About

Shaking Hand With a Woman refers to a viral tweet written by right-wing vlogger Paul R. Ramsey, better known by his online handle RamZPaul, which was widely mocked and criticized as misogynistic for claiming that shaking a woman's hand was like "shaking hands with a child."

Background

On April 1st, Twitter user @ramzpaul^[1] tweeted, "Shaking hands with a woman is like shaking hands with a child. It seems artificial and vaguely patronizing. The handshake was designed as a greeting between men to show that your sword hand was empty." He goes on to explain that, "Almost all women now greet with a quick hug in informal situations" (show below). The initial tweet gained 2,200 likes, 425 retweets and 1,625 replies in three days.

Notable Developments

The tweet was met with widespread criticism and mockery on the platform. On April 2nd, @imteddybless tweeted, "hun u know people can read these tweets right?" and @MichaelJKenny^[2] replied, "I don't think that he thinks women can read" (shown below, left). The tweet gained 1,370 likes in two days. @rowdy_katie^[4] tweeted, "That's not true with the women in my company. We greet each other with handshakes before discussing how we're going to fire guys who say things like you do" (shown below, right). The tweet gained 390 likes in two days.

Twitter user @emilypothast^[3] posted a medieval drawing of a woman taking off a man's head with a sword captioned as, "My sword was in my left hand, PSYCH" (shown below, left). The photo received 1,040 likes in two days. @dykeonique replied to @ramzpaul's tweet with "That's a lot of words for 'I've never made a woman orgasm before'" in calligraphy (shown below, right). The tweet garnered 766 likes in two days.

In a report written by The Daily Dot,^[5] Ramzpaul's Twitter page is said to offer "frequent racist tweets about immigration, sexist tweets, and retweets conspiracy theorists, remains “verified” on Twitter." On April 3rd, Ramzpaul uploaded a video to YouTube entitled, "The Handshake Triggering" in which he defends his tweet (shown below). The video gained 6,700 views and 988 likes in a day.

Search Interest

External References