How to not be Creepy
“Be suspicious of simple answers, that shits for fascists and maybe teenagers” - Frank Turner
Lets say that you are browsing Instagram, Tiktok or any other platform that supports the sharing of stories. As you move through them, if any of them particularly move you, you send congratulations to them through a reaction or short comment.
A story crops up of a woman you only kind of know. The context eludes you, but she is wearing very little and dancing for the camera. You watch for a second. It’s… good. She’s clearly worked hard and is posting something she’s proud of. Your thumb hovers over the reaction emoji. What do you do?
Social media is very young. Twenty years ago, even five years ago, those two paragraphs above wouldn’t have made much sense. The norms of behaviour and etiquette are changing fast. And yet, nearly everyone reading this article probably has some level of understanding of the complex moral dilemma suddenly rearing its head as we consider this little incident.
On the surface, it all seems quite simple. We can generally assume that people are posting things in public profiles for attention. So that others can like and comment on their content. So when someone throws something up as a video on their stories, they should feel good when their followers interact with that content. So it makes sense for you to hit that flame emoji so that your friend knows you like and support the content.
But the world is, unfortunately, a little more complex than that.
In our search for what it means to be a man on the internet, we’re going to intersect with feminism and what it means to be a woman regularly. If all goes well, we’re going to be able to import and reflect a lot of best practice coming out of feminist, queer and other classicly progressive communities and use them to highlight many of the issues with masculinity and find some answers. The lesson we’re going to take away from those spaces today is to put the woman and her experience at the heart of the discussion.
Lets immediately leap away from thinking of the woman merely as a poster of things and begin to understand her motivations. What is she doing, why is she doing that and what is she trying to achieve? Even this step alone helps us begin dismantling some of the internalised misogyny of this issue. We need to think of women and their perspectives in order to respond and act appropriately around them.
In nearly every instance, our central thesis probably stands: Which is that people post things because they want attention. But there’s a lot of nuance about what kind of attention someone might value.
It could be that our poster is looking to connect with her own femininity in a similar way that we’re looking to understand masculinity. She may be looking for empowerment, to have a positive vision of herself as a sexy woman. Especially in uptight British and American culture, sex positive imagery is often seen as ‘slutty’ or ‘indecent’ and women may push back against these social norms by exploring their sexy side.
It may be that she is looking to connect with other people that engage in similar activities. She is trying to join an online community of people that dance in this way and is posting online to share that passion. She may not even be considering the movements in terms of how sexual it is or how men may respond to it.
Or it may be that she, like us, understands that watching sexy content online is something that men do and she is trying to boost her online profile. She could be doing this for any number of reasons. It could simply be an enjoyable pastime or she could be trying to build a career and needs an audience.
Finally, she could just be actively looking for attention. This tends to be called the ‘Thirst trap post’. Sometimes you feel sad and unloved and you want someone to tell you that you are amazing and special and the internet can provide that to people that are willing to put up with a few creepy DMs.
And just like the fact that our poster may have very many different reasons for their behaviour, we have to consider our own position to decide how to respond. Because another idea that we’re going to take away from these discussions again and again is that context matters.
We are after all, individuals, not interchangeable, and a reaction that is appropriate when one man does it may be deeply inappropriate when another says the same thing.
The first question we have to ask ourselves is the most crude: Is there any chance that she may interpret you as flirting with her? Note that this is a very different question from whether or not you intend to do so. We have to establish how she might feel about it. By doing this, we’re keeping both you and her safe.
Try and keep in your mind how difficult it be to tell the difference between a man with positive intentions genuinely being nice and a man copying this behaviour as exactly as possible to build trust before switching tactics, engaging in manipulative tactics or even sexual assault once he has built trust.
And it’s because of this reason that the answer can’t simply be: Just be honest and upfront with the women in your life as to why you are talking to them. There’s so much overlap between a slightly awkward message from a man telling a woman that he isn’t trying to flirt with her and a problematic man sending the same message in an attempt to build trust before ultimately trying to sleep with her.
And let’s be honest, for most men there’s probably slightly more overlap there than we should be entirely comfortable with. We probably do enter into friendly relationships with women without an active plan on flirting with them, but then as relationships and time evolves, those things sometimes do need to be addressed. Often awkwardly. And if we aren’t on our best behaviour it can damage or destroy what were perfectly lovely friendships.
So what tactics are available to us? I present to you below, some heuristics that mostly work for me:
Never contact someone more than three times in a row without them responding.
So go ahead, smash that flame emoji. But if they don’t respond with a little heart when you do, consider that maybe they weren’t looking for your attention and give them a little bit of space. It could be that you are just not the target audience for their thing.
Be clear, but avoid being blunt.
Not everyone is comfortable with very explicit language, so while you might want to go ‘Hey, just so you are aware, when I mentioned that we should hang out sometime, I meant like, as a date!’ that might freak some people out. But similarly, there’s lots of coded language out there that lets you be clear about your intentions. (Hint: Inviting someone over to watch Netflix does not mean that you intend to watch Netflix.)
Be on the lookout for the soft ‘no’
Some men become aggressive and violent when faced with being told ‘no’. Many women have experienced this. Hell, I’ve experienced this. Therefore women often learn that it’s dangerous to say ‘no’ and instead just sort of… let suggestions pass them instead of giving clear answers. You can empathise with this behaviour or describe it as problematic and adding to the issue, but regardless, the answer is the same. Treat a soft no as if it’s a hard no.
But what about women who use a soft no as a way of expressing a desire to be chased and pursued you say?
As we build our understanding of masculinity, we’re going to encounter lots of issues that are outside of our control. Behaviours build into human interaction that don’t easily feed into the understandings we’ve built. This could come from trauma, manipulation or misunderstanding. Wherever it comes from, we’re going to have to deal with it. And if a woman is behaving in a manner that doesn’t make sense to us, that seems to break these rules and indicates you need to behave in a toxic manner to meet her needs? I recommend you walk away. What do you think?