I agree with the first part of your comment, but the last paragraph seems contradictory:
Anytime you find yourself saying, “How dare he do X? That’s creepy! Don’t ever do X, folks!”, ask yourself if you would have the same reaction if you liked this person and welcomed X.
Creepiness is by definition unwelcome behavior; that’s just the meaning of the term—“that which causes someone to feel creeped out”. Of course any welcome behavior would not be labelled creepy.
But the entire problem is that its welcomeness is not known until you do it! That’s why you have to go based on general standards of acceptable behavior in judging an action, not by whether one person happened to not like it.
Imagine if Elevatorgate started from, not some elevator, but just the mere fact of Watson being “asked out”, and she went on to say, “Whoa! Creepy! Guys, don’t ever ask a woman out!”
Someone might protest, “Wait, what?”
Do you understand why it’s not a very satisfactory answer to say, “It’s okay, we’re only talking about those cases where it’s unwanted”? If so, apply it to your own answer.
I reread your first comment and I think I just misread it the first time. (And you may have misread mine). I think we were just talking past each other.
We seem to agree on the important bits, namely that:
“Creepiness” is defined and measured by the “creeped out” response of recipients.
Therefore it depends not just on the action, but on the recipient and on how they perceive the actor.
Therefore an action is not definitely creepy or noncreepy until carried out; it is hard to predict reactions.
To the extent that the same action is perceived as creepy or not coming from different people, we shouldn’t be talking about the action itself sometimes being creepy, but about the relevant differences between people.
I don’t think we agree, in particular, because I don’t agree that the particulars of how a specific event was perceived are relevant for general rules of condemnation. That is, I’m fine with saying “Don’t do X” if X really is widely disliked, regardless of the person, but not with giving the same advice, while actually predicating it on people’s ability to know others’ reaction in advance.
I agree with the first part of your comment, but the last paragraph seems contradictory:
Creepiness is by definition unwelcome behavior; that’s just the meaning of the term—“that which causes someone to feel creeped out”. Of course any welcome behavior would not be labelled creepy.
But the entire problem is that its welcomeness is not known until you do it! That’s why you have to go based on general standards of acceptable behavior in judging an action, not by whether one person happened to not like it.
Imagine if Elevatorgate started from, not some elevator, but just the mere fact of Watson being “asked out”, and she went on to say, “Whoa! Creepy! Guys, don’t ever ask a woman out!”
Someone might protest, “Wait, what?”
Do you understand why it’s not a very satisfactory answer to say, “It’s okay, we’re only talking about those cases where it’s unwanted”? If so, apply it to your own answer.
I reread your first comment and I think I just misread it the first time. (And you may have misread mine). I think we were just talking past each other.
We seem to agree on the important bits, namely that:
“Creepiness” is defined and measured by the “creeped out” response of recipients.
Therefore it depends not just on the action, but on the recipient and on how they perceive the actor.
Therefore an action is not definitely creepy or noncreepy until carried out; it is hard to predict reactions.
To the extent that the same action is perceived as creepy or not coming from different people, we shouldn’t be talking about the action itself sometimes being creepy, but about the relevant differences between people.
I don’t think we agree, in particular, because I don’t agree that the particulars of how a specific event was perceived are relevant for general rules of condemnation. That is, I’m fine with saying “Don’t do X” if X really is widely disliked, regardless of the person, but not with giving the same advice, while actually predicating it on people’s ability to know others’ reaction in advance.
I understood it to mean “ask myself if I can imagine someone doing X in a way I welcomed.”