Interesting Links for 10-08-2012

[andrewducker]

• How does the Corby by-election change the UK's electoral mathematics?
  (tags: elections coalition uk )
• 1300 extreme porn convictions in the last year. Rather more than the original estimate of _30_
  (tags: viaCipherGoth porn uk law freespeech )
• Spotify, Pandora, Streaming Music Make Up 25 Percent of Warner Digital's revenue
  (tags: music spotify

Comments

[xenophanean]

That stuff about avoiding being a sex-creep, some of it's right on the money, but it's also entirely negative, and reads as, "if you've got no social skills, just fuck off".

Gotta have the smooth with the rough. It's some guy who doesn't like creepy guys around his friends and wants them to go away. This isn't an unreasonable desire at all, I dislike creepy guys being around too, but this is selling abuse as advice.

He's identified lots of annoying nasty things which they do, but given no advice as to nice things to do, or ways to help people to trust you.

[andrewducker]

He's given a list of ten things that they should do (or not do - some of them are phrased positively, some negatively). If they do all of those things, then they're (probably) not being a creep. I thought it was a pretty good list myself.

He's not asking for them to have social skills - if they had social skills they wouldn't need the list. He's saying "If you have no social skills, here is a list of things to do so that you don't creep people out."

[xenophanean]

No, I'd say he's given one rather vague thing to do, and nine not to.

Know that you're responsible for your own actions.
Don't expect help from other people in dealing with your personal relations issues.
Don't expect people to tell you what you're doing wrong
Don't regard other people's behaviour as being for you
Don't touch people,
Don't get too close to people
Don't box people in
Don't use sexual innuendos
Don't follow people when they leave
Go away if people don't like you

It makes the world sound fairly bleak and unfriendly.

[xenophanean]

(Although, as I've said, I strongly agree with many of them).

[fub]

And yet it's no-one's job to tell the creep that they are a creep, or what they should do differently. Scalzi makes it the problem of the creep, not the creeped-upon, and that is as it should be.

[xenophanean]

I don't disagree with that at all.

[atreic]

Also, I agree that being excessively touchy is creepy, but advice that goes 'don't touch them, let them initiate all physical contact' is going to be pretty frustrating if _both_ parties are following it...

[naath]

Frustrating is better than creeped-at though. Maybe some people need practice at simply not-being-a-creep before they can progress to working on getting consensual cuddles.

[andrewducker]

I agree. But I didn't see it as advice for everyone - I saw it as advice for people who realise that they're creeping people out (or have been told they are) and want to know how not to do that.

[xenophanean]

Mmm, maybe, but there are people who worry that they creep people out, who are just not very good at people. This is all terrify "STAY AWAY!" advice, and no, "you need to make people comfortable with you" stuff. You do, or there's no point interacting at all.

[cairmen]

In my experience, the geek men who should worry about being creepy usually aren't worried at all, whilst the ones who are worried about being creepy usually aren't, in fact, the creeps.

Hence, as xenophanean says, there's a high chance that what this advice actually ends up doing is persuading shy, non-creepy guys to be even more shy and try even harder to not give off any signals of sexual interest whatsoever.

[andrewducker]

I think it's also useful for setting norms. As the other creep article today indicates, lots of people are very bad at saying "Actually, this isn't acceptable." - public lists of what is/isn't acceptable behaviour give people something to fall back on and say "Hang on, this person is crossing these boundaries all the time!"

[cairmen]

However, as various people point out, more socially-aware people break all of these rules, frequently.

I'm not sure that saying "here are rules. You can't break them. But other people we like more can" is going to have a positive outcome.

I found the other article pretty appalling, it must be said. But there's a difference between "don't molest someone's leg whilst they're asleep" or "don't expect sex as payment for giving someone a ride" (examples from the other creep article) and "don't touch anyone ever unless they have explicitly verbally asked you to do so". The latter is not universally applicable - I'd argue pretty strongly the former two are.

[ashfae]

However, as various people point out, more socially-aware people break all of these rules, frequently.

It's not usually that the rules are broken, though; it's that permission has been given, which is really key and not at all the same thing. That list doesn't strike me as "The permanent set of rules you must follow forever or be labelled as a creeper," more as "Don't do these things when you're just meeting someone or only on casual terms with them," which is just basic common courtesy that someone who's not (yet) socially ept might not know.

[naath]

Well, people I like more *can* do things that people I don't like can't. That's just life. When you know someone well you can establish rules for your interactions with them that are special to the you-them relationship; when you don't know someone you need to make assumptions about how to interact with them in a decent way.

It'd be very strange if I interacted with my partner of several years in the same way I interact with people I've just met.

[firecat]

"don't touch anyone ever unless they have explicitly verbally asked you to do so"

I read the whole Scalzi thread and I'm pretty darn sure I didn't see that anywhere.