kate_nepveu | On asking to touch the breasts of a stranger

If you are a stranger, especially a man, perhaps especially in a group of other strangers who are men, and you come up to me and say, "You're very beautiful. I'd like to touch your breasts. Would you mind if I did?":

You will put me in fear.

Because you could be someone who will go away quietly if I say no (which I will). You could be the exiled gay prince of Farlandia, cursed to wander this Earth looking for the key to his return that can only be revealed by touching the breast of a willing stranger, and who isn't enjoying this at all. You could, in short, not be a danger to me.

But how am I supposed to know that?

How am I supposed to distinguish you from the person who says he's really just whatever, but is actually going to put emotional pressure on me, or make a scene, or stalk me, or rape me?

I can't. Because that would require a level of discernment and of trust that is not possible, by definition, in my dealings with a stranger.

And therefore, if you ask to touch my breasts, you will frighten me.

If your goal is actually to make a better world, I suggest that you use a method that doesn't involve putting women in fear.

(Also, I find it hard to believe you can create "the kind of world where [people can] say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful," by going up to women, touching their breasts, and then going away. Among many, many other problems that are noted in the comments to the original. But that's secondary to my main point here.)

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I don't find fandom has a higher content of creepy guys than, say, your average corporate office. I think fandom has an unfortunate tendency to tolerate the social ineptitude, whereas a corporate culture will pretty quickly teach you to keep your hands to yourself and your sexism on the back burner. Unless you want to get fired.

Fandom is where the creeps feel *entitled* to be creepy.

At least the fandom creeps are open about it and therefore easier to 1) spot and 2) avoid. In the office, creeps are more subtle about it for a variety of reasons.

Hey, some of us have no choice about the social ineptitude but don't want to be creepy (perhaps we are but cannot judge). It's not like we're all advertising executives or something.

(Sexism and groping are an entirely different matter, and this Open Source Boobs thing had me WTFing for some time: I mean, yeah, it's different if you really are inviting it, but still, WTF?! I'm fairly sure that had I been there, I'd have spent far too much time looking for people wearing these badges so I could run away from them, not because there's anything wrong with them but because the simple idea stresses me out. And I'm not even female.)

Advertising execs are socially ept . . . ?

(This is a joke. I don't think I know any advertising execs.)

I have been thinking about self-esteem and socialization about all of this, not coming to any great conclusions. The only thing that worked for me in terms of social ineptitude was experience, but I realize that is a vast chicken and egg problem.

Oh, and I'd appreciate it if in the future you could sign a handle or nickname or something, so readers can tell if this anonymous comment is from the same person as another one.

I was thinking more `advertising execs -> creepy people who really don't think the way normal humans do'. (These are people who in many cases *watch ads for fun* and did it *before* they became ad execs.)

I'm not sure anything fixes social ineptitude completely, ever. Some people have got the neural wiring and can handle it at bewildering speed, and become politicians: some don't have it at all and spend their lives sitting in one small room: and most people are somewhere in the middle. Those of us closer to the 'one small room' than to a politician *can* get better, slowly, but it still feels like an act, always. (Perhaps this is how it is for neurologically normal people too, but I'm not sure this is even an answerable question. 'What is it like to be a bat?')

-- Nix

(And thank you for showing the way to that immortal review of John Ringo's... *inimitable* work _Ghost_, which gave the Internet the phrase OH JOHN RINGO NO. The only references I'd ever seen to this before were occasional despairing screams emerging from rec.arts.sf.written: nobody had actually said what was *wrong* with it before. Now I know. I'm scarred for life just from reading the review, but I know. ;) )

As for feeling like an act . . . as far as I know I'm within normal limits, as it were, neurologically, but in different situations I do find myself feeling that I'm assuming a role to some extent. (Sometimes I feel it most when I come *out* of the situation.) The most prominent example of this is when I'm in court (I'm a lawyer), but it happens in social situations too. I guess the question is how much, and how much it bothers you.

Did you see the comment from John Ringo himself? I was frankly impressed.

Yeah, Ringo's definitely trying to be a good person, and that was an excellent response, quite unlike what most people would say after their work had been panned like that. (Whether he *actually* is a good person I can't say, especially not if he could write something like _Ghost_. His comment that he had to wash his own brain out with bleach was notable: if it's so unpleasant to write, why write it? But I'm not an author so perhaps I don't understand the Authorial Drive.)

-- Nix

I don't exactly either, but I've heard enough author friends say that stuff sometimes just *has* to be written that I can buy it.

On asking to touch the breasts of a stranger

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