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RomanDavis comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong
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So, my social skills are not great. Aren't even really good. But over the last few years, I've gotten so much better from where I was that it's ridiculous.
Anyway, I wish people, particularly women, had been that open with me about my behavior.
Let me be clear: the scenario you present almost never happens. Now, if it does happens, yes, the creep involved has no excuse but to stop. But the signals people, and particularly woman, give off can be much more obscure if you don't know what you're doing.
That sounds like placing the onus for dealing with poor social skills onto the person who's confronted with them, though, in a general sort of way.
If you're dealing with a person with a person with poor social skills, the onus is already on you. You can try to help, or you can run away, or do a hundred other things, but you are already dealing with it.
I'd just like to suggest that using subtle social cues on the socially inept might not be terribly effective for accomplishing desired social outcomes with that person.
I'd just like to point out that "onus" is a horrible word, one that should automatically be marked with a red flag. It's probably not doing you any favors here.
As a person with poor-to-middling social skills at the best of times: no, that's silly and I reject it as a working premise for conflict resolution and group interaction.
Establishing a social norm that hey, some folks here might be autistic or poorly socialized or otherwise have some difficulties with the usual set of interactions is completely different from establishing a norm that whenever someone failing at some element of socialization, and thereby causing others to feel unsafe, pressured or disturbed, then those who've had the reaction are obligated to see the situation resolved to that first party's favor.
I didn't say that. You can do what you want. But if someone made you feel uncomfortable, you already feel uncomfortable. Should they not have made you feel uncomfortable? Yes. Is it fair? No.
What are you going to do about it? That's the only question you get to answer.
You're swinging rather wide of my point, here.
The point of my post was: you may have swung rather wide of mine.
For practical purposes, the onus should be on whoever has the ability to deal with it. If someone unknowingly does something you don't like, and you want them to stop, telling them is say more useful to both of you, regardless of your views on "victim blaming"
The scenario may not have happened to you. That doesn't mean it 'almost never happens'.
If you haven't been told that you're doing anything wrong, then obviously you can't be blamed for carrying on. My point is only that if you have been told, you shouldn't be waiting for some quorum to come to a conclusion, just stop doing the thing that is upsetting the other person.
They totally told me I was doing things wrong. All the time. It's just they were doing so in a code I didn't understand and expecting me to operate by rules I wasn't told about. If a woman did something like this seven years ago, (And, while the same thing didn't happen, a lot of the subtler cues did.), I would have done the same things the man did. I was never, ever told, "Hey man, you're being creepy. Cut it out." I wouldn't have known what to do, and I would have done the exact wrong thing.
I wouldn't do it now. I'm roughly as good of a person as I was then, I just understand the rules better.
Saying "You do NOT touch me" or "Don't want to talk about this", as that person did, is not a code.
Great! Now speak in non-code when people are approaching the line, not five miles past it.
If (1) a population varies widely in terms of how direct a demand needs to be before they recognize it as one, and
(2) framing a demand much more directly than necessary for a particular target to recognize it is viewed as socially inappropriate ("hey, OK, you don't have to make a federal case out of it lady! Jeez. Some people have no friggin sense of proportion, y'know?"), and
(3) framing a demand much more weakly than necessary is both ineffective (that is, my demand gets ignored) and viewed as socially inappropriate when I eventually ramp up to the necessary level of directness...
...well, you tell me: what should I do in that situation, when there's a demand I want to make of an individual whose sensitivity to demands I don't know?
You forgot (4): not recognizing a demand and refusing to comply are indistinguishable.
Can be. Depending how the refusing is done I'd even suggest that not recognizing can be 'creepier'.
This is troubling if true. The worst offenders described in the OP's links are creepers of the latter type, who know their behavior is bad but do it anyway. And yet this is seen as not as creepy as behavior from someone who is socially inept but not malicious?
No.
Can you clarify why you consider this something I forgot?
How do you figure? Also, what do you mean? 'Only a small fraction of men do this,' or 'This almost never happens to women as described'? And are you taking 'creepy' to mean deliberately malicious, or more like what you just said you used to do?
I mean, women almost never react to being creeped out with an unambiguous response that makes a socially inept person know what's going on with no room for denial.
I really wished they did, but I can understand why they don't.
Sure, I think we agree on all that. Do you see why "no room for denial" might seem deeply creepy, and not a requirement that an inept adult could possibly be applying consistently?
I suspect the denial doesn't come so much from "determined to do things despite consent" as much as "determined to preserve one's own self esteem." But it comes off creepy anyway.
They're totally applying it inconsistently. But they don't know that. Hence, the social ineptitude.
This says that people understand indirect refusals the same in sexual and non-sexual contexts. It doesn't say that everyone understands them.
A person who never thinks "Shit, are they bored, or are they just making sure I'm not bored?" will never think "Shit, are they turning down sex, or are they just making sure I really want it?". A person who has trouble with the former may well run into the latter. (Still not an excuse though.)
It doesn't always work anyway.
Of course. But it destroys excuses, which I've found to be the best motivation for action, both in myself and others