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jooyous comments on LW Women Entries- Creepiness - Less Wrong Discussion
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Here is a link describing creepy, threatening desire from a man's perspective.
This goes back to the ever expansive use of the word "creepy".
I take it a little back to the roots of moving slowly along the ground. In terms of humans, that largely became slowly and furtively stalking. Which people find repulsive, so that creep became anyone you find repulsive. I think that's broad to the point of signifying little but your own repulsion and dislike, just slightly different in connotation from dick or asshole.
The guy was repulsive. Intrusive. Annoying. Lot's of people would call him a creep, but in a sense largely interchangeable with loser, schmuck, or freak. I wouldn't call him creepy, as that's just the wrong connotation to me. There was nothing furtive, slow, or stealthy about his behavior. Quite the opposite. It was a full frontal assault.
Part of it was the author's discomfort with an inner conflict on ideological grounds, about being open minded towards gays. Maybe that's really part of what I would consider creepy too. In most cases, there seems to be a conflicted reaction. Wanting to get away or tell the guy to piss off, but feeling constrained in some manner from doing so. I think this is an unexplored general aspect of creepiness, that conflicted feeling within the person feeling creeped out.
Part of the conflict in "classical" creepiness is the slow and furtive stalking, so that one feels uncomfortable with rejecting someone who has yet to make an overt offer. But you want to get it over with too. The unresolved tension makes for discomfort. Sometimes that tension comes from perceived threat, wanting to stop the behavior, but not wanting to escalate the issue either. It's a discomfort that one can't resolve.
Except at the very beginning, I wouldn't have felt conflicted about the guy on the plane. My projected reaction to him would first be discomfort, then annoyance, then violation of boundaries. I didn't find the guy creepy as much as intrusive, and I wouldn't have my undies in a bunch over telling him to back off. I wouldn't have a conflict about asserting my right to space, my disinterest in his offer, or my affront when he got grabby. Knock it off, bozo.
I think you're making the same mistake as Yvain here. I think that etymologically speaking Bob is called “creepy” because he gives Alice the creeps (a visceral feeling of uneasiness, as though spiders were crawling on her skin), not because he's metaphorically crawling towards her. (The word for the latter is “sneaky”; the two are correlated but not the same concept.)
From what I can see, the verb sense came first, then creeper as one who creeps, then creepy as the feeling of having things crawl on your skin, and then creep as someone who creeps and gives you those feelings.
As a matter of semantic hygiene, if used to indicate one person's reaction to another, creepy is a two place term. If used to indicate an observer independent fact, such as actions of a person, it is a one place term.
However, many habitually deny the two place aspect in all sorts of concepts, claiming objectivity and observer independence. That tension between riding my philosophical hobby horse of pointing out two place terms is coming up against those who would habitually seek to make their reactions a quality of the the object they're reacting to. There is validity in that if creepy is a two place term, but it is an over generalization as a one place term.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=creep
creep (v.) Old English creopan "to creep" (class II strong verb; past tense creap, past participle cropen), from Proto-Germanic *kreupanan (cf. Old Frisian kriapa, Middle Dutch crupen, Old Norse krjupa "to creep"), from PIE root *greug-. Related: Crept; creeping.
creeper (n.) Old English creopera "one who creeps," agent noun from creep (v.). Also see creep (n.). Meaning "lice" is from 1570s; of certain birds from 1660s; of certain plants from 1620s.
creep (n.) "a creeping motion," 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning "despicable person" is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of "sneak thief" (1914). Creeper "a gilded rascal" is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps "a feeling of dread or revulsion" first attested 1849, in Dickens.
creepy (adj.) 1794, "characterized by creeping," from creep + -y (2). Meaning "having a creeping feeling in the flesh" is from 1831; that of producing such a feeling, the main modern sense, is from 1858. Creepy-crawly is from 1858. See creep, creeper, creeping. Also creep in the sense of
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=creep&allowed_in_frame=0
creep (n.) "a creeping motion," 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning "despicable person" is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of "sneak thief" (1914). Creeper "a gilded rascal" is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps "a feeling of dread or revulsion" first attested 1849, in Dickens.
This reminds me-- I wonder if "creepiness" is to some extent a group phenomenon. If one or two (high status?) women in group are creeped out, then they might influence others in the group.
I'm sure it is.
Emotions themselves are contagious, particularly with an ingroup member, and that's not counting the usual status and ingroup/outgroup dynamics.
One complication. I'd expect real unsafe assault threat creepiness to decrease while you're in a group from mitigation of the threat, while low status creepiness to increase.
“You” the creeper or “you” the crepee?
You the creepee.
Wait... Why would you be more creeped out by a low-status person if they're your friend? If anything, I'd expect you to eventually realize that theirs is cluelessness rather than malevolence, and eventually get used to it. (I'm reasonably sure I'm more likely to low-status-creep someone I've just met that someone I've known for a while -- though I might just be insufficiently controlling for the relevant confounding factors.)
I wouldn't. We have a clash of the imaginations.
In the scenario in my head, the Creep was never a member of your group, was an assault threat creep, and you may or may not be in a group. When you're in a group, you're safer from the creep, therefore perceived creepiness is diminished along with decreased feeling of threat.
Ohh, I see what you're saying. I guess I won't object if you decide that you don't want to use the word "creep" to describe this guy, but I'm guessing the word originated not from the stealthy behavior of the creep, but the sensation of the person experiencing the feeling of creepiness. Because a creepy feeling is a type of growing discomfort that it's hard to pinpoint the source of. Even in horror movies, a place can be creepy because you feel like something bad is going to happen, but you don't quite know why. And indeed, it takes the narrator some thinking before he's able to figure out what made this guy's approach so much more disturbing than the usual attention he's received from gay guys before.
I'm not sure how big the issue surrounding "creep" is actually a language issue, but I think part of what's happening is that the meaning of words drift slowly enough for people to notice. For example, I have a tendency to disagree when people tell me that "lame" is ableist language, because I always think of lame as referring to jokes and maybe occasionally pack animals and ... never people. I think the usage of that word has drifted away from people, but there are enough vocal people who are still sensitive about it. (And I guess I would try to not use it around those people anyway.)
So I guess I would conclude that when you hear other people use the word creep, they probably mean "a nebulous source of discomfort that I can't quite place" rather than "an agent deliberately trying to cause me discomfort", which is definitely pretty broad, but maybe a lot less accusatory than the latter?
EDIT: Just to be extra pedantic, here are some links! :)