You might be a creeper...

[dolphin__girl]

Yeah, I had One of Those Days and needed to get this out of my system. And we have a con coming up.

So I love my fandom. I love it dearly. But as someone who was greeted at her first-ever con by a very nice and well-meaning individual with "you write science fiction? But you're a GIRL!", I'm the first  to admit that 1) it's still very much a boys club, despite the inroads women have made, and 2) you will inevitably run into creepers. That's not to say you should put up with the creepers. On the contrary! You can do something about them. SFWA has an official sexual harassment policy now, but there's something more you can do. You can take this quick and easy test to see if you might yourself be a creeper, and learn these simple lessons to fix that pesky problem.

You Might be a Creeper...

1. If you are more familiar with a woman's breasts than her face, you might be a creeper. There's a shirt floating around out there that I've seen people wearing, I assume they think it's clever, that says "tell your breasts to stop staring at my eyes," or some shit like that. The countering argument to this is usually something like "if they didn't want me to look, they shouldn't put them on display!" This is particularly true at things like costume conventions (or hell, in bellydance).  But here's the thing. Girls like to play pretend as much as boys do. But our options for girl characters we get to dress up as are somewhat more limited in scope. Let's take Ghostbusters, for example. If a boy (or a grown up equivalent thereof) wants to play a Ghostbusters character of his own gender, he gets to dress like this:
   
   
   
   Here are the options for the girls:
   
   
   
   
   
   Gozer has eeeeevil sexy heels.
   
   Yes, this is one example (I, personally, want to believe that Dana got tired of being a ghost victim all the time and joined the team in the standard uniform. Peter tried to make her wear the above "sexy" uniform once, but she made him wear it for a week instead, whereupon it disappeared, never to be seen again). But this happens over and over and over again. So if a woman wants to get into the spirit and dress as a fandom character of the gender with which she identifies, she almost inevitably gets the sexy costume (and it is notable that on the rare occasions when this is reversed, the subject is almost inevitably the target of homophobic derision). Now, there is nothing wrong with a woman dressing in a sexy costume. Hell, occasionally some women do dress that way because they want attention. But if you don't want to be a creeper, you need to operate on the assumption that she's not dressing this way for you; she's dressing this way because she wants to cosplay in the fandom she loves.  Even if she's not in costume, nine times out of ten, if a woman is wearing a top that exposes some degree of cleavage (and there often isn't much of an alternative save for the other end of the spectrum in covering EVERYTHING), she's doing it because she likes the way she looks in that top. Or that's part of the uniform; I don't bellydance for the male gaze, I do it for me and the relationship it lets me have with my own body, which has not always been a kind or caring one. Or maybe she's wearing that sports bra and shorts because it's hot out and she doesn't want to overheat. It's not because she wants you to stick your face in her boobs. Or touch her.  Which means that when you're in conversation with, a woman, you might need to check yourself every so often and ask "where am I looking? Oh, crap, eyes up!" We get it, occasionally your gaze might wander. But don't let it linger there. Which leads me to the next point...
   
2. If you have ever been offended that a woman doesn't want you to touch her, you might be a creeper.  There's an individual in the SFF community locally here that does this a lot. He once grabbed me from behind, and then ordered me to stop stiffening up and turn around to give him a proper hug. He also has frequent conversations with my boobs (particularly when he's been drinking), and once grabbed my ass at a con. He was doing it to get my attention to stop me from leaving the room, and I don't actually know if he was aware which part of me he touched. That's not the point. The point is twofold: one, that he assumed that he had the right to touch me because he knew me and had introduced me to some people once, and two, that he assumed he had the right to tell me how I was to spend my time when I was clearly in the middle of something. I was not the only woman to whom he did this sort of thing, either. He chased a friend of mine down the hall, interrupting her as she was on the way to treat a medical condition, to order (not ask) her to go do something as a favour to him. Despite the fact she had already explained the urgency of the situation. And then he got really mad and shouted profanity down the hall at her when she told him that he had no right to tell her what to do and walked off to treat her medical condition. Repeatedly, he got shirty at the women around him for refusing to structure their schedules around him.
   
   So you've done something nice for a woman. Hooray! Good for you! That does not suddenly obligate her to allow you access to her body or her time. This is a very typical Nice Guy response, btw: "I was nice to this girl, how DARE she not do things that are convenient for me!" If you treat her like a decent human being, guess what, she will probably be nice to you back. Heck, if you treat her as an actual person, she may help you out when you need assistance, and she may even hug you. But if you demand her time or affection as payment for doing something nice once? She is going to (justifiably) distance herself from you. It's not her. It's you.
   
   This carries on the idea started in the last point, too. Just because a woman is dressed as the Scarlet Witch, that does not mean she wants you to touch her, fawn over her, or have a conversation with her, nor does it give you carte blanche to do so. If it looks like she's not on the way to something important, but may be hanging around for a while, and is not in the middle of something, like reading a book or listening to an iPod (I cannot tell you how many times guys on the subway try to engage me in conversation when I've got my iPod on and I'm clearly in Gathering Myself For The Day space, and it's REALLY FREAKING ENTITLED AND PRESUMPTUOUS to assume I owe you my attention, and now I'm creeped out on top of it), you might say "hi," or "I like your costume."  If she proceeds to engage you in conversation, she may want to talk. If she gives a terse answer, breaks eye contact, starts backing away, indicates she has something else to do, ignores you, or gives any other indication that she's not fully into this conversation, she probably doesn't want to talk. This continues to apply if she starts to do this at any point during the conversation. This may be because you're a creeper, or it may be because she's been trying to get to a panel for fifteen minutes but keeps getting stopped along the way by oglers and creepsters and she really just doesn't want to deal with it anymore. (This happens a LOT, btw. See this for clarification). Err on the side of caution.  Maybe she just doesn't feel like talking to a strange guy right now.  That's her right. Sorry, but it is, and the argument of "but I have a right to talk to a girl if I find her attractive cause Free Speech RRAGH!!!" gets really old really fast. Trying to establish free access to a woman's body, time, conversation, or attention is an extremely creepy thing to do. Society is thorough enough at turning us into objects. We don't need your help, thanks.
   
3. If you have ever been asked to stop talking about sex so much and asked "what else is there to talk about?" you might be a creeper.  This is actually a direct quote from an episode of Come Dine With Me Canada, which featured one of the biggest creepers ever, and was one of the ideas that kicked off this post. But a lot of creepers do this. Talk about sex a lot, as though trying to either establish their cred or compare notes or something. And the answer is, there are LOTS of other things to talk about. "Oh, you work in X field? That's exciting, have you ever used that in a story?"  "Oh, you met X writer? What was she like?" "Oh, you saw Captain America? What did you think of that big production number?"  The creeper on Come Dine With Me was actually the father of a little girl. From the introductory footage they shot, it looked like he had a really good relationship with her. It seems to me that a good rule of thumb for him would have been "don't talk about things you wouldn't talk about with your little girl." (With the caveat: don't be patronizing) And if you're making sexual innuendos at little girls? You are more of a creeper than this blog can help. Sorry.


4. If you have ever called a woman a b***h or a c**t or other misogynist term, you might be a creeper.  I hear this a lot in conjunction with the above points. If a guy gets rebuffed for being a creeper, it's not HIS fault. No, it's because the woman is a frigid (insert sexist term of choice here).  There are really no two ways about this one. These are misogynist terms. The world will be a better place when they fall out of use for good. If you're applying this term to most women you meet, presumably because they have the utter gall to not fall at your feet and worship you as some sort of sex god despite the fact that you're sooooo nice, it's probably you, not them.
   
   
   
   I think I dated this guy once...
   
   
5. If you have ever gotten offended because you have made a woman uncomfortable, you might be a creeper. Sometimes you might make a woman uncomfortable. You may not be intending to, but intent is not magical, and it's a standard creeper response to get offended when it is pointed out. Intent or not, once again, this is not about you. No matter what your intent, you have made someone uncomfortable, and the decent human being thing to do is to apologize and stop doing whatever it is that is making that person uncomfortable. However, creepers usually have the Nice Guy Response (please note the distinction between "Nice Guy" and "a guy who is nice") and get all huffy and "how dare you!" about it. Look, there are very few people who actually set out to be sexist, misogynist, or whatever. This is true for any of the -isms. But when you are, whether that was your intent or not, acknowledge that you have done something that is harming somebody else, and endeavour not to do it again. It actually takes surprisingly little effort to Not Be A Douche, and everyone is much happier about it in the long run.

For further useful and instructional reading on How Not To Be A Creeper (and How To Stop Other People From Being Creepers), see this post here.