= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
jimrandomh comments on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (616)
These seem like importantly different categories that merely happen to share some mental machinery.
True, but I suspect that's just because many things that used to be useful signals, aren't anymore. Strange body language, for example, may be a signal of distant origin (to the extent that body language differs from place to place).
I'm beginning to get the impression that you and perhaps some other commenters have no idea what the creepy guy experience is.
I'm not blaming you, but if there's that lack of commonality of experience, then that could explain some communication breakdowns.
Creepiness isn't just about low status, though I grant that if, say, a street person is making a pass, he might well come off as creepy.
However, the interesting case is that there are men who aren't obviously low status who just make a high proportion of women's skin crawl.
Do heterosexual men ever have the experience of being extremely uncomfortable around women who are superficially be not that much different from other women that the men would find at least tolerable?
Thoughts on what creepiness is:
(Hat-tip: I found Ursula Vernon from your LJ flist, Nancy.)
Thanks. That's a good essay, and I don't think I'd seen it before.
As she says, she doesn't know what the creepiness trigger is-- and whatever is going on, it isn't normal intimacy starting at the wrong time.
Here is a wild guess about creepiness.
Some men are much worse than average at detecting negative reactions (like fear) in the person they are talking to.
So, when a woman has a negative reaction to something in a conversation, it starts to get creepy when the man does not notice that reaction and persists in the behavior that caused the reaction. I gets creepier fast when the woman reacts more strongly than the first time and the man continues to persist.
Just guessing.
I'm guessing too, but the creepiness reaction has a large component of disgust/revulsion-- it isn't just about fear.
I've been trying to think of portrayals of creepiness, and whether it can be done in a movie (or might it be pheromones?)-- it's been a while since I've seen it, but iirc, Beetlejuice is an example.
Successful movie portrayal of creepiness: Anakin Skywalker, in Attack of the Clones. Critics commented on the surprising lack of chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman; I think the "romantic" scenes achieved exactly what they were supposed to.
I'm trying to think of examples of female-on-male creepiness that I've experienced and heard of, and the only examples I can think of fall into the categories of mere mild-discomfort-induction and outright stalking. Male creepiness appears to have a significant middle ground that seems to be almost completely absent in the other direction.
Perhaps this is related to the disproportionate prevalence of male-on-female rape and sexual harassment — because those are strongly negatively-valued events, it's worth having a sensitive filter that'll give false positives sometimes. But that depends on whether features associated with "creepiness" are less perceived as creepy in women by men or if they are actually less prevalent in women.
Edit: I have a friend who's internet-famous-in-some-circles and he has had a lot of experiences with young female (and a few male) fans who've crossed the line into conventional creepiness but not into stalking (plus a few who have...), but people act differently toward celebrities. Probably doesn't generalize very well at all to interactions between, say, two people meeting in a bar.
Not really.
That is odd, actually. Everyone I've met that I would describe as "creepy" is male. Plus I've never heard a woman described as such except in jest.
I think it's a lot harder for a woman to come off as creepy than a man. (Standard "within the culture I'm familiar with" disclaimers apply.) I've been made uncomfortable by girls when in high school, but not really "creeped out". You almost have to go to the level of movie villain before they start getting creepy.
From a comment to the Ursula Vernon essay below:
In my experience, it is much much rarer. As a guy, I have been more creeped-out by other guys than by women.
I can only think of one occasion. A female classmate who had had less than 5 minutes of conversation with me announced her cancer treatment and recent bad relationship, then made overtures about meeting outside of class. Basically, forcing intimacy waaaay too fast. This was followed by a lot of "oh look, we're coincidentally on the same bus" sort of events, despite my consciously unfriendly demeanor and monosyllabic conversation.
Damned if I know. There's at least some commonality of body language across the human race, and I don't know what the xenophobia/exoticism balance would have been for human prehistory.
My bet is in favor of exoticism-- my impression is that people who are relatively isolated are desperate for novelty.
Personal space and touchy-feeliness varies a lot by culture. I've heard of American women being freaked out by foreign men standing too close because the men just didn't realize it was too close in the US.