(no subject)
This comes out of a conversation from elsewhere which I dropped because I didn't want to badger anyone. It's still of interest to me, I wrote up the following a few months back (when it was more relevant -- what, I've been busy), and it seems like as good an excuse as any to scrape some of the dust bunnies off this blog...
I've put forward the proposition that "the essence of unwanted sexual attention, like all unwanted attention, is that the person giving it doesn't care whether the other person is interested."
I find this an intuitive definition that holds up to analysis.
Forget the sexual-attention aspect entirely; let's just look at a nonsexual conversation: Alice wants to tell Bob about her Pokemans. Bob doesn't care; he isn't yet explicitly telling her to go away, but he shows no signs of interest and is semi-subtly looking for a way out of the conversation.
There are fourish possibilities here to my mind:
1) Alice knows Bob's bored.
2) Alice suspects Bob might be bored, but makes the assumption that favors her interests.
3) Alice genuinely has no idea whether Bob is bored or not, and doesn't care enough to find out.
4) Alice actually thinks Bob is interested.
In 1-3, Alice doesn't care about Bob's level of interest. She just wants to talk about her level 45 Charizard*, and she cares more about getting what she wants than whether she's having a mutual interaction with Bob.
Additionally, she's relying on some form of privilege to allow her to not have to worry about Bob's interest level--she has some reason to know the conversation will continue for at least a little while even if he'd rather be anywhere else. Maybe she's his boss; maybe she just knows that he personally is (or members of his church or whatever are) socialized to be overly polite; maybe Alice is popular and Bob's worried that his friends will call him names if he doesn't hear her out for a while; maybe there are other power-differential or privilege-differential axes at play: point is she knows, at least unconsciously, & relies on some reason that Bob's not going to tell her to shut up and walk away from her, so she can focus just on what she wants to get out of the interaction without having to care about his interest.
That leaves Situation 4: Alice grossly misreads social cues. This could be! But barring a psychological problem, it's not a situation that can persist for long without her apathy about Bob's interest level being involved somehow. Sooner or later she'd notice that nobody wants to be alone with her or talk with her; even if she's really dense and can't figure it out, some friend or another would probably tip her off. (And as far as sexual dynamics goes, there's an entire genre of internet commentary at this point explaining why you shouldn't harass uninterested strangers with tales of your Jigglypuff. Ahem.) Anyway, the diagnostic test to identify a Case 4 is pretty simple: if Alice does care about Bob's interest, then when she eventually learns Bob is bored, she'll feel bad about it. Conversely, if she gets mad at him for not being interested, she's being further entitled: she's reinforcing the clear point that she cares more about getting what she wants than making sure she and Bob have a mutually comfortable and enjoyable interaction.
Note that "feeling bad" doesn't mean she gets to badger Bob to forgive her, whether for her own self-image or to encourage him not to tell his friends she's a bore; it means that she genuinely misread his interest, she'll correct her behavior, leave him alone if he wants, and try to learn from the interaction to better gauge her counterparty's interest in the future.
The fact that caring about your interlocutor's enjoyment is part of what makes you a good conversationalist, well that's just a bonus. But all else aside, even if Alice can coast on privilege indefinitely, it's definitely in her interest to learn to read the Bobs of the world & shade her interactions with them toward mutual interest.
Now unless she's psychologically incapable of learning to read social cues (a proposition I find highly suspect, but we'll let it stand), she's gotta fall in 1-3: she doesn't care enough about what other people think to learn how to gauge their interest. And yes, that is her responsibility; the rest of the world is not responsible for listening to her just because she can't be bothered to figure out who cares about Pokemon and who doesn't. Geeks or others who "are bad at social cues" don't get a pass here. Reading cues is a learned skill which none of us did as kids (where else did "let me show you my pokemans" come from??) If anything, geeks are supposed to be good at learning new things and observing patterns. The problem is geeks have been coasting on the tolerance of others: having been isolated, we've internalized the idea that nobody deserves to be ignored; we've come to act like setting boundaries is "being mean." So pushover geeks don't set boundaries, which teaches boorish geeks that Case 2 is their friend. The boors and bores thus enjoy the privilege of skipping out on the hard work: reading other people and developing shared interests with those you want to socialize with.
If so for conversations, how much more for flirting or sex?
* (Do Pokemon have levels? I don't even know...)
I've put forward the proposition that "the essence of unwanted sexual attention, like all unwanted attention, is that the person giving it doesn't care whether the other person is interested."
I find this an intuitive definition that holds up to analysis.
Forget the sexual-attention aspect entirely; let's just look at a nonsexual conversation: Alice wants to tell Bob about her Pokemans. Bob doesn't care; he isn't yet explicitly telling her to go away, but he shows no signs of interest and is semi-subtly looking for a way out of the conversation.
There are fourish possibilities here to my mind:
1) Alice knows Bob's bored.
2) Alice suspects Bob might be bored, but makes the assumption that favors her interests.
3) Alice genuinely has no idea whether Bob is bored or not, and doesn't care enough to find out.
4) Alice actually thinks Bob is interested.
In 1-3, Alice doesn't care about Bob's level of interest. She just wants to talk about her level 45 Charizard*, and she cares more about getting what she wants than whether she's having a mutual interaction with Bob.
Additionally, she's relying on some form of privilege to allow her to not have to worry about Bob's interest level--she has some reason to know the conversation will continue for at least a little while even if he'd rather be anywhere else. Maybe she's his boss; maybe she just knows that he personally is (or members of his church or whatever are) socialized to be overly polite; maybe Alice is popular and Bob's worried that his friends will call him names if he doesn't hear her out for a while; maybe there are other power-differential or privilege-differential axes at play: point is she knows, at least unconsciously, & relies on some reason that Bob's not going to tell her to shut up and walk away from her, so she can focus just on what she wants to get out of the interaction without having to care about his interest.
That leaves Situation 4: Alice grossly misreads social cues. This could be! But barring a psychological problem, it's not a situation that can persist for long without her apathy about Bob's interest level being involved somehow. Sooner or later she'd notice that nobody wants to be alone with her or talk with her; even if she's really dense and can't figure it out, some friend or another would probably tip her off. (And as far as sexual dynamics goes, there's an entire genre of internet commentary at this point explaining why you shouldn't harass uninterested strangers with tales of your Jigglypuff. Ahem.) Anyway, the diagnostic test to identify a Case 4 is pretty simple: if Alice does care about Bob's interest, then when she eventually learns Bob is bored, she'll feel bad about it. Conversely, if she gets mad at him for not being interested, she's being further entitled: she's reinforcing the clear point that she cares more about getting what she wants than making sure she and Bob have a mutually comfortable and enjoyable interaction.
Note that "feeling bad" doesn't mean she gets to badger Bob to forgive her, whether for her own self-image or to encourage him not to tell his friends she's a bore; it means that she genuinely misread his interest, she'll correct her behavior, leave him alone if he wants, and try to learn from the interaction to better gauge her counterparty's interest in the future.
The fact that caring about your interlocutor's enjoyment is part of what makes you a good conversationalist, well that's just a bonus. But all else aside, even if Alice can coast on privilege indefinitely, it's definitely in her interest to learn to read the Bobs of the world & shade her interactions with them toward mutual interest.
Now unless she's psychologically incapable of learning to read social cues (a proposition I find highly suspect, but we'll let it stand), she's gotta fall in 1-3: she doesn't care enough about what other people think to learn how to gauge their interest. And yes, that is her responsibility; the rest of the world is not responsible for listening to her just because she can't be bothered to figure out who cares about Pokemon and who doesn't. Geeks or others who "are bad at social cues" don't get a pass here. Reading cues is a learned skill which none of us did as kids (where else did "let me show you my pokemans" come from??) If anything, geeks are supposed to be good at learning new things and observing patterns. The problem is geeks have been coasting on the tolerance of others: having been isolated, we've internalized the idea that nobody deserves to be ignored; we've come to act like setting boundaries is "being mean." So pushover geeks don't set boundaries, which teaches boorish geeks that Case 2 is their friend. The boors and bores thus enjoy the privilege of skipping out on the hard work: reading other people and developing shared interests with those you want to socialize with.
If so for conversations, how much more for flirting or sex?
* (Do Pokemon have levels? I don't even know...)