I hate it, I’m quite ticklish and growing up my family thought it was fun to tickle me because I would always laugh loud and Wrigley around, that’s only because it didn’t feel nice like I assume other people feel, it hurt a bit to be tickled and when it’s getting done for long enough it makes you cry, yeah tickling can fuck right off, I’ll fight you now if you try.
That all depends on how, and the context in which it’s done. My first girlfriend would spend hours tickling my back in between sessions - I never forgot those sunny days.
Now with more aggressive tickling - it is akin to a violent attack, and my father used to tickle me until I couldn’t stand it, and then push some more. Often it ended with me in tears… so with my son, sometimes I’ll grab a foot and start tickling it like mad - but I have a MUCH shorter cutoff time so that it ends with him laughing.
Can’t say I have much of an opinion at all, but seeing this post is reminding me of that documentary where the guy was commissioning videos of young dude wrestlers tickling each other, and he played it off like it wasn’t, but of course it was for sex reasons
I once read that tickling is actually a really excellent way to teach kids about consent, and to keep them safe by teaching them there’s something wrong when someone does not respect a repeated and firm “no.”
EDIT: Short article from a nanny explaining it better than I can.
This article doesn’t really acknowledge that for some people, tickling can be really painful. “without control or autonomy. It can start to feel bad or scary pretty quickly.” – This can just as well apply to restraining someone. Which is why I’m not sure I agree with the premise. Most things, such as restraining someone, hitting someone, hugging someone, we can sympathise with as kids and therefore approach the notion of consent with sympathy. But tickling is a very different experience for someone who can enjoy it vs someone who can’t.
Yeah, if tickling someone causes them pain or any other negative feeling I don’t think anyone is saying you should keep doing it. Especially since in that case it would be non-consensual in every instance, which defeats the purpose of using it as a tool to teach consent. There are other tools out there revolving around a variety of forms of touch or permission asking, tickling is just one.
EDIT: rereading my first comment I think it’s coming across like I was somewhat disagreeing with your first comment and that we should use tickling to teach consent even in the absence of consent. My reply was meant to be in total agreement, that consent is vital and that consent in tickling can lead to healthy attitudes towards consent in a wide variety of other cases.
I’m not saying the article is telling you to push boundaries. I’m saying the article is treating it like other forms of autonomy restricting actions, rather than as assault. This is accurate for most people and the lens kids will intuitively understand, but it’s not accurate for everyone. Therefore it’s an unintuitive lens for teaching.
OK, so you’re saying because tickling is painful for some number of people, it shouldn’t be the default first way to teach consent since hugging or other less invasive/painful forms of touch can do the same thing with less risk of harm?
That makes sense, and I can understand needing to treat it with more caution because of that.
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