Right. What do I mean by "subhuman"? It's probably a bad word to use.

Besides my wife, most of the value I get out of other people is intellectual. Sharing interesting ideas, working together on cool projects, pair programming, etc. I can do these things with the occasional interesting female, and it works for a while, but then it inevitably slides towards flirting and the subtle sexual dance. My thoughts turn towards sex, I start acting differently, sitting close, talking and making jokes, steering things towards sexual escalation, and so on. This is mostly uncontrollable; the meat does as it was programmed to. This ends up distracting from the real reason I might want to be friends with this person; they were intellectually interesting. (This has happened at least five times.)

So why "subhuman"? I've gotten pretty good at noticing the social game and the behavior protocols. People act a lot differently depending on attraction and the gender match; with men and women there's that flirty sexual undertone. It looks a lot like a dog sniffing another dog's butt and then executing different behaviors depending on the result; subconscious, nonsentient, animal behavior.

I think I should be able to treat women as people instead of just automatically executing this absurd mating dance to the detriment of my plans and interests. It's really frustruating to have the meat override me on this, and it makes me feel subhuman (have you read "Dune"? That kind of "subhuman").

So I'm not just oversensitive to political correctness or a rapist monster, I just resent that flirting has root access to my motivations and interferes with my friendships.

Of course the sexual dance is a fun and valuable part of being human, like eating, sleeping, and playing, but I have bigger plans right now and I resent that those things aren't optional.

While rephrasing it as the matriarchy is deeply amusing to me, I don't think we're even talking about some deliberate system here. I think most women just have no idea how to date women, and give men advice on how they interact with women, which is to say, behave like a friend.

Pity lesbians have been fetishized. Men could use lesbian friends.

And don't get me started with the advice about women my mother would give me: it sounds exactly like you took everything people complain of about Nice Guys™ and told me to do exactly that. Fortunately it has always been obvious to my System 2 that it's not enough for me to romantically like a woman but she has to romantically like me too, but my mother nearly convinced my System 1 otherwise.

Yes, people offering me their sympathy when someone wrongs me even when I've pointed out that I'm not terribly bothered myself seems to be a common pattern.

(Seems like my resent-o-meter is under-sensitive; in game-theoretical terms, it's like when someone makes me an excessively small offer in the Ultimatum game, my System 1 infers that they're not an agent and decides that I might just as well do the CDTical thing and accept the offer anyway.)

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.

Sorry, I meant the guy is the loser.

"What a bitch!" makes a much better soundbite than "She was probably not interested ...

And "she's just not that into you" makes a better soundbite than either - but I do agree that this is probably what's going on here. Flaking is not even that uncommon nowadays; regardless of anyone's opinion about this, it does mean that it's hard to take the female friend's comment at face value.

Give him a big L-shaped "I've been friend-zoned again" bumper sticker.

It's interesting. Suppose I go on a date with a guy, after which he decides he's not interested and doesn't want a second date. I email him a couple of days later asking if he'd like to go on another date. If he doesn't reply I'll get the message that he's not interested. I'd prefer he didn't reply at all to an email saying "sorry I'm not interested." I get the message both ways, but the first is less awkward.

Given my preferences, I have stopped replying to guys in the past. I haven't been dating at all recently, but when I start again, maybe I should send "sorry not interested" emails.

C) a man who appears to be hiding his sexual attraction from a woman is it's own kind of creepy.

Creepy casts a wide net, but that seems to me the key differentiating aspect to me. It's the unasserted desire for increased levels of intimacy or physical contact that makes for creepiness. Asserted, it might make someone uncomfortable with dealing with it. If there is a question about whether he would use force, it is more threatening than creepy.