TAKE OUR QUIZ

Dearest heterosexual man,

I don’t actually hate you, okay?

I didn’t hate you when you were in middle school and coined “Slap Ass Friday” and “Touch Tits Tuesday,” making future me recognize the one benefit of being the weird Asian girl who never talked and wore off-brand crocs. (The benefit being that I was cool AF, obviously. Too cool to be sexually harassed more than just a couple times a month.)

I didn’t hate you when you called me “cutie” and asked if I smoked weed as I walked down the street in my uniform sweats eating a mini Dillon James with Mama Lil’s Peppers from Mod Pizza.

And I didn’t hate you when you harassed and assaulted and manipulated and abused my friends and family by following them home, stalking them at school, calling them sluts, telling them what to wear, soliciting them for sexual favors…

I swear I don’t hate you. But I, like many of my peers, am extremely wary of you.

If you’re a man and you catch a woman staring at you, you probably wouldn’t think of her as any sort of physical threat. But it’s different for women. Which makes sense because data show that the number of women who experience sexual assault by men eclipses the number of men who experience sexual assault by women.

But, being the ever-so-benevolent person I am, I recognize that your creepy staring and cat-calling is probably not malicious. You probably don’t even think twice about it. After all, you aren’t doing any actual harm, right?

Well, keep in mind that your ignorance is a privilege. A 2016 study shows that women are more likely to associate creepiness with the threat of being sexually assaulted, so for every second that you’re not thinking about your behavior, there’s a woman out there overthinking for you, wondering if this is the day she becomes a statistic.

Creepiness isn’t sexual assault, nor is it necessarily sexual harassment. But it can be a precursor to both and it serves to perpetuate a culture where women feel threatened while men live in ignorance.

Not sure if you’re being creepy? Well, good thing we’ve conveniently created a comparatively comprehensive creeper quiz (the CCCuiz, if you will) to get you thinking about how you can do better in the future.

Disclaimer: We at the Ebbtide recognize that creepiness is equal opportunity, so people of all gender identities and sexual orientations are invited to take our quiz by substituting the appropriate pronouns. But, taking into consideration historical and social context, straight men suck may benefit more from this quiz, as it was specifically designed with them in mind. Don’t @ us. Actually please do. We’re trying to build up our Twitter presence.

Each question has some creepy answers and some slightly-less-creepy (but not necessarily recommended) answers. Pick your poison. Creepy answers will be in the answer key.

And remember, when in doubt, just don’t engage the person at all. It removes all threat of creepiness. Think of it as preventative care.

1. The hottie from psych totally stared back at you the other day. But you’ve never actually talked to them. What do you do about it?
   1. Corner them after class and try to get their number.
   2. Be friendly (but not too friendly!) in class and see if you can just strike up a rapport with them.
   3. Think nothing of it. They were probably just spacing out.
   4. Start leaving them notes and gifts from “a secret admirer,” so they’ll have to accept your love when you confess because roses ain’t cheap.
      
2. Oh boy, oh boy, the cute girl from your class accepted your friend request. How do you strike up a conversation?
   1. Send her a picture of your nether regions to assure her of your virile mating potential.
   2. Tell her she’s the most beautiful thing to ever grace this wretched earth.
   3. Ask her if she has a boyfriend. If she doesn’t, tell her she does now.
   4. You don’t.

3. The person you’ve been messaging with suddenly stops responding. What do you do?
   1. Keep messaging them, morning and night, in eight-hour intervals until they respond.
   2. Find them at school or work to ensure they haven’t been abducted by aliens or murdered by misogynists.
   3. Leave them alone. They’re probably busy or something.
   4. Check in with them after a couple days with a quick “hello!” to see if they’re still interested in talking.

4. You’ve been talking to the pretty lady from your rock-climbing club for a while now. You’ve hung out during events and have recently started Snapchatting, so you decide that it’s appropriate now if you ask her out on a date. But she turns you down, saying she only wants to be friends. How do you respond?
   1. Grin and bear it, and tell her you appreciate her being straightforward.
   2. Ask her why she only wants to be friends. Let her know that there aren’t a lot of nice guys out there and that she would be missing out on one of them.
   3. Call that bitch out for leading you on! She wasn’t even that attractive anyway! You just felt sorry for her!
   4. Disappear into the ether. Accept your fate of being alone forever.

5. You haven’t resigned yourself to the forever single life just yet! It’s time to really get out there and make an effort to find ~the one~. But how are you going to do that?
   1. Look through the comment sections on Facebook and start messaging all the females with nice facial symmetry.
   2. Approach the woman standing alone at the bus stop and let her know that her Warm Vanilla Sugar Moisturizing Body Scrub from Bath and Body Works smells deeeelicious.
   3. Create a resumé highlighting your future earning potential and hand it out to people on the street
   4. Tip a lot at restaurants and leave your phone number on the receipt with a winky face to indicate interest.
   5. Sign up for a dating website.

Creepy answers:

1. A, D
2. A, B, C
3. A, B
4. B, C
5. A, B, C, D

By Areeya Tipyasothi,
Copy Editor