“That’s creepy, dude": Disciplining desire and making masculine selves in the sexual moment

Abstract

How do men negotiate the boundary between romantic and creepy behavior in initial, sexualized interactions with women? In this paper, I argue that the discourse of "the creep," a stigmatized sexual figure, functions as a disciplinary mechanism that both creates and limits men's desire and sense of self in the tense initiation of a sexual moment. My analysis of 244 articles from 3 popular men's magazines suggests that an idealized sexual moment, as it is imagined in the pages of popular men's magazines, is fraught with the risk of miscommunication and the potential for failure. The figure of the creep on the cusp of a sexual moment signals a tension in the masculine self that, if resolved successfully, produce a particular heterosexual masculinity and access to women's bodies in an idealized sexual interaction. Furthermore, the discourse of the creep helps men manage these risks as they relate to feminist discourses about sexual harassment and violence. Ultimately, analyzing popular discourses of the creep reveals a set of cultural tensions threaded through heterosexual men's romantic interactions. IntroductionIn the current #MeToo moment, men 1 seem newly mystified about interactions with women and are continuing to ask questions about how to navigate dating and sex with women.As a recent Esquire article noted, "So as a new year begins, we hold this truth to be self-evident:When it comes to the pursuit of happiness, all men may not be equal creeps, but everyone is suspect" (Esquire 2018). Whole industries have emerged to help heterosexual, cisgender men navi-1 While men's magazines and research on gender are generally not explicit about men's gender identities, in this article, I assume that the men being discussed are cisgender men, or men whose gender identities align with the gender they were assigned at birth. How the discourse of the creep circulates, for example, in heterosexual relationships between trans men and trans or cis women, or in relationships between cis, trans, and nonbinary people are topics to be explored in future research.