How Not To Be "That Guy"

[coraa]

I was going to shut up about this now, but this is too useful and true and excellent not to share.

From synecdochic, Don't Be That Guy. Where That Guy is the guy who sets off women's creepdar (and often rightly so). How to recognize what behaviors you might have that make you look like an entitled creep, how not to do them, and how to back up women who are encountering them without making yourself creepy in the process. Covers such topics as I-deserve-your-attention entitlement, but-I'm-a-feminist-so-I-deserve-some-tail-too entitlement, why "no" doesn't mean "maybe" and why you might think it does, why you may want to avoid being a Man Who Explains Things, why it's okay to fuck up but not okay to get dismissive, and why "men can be raped, too!" is a non-starter of an argument.

Yeah, these aren't creepiness flags that Every Woman Everywhere find creepy -- but I can tell you that they're dead-on accurate for me, at least, and I know I'm not the only one.

Also, as a follow-up to the Back Each Other Up pledge, via shaysdays, a post on how women can back up or 'rescue' other women without putting themselves in a dangerous situation (as might happen if they confront a creeptastic guy directly), and also on how to spot body language that means 'I do not want to talk to this guy or even look at him but I'm too polite and/or frightened to actually say so or walk away.'

Most of the how-to-back-up tips there are more appropriate for women rescuing women (the body-language tips are generally applicable) -- it's trickier for men to do so, because so many women (including me!) have had one of two bad experiences. Either a guy tries to 'rescue' me in a way that's actually alpha male posturing, faux-chivalric 'I shall rescue you and then surely you will bestow a kiss upon your knight' stuff, which is ew. You shouldn't try to get a woman away from a creep so that she'll pay attention to you instead. OR: guys leaping straight into trying to Solve The Problem and chase the other guy away before they even determine that I want to be rescued -- at which point it gets directly into I Know Better Than You, Helpless Female territory. synechdochic's suggestion for how a guy can back up a woman is brilliant: he should join the conversation and start talking to the guy, thus providing a distraction and allowing the woman to more easily make her excuses and escape. That way, if she was enjoying talking to potential-creep, she can continue, and if she wants to get away, she can.

At some point I'm going to pull together my post on Hugs Of Inappropriate Length (kind of like the more gropetastic cousin to Rodents Of Unusual Size), but not today. Today I'm making earrings and writing a story.

Comments

[canis-ridens.livejournal.com]

So, I've read the background on how the backup project got started finally, and I have to say, "OPEN SOURCE BOOB PROJECT WHAT THE FLYING FUCK?!"

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I know! It's one of those things that makes me think, "Who thought that was a good idea???"

I mean, outside of consent-negotiated-in-advanced private parties.

[marvinalone.livejournal.com]

At the risk of being That Guy, I have to say this: The thing that really gets me about these arguments is the "You don't get it." part. This happens with all minority discussions that I am part of, because I am privileged on pretty much every vector. The argument is essentially "If you don't agree, you just don't get it. If you got it, you'd agree.". This makes everything a member of the minority says to me non-falsifiable. I feel like my opinions are dismissed out of hand because I'm white and male. Isn't that exactly what disagreeing gets me accused of in the first place? As a result, I don't muster as much respect for the points raised as I probably should.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Mm. On the one hand, yes, your opinions shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, certainly. On the other hand, I do think that in general, when dealing with situations where one person is privileged and the other is not, the privileged person should make more of an effort to listen and less to talk, because, as a factor of being privileged, we (and I say we because I'm privileged along every vector except gender, so this is true for me when it comes to race, class, etc) already get to do most of the talking.

Maybe "you don't get it" would be more usefully phrased as "listen to me for a minute before you start to argue."

[marvinalone.livejournal.com]

I talked to a friend about this thread, and she said that I can't just reply to the posts I disagree with, I also need to say when I agree. That makes sense to me. So here I am, saying "Yes, you are right. More listening would be a good thing!".

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yay!

More listening all 'round.

[madduckdes.livejournal.com]

If you needed users to buy your products, and if some of the users who had bought your products were calling the customer service line to complain, it would not be good for your sales to tell the users 100 ways that they are wrong. You would want your tech support people to listen carefully, help the customer feel as comfortable as possible using the product as it is, and then take note of the complaints to make adjustments for future product versions.

Straight men want the ladies to buy their products. In fact, some straight men out there are loudly whining about why the ladies are leaving the product on the shelf. And some ladies are being kind enough to call the giant customer service hotline in the sky and say, "Hey! I don't like this feature!"

Dudes have three options. 1) "Thanks for calling. Here's a workaround so that you can get what you need even though our current product didn't behave in the way you initially expected." 2) "We didn't realize how important that feature is. We'll do our best to update the product so that it will better meet your needs." 3) "We have so many customers that we don't have time to listen to your complaints. Leave a message at the beep, and maybe we'll call you back in three years when business slows down."

If you've got enough customers to go with option three, well, bully for you. But most dudes realistically would be better off going with response one or two.

And yet, dudes tend to give the ladies response four: "But my product works fine! Why are you such whiny customers! Users are stupid anyway!"

And then the ladies go elsewhere. Shocking.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I ♥ this metaphor. Lots.

[marvinalone.livejournal.com]

You make it sound as if that post was a guide for guys to get laid. I thought it was merely about getting along and treating each other with respect.

[madduckdes.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. Wow. So many... argh. I don't even know how to properly respond to that. Let me think about it for awhile and get back to you.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Well, "buy your product" can mean "interact with you," not just "have sex with you." It's not just that I don't have sex with guys who I perceive as creepy or misogynistic (although I don't); it's that I refuse to hang out with them socially, and minimize professional interactions with them, and in some cases literally refuse to 'buy their product' -- I won't buy books written by authors whose views of women I find upsetting.

In other words: yes, it's about getting along and treating each other well, but if I feel like I am being treated unwell I'm going to vote with my feet.

[madduckdes.livejournal.com]

[I think I originally replied at the wrong level. Sorry about the dup, coraa.]

I think that coraa's response about different types of "product" touches on some important points.

And yet it's true that my original mindset was mostly about guys trying to spark relationships (although you'll note that that is not exactly the same thing as "getting guys laid").

The linked article devoted many of its early sentences to the issues of "You owe me sex/attention" and "I'm one of the good guys so girls should sleep with me." How many times did the author refer to tits? Thoughts/comments after reading that article will probably at least have some undertones of being related to male/female intimate relations. From that first issue, however, spun off much discussion about how to not piss off feminists in general with arguments like "but men get raped too." The article was about how to not be lame when asking girls out AND how to help girls in distress if you want to be one of the good guys AND how to have respectful dialogues with women in general.

That should be the end of the comment, but I feel like there's something important still hanging that I don't know how to say.

The linked post talked about what happens when women try to express themselves and when guys continue to assume that even that expression is all about guys. No analogy is perfect; I was trying really hard to express myself and how frustrating it gets to to say Hey, Guys, Stop It and not be heard... about how that experience makes me want to walk away... and that somehow translated into me summing up the article as a guide for guys to get laid? I don't think that's a fair characterization.

[marvinalone.livejournal.com]

Well, I read the whole post as a guide on how to not be a jerk. I can see though how you could read it as "How to be a guy I'd want to date". However, once you're not talking about dating, the situation isn't the kind of buyers market that you describe in your analogy, and this is where I got your intentions confused.

[madduckdes.livejournal.com]

I think that, in general, one of the unfortunate things about gender relations is that for so long guys have (mostly) only needed to care about women's opinions in order to get the women to date (or screw). I think that you're right that dating often feels like a buyer's market (where women are the buyers) to guys - particularly "nice guys," whereas other environments do not have that buyer's market sense because women don't hold the power. I think that in my original analogy, for things other than sex, lots of guys go with response 3, "Don't have time to listen to these complaints."

"I want to work either fewer hours per day or fewer days per week immediately after having a baby." "That's not how the world works, dear."

"I feel uncomfortable when in meetings the person who shouts the loudest is perceived as having the best idea." "Well, if you want to get anywhere, you're just going to have to learn to be more assertive."

"My best friend narrowly escaped sexual assault at a dance club, and so now I'm really anal about the buddy system when I go out with my female friends." "You're just paranoid. You should relax."

Definitely not a women's market for so many issues. Not all, but many. And change is so slow.

But I have faith that it will happen. More women will start opening their own businesses. Women will keep voting. Things will have to balance out someday.

Guys often have this weird idea that if they agree with the women around them, they've become whipped. And so some guys avoid seeing the women's side at all. I wish there were way to help guys feel like they have their own opinions while still embracing that the woman's ideas are equally valid. There are so many times where I'll see a guy shrug and say something like, "That's not important to me." And I want to tell him, yeah, but it's important to her. And she's important to you. So at least listen.

Continuing with the idea of women as buyers (and then thinking of "the male way" as a type of monopoly power), I'm not saying that I want things to shift so much that "the female way" gains monopsony power. I don't want guys to have to talk about their feelings during a job interview. I don't want the federal government to become all about social programs and forget about security. I just want the male assumptions to stop being the default right way.

... And if that means that I have to keep explaining myself over and over to the good guys (even if they're sometimes frustrating conversations, or even if it turns out that some of the good guys turn out to actually be asses), well, then I will usually take one for the team. Coraa mentioned below that at some point guys who won't listen have stopped being part of "The Good Guys." I think she's right. But I also try to draw my line pretty far. If men have been getting the signal for ages that their way is always right and they don't have to listen to the women, the process of men seeing the female perspective might require a buttload of patience.

Hmm. That all sounds very female. Maybe it will change quicker if I start shouting louder than the other people in the room. But then, would we have really gotten anywhere?

[coraa.livejournal.com]

This is on a bit of a tangent and not directly related to what you say here (and definitely not specifically targeted at marvinalone, to be quite clear), but it made me think of it -- particularly the frustration of not being heard.

One of the things that always always gets me in these discussions is that I'll say, "I find X, Y and Z to be creepy, threatening, unreasonable or insulting." And without fail someone will come back and say, "But geeky guys do X, Y and Z not because they're jackasses but because they're just not socially clueful! They don't need you to pick on them, they need to be educated! You'll never solve the problem just by snarking at them. You should be understanding and productive and educate, not dismiss.'

So I try. I try. I try to explain, I try to patiently go through what X, Y and Z make me feel, why my feeling that way is not crazy or unreasonable, where I'm coming from, how it differs from where they're coming from, what they can do differently. I try SO HARD.

And what do I get?

"It's not fair that I have to do that just because there are jerks out there."

"That's too much for me to think about."

"You have an unreasonable expectation."

"This is too hard."

"I'll never meet girls if I follow these rules."

"But jerks get more women."

(When I was single) "If you expect that from men, you'll never date."

"It's not my fault."

"Why should I be punished?"

"You can't expect me to remember all this."

"You can't expect me to be all PC all the time."

"Well, it offended me when you said [small part of the argument], so I can ignore everything else you said."

"[small part of the argument] is contested in some circles, so I can ignore everything you said."

"My girlfriend/sister/roommate/mom disagrees with you on [part of the argument], so I can ignore everything you said."

"I don't like this. Explain it so I like it."

And maybe I try to explain it again. And again. And againandagainandagain.

But eventually I hit this point where I want to say, "You know what? You aren't well-meaning but clueless anymore. You said you would listen but you're resisting actually hearing anything. You're a jerk who has found that faking cluelessness is a great excuse to continue being a jerk. Deliberate ignorance is not a virtue. Fuck off. Educate yourself. I'm not going to associate with you, and if I feel necessary I will warn other women away too."

(Again, marvinalone, not directed at you! But this is why I -- and I suspect a lot of women -- get so frustrated and eventually unhelpful.)