To be honest, personally, Imma little sick of the so-called eastern culture or high context culture, where tradition, rituals, and people’s habitude almost really controlling of how should we behave. No offense, (the elders might be angry to read this LOL) I just tryna be a little truthful, and sometimes the truth can be different from prevalences.

We’re induced to follow the unwritten rules that control our acts. Despite our flaws as a human, we have to always be a well-mannered, well-spoken and well-behaved person. Being wise in every situation, avoiding self from people’s judgments.

No, I don’t mean to rebel about the eastern culture because it doesn’t matter which culture do we embrace, every culture holds the moral values for good sake. What I’m trying to say is, sometimes this culture might be toxic for some people. Seriously.  Freedom almost unappreciated here. What we say, what we do, are always depend on what people gonna say about us. At the end of the day, we’re just live to please other people. We need to keep the uniformization in what we think, believe and do. Or else, we’ll ended being marginalized.  

Including how we express our feelings. We can love, but we’re not allowed to express it in public. How frustrating is it? Ain’t expressing affection verbally and physically are human rights?. But here we have to keep everything lowkey, including love. Don’t say sweet words or show any romantic gestures to your couple in public, or people gonna puke in front of you. Nah, not literally puke, but I always heard directly or overheard people talking sarcasm, judging, even scolding other people who show common types of affection, like kissing, hugging, holding hands, calling ‘sweetheart’, acting spoiled in public, or what so called as Public Display Affection (PDA).

They’ll be like “Eww that’s gross” or “That’s really cringey”. Some religious people even judging people who did PDA based on their appearance, like showing PDA for hijabi girl isn’t appropriate. I really don’t get it. Is that wrong to show affection? Don’t they want to be treated with love too?

Welcome to the place where you can find people do shaming to almost everything, not just body, even PDA Shaming truly exists here! I define PDA Shaming as an act of humiliating people who shows affection in public.

PDA shaming is a habit that’s penetrating amongst society in the medium of culture context. In eastern culture case, which is high context, people are so cohesive that completely independent behavior usually isn’t possible, nor even desirable (Nisbet in Jandt, 2013). Well, maybe since our anchestors, the elders always tried to grow a self-constructed understanding that showing affection in public is impolite, and it may also be connected with Islamic culture. The mindsets then inherited amongst generations. That’s why we tend to think the same mindset without any effort to ponder why.

But I believe (I’m sorry if we’re not on the same side, dude), there’s no written law (in cultural context) that prohibit us from showing affection. Love is a pure thing, it may not harm anybody, showing love isn’t like committing a crime. So why bother saying sarcasm (or showing jealousy) to the lovebirds who seem in love each other? Why bother giving a lecture to them about politeness? They do nothing harmful, their act of affection wouldn’t explode a building, nor sparks radiation.

I think our society needs to learn to understand that people may have different ways of expressing love. It’s called the love language. Based on Chapman (1992), some people may be expressing love through gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, the act of service (devotion) or physical touch. People may have different languange and may speak multi-language. I personally speak physical touch most of the time, and sometimes quality time matters. If you don’t speak the same language, just please don’t judge other people’s way. You might think leaving your couple neglected as cool, but not everybody wants to be cool (and that’s not cool at all anyway!).

But because we’re here, we have to follow the rules, ride or die. Kissing on the lips or having sexual intercourse in front of people can’t be tolerated at all (like who does anyway? We’re not a Dothraki #GoT ). 

So we just don’t do that here in the country with high context culture. I’m no longer give a shit to people talking about me showing PDA. Physical touch is me and my bf love language, and I’ll just embrace it from now on because I’m a loving person and we love each other. Feeling disturbed? Just f*ck off or find a boyfriend/girlfriend!

You know I love you when you loving me
Sometimes it´s better when it´s publicly
I´m not ashamed I don´t care who sees
Just hugging & kissing our love exhibition all

- John Legend 

References: