(Hat tip to Misha and Doug S. I assume the coincidence of two people sending this to me means that there is a vast outcry for me to write about it. Never let it be said I ignore the wishes of my slavering fanbase.)
Recently, Yvain wrote a series on privilege and creepiness and social justice and suchlike things (the link goes to the race/gender tag, in which I think all the posts are tagged. They’re all called “The (number) Meditation on X.”). (Incidentally, I am such a fan of Yvain. The non-libertarian FAQ! Squee!) I read through it and it was half “oh, yes, never thought about it that way” and half “yes, but you’re not paying attention to…” So I decided to write about it. These meditations do stand on their own, but you should read his posts, they’re fun.
There’s a pretty common meme when people are talking about creepiness which Yvain sort of takes as understood in his posts, i.e., that the problem of creepiness is primarily a problem of socially awkward dudes who don’t know what they’re doing and accidentally creep women out. I’ve seen well-meaning socially awkward dudes creep women out, of course. (And well-meaning socially awkward people of all genders creep out people of all genders; despite the way it’s usually portrayed, sexual harassment is not just a dude-on-lady thing.) But, you know, I don’t think that’s true.
Although I’m nonbinary, I’m generally read as female and have spent most of my dating life being called “she,” dating straight men, making half-hearted attempts at wearing eyeshadow, etc. Also, I am what is technically referred to as a “nerd fetishist,” so I have dated a lot of fucking socially awkward people. Right now my girlfriend, my boyfriend, and I are sitting in a room together all on separate computers, the way we do most nights. (She’s on Lamebook and he’s watching a Magicka Let’s Play. We’re nerds.) I have also been sexually harassed including (much to my displeasure) when I’m binding.
Here’s a pretty typical example of Ozy Being Hit On In A Way Zie Finds Creepy, chosen because it was the most recent:
Ozy: (in dimly-lit park, alone, at eleven at night, on swings, contemplating life)
Dude: (with friend) Hey, baby. You playing by yourself?
Ozy: …
Dude: Hey, baby, you wanna play with us?
Ozy: …
Dude: Why aren’t you talking to me, bitch?
Ozy: (gets up, silently walks away)
And the thing is… of the socially awkward guys I know, not one of them would do that. Not even the most awkward ones! It would not occur to them as a possible thing that one would even consider doing. In fact, being hit on by a socially awkward guy usually looks more like this:
Dude: (sends telepathic vibes of wanting to sex you up because you are teh sex)
Me: You’re cute!
Dude: (turns bright red, looks in the other direction, mumbles) Thanks.
Me: Would you like to come to my house to watch a movie?
Dude: (comes over, actually watches movies)
Me: Let me slip into something more comfortable. (comes back in lingerie)
Dude: That doesn’t look very comfortable.
Me: FOR FUCK’S SAKE JUST TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF AND LET ME SUCK YOUR COCK I WANT TO RIDE YOU LIKE YOU’RE ONE OF LOKI’S CHILDREN
Dude: (to himself) But zie probably means it in, like, a platonic way.
There are many, many, many problems with that strategy, but I really cannot think of a conceivable circumstance in which it would lead to harassing random people on swingsets.
And, you know, I don’t think Random Dude’s problem was a lack of understanding of social rules. It’s not even just that he failed at “do not approach women who are alone, at 11 at night, in a badly-lit park” (although please don’t do that), it’s that he failed at “if someone has not said anything to you in response to you saying something, they don’t want to talk to you.” Most people learn that by kindergarten. While there are probably some people who have not mastered that, it is odd in the extreme that that problem only comes out when they’re hitting on ladies, as opposed to every conversation ever. You never see them being like:
Dude: hey, what’s the time?
Other Dude: …
Dude: HEY WHAT’S THE TIME TELL ME THE TIME
Other Dude: …
Dude: STUCK-UP BITCH
So I’m pretty sure most of the problem of Dudes Hitting On Ladies In Creepy Ways is not actually a problem of social awkwardness, but a problem of Something Else. I haven’t read any studies or talked to any dudes who hit on ladies in creepy ways, so this is just speculation. But I hypothesize that some of the problem might be that they have a fundamental problem with the concept that women have the right to say no and that a woman not wanting to talk to them is a perfectly valid life decision rather than a sign of her being a stupid fat ugly stuck-up bitch. Possibly a fundamental problem with the concept of “figuring out hitting-on-people strategies that work rather than ones that just freak people out”? I really have no idea.
I think that socially awkward guys often tend to assume that when women (and people who are read as female but aren’t women) are complaining about creepiness they’re complaining about socially awkward guys, because they’re socially awkward. It’s relatively easy for most people to imagine “fuck, I did something wrong without meaning to and accidentally freaked her out,” and relatively difficult for most nice people to imagine “I have not quite realized that other people have boundaries and it is not okay to try to violate them.” But guys? It’s not about you.
“Because i never act creepy to women.”
Try to be somewhere while trans, while gay, while visibly disabled, while quite old (60+) who even so much as LOOKS at someone who isn’t interested.
Come back to me and tell me it’s about acting.
Not all shy guys are labeled creepy by women. I always shy from my childhood, but i never heard any woman called me creepy, i even got asked out by women ( strangers ) several times, in bar, in train, etc although i’m shy. Because i never act creepy to women. Women dont hate shy guys, they just want us to be more confident ( its the hardest thing to do for socially awkward guys like me ). If any woman called you creepy, its because you are creepy, not because your’e shy. I actually think most of creepy guys… Read more »
“If any woman called you creepy, its because you are creepy, not because your’e shy.” I’ve watched women do this to men who were not acting suspicious, not pushing boundaries, their only crime was being nervous, a bit awkward, muttering/mumbling/stuttering. There are quite a few women who’s idea of creepy is so fucked up that they will label something they feel is ugly as creepy, they’ll get creeped out by nearly anything. And yes the problem lies with those women, they’re using a highly insulting word to creepshame guys who at times are doing no wrong except having poor dress… Read more »
I know i cant speak for every shy guys. But to shy guys ( and to every guys ), i know one important thing you can do to make you different in the eyes for women. Simple, looks. Many women said they don’t care for men’s appearance at all, they only care for personality. But i don’t believe it. , at least for me. I really care for my appearance, I always use face moisturizer, eye cream, hair styling products, body lotions, deodorants. I working out on gym. I follow fashion and choose nice and fitting clothes. Even when i… Read more »
Why would anyone want to spend any time at all, much less have a relationship, with someone so staggeringly shallow that they view a guy who doesn’t use hair product and doesn’t wear perfect fashion as “creepy”?
Do we really want to start the list of “how to be not creepy” with “waste 2 hours a day preening like a peacock and pissing away money on clothing”?
Sorry, I’ve got actually important things to do with my time instead.
I’d argue that “shy” describes the mental state of the shy person whereas “awkward” describes behavior and “creepy” describes the emotional reaction of the other person. Unfortunately, shyness generally means that a person is very anxious socially and anxiety creates awkwardness (lack of eye contact, halting speech, shaking, sweating, blurting out strange remarks, lurking, staring etc.) that may be perceived as “creepy” by the other person. That is, a person who is anxious and awkward makes others feel anxious — they sense his or her inner tension and fear, and this creates a feeling of unease in themselves that contributes… Read more »
Hmmmmmm…. Here is the critical thing that I notice: Creepy people actually do the creepy things. Shy guys are afraid of being creepy, and therefore do not do the creepy things. In general shy guys are not creepy, but they might (*might*) be creepy if they had more confidence and actually did make advances. Shy guys who don’t want to be creepy are generally not going to make the big ignoring no or ignoring non-response mistakes, in fact they will probably back away faster than needed. For me personally, the biggest problem is that one little step from talking platonically,… Read more »
I just wanted to chime in and say that Ozy has completely missed my experience of being a straight male. Specifically, Ozzy claims that this never happens: “Dude: hey, what’s the time? Other Dude: … Dude: HEY WHAT’S THE TIME TELL ME THE TIME Other Dude: … Dude: STUCK-UP BITCH” Please let me disabuse Ozy of this notion. Having personally played the part of “other dude” I can assure you that this happens with some frequency. Usually the term “stuck up bitch” is not used, instead it’s a variation on asshole/retard/and-or a racial slur. I have heard all three. Since… Read more »
Haha..! Actually, a bunch of my girlfriends (and guy friends) from HS are going to be hanging out in the city (a former Brooklynite is visiting from a swing state!) this weekend…we all can tell you stories about subway and street harassment (from all the 5 boroughs!) riding back and forth to school …we’re a tough crowd…not sure you could handle my smart gorgeous girlfriends picking you apart…I will let them read some of your posts!
Haha, I’m far too smart to get picked apart. I can more than hold my own against even the brightest and most aggressive people. Intellectual combat is, after all, my favorite sport!
In public spaces, a female has to run the gauntlet of homeless, creepy , or other strange guys on the street bugging them…Penn Station has quite a few characters who flash (when they think no cops are around) and homeless guys without tickets who hang out in the waiting room trying to pick up what they think are naive dumb girls at 3:00 AM in the morning until the cops shoo them away…The streets are filled with vagrants and men from the nearby halfway houses…these guys fill the subways and stink it up with their bodily functions so that tourists… Read more »
Do you live in NYC Leia? I have to say that the city is not nearly as bad as you make it sound, and I assume you haven’t been here in a very long time. There really aren’t that many homeless people here in the city, and most of them are pretty harmless. There are definitely the occasional crazy ones — there is a really crazy lady in herald square, for example — but I’ve found they’re mostly fine.
Born and raised…rode the subways for 6 years going back and forth from the boroughs to Manhattan….now I ride the suburban commuter train and the subways everyday back and forth to work…I have worked in NYC for 18 years….
I invite you to hang out in Penn Station and the subway stations at 34th Street…those guys are there everyday…that’s part of the reason why there are so many cops hanging out there on duty…
Maybe the pervs don’t make lip-smacking noises at you, but they do to me and the women who walk down the stairs into the station….
I work on 35th Street between Broadway & 7th, so I’m there every day. I don’t generally go to Penn Station — I use the Herald Square subway — but I’m here every day. I’ll honestly have to loiter and see. I figured it was much more common back when the city was a mess, but it’s much nicer than it was in the past. I really don’t see too many homeless people, maybe 10 in any given day.
Maybe we can grab a beer sometime and you can tell me what’s wrong with me in terms of dating, haha.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d be pretty pissed if I asked someone for the time and they ignored me. Likewise for if I invited someone to play with me and my friends and they didn’t even acknowledge me. Just saying no thanks is OK, but pretending I don’t exist would be very disrespectful and I think that would piss most people off more so than politely declining, whether they were hitting on you or not. Also, in my opinion, “would you like to play with us?” is less creepy than “FOR FUCK’S SAKE JUST TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF… Read more »
That was an exaggeration meant to convey my level of frustration. Usually I *actually* say something like “I would like to kiss you now. Would you mind?” and then have him be truly flabbergasted at the idea that any woman would ever want to have sex with them.
It’s like I’m hearing about a movie. Why is it that these things happen to other people but never to me! I have still gone my entire life without a woman hitting on me. I have never even felt DESIRED. I don’t get it. I believe that you’ve had these situations, and I know lots of women say they do it too, but I’ve seen as much evidence for this as I have unicorns. It’s like I’m the Truman Burbank of dating/sex/etc.
There’s nothing wrong with you. None of the women I’m friends with would ever really approach a guy (including myself). I mean, due to social awkwardness, low sex drive, laziness, etc. I find women who hit on people just as odd and rare as you do, but then again, I don’t get out much. XD On the opposite side, eople tell me men hit on women all the time, and that has not been my experience at all, speaking as an average-looking woman with no blatantly obvious character disorders. I like to think that some people just don’t attract confident,… Read more »
* this.
I just wish I could be a bit unambiguous. I think maybe we should compile a huge list of situations rated by likelyhood of creepyness assuming that the issue is not pressed once a rejection or ignoring is noticed.
I dunno, “would you like to play with us?” sounds really creepy to me. IMHO, you should generally avoid questions that sound like they could come from a well-dressed 8-year-old who is actually possessed by demons / the anti-christ / an evil AI / channeling evil spirits / etc.
> You never see them being like: Dude: hey, what’s the time? […]
Actually, I have been in that (exact) situation more than once. I wouldn’t call Dude creepy; just aggressive, assholeish, etc. But then, for me, “creepy” denotes a certain air of insidiousness; so outright aggression isn’t creepy in itself (to be creepy would require something more, like evidence of derangement as the source of the aggression, etc).
I regularly see two category errors when reading about creeps. Some people are talking about the harassers/PUAs/personal space violators, and won’t acknowledge that a lot of people are being called creeps for the wrong reasons. Others think the exact opposite – that street harassment is street harassment and creepiness is something else entirely. We’re talking past each other not because we don’t have the vocabulary, but that we choose not to use it. What we need here is to retire “creepy” and replace it with *words that mean things.* “Creepy” says so little about the subject that it’s more or… Read more »
“- Stuttering/mumbling/shy
– Ugly, yet with the audacity to hit on me
– Unkempt or not dressed/groomed to my standard”
You call men creepy for these reasons? That’s pathetic. It’s people who use the terms for those reasons that muddy up the legitimacy of the word. Why on Earth would you call a stutterer creepy?!
Creepy is a catch all word for ‘makes me feel uncomfortable’. If you say you find someone creepy and later realise that you were just uncomfortable because they were stuttering and you couldn’t understand them, that doesn’t make it a less useful use of the term.
To me creepy is pushing past boundaries, continuing after a no, etc.
You seem to be equating ‘socially awkward’ with ‘shy’. But that is not the only kind of socially awkward there is. And creepiness does often come from socially awkward people who are normally shy trying, and being bad at, various strategies for attracting a mate. Things like ‘just put yourself out there’, ‘don’t expect her to say no’, and various other suggestions they might get from people who don’t normally have problems. And then, having no practice, they try these things. And being bad at empathy (which is often the core of social awkwardness) they don’t realise they’re being creepy,… Read more »
I would add that awkward, shy people like the one described by Ozy are shy in large part due to fear of accidental creepyness and of what would happen if they DID just come out and say what they wanted. (also, I have never yet had anybody make an advance at me).
And I never know if the other person feels the same way or I’m imagining signs. So I can only escalate very slowly.
I hope and assume that the middle example is an exaggeration. It does make me think of a separate point, that we tend to conflate “socially awkward” with both lack of social skills and someone who lacks self esteem and confidence. In that example, the fictional dude is convinced them self that no one would ever want to have sex with them. Even if you have good skills, they’re mostly useless if you lack the confidence to attempt whatever it is you’re doing, including a guy asking a girl out. Also it is easy to imagine a guy who is… Read more »
So if according to these social prescriptions, adored by men and women alike, men are SUPPOSED to ignore a woman’s boundaries for the sake of sexy times then what is the difference between the proper approach and the creepy approach? I don’t really buy this. Adult humans are perfectly capable of differentiating between fictional narratives and real life, and only a sociopath would think about trying to (non-consensually) replicate that scene from Gone With the WInd. The problem is that a small fraction of jerks use the convenient excuse of “women say no when they mean yes so it’s not… Read more »
True, only a sociopath or idiot would take this idea literally. My point was that the thought would influence the behavior of some, namely the sexually insecure who feel conflicted by different social pressures but don’t feel comfortable talking about it. My personal experience is one of Asperger’s Syndrome and a intense social anxiety. I have a high libido and yet I can rarely ask anyone out. I feel sexual desire for many women. Usually it is because of the good figure. Though there are instances where I feel impressed by the woman’s personality and intellect. I admire her as… Read more »
50 Shades is not a book abt violating consent . The 2 characters discuss everything ahead of time and sign a written contract before they do anything.
I haven’t read those books, but there was a feminist review that suggested that he forced her into sex when she clearly didn’t want it. She put up with the behavior because the of contract, but more so because she was just so in love, and the endless orgasms. The point being that she didn’t have any sexual desire at that moment, a seeming requirement for a positive sexual experience, and yet somehow HIS desire is enough for HER enjoyment.
I think most people would accept that it is possible to give genuine consent despite not being aroused.
Also, its hard to argue that she didnt have sexual desire and then say she only wanted sex with him for “the endless orgasms”.
In the first book he responds to her disobeying a command of hers by spanking her in her own home. This is prior to any contract, which is not signed until the end of the book (leaving aside the fact that a consent contract is ridiculous, inasmuch as consent can be withdrawn at any time and someone who did not do that would be guilty of rape). She at multiple points in the book describes not wanting to do something, being forced to do it (often describing her fear of him) and then only afterwards is magically cured by his… Read more »
Do you know why so many talk about creepyness and socially awkward guys? Because there are a lot of cases where a woman will label a socially awkward male as creepy, even cases of calling him creepy based on nothing but his looks. Yes there are a lot of legitimate usages for the word but there are also a lot of what I consider stupid uses, basing it on looks, or being creeped out over shy/awkward behaviour. I seriously don’t get how some people can’t understand this simple concept. There are plenty of women using the creep label to guys… Read more »
And we also see a lot of socially successful people acting in a way that would be deemed “creepy” had it been done by any other person…
Isn’t that the complaint about dr nerdloves articles? Stuff he did would have failed for others?
Doctor Nerdlove is pretty good at understanding these things, I think. It can get a bit frustrating.
I agree. The thing is, everyone, women and men, surround themselves with people who are similar. And if you live in this bubble enough, you start to think everyone’ s like that. I personally have heard a lot of stories about things women do that make me go “What? We don’t do that!” because the women I associate with DON’T do that cuz they’re cool, decent people. I think it’s the same when a woman complains about men’s behavior. A bunch of decent men with decent friends say stuff like “What? Men don’t do that!” Well of course they don’t.… Read more »
Someone* pointed out that a lot of the behaviours being labled as creepy and dismissed as social awkwardness are actually very advanced social skills used for evil. From choosing a victim to choosing a venue to acting in ways that appear innocent from the point of view of observers while actually being threatening.
Leo makes a good point though. I prefer to say ‘x is making me uncomfortable’ rather than ‘x is being creepy’.
* somewhere in the many threads about harassment at cons that I’ve read recently
Indeed. While I have seen people being creepy through “no fault of their own” (as it were), by far the majority of creeps I’ve seen or heard discussed are demonstrating a sophisticated degree of social control (if not awareness thereof). This sort of behavior is a paradigmatic example of abusers in general, who have intricate awareness of how to (a) identify the most susceptible targets, and (b) to abuse/creep/impose on them in a way that maximizes deniability. One of the key tools of an abuser is to be able to deny that anything has happened or to turn things around… Read more »
“Creepy” covers a lot of things. It means the guy to whom “Leave me alone” means “Try harder”, and the guy who secretly writes a zillion sonnets to someone he doesn’t dream of asking out, and the girls who talk in a monotone about playing with them forever, and Cliff Pervocracy before she wrote the How Not To Be Creepy guide, which is about social awkwardness. A unified theory of creep is doomed, I tell you, doomed – the only common factor is the emotional reaction in the creepee, not the reasons for the creeper’s behavior.
I think that the reason people associate creepy with socially awkward is that mostly creepy is used as a catch all term for when someone didn’t do anything specifically wrong but none-the-less made the other person uncomfortable. Your example, while certainly creepy, is a little more blatant, or at least more blatant than what I was expecting. That seems clearly aggressive. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on someone you’ve just meet at a party friending you on facebook and then ‘liking’ a photo of you from two years earlier, or coming up to you the next time you… Read more »
I’m female, and to me your example would be interpreted by me as ‘this guy is attracted to me.’ If I was attracted to him in return this would be good news and would encourage future flirting from me. If I was not attracted to him, it would probably just mean I would be careful not to go on about other guys being hot to him or anything. (not that I tend to do that anyway, but who knows.) I don’t want to present this as FACT, like ‘if you want to let a woman know you are attracted to… Read more »