the first to bring up the hand for a shake, and I appreciate that.

Should kissing on the cheek or other more intimate forms of greetings be used in professional settings? Is there a gender bias in how they're used? Join the conversation and write to us at nytaustralia@nytimes.com

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