Changing The Creepy Guy Narrative
chrisbrecheen.blogspot.com.auI love stories that expose the gender asymmetric nature of typical encounters. That these asymmetries are so deep ingrained in most of our societies and so widely accepted is the problem.
It reminds me a bit of the story about the mullah's daughter.
(could not find it on the Internet so you have to bear with my narration)
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The daughter of the Mullah comes to her dad and tells him that this honourable young man asked her out. He swears that he only has honourable intentions and there will be nothing than harmless conversation.
The mullah pulls his hair "Oh no, my daughter! You do not understand. This is how this will end: He will pick you up, and be totally honourable when you get into the car with him. On the way to the city he will remember, that he forgot his wallet at home, so he will kindly ask your permission to stop by at his house to get it. Of course you will accept as you don't want to embarrass him. He will drive to his house and tell you he will be right back.
But after he got out of the car he will turn around and tell you how impolite it would be to let you wait in the car, and if you would like to come in and wait in the house.
You will accept his offer and he will open your door, and politely accompany to the house. There he will introduce you, and then go upstairs to get the wallet from his room.
But halfway up the stairs he would turn back and apologize for his incredible rudeness letting you wait in the hallway. He will ask you to accompany him up to his room.
You will accept his offer and politely he will lead you to his room and all will be lost!
Once you are in his room, he will have his way with you and rob you of your virtue and of your honour and of the honour of the family!"
The Mullah almost wept at the imagination of these horrors.
The daughter assured her father that she would make sure nothing of that sort would transpire, and the mullah, who always had a soft spot for his daughter did not object to her evening out.
The evening came, and the young man, polite and well bred, showed up at the door. He made pleasant small talk with the Mullah and assured him of his incredible esteem of his daughter and his thoroughly honourable intentions.
Then they departed and the mullah anxiously awaited the return of his daughter, depicting the disgrace she would suffer in ever more colourful patterns.
Finally his daughter came back. Hysterically he asked: "My Daughter! Tell me! What happened this evening?"
"Well, he led me to his car, and was the perfect gentlemen. Then he remembered he had forgot his wallet, and asked if I would mind a stop at his house."
"Oh no " exclaimed the mullah in despair "What then?"
"I agreed because I did not want to embarrass him, and we went to his house. He said I could wait in the car while he was getting his wallet, but when he got out he came over to my side and told me how impolite it would be letting me wait in the car. And if I would like to wait in the house."
The mullah felt panic creeping up "And then?"
"He politely led me to the house and introduced me. The he went upstairs to get his wallet. But halfway upstairs he turned back and chided himself for his impoliteness and asked me if I wanted to accompany him to his room"
The mullah was beside himself "Oh my daughter what has he done to you?"
"Don't worry father, as soon as we were in his room, I had my way with him and robbed him of his virtue and of his honour and of the honour of his family."
Is it weird that when I saw the headline I thought this was going to be article about how calling a guy creepy is the same thing as slut-shaming but for males? And that this guy was going to offer up a sort of fix to the problem of inappropriately "creep-shaming" men? Instead I got a humble-brag that reinforces the creep narrative.
The problem with the "creepy guy" narrative is that the really bad men out there aren't the ones who bear the brunt of the nastiness.
The guy he described wasn't a traditional "creepy guy", but a macho alpha male. Different breed. The latter carries the sense of entitlement and swagger because, on its own terms, that approach works. Many women respond positively to it (which does not make it right, because plenty of women don't). He's an arrogant jerk because he's gotten away with it for a long time.
The issue with that whole stigma is that there are some really bad men out there-- for whom that repulsion is justified-- but the guys who get the "creepy" treatment are the socially awkward men with average intentions. The fact that so many bad men get rewarded (at least in high school and college) makes the whole thing worse.
Men are typically rewarded for being proactive, rather than reactive like the author, waiting for the perfect situation to occur for him to show his saintly virtues, then go home and write a blog post about his white knighting.
Unfortunately it seems a lot more bad guys are in the former category, and a lot of good guys fall into the other. This does not mean that this author wins any points with me for this article.
> the guys who get the "creepy" treatment are the socially awkward men with average intentions
Perhaps we could address this by fixing the "socially awkward" bit -- explicitly spelling out (perhaps through education, or a book, or something) what sorts of things are and are not acceptable.
It's difficult enough to get parents to consent to "sex ed" from a biological standpoint as it is, but I would have found it useful to have had classes in {elementary, middle} school about how to not treat girls like crap. Do you think that it would be possible to build a program that addressed this problem?
The reason the antagonist of this story treated the woman "like crap" was because he wanted sex.
Thus, I think the classes you propose would have worked if they dealt with "how to not treat girls like crap" and still get regular sex from hot women.
I would have found it useful to have had classes in {elementary, middle} school about how to not treat girls like crap. Do you think that it would be possible to build a program that addressed this problem?
Honestly... you have to change the whole culture.
The part of American culture we're fighting with is a culture of treating people like crap. In business, it's the idea that employees and relationships are commodities to be traded and exploited, and the vicious and nonsensical competitions over nothing (similar to Game culture) that nonetheless determine who ends up in charge and who gets fired. How could one expect people to be decent around sexuality when they aren't decent at all with regard to the other things they want (e.g. money, jobs, social status)?
We have a culture that glorifies people who break rules and trample others to get what they want. How is that not going to cause this sort of behavior?
American college-style hookup culture is so focused on acquisition, manipulation, the bad kinds of competition, and emotional immaturity that it can't be separated from horrible behavior.
I'm not religious. I'm not going to claim that there's some supernatural being that cares about human sexual behavior in such prurient detail as the traditional Christian God, because there (almost certainly) isn't one. I also don't think promiscuity, polyamory, and extra-relational sex are unhealthy for everyone; but they seem to be unhealthy for most people. Building a culture that glamorizes a sexuality that only makes sense for about 25% of people (wild guesses: 15% of women and 35% of men) is a recipe for disaster.
Where religion gets sexuality disgustingly wrong is when it comes to the letter, rather than spirit, of the law... and also puts sex under different, extreme, and often misogynistic rules as opposed to the rest of human behavior. Traditional morality is actually right on the basic idea (sex, for most people, should occur only in long-term loving relationships) but, unfortunately, tied up with bigotry (religious, racial, gender) and there are some really awful (and usually hypocritical) people who take sex policing (which has no place in modern society) to heart and go to the extreme with it.
To make it clear, I don't care what other (consenting, adult) people do as long as it doesn't affect me, and in general it really doesn't. However, the culture is sick and "hookup culture" is a symptom, if not a cause. It no longer affects me (30 years old, happily married) but if I have kids, I really hope they can come into a world where respect between the genders is so normal that these behaviors don't happen. But, I don't see that problem as separate from the more basic fact that most people don't respect each other in this society.
The hidden part about this story is that the woman is still not empowered. She's now the princess to the knight in shining armor, rescued from the horrible dragon. The author hasn't changed the narrative, he's completed it.
It's still a story where a man decides the outcome. What he did was indeed chivalrous, good even, but chivalry is nothing original.
"Empowered" is such guff. Here's the point: if she does anything short of drawing a weapon on him, there are men out there, lots of men out there, who will chance taking it physical in order to resist having their dominance questioned.
And society will take the man's side. She provoked him. She was impolite. She emasculated him.
It's like the game of "cat and mouse" in Red Dwarf, the only way to win is not to be the mouse, well in this game the only way to win is not to be the woman. Because all the other players in the game - including the cops and the judge and jury - won't sit still for an outcome where the woman just wins.
And if she does draw on him, well, look up Marissa Alexander.
To empower means to give power. It's empowering for the hero to support her while she stands up to him.
Far from it.
What's empowering is feminism. Fighting the slow fight to crush and erase this male centered culture.
A man, standing up for her? If he chose that particular patronizing way, she'd be well justified in worrying he too was trying it on - the "hero saves princess, gets the girl" narrative. Out of the frying pan…
And yeah, it's patronizing, because it reckons she chose her choices from weakness or timidity rather than a well calibrated judgment of her chances in this sexist society.
I think my post must have been poorly worded. I meant to give her agency by encouraging her to stand up to him, instead of for him to do it (which is what happened).
If you disagree, okay, but what better actions could he have taken in this situation?
No, I understood exactly that. You can't "give her agency". "Encouraging her to stand up to him" is exactly the wrong thing to do, she's chosen her choices as an adult who knows the score, and doing that is implying she just lacks the gumption and if only a dude was backing her up… No, it's not that easy. You may be the best intentioned dude in the world but you are ONE dude, and no, she is not going to suddenly start acting like a woman in a non sexist society at the risk of her own life, just because of one dude nominally taking her side.
Ok, but I'm still genuinely curious if you have an answer to my previous question.
Oh, apologies, my eyes skipped over it.
Well, he did an effective thing. It's unfortunate he had to rely on homophobia to get the point across. That has been described as "the fear that another man will treat you like you treat women" and it's clear that's what stopped creepy guy here in his tracks. He sure didn't like it when the non-consensual boot was on the other foot!
Yeah, I also thought that was weird. I don't know any gay guys that would step in like that.
I found a much more in-depth discussion of the article on meta-filter, maybe it's interesting to you.
http://www.metafilter.com/129974/Changing-the-Creepy-Guy-Nar...
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but the narrative won't change without both men and women being involved in making that change.
My limited understanding of history is that "affluent white men" were involved in granting women and blacks the right to vote, due to the nature of "democratic" processes at the time.
Similarly, ongoing debate about granting equal legal (tax, etc.) benefits to those in homosexual relationships requires the consent from a government consisting (mostly) of heterosexual people.
So the guy could have gone up to the girl and said, "Is this guy bothering you?" and then encouraged her to talk back to him herself. That's not nearly so stereotypical.
If I was a girl, I would find that overwhelming. Instead of unwanted contact with just one guy, I now have unwanted contact with two guys.
Plus, that sounds like a bad cop/good cop routine to use the first guy to make the second guy look like an attractive candidate for a significant other.
Maybe I'm just over-thinking this.
Honestly while I understand the obvious concerns, I would like to point out that the writer is doing the job of expressing emotions for all the parties involved. An important question is whether verbal communication really implies anything. What if the other guy was stoic and the fact that he himself was being bothered did not matter. What if he was a bisexual. Its important that writer wants to frame himself as hero. But from a more neutral standpoint three people had a conversation and moved on.
Not to mention: I know several very happy couples, were the other person ignored and or denied the other's approach for a long time, before they finally clicked.
Should the approaching person had quit, lest he be called a creepy sexist?
"...wore one of those wispy skirts that always make me want to send God a fruit basket for inventing summer."
Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.
And the "because I'm a writer" stuff doesn't even make sense. Because he's a writer he noticed someone being creepy and intervened? I don't understand that logic at all.
It sounds more like because he's a writer he knew the word "trope" and wanted to jam it into an article.
The author was saying that the woman was attractive, particularly her skirt. It's not sexist to admit to finding someone attractive.
Give it a second reading if you didn't understand the connection between being a writer and the author's interpretation of the events:
> Others might get it for other reasons, but I got it because I am a writer. I knew the tropes and the cliches and the tired old lines. I was aware of how to create a role reversal in the "typical characters."
His point is that other people might experience the situation as "someone being creepy" and someone else intervening, but that he experienced and interpreted the situation differently: in a literary context, as a reversal of cliche roles.
I genuinely don't understand why this sentence is considered sexist. As a matter of fact, I am often surprised to see how people perceive sexism on HN. For example, I don't see how the douchebag in this story was sexist apart from the fact that the person he was being rude to was a woman... Is that sufficient to call him sexist? Maybe it's a cultural thing?
Wait, it's sexist to thank God for the physical qualities of the opposite sex?
Thank God for the physical qualities of the opposite sex. (Or evolution, whatever.)
It follows a feminist narrative where woman are asexual beings and sex is something only men like and force upon women. (sex-negative feminism) In such a narrative every statement of attractiveness is ultimately a outing a want-to-be rapist or a predator. If you are in such a narrative it also makes perfect sense to say it's sexist. Outside of that narrative hardly.
The feminist narrative is that women would like a bit of consent with their sex, thank you very much. That includes eye sex.
Ok, I'm not even sure if you are sarcastic or serious. Did you seriously just say that looking at somebody can constitute rape?
Nope, but
soas rape is to sex,nonconsensual leering is to hot eye sex.So, looking at somebody consensually is "eye sex" and non-consensually is "eye rape"? I have to say... I can't take this vocabulary serious.
/edit
Looking a somebody and having sex with sombody is as far apart for me as a hand shake and a MMA fight: the polar opposite sides in the spectrum of social interaction.
I'd ask why you're defending nonconsensual leering, but it's clear you're anti-feminist trash, so meh, please disappear.
I think you both make valid points. What does that make me? Unqualified trash?
A substantial part of feminist theory holds that intercourse is rape.
Nope, just that if what you want is consent, and if you don't permit consent to count unless it's genuinely meant - no pressure, no arm twisting, no punishment for a "no" - then it's damn hard to contrive a circumstance where in a patriarchal society, a man can assume a woman is consenting. "Yes" can only be understood as "yes, given the estimated probability of consequences for no". And it takes a whole lot of effort even to blunt that a little.
So if consent is more or less meaningless, why isn't it logical to conclude that intercourse is rape?
It's absolutely not meaningless. The opposite! But it's hard.
And yeah, that means for most people who aren't putting in the unusual effort, most nominally mutual intercourse is somewhere from slightly to heavily contaminated, depending on things like "how abusive is the relationship?". Call that what you will.
But like I don't think consent is hard, and I don't rape people, and I'm not a feminist because I believe unhealthy relationships are equally bad for men (assuming I'm allowed to choose my identity which seems to be a tenet of modern sexual politics). It's obvious if someone wants to have sex with me, usually based only on their body language, and I respect it if they don't. But maybe I'm just one of the lucky and sensitive ones.
This was interesting:
Appreciating clothing that accentuates womens' bodies and being sexist aren't the same thing. But, yes, he is definitely overly enamoured of the word "trope".
>Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.
No, it does not negate it one fucking iota.
Appreciating a beautiful woman or dress is not sexist in the least. Period.
Appreciating the beauty (in your eyes) of a person of the other sex, and even more, gathering some courage to go and talk and flirt, is how you (and me, and just about everybody fucking else) got into this planet. It's the very basis of every love story.
Only a prudish society, which evolved politically correctness to take the place of its older puritan religious blockings, would ever make the claim that this is the same thing as being "sexist".
What exactly would be the "right thing"?
To only ever be attracted to a person you're in a relationship with? To which you'll end up with in a magical unicorn way, because it would be sexist to like (and even lust) for that person (and, say, his smile or her dress) before you are together?
Another way to look at this would be to say, "we (i.e., men) are all sexist and we need to help each other not treat women like crap/objects/trophies".
I don't like this way of interpreting the author's article, because it portrays women as helpless princesses that need saving, but I'm not sure what a better one would be.
Kind of negates the whole "I'm not a sexist" take on the situation. If you're going to write about how much of a chivalrous guy you are, you should probably also be more careful with the way you describe the thin skirts that you like so much.
I agree with you. If someone (male or female) were writing about an interaction with the genders reversed, you probably wouldn't hear anything about how good-looking the guy was or what he was wearing.
The (unconscious) sexism is not in finding her attractive (obviously) but in the fact that her attractiveness is treated as a relevant detail. How would it be different if she were unattractive? It wouldn't.
But the attractiveness is the lynchpin of the entire story. Dude wouldn't be hitting on her if she were unattractive. And who wants to rescue an ugly chick? Is the author Shrek or something? There's no fantasy for the reader if she's not attractive.
I think it's passive sexism, in that to play his role he needs a aggressively sexist beast in the triangle.
The outer appearance of the two people interacting are descried. There is even a picture illustrating how the man looked like.
How this is sexism against the woman is beyond me. How this is sexism at all.
This seems to be a feminist keen-jerk reaction. Outer appearance of a somebody? That somebody happens to be a woman? What a misogynist!
I didn't claim he was a misogynist. There's no evidence of that. Now that is an overused word.
Our culture is sexist, and all of us are (in daily practice) to some degree. With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men. For just one example relative to this society (not OP) people don't infer radically different personalities for men based on attractiveness (except, perhaps, for the top and bottom couple of percent) but they do for women.
Yes, I think that, based on the totality of the OP, there's a latent sexism in the way the encounter was presented.
Yes, it is overused, that's why i used it. The last sentence was not serious, but a caricature.
> With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men.
Except there is not in this text. As i said, it is very balanced, if there was not the picture.
Your posts illustrates exactly what i said. Any mention of attractiveness leads to accusation of misogynist (or sexism towards woman, I have to say I don't really know the difference), no matter in witch context. No matter how the author does this for all genders, at some point somebody points out that "all genders" in include woman, and that this is not ok. And clearly discrimination to include women into "all genders".
On the surface I agree about the statement - I love women's dresses as much as any heterosexual man - but consider what the attractiveness means in the context of the story. She has to be attractive to be the princess. It's not sexism to make that remark, but it was a sexist situation - two men fighting over an attractive woman's affections like a prize.
Brings this to mind http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBVuAGFcGKY
Men aren't the only ones who just won't take a hint. I had a woman that I finally had to physically stop her by twisting her hands when she pulled the chair I was sitting on out because she insited on dancing with me.
So yeah please everybody try to learn to take a hint.
Good man!