The power of paint
Sep. 18th, 2012 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupAutism and Oughtism has a post about how she feels her son has covered an ever shifting third of the house in invisible red paint. She can't see it, but he can, and he gets very upset when she touches or moves anything he's painted red. It wouldn't be so bad, she could just memorize everything she wasn't allowed to touch, except he keeps painting new things, and sometimes he paints things she really needs to touch at some point, like lightswitches. It was, as you can imagine, incredibly stressful to live with.
Women deal with this, in less obvious forms, a lot. Don't be a slut, but don't be a prude either. Don't be mean, but be a tease. Don't be fat, but don't ever admit to putting any effort into being thin. Don't be a moocher, but don't make more money than your husband. To be fair, the opposing paints are often being applied by different people, but all that means is there's no one person to yell at for the whole mess. The paints are often applied and enforced by other women, not men, which makes almost 0 difference to how frustrating it is.
In the form of "creepy", women finally have gotten their own paint. For once, we don't have to give a powerpoint presentation to justify our feelings, we can just call someone creepy, get the behavior change (or at least sympathy) we want, and move on with our day. Has the paint been used against certain men unfairly? Against men who were not only not safety threats, but obviously not safety threats? For very bad reasons, like race or class or trans-status? And is it being disproportionately applied against people who were already low on the totem poll? Yes. That is human nature. We kick down, and we're not known for surgical use of new tools. That's why we're outsourcing surgery to robots. Additionally, there is genuine ambiguity. Perfect use is an unreasonable expectation, and "you can only have your reasonable request if you've behaved perfectly" is something women hear a lot and are just not in the fucking mood for now that we have our paint. Lastly, sometimes we're using a dirty trick to get a fair outcome.
Mindy Kaling has a story in her book, Is everyone hanging out without me, about going to a photoshoot and finding racks and racks of clothes that were half her size, and one mumu that fit her. The photographer assumed she'd wear the mumu. She used the closely related "I only feel comfortable in" paint to make him more or less destroy a really nice designer gown so it worked on her in the photos.* It was unfair to make the photographer feel like a subway flasher when he hadn't violated any sexual boundaries. On the other hand, Mindy Kaling was the same size she had always been, which is a fairly common size, and it was bullshit of him to bring a bunch of clothes that didn't fit her to an event that was in large part about putting her in clothes. Could she have gone all fat acceptance on him? Sure. But it would have cost a lot of energy, probably wouldn't have worked, and could easily have gotten her a reputation for being difficult, with long term career implications. So she used the one weapon she had that, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, carried no retaliation risk.
"No retaliation risk" is another way of saying "no way to fight back", and it does suck to have people use weapons you can't fight against. That is why we get so upset about the slut/prude/fat/anorexic/rude/tease/gold-digger/bitch paints. Moreover, in a world that is constantly insisting we justify our feelings, it is really nice to be able to tell my friends "he was creepy" and have it just be understood.
The paint doesn't even always work. Which only makes the overuse issue worse, because we get used to hearing people dismiss the creep label even when it is used against really legitimate targets** and that makes us insensitive to complaints when it genuinely is misused. This is not unique to feminists or women or the creep paint, it's what human beings do.
So, commenter on No Seriously What About Teh Menz: you are correct that creep "is a stronger way of saying “I don’t like that guy” without giving any information about WHY he’s considered a threat". You are simply incorrect in your belief that anyone owes anyone else an explanation for their disinterest.
I am going to preemtively concede that men have a bunch of contradictory paints to cope with too, and that the creep paint feels like it conflicts with some of them (even though I think there's a third way not banned by any paint). I don't believe this changes my argument.
*If I understand correctly, they ripped it open from the back and sewed in several new panels. It would look hideous in person, but photographed well from certain angles.
**Seriously, read that post, men are dismissing their girlfriends complaints about men who sexually assaulted them in front of a witness.
Women deal with this, in less obvious forms, a lot. Don't be a slut, but don't be a prude either. Don't be mean, but be a tease. Don't be fat, but don't ever admit to putting any effort into being thin. Don't be a moocher, but don't make more money than your husband. To be fair, the opposing paints are often being applied by different people, but all that means is there's no one person to yell at for the whole mess. The paints are often applied and enforced by other women, not men, which makes almost 0 difference to how frustrating it is.
In the form of "creepy", women finally have gotten their own paint. For once, we don't have to give a powerpoint presentation to justify our feelings, we can just call someone creepy, get the behavior change (or at least sympathy) we want, and move on with our day. Has the paint been used against certain men unfairly? Against men who were not only not safety threats, but obviously not safety threats? For very bad reasons, like race or class or trans-status? And is it being disproportionately applied against people who were already low on the totem poll? Yes. That is human nature. We kick down, and we're not known for surgical use of new tools. That's why we're outsourcing surgery to robots. Additionally, there is genuine ambiguity. Perfect use is an unreasonable expectation, and "you can only have your reasonable request if you've behaved perfectly" is something women hear a lot and are just not in the fucking mood for now that we have our paint. Lastly, sometimes we're using a dirty trick to get a fair outcome.
Mindy Kaling has a story in her book, Is everyone hanging out without me, about going to a photoshoot and finding racks and racks of clothes that were half her size, and one mumu that fit her. The photographer assumed she'd wear the mumu. She used the closely related "I only feel comfortable in" paint to make him more or less destroy a really nice designer gown so it worked on her in the photos.* It was unfair to make the photographer feel like a subway flasher when he hadn't violated any sexual boundaries. On the other hand, Mindy Kaling was the same size she had always been, which is a fairly common size, and it was bullshit of him to bring a bunch of clothes that didn't fit her to an event that was in large part about putting her in clothes. Could she have gone all fat acceptance on him? Sure. But it would have cost a lot of energy, probably wouldn't have worked, and could easily have gotten her a reputation for being difficult, with long term career implications. So she used the one weapon she had that, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, carried no retaliation risk.
"No retaliation risk" is another way of saying "no way to fight back", and it does suck to have people use weapons you can't fight against. That is why we get so upset about the slut/prude/fat/anorexic/rude/tease/gold-digger/bitch paints. Moreover, in a world that is constantly insisting we justify our feelings, it is really nice to be able to tell my friends "he was creepy" and have it just be understood.
The paint doesn't even always work. Which only makes the overuse issue worse, because we get used to hearing people dismiss the creep label even when it is used against really legitimate targets** and that makes us insensitive to complaints when it genuinely is misused. This is not unique to feminists or women or the creep paint, it's what human beings do.
So, commenter on No Seriously What About Teh Menz: you are correct that creep "is a stronger way of saying “I don’t like that guy” without giving any information about WHY he’s considered a threat". You are simply incorrect in your belief that anyone owes anyone else an explanation for their disinterest.
I am going to preemtively concede that men have a bunch of contradictory paints to cope with too, and that the creep paint feels like it conflicts with some of them (even though I think there's a third way not banned by any paint). I don't believe this changes my argument.
*If I understand correctly, they ripped it open from the back and sewed in several new panels. It would look hideous in person, but photographed well from certain angles.
**Seriously, read that post, men are dismissing their girlfriends complaints about men who sexually assaulted them in front of a witness.
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no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 02:23 am (UTC)My own (relatively unconsidered) opinion on this is that people have a right to express their opinions of people, but not to express false facts. I would be pretty okay with a guy calling a girl he didn't like "a bitch", because bitch pretty much just means "a girl I don't like" and is pretty much 100% opinion. His friends then can adjust their opinions of her based on the evidence "This guy seems to really dislike her". I would be much less okay with him calling a girl he didn't like a "gold-digger" just to make her feel bad, because that's slander - for example, if he has no evidence that she is after money, then it would be slanderous to call her a gold-digger. If you call someone a gold-digger, you really should be prepared to give some evidence, or at least have some yourself. "Slut" seems kind of in between, in that it has both a "factual" meaning as someone who sleeps around, and is a general term of abuse.
I would be prepared to call that fashion designer in your example a creep. He seemed to be trying to pressure her into giving sexual favors she didn't want (appearing in a skimpy outfit). That seems pretty close to the definition of creep. But since creep has a definition, it's a little more like "gold-digger" than "bitch" in the example above - although I would place it closest of all to "slut" since it has both the factual meaning and the opinion meaning possible.
There seem like a lot of ways to preserve the paint function while being less unfair. For example, I would be much more comfortable with "Bob creeped me out" than "Bob is a creep".
no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 02:39 am (UTC)EDIT: Okay, I looked it up and that's just about the least scandalous article of clothing possible.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 04:19 am (UTC)Part of the problem is that creep is useful specifically for times when you have no concrete data to point to. If you have concrete data (like the captain awkward link), you can just say that. But there are times when you cannot put your finger on what is making you uncomfortable, and still have a right to protect yourself. I had a coworker once that made me uncomfortable. He didn't do a thing sexually, but his overtures of friendship felt wrong, in a way that was very distinct from my usual annoyance at extroverts. When I confronted him about it and told him to back off, I got a very typical "oh, pardon me for thinking you were an interesting human being." Years later, I learned that he had been kicked out a sex club for repeatedly refusing to respect the word no. So I was picking up on something, even if nothing overtly bad had happened to me yet.
I think the equivalent to "creepy" is "crazy", and it covers a similar rage of legitimacies. I've seen it used for everything from "stabbed me with a fork for kicking her invisible spirit animal." to "expects me to care when she has emotions." I once diagnosed a friend's potential girlfriend as "not stabby, but future emotional black hole" level crazy from reading a page's worth of facebook posts. Couldn't tell you why, but I knew, and I used the word crazy specifically to convey that. He didn't listen, and went on to gather enough data to prove unbelievably right.
Presumably, I was pattern matching. it's possible to pattern match unfairly (apply the paint to things that shouldn't be painted), and the mistakes will not be distributed at random, and that legitimately sucks for the people receiving disproportionate amounts of paint. But I don't think it invalidates the paint as a tool. Of the paints I listed, some are legitimate- it is wrong engender false hope in people to elicit validation (tease) or money (gold-digging). But it's wrong to accuse a woman of being a tease *just* because she won't sleep with you.
And FWIW, my friends and I have a fairly sophisticated hierarchy of "I felt awkward because he was way too optimistic as to the course of the evening", "I feel uncomfortable", "He creeped me out", "Okay, he's officially creepy." Honestly, I'm not sure if I ever use the noun form, because I feel like I'm on stronger ground talking about "what he did" rather than "what he is."
no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-19 10:08 am (UTC)Yesss, as someone stuck on the word "crazy" and its uses, this. There's such a range of uses for both: crazy mean "clinically psychotic" to "great deal on these shoes" whereas creepy can mean "molester" to "Scooby Doo villan".
They both have the capabilty to create knee-jerk responses (especially creepy, as men have rarely had an insult that applied directly to them in a sexual manner, so the newness is a huge factor). But do you think that, with time and overuse, people will be desensitized to creepy (i.e. not take it as seriously, as people seem to do for crazy)? Or will it always be this completely offensive stigma for men?