Touching people is not a personality or a style. Insisting on the freedom to do so would mean prioritizing your way of being over other people’s experience of you.

I, for instance, elect to walk on certain streets, not others. The elevator doors slide open, and there’s one man inside: I evaluate his size against mine, calculating how well, if I had to, I could fight him off. I check the backseat of my car before getting in, just to make sure no one’s waiting there. I don’t leave my drink unattended.

How many lives have been ruined by coercive men and their protectors? How many women stopped working in music because of them? And how much great music did we lose in turn?