(no subject)

[aroraborealis]

The kiss in question here is not a peck and not a full-on clinch, but something between. Let's say it lasts a 3-5 seconds, involves (but doesn't display) tongue, and does not involve groping, grinding, or otherwise suggestive activities, but is clearly intimate.

[Poll #1359433]

[ETA: I phrased this poll confusingly; take note that the question is whether it's INappropriate. Bad poll designer!]

Comments

[blk]

"Inappropriate" feels like too strong of a word for me. "Somewhat tacky" is closer to my feelings. Also, there are a variety of exceptions, such as in areas where you are likely to greet/part someone intimately (ie, airport), or in certain places where such interaction is generally accepted (ie, nightclub).

And it's such a small deal as to be nearly neutral as long as the kissers are stepped enough out of the public way, so nobody has to wait for them, walk around them, or even look at them unless they want to.

[blk]

Actually, I'm going to amend myself to say that it's generally appropriate, as long as the people around you are not uncomfortable. The determination of that, of course, is very fluid.

For me, my comfort level is that if I'm not at least semi-dating both people involved, I don't want to be a part of the kiss. This can be in the form of having to step around a kissing couple or having to pause in the middle of a sentence and wait for my company to finish kissing before continuing a conversation.

I suspect a few too many occurrences of the latter have made me a little more sensitive than usual to many types of PDA.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

"as long as the people around you are not uncomfortable"

how would you even know this?

Especially if by public you mean public...as in, in the presence of strangers, such as at a restaurant, in a park, etc. "Excuse me, do you mind if I kiss my girlfriend while we stand near you?"

[blk]

Exactly! You can't know, although I would say that you can have a reasonably good idea most of the time, by just going by set social standards and community rules-of-thumb. Like I mentioned above, for example, greeting places are frequently more lax about PDAs than, say, restaurants or middle-of-the-sidewalk.

Basically, my complicated-"it depends"-answer-that-would-never-be-an-option-in-rosa's-polls is: it's inappropriate if other reasonable people are made uncomfortable, but since you can't put a logical and clearly set definition on "reasonable" or "people" or "uncomfortable," you have to use social senses to choose which side of the "possibly uncomfortable" fence to err on based on surroundings, and I, personally, tend to err slightly on the "inappropriate" side.

[cos]

... and this is one of the things about this country, which I mostly love living in, that I may never get used to or like: the pervasiveness of public anti-affection expectation, the large number of people who just don't want to see it. It grates on me, it feels so wrong.