Repeated handshake becomes sexualized
example ·
retold in 4 talks
If after shaking hands one does not release but simply repeats the same gesture, it immediately acquires a sexual charge, illustrating how repetition introduces the detour constitutive of human sexuality.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“If after we shake hands I would not drop your hand but I will just repeat the same gesture. Automatically your impression would have been something dirty is on his mind.”
“The very fact that I just repeatedly insisted on a gesture will be sexualized.”
“The very repetition would minimally sexualize it... this can be demonstrated in a very primitive way.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Brothers Grimm1Gilbert Ryle1Juliet Flower MacCannell1Mark Epstein1Joseph Breen1Hans Christian Andersen1Kristen Stewart1Maurice Merleau-Ponty1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
If after shaking hands one does not release but simply repeats the same gesture, it immediately acquires a sexual charge, illustrating how repetition introduces the detour constitutive of human sexuality., illustrating sexuality as failure and detour,human sexuality versus animal mating
Žižek offers a vulgar example: if instead of shaking someone's hand once he simply clung and squeezed it again and again, the repetition itself would be perceived as sexual, showing how the death drive's insistence is as such sexualizing., illustrating Wiederholungszwang,death drive and sexuality,repetition as sexualization
Žižek invites a woman in the audience to imagine him shaking her hand and then rhythmically continuing to do so, a non-obscene act that would become sexually charged through sheer repetition, demonstrating that repetition itself sexualizes., illustrating sexualization through repetition,drive,culture and sexuality