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fubarobfusco comments on LW Women Entries- Creepiness - Less Wrong
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Eh, I don't know. To some folks, finding out that someone is attracted to them, when they don't reciprocate, might be a little like finding out that someone you know would really like to stick their fingers up your nose and sneeze in your mouth.
Given the person in question isn't willing to violate your consent in order to do so, what's the problem?
How strongly do you believe that?
Plus, they keep bugging you about it and thereby eliciting unpleasant imagery in your mind. And trying to modify you to cause you to consent. And moping dejectedly about how nobody lets them do it. And coming in to work after watching snot videos and staring at your mouth when you yawn.
I mean, seriously, ew. Even if it's not threatening, it's still unpleasant.
"Finding out" and "Being pressured into" aren't the same things at all. Your "plus" is an insertion after the fact; the statement Mwengler made which I responded to was that all the complaints were about how women wouldn't date poorly-socialized people, and my response was that this isn't what the complaints are about at all, but about how a particular segment of society demands we -revile- poorly socialized people. There are some really good comments made recently pointing out that the audience for these demands is strictly composed of those people for whom these demands are most implicitly harmful.
But back on point, you do realize your argument here represents an attempt to trigger a halo effect on my part? I should revile all snot-gobbers (to make up a suitable invective for your made-up kink) because some snot-gobbers are assholes?
This argument is -particularly- unpersuasive to me because you're telling me I'm an extra-horrible person for being bisexual and being potentially attracted to -everybody-, and anything I do which reveals that to be the case is equivalent to pressuring them into sex. [ETA: This may not be the case you're making, in further consideration. I'm leaving this here, however, because this is exactly how you're coming across to me; your argument shares too many similarities with people who have made exactly this argument against me before.]
Eh? I'm not making an argument that anyone is horrible. I'm trying to express that people who do have an unpleasant reaction to others' sexual attraction to them are not some kind of broken alien robot zombies, nor are they dehumanizing anyone (as you implied upthread). They are (frequently) in situations that, if we empathize with them at all, we may notice their responses actually make a heck of a lot of sense.
They're free to have an unpleasant reaction to others' sexual attraction to them.
But their freedom to have that unpleasant reaction stops short of being free from criticism when they suggest that that sexual attraction, being unwanted, makes -other- people broken alien robot zombies.
ETA: Parallel conversation suggests where our disconnect is coming from. I'm not arguing against unpleasant reactions, I'm arguing against certain behaviors arising from unpleasant reactions.
No, even if unwittingly creepy folks were not reviled, most of the complaints about them would still stand. It's not even clear that the people who complain about creepers are demanding anything, as opposed to simply expressing their own revulsion. Consider that many and perhaps most folks dislike rude people to some extent - and creeper behavior is unquestionably more obnoxious than many other kinds of social faux pas.
Sigh. I'm not talking about people complaining about creepy behavior. I'm talking about people who, for example, lump passive-aggressive sexual behavior in with "rape culture."
Google "creep rape culture". There are a lot of people who argue that creepiness should be clamped down on, hard, by society. Lost in the discussion is that "creepiness" is -really fucking vague-, and includes not only the examples of aggressive behavior listed in some of the links there, but also a lot of passive behavior which, as another commenter here pointed out, can be as simple as never acting on feelings that are apparent to other people.
"Creepy" is a spectrum, ranging from the harmless (and in some cases maybe even helpful - I'm not going to hit on a guy I know isn't gay/bisexual, even if I'm attracted to him, and even if it might be painfully apparent that I'm attracted to him - for example, the really cute waiter with blue hair at my favorite restaurant who I probably look at a little too often) to the harmful (not going into examples here, I'm sure you can come up with something).
It's not helpful, in the least, to address the entire spectrum as if only a subset of it were real.
Well, now you're changing the subject. AIUI, nobody in this thread has been lumping mild forms of creepiness in with 'rape culture'. However, it only takes listening to the latest gangsta hip hop rap "songs" to realize that some parts of popular culture do glorify predatory behavior (if not perhaps actual rape) to a disturbing extent. It's not a stretch to assume that at least some people who consume such content might be unconciously influenced by it and perhaps become more creepy as a result.
The person I was responding to -was- lumping mild forms of creepiness in with rape culture with the "snot-gobber" example (as the aggressive behavior described pretty much fit that nomer). That wasn't me changing the subject, that was me responding to somebody else changing the subject.
And now you're changing the subject.
(Also, what the hell, Less Wrong? Of all my views, why do I get upvoted most consistently for my views on gender relations, of all things? I'm antisocial bordering on sociopathic. My idea of a good dating profile is one which frightens away as many people I deem unacceptable as possible, my idea of a good dating profile picture involves me holding a gun and a bottle of Jack Daniels. One of us is extremely poorly calibrated here.)
But this only applies if you assume that snot-gobbers may be described as creepy not because of any particular behavior on their part, but because of their supposed desire to pick someone else's nose. I don't think that anyone would be willing to go that far, at least in this context[1]; even mwengler probably assumes that the "creeper" description is rooted in some kind of bad behavior. You suggest that "passive-aggressive" behaviors might be seen as just as creepy as actually aggressive ones, but you're the one who's making a catch-22 argument here.
[1] As you say in a related comment, some people may simply appear "wrong" or "not right" to us, for some unidentifiable reason. But it makes no sense to refer to this kind of creepy if the issue is whether "creepiness should be clamped down on, hard, by society".
The author expected me to find them creepy -without any particular behavior on their part-. That's the bit you're missing. The behaviors were added later to try to make me feel like they were creepy, but the author -already- found them creepy, without any of those behaviors added in (or at least expected me to, which I take as good evidence).
Look, I'm more than happy to completely start over, with a completely new context, and argue with you about behavior - but don't drop the context of the argument I was already having in order to try to score a point against me. Yes, I think there should be social prohibitions against certain behaviors; I'd prefer both well-defined and gray areas. No, I don't find "creepy' to be a useful way of describing those behaviors, because it's used to describe a lot of gray areas as well. No, I don't think complaints about these behaviors should be eradicated.
However, and it's a really big however, all the valid criticisms that can be raised against gray-area creepiness -also- apply to COMPLAINTS about non-specific creepiness. Creepiness makes people feel uncomfortable because they aren't certain of your intent and lowers their utilons? Well, complaints about creepiness make people feel uncomfortable because they aren't certain what you're describing, and lowers their utilons.
When you communicate about creepiness, be socially well adjusted enough to consider the possibility that what you're communicating isn't what you're intending to communicate. Audience matters, interpretation matters. What's in your brain isn't what's in your mouth and in their ear isn't what's in their brain.
And maybe it's a good idea to just drop the "creepy" label and use a more specific description.
I don't know why you were upvoted either, but that's a perfectly good dating profile picture (if you look at it in terms of what the women are saying is creepy, rather than what the men are saying the women are saying is creepy, then it's fairly clear)
I have no idea who the men and women in Less Wrong are. Even if I'm told I don't care enough to remember. To the extent that I gender people, it's based on usernames; your username comes across as male to me, which makes your comment come across as a little silly.
I'm making my judgment of what is called creepy based on what I've heard it used to describe in real life. In my family, it was exclusively used to describe people who come across as wrong; who have this unidentifiable aura of wrongness which wasn't necessarily tied to behavior. One such individual, who we had long described as creepy, killed his daughter. (He deliberately got in a car wreck; it was an attempted murder-suicide.) Outside my family, I've heard it used to describe a pretty wide range of things. "Creep" is in fact a commonly-used word to describe men who fail miserably at legitimate attempts at socialization.
I've stopped using the word "creepy" to describe people. It didn't fit common usage. I refer to these people now as "off," or "not right." I prefer the word creepy, but it doesn't convey the meaning I intend it to convey, so I dropped it. I'm sympathetic to people who use it to refer to a feeling of wrongness in a fellow human being, but I'm not going to privilege their definition.