Counterpoint: Shaking hands with men, as a woman, is kind of gross and irritating because most of them don’t know how to do it and you end up with that limp-fish handshake. Ug.
Seriously, there’s nothing worse than shaking hands with a man who’s all like, “Oh no, it’s a girl, WHAT DO,” and gives you a floppy-assed, no-grip handshake. Like, do you not know how to shake a hand? Do you do this to other men, too? Did no one teach you how to do this?
It’s a pretty straight-forward process: firm – but not crushing – grip, quick shake, eye contact, smile, introduce yourself. The gender of the shakee doesn’t matter, so you can ignore that part.
I also find it irritating when a woman offers to shake your hand, and then doesn’t know how to do it right. If you don’t know how to do it, don’t offer it.
This seems to happen most often with middle-aged ladies, particularly those in professional, business-y jobs, like they saw men shaking hands and decided to do it too, but never bothered to figure out how.
Dude up there goes on to claim that women just hug hello anyway, so why bother to shake a woman’s hand, blahblahblah, because he’s just a garbage woman-hater, so his opinion on anything doesn’t count anyway, but I would like to point out that most women don’t just go around hugging random people hello. I’m sure there’s a few women out there who do that, but I think most of us save hugging hello for friends and family.
Notes & Thoughts 