I do see where you're coming from, but I'm worried that this is one of those issues where people are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

As I see it, there are two consistent positions. The first is to say that our culture's rules against stereotyping people are dumb and that if observable characteristics of people predict their tendency toward violence everyone should take full advantage of them.

The second consistent position is to say that stereotyping is morally wrong, even when the stereotype can be justified statistically (for example, if we found that people of certain races and classes did commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime). Therefore, it is wrong to shame members based on their observable characteristics even if it might be a useful tool in avoiding violence.

The position I don't want, and which I don't think is consistent, is that we will avoid stereotyping people in ways that there are popular campaigns against (like racism, classism, and ableism) but stereotype the heck out of unpopular groups who don't have lobbies telling us not to.

Think of for example people with bad social skills, people with weird facial hair, people who don't want to spend a lot of effort conforming to fashion norms, introverts, and people with unusual hobbies.

As far as I can tell, these sorts of things are the essence of creepiness. I agree with you that it is easy to disentangle creepiness from race in theory (thought I bet in practice it turns out to be impossible for most people) but I think if you disentangle these things from creepiness there's nothing left of the concept. I'm trying to think of what people would mean by "creepy" aside from these things, and all I can think of are very exaggerated cases like people who grope or expose themselves indecently to others - and this seems to be well past "creepy" in the same way a guy robbing a bank is well past "suspicious".

This issue is important to me too because I've been called a creep. It was usually in school, usually because I was sitting in the corner reading a book and kind of freaking out whenever anyone tried to talk to me. I recognize I might have selection bias because these are the sorts of people I tend to hang out with, but poorly dressed geeks with bad facial hair - and a view of romance so outdated they actually use the word "courting" - are only people I ever hear this term used about.

And the actual rapists? I don't know any rapists personally (as far as I know), but when I hear about them on the news they're always football players or lacrosse players or something along those lines. I guarantee you no one calls them creepy. They're attractive and socially adept and popular! Popular people can't be creeps! They're the guys who hang out with the popular girls and joke with them about how creepy that nerd who sits in the corner is.

Although it could certainly be useful to have a word which could identify potentially violent people, I don't think "creep" is it, at least not the way it is actually used.

"Smith's various relevant disprivileges don't improve the point he has decided to make; they just lengthen the list of actual contributions he could be making to the conversation but has chosen not to."

This sentence bothers me. If only certain types of people are able to contribute to a conversation, and if only certain opinions that agree with you count as 'contributions', then it's not a 'conversation', it's a lecture.

I actually think the value of Smith's disprivileges in this case is precisely that he is allowed to contribute an alternative side to the conversation without being immediately dismissed or told he has to shut up just because of his race or assumed privilege. Think "only Nixon can go to China"

Edited at 2013-01-17 05:30 pm (UTC)

You should write a utilitarian theory of optimal social ostracism. Then we can know exactly who it's ok to make fun of with which words. I'm at least partially serious.

I try to reserve my scorn for the category 'human'.

Think of for example people with bad social skills, people with weird facial hair, people who don't want to spend a lot of effort conforming to fashion norms, introverts, and people with unusual hobbies.

As far as I can tell, these sorts of things are the essence of creepiness. I agree with you that it is easy to disentangle creepiness from race in theory (thought I bet in practice it turns out to be impossible for most people) but I think if you disentangle these things from creepiness there's nothing left of the concept. I'm trying to think of what people would mean by "creepy" aside from these things, and all I can think of are very exaggerated cases like people who grope or expose themselves indecently to others - and this seems to be well past "creepy" in the same way a guy robbing a bank is well past "suspicious".

Okay, I think this is where you and I have had our experience differ, and where Smith's experience differs from the experience of people like me who need a way to say that some people are creeping us out. You don't know any use of the word "creepy" aside from "socially awkward" or "unusual-looking."

I'm trying to decide whether I should actually tell you about all the things that people (generally guys) have done to try and blow past my stated boundaries, refuse to take no for an answer, or behave in ways that aren't so much threatening as the usual precursors to threatening behavior, or whether I should just be resigned to the fact that if you've never had to live it you're just not going to believe me that being creeped out and saying so is sometimes okay.

Maybe I just don't know you well enough. I don't know.

Edited at 2013-01-17 08:44 pm (UTC)

Okay. I didn't realize there were people who used it in such a restrictive way. If that's you, I commend you and only wish other people were equally responsible.

I can hit you up with some links about it if that's something you're available for. I have links talking about why women need the word and what a lot of the criticism of the word is rooted in.

One thing I referred to without linking (because I wasn't sure how into this it would be okay to get) is the Geek Social Fallacies essay that tends to make the internet rounds a lot.

Predator Redux from Yes Means Yes is a great link that talks about the kinds of behaviors which are not overtly threatening but which still creep women out because they're precursors to predatory behavior even if they wouldn't register as predatory not on the receiving end. I particularly like the section about repeatedly testing a prospective target's boundaries. A guy who keeps inching closer to me even though I am trying to get away might just not understand personal space, but he's also (possibly inadvertently) starting our interaction precisely the way a predator would.

I also think that the "creepy guys are just awkward" defense is a bit rubbish. Post about allegedly-"awkward" creepers that, full disclosure, I wrote. It links to CaptainAwkward's entry The C-Word, because that entry is amazing and if I could post copies of it in every bathroom stall in the English-speaking world I might damn well do it.

Furthermore, most people can tell by looking at a cat that it doesn't want their attention; the only thing that makes it hard to figure out whether a woman want to be talking to a man is literally not even trying to.

As evidence for this, even soft/indirect refusals are completely intelligible to most people except when a sense of entitlement to sexual access to someone else gets involved. Another link to Yes Means Yes because YMY is great. Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer.

And if it makes you feel better about the common usages of the word "creepy" in ways that aren't just about ableism or racism or classism, here are some links that emphasize "creepiness" as a quality women need to keep track of as a way to weed out potential predators. When we defend our need to use the word, this is the need we are talking about.

I just want to say that I don't think the "defense" of "creepy guys are just awkward" if phrased correctly. I think what's being claimed is that "awkward guys are called creepy". Saying that all guys called creepy are predators really is lumping people who are acting innocently with those who are out to harm others. They really should be two different categories.

"Furthermore, most people can tell by looking at a cat that it doesn't want their attention; the only thing that makes it hard to figure out whether a woman want to be talking to a man is literally not even trying to."

I worry that as someone good at social skills you just have a natural inability to believe other people could be genuinely worse than you, in the same way that one of my friends who is a math genius claimed that the only way anyone could get below a 1400 on the SAT was if they weren't even trying. Given the amount of work I put into developing these skills, this is kind of annoying to hear them dismissed like that.

(I think in both cases this may be a sort of just world fallacy - "it would be horribly unfair if other people weren't as lucky as I was, so they must actually be just as lucky and just not trying, and so only getting what they deserve." I have a lot of problems with just world fallacy myself but no illusions in this particular area)

I understand you can cite from a huge literature of people who have never had to worry about the word "creep" claiming that surely no one would ever use it in the wrong way, and that all claims that people use it the wrong way are surely just malignantly clueless creeps trying to deny their creepiness. I can only say that I preferred the more balanced previous argument that the (real) benefits outweighed the (real) costs.

Edited at 2013-01-20 04:29 am (UTC)

I had a quick go at googling to answer this question with Science!

I didn't find anything to answer the direct question, but I did get Can Men and Women differentiate between friendly and sexually interested behaviour?, which suggests that in general men perceive more sexual interest than women.

In addition, both genders lie, retroactively, and have highly selective memories WRT status-effecting issues.

Pervocracy's How to not be creepy.

If you substitute "skeeze" for "creepiness," this essay feels like it might also be a good addition. Flirting, sex, and lines: removing skeeze from the movement, written by a guy so that other people can happily flirt and hook up, skeeve-free! Good info for both men and women here.

I also wanted to address what seemed like an assumption on your part that the only legitimately creepy men are the archetypical trenchcoat flashers and obvious rapists with Pervocracy's Slavering Beast Theory. I think it's an important contribution because it makes it clear that the men to worry about aren't always going to be obviously evil to everyone who meets them.

Fugitivus has a great post about the ways women are also taught to perpetuate the nasty cultural crap that shelters and aids rapists. You've mentioned before that you didn't realize that there are women who really will say no when they mean yes, which in turn trains men to interpret all no as yes, and this seemed like a useful read along those lines if it isn't something you'd had a lot of familiarity with before now.

The other good thing this link does is get a little into the disproportionate reactions a lot of women get when they respond "too strongly" (read: at all) to being creeped out by a man.

Here’s a situation every woman is familiar with: some guy she knows, perhaps a casual acquaintance, perhaps just some dude at the bus stop, is obviously infatuated with her. He’s making conversation, he’s giving her the eye. She doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want to talk to him. She doesn’t want him near her. He is freaking her out. She could disobey the rules, and tell him to GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER, and continue screaming GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME every time he tries to step closer, or speak to her again. And then he will be all, “I was just talking to you! WTF!” and everybody else will be all, “Yeah, seriously, why’d you freak out at a guy just talking to you?” and refuse to offer the support she needs to be safe from dude. Or, the guy might become hostile, violent even. Ladies, you’ve seen that look, the “bitch can’t ignore me” look. It’s a source of constant confusion, as soon as you start budding breasts, that the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didn’t get in his car.

The reason I mention this is that I have known men like this, and you know what they do? They go get on the internet and tell all their friends how they just paid this bitch a compliment and she called him creepy like the ostracizing stuck-up bitch she is.

This is a big reason I am skeptical of men who claim they are being wrongly accused of creepiness, because I've heard it too often from men who don't realize or don't care that their behavior actually is genuinely alarming.

Anyway, more links.

Edited at 2013-01-18 07:20 am (UTC)

Dr. Nerdlove's Don't Be A Creeper is great. Just... it's.... it's just a great goddamn essay. Also it is written by a dude, which I know might give it extra credibility to some people.

Here's another. Why “Creep Shaming” Is Total BS One of the links in this entry is broken. I had to find a cached copy of Amanda Marcotte's essay In Defense of the Word Creep, but here it is. I'll quote a chunk of it in case it gets eaten further by the internet.

Clarisse is critical of the word “creep”, and she compares it to “slut”, which is to say a term used to police sexuality. (...)

She does make really good points about how male sexuality is constructed as predatory, and how this needs to be changed, but I don’t think that means the word “creep” is invalid. If anything, the fact that the term exists shows that our society has evolved a highly imperfect restraint on predatory behavior. I do agree with Clarisse that this creates a confusing contradiction for some men—-a lot of creepy dudes aren’t out to hurt anyone, but act out of cluelessness (though this doesn’t let them off the hook, as I’ll get back to)—-and I agree with her that a world where male sexuality was more about pleasure and less about point-scoring would be one where there was less creepy behavior. But that world is a long time coming, and in the meantime, the word “creep” is a useful, commonly understood term for a set of behaviors that absolutely are a problem. (...)

Some creeps are openly predatory, and some fall more into the “clueless” category. (Though the problem is that men hide behind “clueless” in order to excuse being creepy. When they whine that they Just Don’t Know, and women go out of their way to educate them, the response is going to be a tantrum 99% of the time. They could change, but they don’t want to. But they don’t want to be responsible for being creepy, so instead they just choose cluelessness as a strategy to avoid having to change.)

Dan Seitz of GuySpeak.com wrote The Male Perspective: Why "Creep-Shaming" Is Ridiculous.

Other people's experiences will vary, so I don't speak for all women. Someone else's mileage may vary on this issue. However, it is pretty obvious from even a cursory look at the way this word actually gets used, rooted in the fears a lot of women demonstrably have, that I speak for more women than just myself.

Have you read The Gift of Fear?

I haven't but I'm definitely familiar with its content in broad strokes. I've seen it referenced a lot by people whose reasoning and judgment I respect.

So far all signs point to it being great.

And the actual rapists? I don't know any rapists personally (as far as I know), but when I hear about them on the news they're always football players or lacrosse players or something along those lines. I guarantee you no one calls them creepy.

I've met quite a few of them, and the answer is that it really depends on their type/category. From your career are you familiar with what law enforcement basically characterizes as the four types? (Simplistically, here.) You're describing the common Power Assertive, who DO usually fit that profile.

One interpretation is that 'creep' refers to ambiguously scary, unconfident/nonagressive people, and 'jerk' or asshole often refers to unpleasant aggressive people who, if actually scary, tend to be unambiguously so.

The problem is that the 'creep' terminology blatantly encourages a mass of halo-effecting.

I think that feminists use the word differently from the people in school.

I don't think this is a question of specific words. There's a deeper problem to be had here:
Further down in the comments celandine13 remarks that the word "sketchy" used to be used like "creep" is used today. This probably means that if we stop using the word "creep", there'll be just another word that's supposed to denote subtle cues of danger but gets used against lower-status people of various sorts.
This is inherent in the function the word is supposed to fill: You (and think of yourself as female here, i.e. people are likely to criticize you for not being sufficiently nice (or so I heard; not female myself)) have to be able, via this word, to justify shunning or keeping distance from someone without being able to give concrete evidence of them being dangerous. You'd have to include some evidence in the word ("no-ignorer" would do, but is probably neither broad enough nor catchy enough to be useful) to prevent misuse of this kind.