Whether a man is allowed to touch a woman or isn’t can depend on the man.
If the man feels good and is relaxed he is allowed more touching. If he’s high status he’s also allowed to initiate more physical contact.
If a guy wants to be seen as non creepy, trying to figure out the rules of etiquette that are valid for a high status member in his group might not be enough.
Books are problematic. If you read a book you might see that high status members of your group don’t follow the etiquette of the book.
There are basically two ways:
(1) Learn to feel when you make other people uncomfortable.
(2) Follow a set of rules that make your interactions safe.
There are basically two ways: (1) Learn to feel when you make other people uncomfortable. (2) Follow a set of rules that make your interactions safe.
Another piece would be learning how to recognize when people are attracted to you—a fair number of people (perhaps especially geeks) aren’t reliably good at that.
It’s an important skill but it’s not enough. Even a girl that’s attracted to you can get uncomfortable if you touch her too much.
A shy girl might get uncomfortable with physical touch from a guy she’s attracted to.
Another girl who isn’t attracted to the same guy might find the same amount of physical touch acceptable.
I was at a party a while back where I made a somewhat sexual joke and the people in that conversation (probably more female than male, I can’t remember; my social scene is lopsided towards women) all laughed. A couple of minutes later, another guy made the same exact joke with a different group of people at the party and his reception was a lot less warm than mine (some people groaned).
I could only explain why this happened as a result of relative status in a social group. Status seems to determine who is “creepy” and who is “not creepy” even if they are using the same words. Of course I’m tall and in good shape while the other guy isn’t so much. So I think that factors into status as well; the first thing that people are going to do when trying to describe “non-creepy” behavior is imagine Brad Pitt or someone who they already are attracted to, and then proceed to describe their ideal encounter with this hypothetical attractive person.
I remain badly uncomfortable with this portrayal of the situation as “High status men are permitted to touch arbitrary women in their social group more,” and this being presumed to be the same as “Women are more happy when high status men touch them [than when low-status men do.]” I can allow someone to touch me for a lot of reasons: fear, paralysis, having been Psychology-of-Persuasion’d into it, being friends with them, being ecstatic about something unrelated, sexual or aesthetic attraction. However, I have good reason to believe that nearly all men don’t just want to touch women, they want to touch women and have those women be happy about it, in the moment and afterwards. For certain when I think about touching someone, I’m displeased at the thought of them pretending to enjoy it and feeling vaguely skeeved, but not knowing why/not thinking they have the ability to prevent me from doing so.
A woman who’s afraid to resist the touch in the moment might still label the guy afterwards as a creep. When I said allowed, I meant behavior that doesn’t lead to being labeled creepy.
When it comes to the girl being happy about being touched things can be more complex. Most people find being tickled a bit uncomfortable. Some guysenjoy tickling a girl even if the girl would prefer in the moment not to be tickled.
Tickling a girl communicates “We have a relationship where I have the power to tickle you without negative consequences for myself”.
It’s demonstration of power. If the girl goes along with it, she recognises the power. It demonstrates status to other people who are watching.
Successful demonstration of power can increase the amount of attraction that a girl feels. Jerks who demonstrate power have more success with girl than nice guys who don’t.
The pickup literature is full with advice that suggest that being “nice” isn’t enough to create attraction. Unfortunately that frequently leads to guy’s behaving in creepy ways. They try to act like they have social power that they don’t have.
Most of the purposes of LW meetups aren’t to be venues for seduction, and the riskier styles have noticeable odds of guaranteeing that some women won’t come back.
I myself wouldn’t use LW meetups as venues for seduction. I would however guess that most of the people who act creepy on LW meetups do see them as venues for seduction.
If you want to convince those people to change their behavior I think it makes sense to speak in a language that they are more likely to understand.
If you use the kind of language in which the main post of this discussion is posted, I think you are unlikely to reach the people who pose the problem.
If my intended audience wouldn’t be the people who pose the problem but the people who are fluent in deconstrutivist language I would speak differently.
This is funny to me, because the first time I met a group of Less Wrongers, one of them tickled me a day or two into us having met. However, the person in question was MBlume, who is known to not be scary.
Whether a man is allowed to touch a woman or isn’t can depend on the man. If the man feels good and is relaxed he is allowed more touching. If he’s high status he’s also allowed to initiate more physical contact.
If a guy wants to be seen as non creepy, trying to figure out the rules of etiquette that are valid for a high status member in his group might not be enough. Books are problematic. If you read a book you might see that high status members of your group don’t follow the etiquette of the book.
There are basically two ways: (1) Learn to feel when you make other people uncomfortable. (2) Follow a set of rules that make your interactions safe.
Another piece would be learning how to recognize when people are attracted to you—a fair number of people (perhaps especially geeks) aren’t reliably good at that.
It’s an important skill but it’s not enough. Even a girl that’s attracted to you can get uncomfortable if you touch her too much.
A shy girl might get uncomfortable with physical touch from a guy she’s attracted to. Another girl who isn’t attracted to the same guy might find the same amount of physical touch acceptable.
Yes. I creeped out girls who had cold-approached me first a few times in the past.
Wow, that’s impressive. :)
I agree with your comment.
It’s just that noticing when someone is attracted to you frequently gets left out of advice.
I’m selfishly glad my husband was late in learning that. If he’d learned sooner, he’d have been married to someone else long before we met. :-)
If I may argue from anecdote for a bit:
I was at a party a while back where I made a somewhat sexual joke and the people in that conversation (probably more female than male, I can’t remember; my social scene is lopsided towards women) all laughed. A couple of minutes later, another guy made the same exact joke with a different group of people at the party and his reception was a lot less warm than mine (some people groaned).
I could only explain why this happened as a result of relative status in a social group. Status seems to determine who is “creepy” and who is “not creepy” even if they are using the same words. Of course I’m tall and in good shape while the other guy isn’t so much. So I think that factors into status as well; the first thing that people are going to do when trying to describe “non-creepy” behavior is imagine Brad Pitt or someone who they already are attracted to, and then proceed to describe their ideal encounter with this hypothetical attractive person.
I remain badly uncomfortable with this portrayal of the situation as “High status men are permitted to touch arbitrary women in their social group more,” and this being presumed to be the same as “Women are more happy when high status men touch them [than when low-status men do.]” I can allow someone to touch me for a lot of reasons: fear, paralysis, having been Psychology-of-Persuasion’d into it, being friends with them, being ecstatic about something unrelated, sexual or aesthetic attraction. However, I have good reason to believe that nearly all men don’t just want to touch women, they want to touch women and have those women be happy about it, in the moment and afterwards. For certain when I think about touching someone, I’m displeased at the thought of them pretending to enjoy it and feeling vaguely skeeved, but not knowing why/not thinking they have the ability to prevent me from doing so.
A woman who’s afraid to resist the touch in the moment might still label the guy afterwards as a creep. When I said allowed, I meant behavior that doesn’t lead to being labeled creepy.
When it comes to the girl being happy about being touched things can be more complex. Most people find being tickled a bit uncomfortable. Some guysenjoy tickling a girl even if the girl would prefer in the moment not to be tickled.
Tickling a girl communicates “We have a relationship where I have the power to tickle you without negative consequences for myself”. It’s demonstration of power. If the girl goes along with it, she recognises the power. It demonstrates status to other people who are watching.
Successful demonstration of power can increase the amount of attraction that a girl feels. Jerks who demonstrate power have more success with girl than nice guys who don’t.
The pickup literature is full with advice that suggest that being “nice” isn’t enough to create attraction. Unfortunately that frequently leads to guy’s behaving in creepy ways. They try to act like they have social power that they don’t have.
Most of the purposes of LW meetups aren’t to be venues for seduction, and the riskier styles have noticeable odds of guaranteeing that some women won’t come back.
I myself wouldn’t use LW meetups as venues for seduction. I would however guess that most of the people who act creepy on LW meetups do see them as venues for seduction. If you want to convince those people to change their behavior I think it makes sense to speak in a language that they are more likely to understand.
If you use the kind of language in which the main post of this discussion is posted, I think you are unlikely to reach the people who pose the problem. If my intended audience wouldn’t be the people who pose the problem but the people who are fluent in deconstrutivist language I would speak differently.
This is funny to me, because the first time I met a group of Less Wrongers, one of them tickled me a day or two into us having met. However, the person in question was MBlume, who is known to not be scary.
I liltle touch in the upper arm(women) in dating situations make a difference(signal high status), but could end very bad, if is a overeaction.