Brace yourself for some Grade A Creeper-fap (h/t to Betsy Dornbusch) from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Bulletin by C. J. Henderson:

The reason for Barbie’s unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the way-side is, she’s a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route but it wasn’t for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.

She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should.

Ron Jeremy says, “That’s exactly what he learned at Real Doll Re-education Camp!”

STILL NOT KIDDING.

So, I thought, just for the sake of educating the public, I’d do a minor exploration of an actual thing, out there, in the actual world.

Dollification.

You read that right.

Doll-ifi-cation.

What is dollification?  Well, allow me to quote dollification.com!

dollification: the process of evolving, mentally and physically, into a “living doll.” Individuals who desire this process-as well as those who are in the midst of the process or have already achieved an end result-may be described as “dolls,” and most desire as well to be owned. The parties involved in dollification are referred to as “Owner”and “doll”; this is comparable to a Master/slave or Dom/sub relationship.

Mental traits of a doll include but are not limited to: enjoyment of objectification and natural subservience, the underlying will to be transformed through one’s own and/or outside forces into a living doll, ultimately, the capacity to feel/see oneself in a dollific manner, which the doll will continuously strive to achieve and/or improve.

Don’t you feel educated?!

Many dollification fans do tend to fixate on “demure” dollies, like Japanese ball joint dolls and porcelain dolls.  When you start converting women into dolls, you stop worrying about their degrees–dolls just sort sitting there waiting to be manipulated by their owners and all. Barbie may be a Doctor who’s bad at math, but when you value her for stately silence and the modesty you deigned to provide, she’s a just another baby doll in the context of comparing an actual woman to a doll.  Anyone that’s played with dolls knows that the doll is only what the owner brings to it–I won’t tell you what nefarious activities my childhood Barbies got up to.

Dollification enthusiasts tend to also dig on what they call “Bimbo-ification,” (bask in that education) which, using the patented C. J. Henderson Doll Whore Scale (not that I’m saying he has one… just that one is implied) is an attempt to emulate something more like a  Bratz doll, I guess, what with having whorish ambition (which Mr. Henderson can clearly discern because… Bratz dolls aren’t rich, blonde, white women? I don’t know. It is a mystery.)

Bimbos intentionally work the Living Sex Doll angle. Despite the fact that Bratz are “younger” than Barbie, both in brand life and narrative intention, they’re also at least given the agency to acknowledge their own sexuality, instead of “maintaining quiet dignity, like a woman should.” Not that really, either of these isn’t fraught with, well, the essence of distilled objectification.

“My blind and docile thing. Her hollowed hands, her painted eyes, empty with waiting.”

-Avery Vain, on Twitter

Where fetishists and C. J. Henderson part ways is when the fetishes at least acknowledge objectification as a key point in why they get off on the idea.

Anastasiya Shpagina

I found this mess thanks to Karina Cooper, guest-blogging for Chuck Wendig.

Rodney Dragondong did stealthily creep across his vast landholdings at Orchard Grace Retirement home, his two-handed man-blade peace-tied to his back. He had an honorable mission to accomplish, and no low-born Unmen were going to muchly stop him.

The chicken must die, in the way of chickens. For that is the way of chickens.

She’d never be allowed on Gor.

Rodney, Lord Dragondong of Orchard Grace, knew that his pursuit of chicken freedom would be frowned upon on Earth where things are all rong, and men are bee-stung, and women are terrifying, except for luscious, lovely Kajira Crystal, his devoted slave, who sat in perfect slave postures, prostrate and prostrated in his Weapon-heavy Knight’s Dojo/Den. He knew the risks were high. But Randy would pay and pay well, for that is the way of unmen. They pay. And pay well.

So Rodney, the Dragondongiest, did creep. For his very self did not resist creeping, and creeping is good and wise, as Earth’s gravity and rongness did weigh heavily upon his Dongness.

Randy and his Rongwife appeared to be sleeping, as is the way of Earthfolk whom haven’t found magical crystal elixirs that give you Tarnsman strength and endurance and mental acumen and facial cysts. Rodney, Everdonged and Armed, did creep around to the backyard at Randy’s enviable holding.

He could hear the chicken, clucking as is the way of chickens.

Creepingly, he crept into the back holding, creeping through the darkness in a low crouch while he crept.

The chicken clucked a greeting, safe in it’s coop, as chicken are natural slaves, and desire a coop the way Earthwomen do.

He unlatched the coop with much manliness and verve, chuckling to himself. Oh, yes. Randy would pay and pay well for the insults earlier, when he so rudely evicted Rodney from his hedges, threatening him with Earthlaws and hurling insults. Rodney Dragnondong could not bear this insult, and bear it he would not. Clutching is war spoils, he raced from the Randyshire, triumphant and full of victory and win. The chicken flapped and protested, but Rodney knew it was all a show, as chickens are there for the plucking and he had rightly plucked.

Oh, yes. Randy had paid, and paid well.

I know creeps.

There’s the too-shy dude. The “nice” guy that “can’t catch a break,” who’s actually a dick that invalidates his own “girls like assholes” theory. The undiagnosed dude who’s running around with autism or OCD or sensory processing disorder or even face-blindness. The dude with the questionable mustache. The dude that is nick-named after a lovingly-crafted Vampire: the Masquerade character from 1994, which he used to vLARP, and has since built an entire false persona around, and for the love of all that’s holy, he’s never, ever going to shut up about it.

Then there’s the scary guys. Lord Dom Thunderfart who threatens people at clubs in a only-barely veiled way. Old guys that zone in on 16 year olds. Guys that are always bringing up sex out of context.  Guys that make you shudder. Creeps.

Creeps run a wide continuum.

The main character in my last short story is a creep. (Note: I HAVE NO BUSINESS WRITING PORN. “What? Red-headed Adonis Billionaires in silk suits are hot? Pshaw. Bring on a subby fanboy living in squalor!”)

“Right. No, you’re right. Sorry. You may be Creepy Sean, but you pay your bills.” She nodded, and she shoved the check into her bra strap.

He tossed the checkbook on his desk, knocking over a can, which destabilized a book, and sent his phone, a screwdriver, and some change cascading to the floor. He shook his head. “I am not creepy. You’re shallow.”

“I didn’t name you Creepy Sean. My friends did. Because you’re so warm and inviting.”

He swiveled idly in his chair and popped his knuckles. She grinned at him. “You’ve got a flaming skull tattooed to your tits. You really wanna talk about warm and inviting?”

She screwed her face up and shrugged. “Dude, forget it. You’re not creepy. Fine. Marinate in the cock cave with the porn bots until the dirty laundry and Cheetoh dust become sentient. I don’t fucking care.”

“Your friends are idiots.”

Creep, in most contexts, involves a certain level of unconscious (or maybe conscious) misogyny.

Not all the time.

But, most of the time.

Most of the time, Creepy Dude scared someone. Worried them. Made them uncomfortable. Or, made them cry at a convention, by whipping his penis out in an inappropriate place, time, context and universe.

So. Yeah. I once knew a guy that was banished from convention forevermore for running around asking people to sign his nuts with a felt-tip pen. Dude wasn’t autistic. He was just a jackass.

This morning I ran across an argument between Ryan Macklin and Chuck Wendig (and some other people.)

The gist is that it’s Super Mean to assume that any given creepy dude can tell when he’s being creepy or not.

Wendig re-tweeted:

Always concerned when guys worry if their behavior at cons is “creepy.” When I go to a con, I just don’t do creepy things.

To which Macklin replied:

Often, when a guy says that he is concerned, he’s really saying a variant: “So, I see that other dudes are able to chat and flirt with women, and I want to do that as well, but I don’t know where the lines are. See, I have a neurological condition or I was awkwardly socialized, so the natural thing I perceive this guy doing is really fucking alien. I’m not a bad human, at least I don’t think I am, but I’m obsessing over this situation to paralysis. It causes me a lot of strife because I’m doing nothing — which, admittedly, is better because I’m not bringing a toxic moment into another person’s life (which is my fear), but I see that I’m missing out of some part of the basic human experience and I honestly don’t know what to do. I would like to be a normal person, please.”

The conversation at g+ is decent. It hit twitter, went a little nuts, and Macklin emo-parted right at about the time I sent:

I’ve got autie loved ones. I get it. But every unhousebroken fanboy ain’t worth tilting at neuro-diversity windmills over.

I am okay with the use of the word creep, in that it can keep women and girls safer. It’s shorthand; it’s currency in inter-female news-sharing at the younger end of things. It is more important for women and girls to be safe, than it is for every dude to get all the vagina he longs for. There’s very little room in the Creep Debate for women to have their cluelessness acknowledged, too. If “creep” works, it works.

Even if it works like a sledgehammer on a walnut.

A continuum that starts at “he has no game and girls make him nervous,” and ends with “coyote-otherkin that eats people and wears their lungs as hats” is probably not… efficient.  It’s not fair.

I get that it’s not fair.

And I understand that it’s frustrating.

Recently, I got into a conversation about frats and how frat parties are the Everest of Male Privileged Consent-crossing, yadda yadda. Only, really? Convention parties are safer than a frat party, how? Given the recent shenanigans in the perv-0-sphere, where people are being violated on stage? It’s not safe anywhere. It’s just not.

And, so, we’ve got this weird lack of specificity in our language that sets up a few ideas:

First: that “creeps” are “awkward” and that the awkwardness is interpreted as “possibly dangerous” in a consent-violating way.  It may be intentional, it may not be, but it doesn’t matter because Lennie Small only wanted to pet the rabbits.

Second: that being socially adept minimizes your chances of being labeled a creep.

Third: that the apex of being a consent violating jerk is  actually at the top end of the socialization scale.

This is nonsense.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter where you are on the social totem pole, you are getting the same messages about “women as conquerable things to fuck” that every other person out there is getting. It doesn’t matter if you’re Greek or Geek–you’re socialized to put up with aggressive men. To excuse them. To write off the stories that accumulate. Every sexual predator out there has had a friend say, “But he’s an okay guy, he’s just loud/quiet/clueless/a player/a joker/etc. Etc. Etc.”

He’s always an “okay guy.”

The problem with creep is that it means we’ve left women with fucking Spidey Sense as their primary means of defense, then, we, as a culture, minimize and actively hide bad male interpersonal behavior. We hide it with social fallacies and misogyny about lying, drunk, crazy, slutty women.  We hide it with Not My Nigel. We hide it with myth and half-truth. And “he’s an alright guy.” And then when a woman has a failure of Spidey Sense, we blame her for it.

That’s a cruel set up for failure.

There are ways to cut down on a given individual’s creep factor.  Skillsets can be acquired. Rules, hard and fast and free of gray areas, can be learned.  A greater tolerance for neurodiversity can be taught, so that someone can be all, ‘Hey, I’m not a darty eyed weirdo, I’m on the spectrum and I mean you no harm.’

But it’s difficult to justify crying over the unfairness of creep, when we’re offering shelter to predators with endless excuses for boundary violating actions. You take away “creep,” and you’re leaving women no actual alternative besides the never-ending demand to trust, trust, trust and never, never judge.

That is just not going to work, until we’re all willing to label the real creeps.