Quickies

Quickies: Creeps, what’s safe for pregnant ladies, and 3-parent children

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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11 Comments

  1. The Hot Topic guy was out of line. It’s a very dicey thing to “track down” a retail sales clerk to proposition her for a personal relationship. The creep-factor potential is extraordinarily high. And, the fear factor can be high, too, because people in this day and age get a little weirded out by people “finding” them. What’s next, the dude is going to start driving by her house?

    I don’t blame her for getting angry and telling him off. Tracking someone down is not generally received as well as it might be portrayed in a movie, where a lovestruck person searches for the love of their life…. this isn’t “Something About Mary” where hiring a private investigator to track down your love interest can actually work, and he’s not Jude Law in The Holiday who can get away with saying “I love you” three days after meeting Cameron Diaz.

    That being said, there is some caution to perhaps take in responding to such stalker type behavior. Who knows how whacked out this creep is. Were I Kitty, would have simply blocked the fellow without comment. Reading the guy the riot act runs the risk of alienating a “Cable Guy.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IIU2GCFbJc

    1. “That being said, there is some caution to perhaps take in responding to such stalker type behavior.”

      You can say this about any random fool you meet on the street or the internet.

      Most people aren’t crazy stalkers, even the annoying jerks like this one.

      Also, this is bordering on blaming the victim — “well, maybe if you hadn’t been so mean, he wouldn’t have stalked and tried to murder you!”

      But we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t — don’t say anything, and he may not get the hint and stalk you anyway; be nice about your rejection, and he still won’t get the hint and might still stalk you; be really upfront like this woman and he still might stalk you.

      And there will always be a way to blame the victim. “Well, maybe if she’d be ore firm.” “Well, maybe if she’d been nicer!” “Well, maybe if she’d just ignored him.”

      It’s not up to you to police how we respond to these types of things.

      I tend to either ignore or go full-force like this woman, depending on the situation and the mood.

      Interestingly, I’ve only had one stalker, and he was a dude I worked with and wasn’t stalking me for sexual/”romantic” but because he was a meth-head paranoid dick (and I don’t think it matter so much that I was a woman).

      1. I do say it about every random fool.

        When I drive in a car, I refrain from negative interaction with people that cut me off or drive like maniacs.

        In any situation where there is unwanted communication or communication which is creepy or hostile, I have learned to take care.

        I’ve learned to deal with police in a similar fashion. There is no “obligation” to be polite or cordial or respectful to police. However, when I get pulled over, my window goes down, my license, registration and insurance is at the ready and I turn the radio off. I sit with my hands visible on the wheel of the car and look the officer in the eye. Do I “have” to do that? No, of course not. I can tell the stupid so-and-so that he had no damn right to pull me over and call him a creep. Which is the most advisable move?

        Annoying jerks like this one ARE stalkers. He found her surreptitiously, tracked her down and is now hounding her on social media. He clearly has thought this through before, because he says “you haven’t blocked me yet…” — implying that being blocked may be something he’s encountered before. This guy definitely sounds imbalanced. I’d back away…back away slowly….

        It most certainly is not blaming the victim. She does have every right to tell him off and she’s justified in doing so. Just like the guy in the movie theater in Florida had every right to tell the creep behind him to shut the fuck up about a brief text to his daughter’s babysitter during the previews of a movie that hadn’t started. However, sometimes that creep behind you is a maniac.

        I also am not “policing” anything. This topic has differing opinions. There is definitely room for differences of opinion and nuance as to how people respond and ought to respond to a situation. Some might say she was too easy on the guy. Some might say too hard. Some might say just right. As I’ve noted, I think her response was appropriate, but that caution is always warranted because there are too many instances where some small thing blows way, way out of proportion.

        Stalkers bug me. There are certain types of people that give me a visceral sense that something is really, seriously, dangerously wrong with them. People who are cruel to animals is one. Another is a stalker. The behavior evinces a real sense of it being the tip of a very, very ugly iceberg.

        But, in the end — no, I did not mean to suggest this woman did the wrong thing, or that somehow her behavior caused the guy to behave like a crackpot. Noting in the facts we’re presented state or imply that at all. Were I in her shoes, I’d feel like she did, and I’d want to say even harsher things. In my younger days, I would have said harsher things. Now, I’d have blocked the creep and I wouldn’t have spent another second thinking about it.

  2. Some of the creep’s defenders are billing him as a socially awkward guy we should feel sorry for. But read this bit again:
    “You haven’t blocked me yet. You haven’t deleted your account.”
    Your first instinct is “Wow! How self centred is this guy to think a woman should delete her FB account because of him.”
    But how does he know that this is a potential response? Why does he say to himself, “Oh, good, she hasn’t erased herself from the universe to get away from me! This is going well!”
    It’s because this has happened before. With him. With another woman.
    What he’s really saying is this:
    “You haven’t blocked me yet. You haven’t deleted your account … like the last chick I stalked.”
    Yeah. It’s there. I feel no sympathy.

    1. The defenders are saying that he had no way to know she wasn’t interested, and then she was too harsh in telling him she wasn’t interested.
      Yeah.

      1. Yeah – the socially awkward thing is b.s.

        Socially awkward is Mark “Rat” Ratner on Fast Times at Ridgemont High who’s best pick-up method was to go up to Jennifer Jason Leigh and open a conversation by asking where they put the jackets people leave there.

        This guy at the Hot Topic store is just a manipulative jerk.

    2. So sick of the ‘oh but what if he’s socially awkward/has Aspergers’ excuse-making. People who are socially awkward or autistic DON’T BEHAVE LIKE THIS.

    3. As someone that is socially awkward these conversations make me soooo mad. The guy himself isn’t socially awkward at all, but some of the many people defending him are. Seriously, how do people not notice the difference?

      It’s sad though, watching the socially awkward guys rudely mansplain to women that say things like this. It’s like watching guys in the desert, desperate for water, turning down a very polite lady offering them a cold glass of lemonade in favor of a douchebag in a fedora offering them a glass of mud suspended above the giant meat grinder that is PUA.

      It infuriates me when people “defend” these socially awkward guys from having their fee-fees hurt by the very information that would save them from their loneliness.

      1. I know.
        I was socially awkward well into university. I made a girl slightly uncomfortable once by asking her out on a date. And boy did I notice right away and back the hell off. That’s what *actual* shy, awkward people do. We’re very, very aware of when we’ve made someone uncomfortable. We don’t stalk people to the ends of the earth and prey on the fact that they don’t join a Witness Protection Program as evidence that they really do like us underneath it all.
        Being shy and awkward means you have *low* self esteem, not a planet-sized ego.
        Duh.

  3. The interesting thing about the ‘three-parent’ treatment is that it’s basically being used for mitochondrial disorders. Most of us would have no problem with curing a deadly disease, but apparently people can’t tell the difference between curing a deadly disease and Gattaca.

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