Don't want to dance with an old creep? You're a "bitch"!

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

...and other reasons my bff and I both have fake wedding rings....

[AVENues]

...and other reasons my bff and I both have fake wedding rings....

Do you know that many... many, many travel portals recommend it as a safeguard? It is true!!! All the travel forums have entire sections for female travelers (because this world is full of entitled rapist no matter where you go and what you dress like.) I'm still wearing my rings too even though I've gotten rid of the ring donor. As soon as they sniff out that you are a free person (aka "single) they'll come after you like sharks when they sense one drop of blood in a pool of water.

[Hane]

Perhaps "You are old enough to be my dad!" would give the old mysogynist a clue.

When my daughter was in her early 20s, she was filling her gas tank and a guy came up to her and said, "You're very beautiful." It was early in the morning, she was on her way to work, and she hadn't had her coffee yet, so she couldn't think of anything more intelligent to say than, "But--you're OLD!" He got embarrassed and went away.

[AVENues]

I loathe it when they use the word "beautiful", I mean, complete strangers. That is supposed to be a poetic way to say they would want to have sex with the "beautiful" person. Why don't they keep their opinions to themselves? Your poor daughter... no, she was very intelligent and frank and look, her method worked. She's smart even without her morning coffee. That old b*****d thought she'd be some sort of an easy prey, well, he'd earned himself a good hot portion of humiliation...

[thoughtful]

When my daughter was in her early 20s, she was filling her gas tank and a guy came up to her and said, "You're very beautiful."

Was it this guy?

(not embedded because it is cued up to a particular spot)

I love her reaction -- written well, directed well, acted well, and right in character for that role.

[Hane]

Was it this guy?

(not embedded because it is cued up to a particular spot)

I love her reaction -- written well, directed well, acted well, and right in character for that role.

Wow--I just remembered something: I was in my late 20s and went to a Parents Without Partners dance. (75% of the people there were nice, intelligent, well-dressed women, and 25% were males whose ex-wives had shown great wisdom in dumping their sorry asses.) A fairly decent-looking guy came up to be and said, "You're very beautiful." I replied, "I know," and kept on walking.

[FairyPrincessK]

I get the impression there is a pretty significant element to this story that is missing. Most of the time, my first, even my second rebuff would be politely worded, even if the advance wasn't. For the most part, I don't think about it much and polite rejections are first out of my mouth, but if I did think about it I would probably keep it polite anyway because I think unemotional and cool distance probably keeps me safer....soooo....

For a conversation to get to the point where say "its time for you to go?" yeah, that would have to escalate a bit. He would have had to keep asking after I'd politely refused several times, or perhaps I felt cornered and wanted to draw attention to the situation.

[GolightlyGrrl]

I get the impression there is a pretty significant element to this story that is missing. Most of the time, my first, even my second rebuff would be politely worded, even if the advance wasn't. For the most part, I don't think about it much and polite rejections are first out of my mouth, but if I did think about it I would probably keep it polite anyway because I think unemotional and cool distance probably keeps me safer....soooo....

For a conversation to get to the point where say "its time for you to go?" yeah, that would have to escalate a bit. He would have had to keep asking after I'd politely refused several times, or perhaps I felt cornered and wanted to draw attention to the situation.

Good point. Ages ago I was waiting for a bus, and I had my nose in a book (a book I was actually going to review for a local publication). One guy asked me if the book was good. I answered in the affirmative. Apparently that was his cue to start harassing me and get up in my face. I made some vague eye contact with him so that must mean I want to sleep with him, right? Typical MRA logic. Finally, tired of his shenanigans, I told him to fuck off and that my book was vastly more interesting than him.

[AVENues]

Um... it happened today and reminded me how we can totally express our likes our dislikes toward people.

I saw a really, really cute guy, he was a black male, mid-20s in a mall today. (I don't know if he was from Africa or he was Afro-American or whatever and they haven't invented a better term for black yet, sorry.) I couldn't help it, I smiled at him. I never ever do that since I have a sever case of xenophobia (by that I mean I'm afraid of people that I do not know, not foreigners). When I looked again, he smiled and waved a little. This is how strangers tell each other that they like one another. I did not get in his face right away or hollered, he did not whistle, yell or run after me like crazy. I know it did not result in having sex right away but we both continued walking with a good feeling in our hearts. I might or might not see him again, that's life. Damn, he had a sweet face and lovely eyes. He was totally not creepy. I'm really unfriendly with males that I don't know but I had a good feeling about him and I was right, he was not a creep. He could have been, despite the fact that he was really young, creepiness does not depend on age... Why am I blabbering so much. So the point is, adult people will and can find a way if they want to, to let strangers know if they like them, in a non-creepy way : )

[Jezebel]

We all know gaydar, right? Well, I think these ladies have creepdar. They know an entitled, narcissistic, misogynist douchebag when they see one. They were definitely raised right.

I don't think having good "creepdar" has anything to do with being "raised right." If anything, being raised around some crappy people would help develop it, much the same way that living in rough neighborhoods teaches you how to spot trouble on the street and avoid it.

I have excellent creepdar, thanks to growing up with a narcissistic father and seeing him and his jackass friends in action. By the time I was eight years old, I knew that I would never marry a guy who was rude and mean to waitstaff and store clerks, and that when I one day started dating that was going to be one of my criteria for whether a guy was going to be my boyfriend or not. I also learned very early that any guy who said stuff to cut me down (what "pick-up artists call "negging"), then said it was "just a joke" was someone to walk away from.

The creeps I wasn't really prepared to fend off when I left home were the sensitive, poetic, Nice Guy creeps--I was used to the more aggressive, openly boorish, or oily "playboy" types. I dated a lot of those kinds of guys at first because they seemed so unlike the men I'd grown up around. But I could already pick up on disrespect and manipulative behavior, so I eventually learned how to spot and avoid Nice Guys, too.

I can meet a guy and know instantly whether he's a creep or not. Sometimes it's something I can identify--body language, looking at me like I'm fresh meat, pushiness when I've made no indication of interest--but often it's not. I'll meet him, and it's like the big portcullis gate comes slamming down. I can actually feel the repulsion in my body before it fully registers in my mind. And once I've had that initial reaction, there has never been any going back; getting to know the guy only reinforces that I have no interest in him.

I've had a very busy and varied sex life over the years. I'm one of those crazy-extreme statistical outliers who has had a lot of different sex partners. But with a couple of exceptions when I was very young and still figuring things out, I've had a good time, never been in any danger, and have no regrets. My creepdar weeded out all the bad actors, so whenever I've met a guy and got a "green light" feeling, I knew I could trust it.

And I do believe that most women have some level of "creepdar." The problem is that all too often trusting it means getting called a bitch, or frigid, or a tease, or lots of other not-nice things. It might even bring the threat of physical danger from a rejected man. And since women are constantly socialized from birth to seek others' approval and placate men so they won't hurt them, they ignore their own instincts.

[Peas n carrots]

Guys like this are the reason my girlfriends and I started going dancing at gay clubs. The men weren't going to creep on us and they were good dancers to boot. Plus the creeps were less likely to follow us girls into a gay bar.

Jezebel, I wish I had honed my creepdar at a much younger age. I had some pretty good men in my life, and generally protected me from the creeps. To this day I still have a hard time taking a stand with creeps, and it's led to me letting them get further than they should of in several situations throughout my adult life.