Creeps and Betazoids

First I must say: Happy Anniversary to Mancheeze. This blog is now 2 happy years old!

I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for several nights now and my mind loves to wander creatively, imagining that I’m on the starship. The character on the show that I find most pleasing to my psychology is Deanna Troi, who is half human/ half Betazoid. Her primary skill is Extrasensory Empathy. She is capable of reading the deep psychological intentions and motives of others and instructs the crew when she feels the feelings of other life forms.

Betazoids like Deanna Troi come from the planet Betazed, an extremely peaceful culture that values honesty and compassion. Betazoid children are born with black eyes and an extra cortex which produces a neurotransmitter that gives them psionic abilities. They develop their telepathy and empathy over time, usually starting in adolescence.

Deanna Troi and William Riker on her home planet Betazed

Deanna’s skills are taken quite seriously and she is highly respected by all her colleagues. Only in science fiction and women’s earthly lives is empathy and emotional competence valued. Earth has a long way to go.

Men denigrate emotional life, probably because they don’t understand it. Masculinity prevents this essential element of human life to be transferred to males. This is especially true of Manospherians who continually bleat about logic being the standard method of solving problems. It’s then odd that most Manospherians are Gamergate geeks, who love Star Trek, which is basically a story about diversity and the deep connections and respect for all life.

Most MRA’s admire Spock, a Vulcan whose only purpose is to think logically and suppress emotions. Logic is all men ever talk about, as if it’s the only way to solve a problem, when it’s obvious that emotional savvy and skill is highly capable of doing the same.

So what then of a highly valued female character, Deanna, who saves entire planets by feeling feelings?

In one Star Trek episode, a community was conducting an inhumane experiment on a new life form, trapping it against its will. The captain of the Enterprise, while orbiting the planet, spoke on a tele-screen to those responsible. Deanna also saw this conversation and immediately told the captain they were ‘hiding something’ which led to the intervention and release of the life form.

Deanna Troi advising Captain Jean Luc Picard on the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise

In another episode the captain takes Deanna into the holodeck to ride a horse. She refuses, explaining that Betazoids can feel the passion of the animal and do not want to use it for selfish purposes. On Betazed, there is no animal cruelty.

The more I watch Deanna the more I come to the conclusion that she is modeled after us: human females. The ability she has to ‘read people’ and recognize dishonesty is something every little girl learns how to do very early in life, especially with males. How we acquire this skill is another question. There’s a feeling you get. You just know something is wrong. It’s automatic for most girls to instantly scan the environment for negative emotions and motives of men and we have a standard term for it: creep.

creep as a noun

A disgusting and obnoxious person; crud, jerk, nerd •

“a creeping motion,” 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning “despicable person” is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of “sneak thief” (1914). Creeper “a gilded rascal” is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps “a feeling of dread or revulsion” first attested 1849, in Dickens.

Every woman knows several creeps. Creeps are those men who cheat our social systems, who lie and steal to get what they want. Manospherians have fits over the word creep. They know what it means. When a woman calls a man a creep she’s telling him ‘ I see you’re a liar.’ This translates to him as ‘I have no honour.’ Why do you think there are PUA’s desperately exploring every detail of the female experience? They’re trying to find ways to cheat the Betazoid in every woman. The only problem is, generally, they can’t because they don’t recognize our emotional skills as intelligence. They use terms like ‘rationalization hamster’ as if our minds work in such simplistic ways. They just don’t.

Here is one woman’s experience with a Manospherian PUA:

The first time a man used a trick on me that he had learned from a pick-up artist (PUA), I did not do any of the things his guru had promised I would: I was not “intrigued”; I did not feel an urge to “impress” him; and nor did I immediately drop to my knees and start servicing him sexually – which was, no exaggeration, cited as a possible outcome. Instead, I walked away. In PUA parlance, I showed my “bitch shield”.

So I turned up to a friend’s party and was thrust in front of a 30-year-old dude who worked at GQ. He asked me what I did for work. I told him, and he laughed. He asked where I lived. I told him, and he made sarcastic comments. By the time he asked me where I grew up, I thought I was prepared for his reaction. I was wrong.

“Ohhhh, I know that part of town,” he smirked. “I used to tutor kids up there, but I couldn’t justify to myself giving an extra leg-up in life to spoilt kids, and dealing with their dumb-dumb parents. So can I have your number?” I told him to get it off my butler, and walked away.

I assumed he was just a weird one-off. Again, I was wrong. There was the 50-year-old news editor (“You work for a British paper? Does your wrist get sore copying stories off the New York Times website all day?”); the 25-year-old from a trendy literary magazine (“Has anyone else ever told you that you have a face like a rabbit?”); the 45-year-old arts critic (“I’m having a party. You probably shouldn’t come – it will be quite highbrow”). Eventually, I mentioned to a girlfriend that the men in this town all seemed to be jerks. She rolled her eyes: “It’s that negging thing. They all do it these days.”

“Negging” is a “negative hit”, or what you and I call an insult. PUAs teach their acolytes that if you insult a woman, she will be intrigued and see the man as a “challenge” , or what you and I call a jerk. The PUA mentality is that women should be psychologically (and sometimes physically) manipulated into having sex.

Note to dudes: you can’t cheat a system you know nothing about while comparing women’s minds to hamsters on wheels. But this doesn’t stop them from trying, and failing, and coming up with more elaborate cheating schemes. Look at this frighteningly long list of terms and concepts men have pulled out of their logic-ass in order to tell a woman he likes her. Have you ever heard of Kino Anchored Motion Inducement? It’s a PUA concept where men think if they touch certain areas of a woman’s body, she’ll magically go where he wants. When you read the description, there’s no magic to it. It’s simply pushing her around.

‘For example, if a PUA wants a girl to move with him to another side of the room, he can place his hand on her lower back and gently nudge her as he moves forward. If she’s sitting, touching her in the back of her upper arm will indicate for her to stand.’

‘By pushing a girl near the front of her hip area lightly, she will feel compelled to sit down. Also, placing your thumb and index finger around her wrist will physically lock her hand to your hand, and these pulls become physically powerful to actually move the girl, should she hesitate.’

The goal of PUA’s is one thing: compliance aka ‘she does what I want.’ There is no room for an autonomous human being if all you want is compliance. Reducing human beings, which are women, to an automaton is incredibly sociopathic. This is why the best solution to a dude who wants compliance is plastic.

The entire Manosphere reduces women in this way in one form or another.  For all the men crowing about the ‘meritocracy’ men sure do lie and cheat a lot. (Ashley Madison anyone?) In the crime of rape, a man is stealing from a woman. He is taking something without her approval. He knows this too because the first thing he compares a woman’s body to is a locked home. Of course, he admits he sees her as an object and not a living human being entitled to self-governance and bodily integrity. No. He sees her as a lock on a home that he must cheat, sometimes by murder. This isn’t merit. This is dishonesty and depraved indifference to human life.

Think about the way the Western male of the Manosphere encourages other men to go to a third world country to find a ‘good woman.’ He can’t be successful in his own country under his own rules so he throws the ‘meritocracy’ right out the window. He wants to cheat the system, to find a woman that has less options, even if she successfully ‘reads’ his intent. It turns out to be true that even third world women are Betazoids and eventually kick these men to the curb, realizing the creep factor knows no international borders.

When I look at things this way, it’s easy to see why prostituted women openly admit their inner Betazoid. When C36 was made law in Canada many prostituted women said it effectively cut off their ability to scan men. Now, as a former prostituted woman, I don’t buy that. Men can and do avoid detection precisely because a woman is economically desperate. She may read him just fine but take the risk anyway and I know from experience that that is exactly what happens. What they’re really saying is ‘don’t take my johns away or I’ll starve.’ This is why this radical feminism thing is so concerned with elevating the sociopolitical and economic status of women and abolishing this form of sexual slavery.

It’s not a coincidence that men despise feelings and are always saying ‘women are too emotional.’ If it weren’t for our emotional expertise, men would have a much easier time cheating us. For all their ‘logic’ they still haven’t found a tried and true method of avoiding the creep factor. Logic is no match for emotional intelligence. It’s not even the same system. Men whine that ‘good men’ and ‘nice guys’ aren’t being recognized. So what if a few ‘good ones’ get tossed by the wayside during the process when the possible result of lax screening could be a horrible and painful death?

The Betazoid in all women is a survival mechanism but it also allows us deep connections to life. I often wonder if we would have developed these skills if it weren’t for the fact that we must navigate masculinity’s obsession with dehumanizing, cheating, and stealing. Maybe it’s due to the fact that we are the sex that has the most direct experience with caring for new life even though women who’ve never had children are more than capable of detecting creeps.

Creeps love to expound on the meritocracy but they never play by the rules, even the ones they set. It’s amazing how quickly things like fairness and honor go out the window when a man has a sexual or violent impulse and insists on, say street harassing. Not only do men seem to lack rich emotional lives, as evidence of their complete hatred for ours, but whatever emotions they do have they can’t seem to control in any humane way.

Sci-fi fantasy is truly the world of women. Since our Earth world has no place for us, doesn’t honour us, and 50% of the population are always trying to find ways of stealing from us, we should bravely take pen to paper and create new worlds in the hopes of making them a reality. Star Trek shows that our skill set isn’t worth .75 cents on the dollar but is worth a leading role on the bridge of a star ship saving entire worlds. Our creep scanner is invaluable.

If there is any criticism I can muster regarding the show it’s that the female characters are still being interpreted through male minds. There are many episodes where this profoundly male viewpoint is evident, especially the original Star Trek which began in the 60’s. The youth element of The Next Generation is represented by a young male, Wesley Crusher, who is being groomed for Starfleet command. Why not a young female? They also invented a midlife crisis called ‘The Phase’ where older Betazoid women get horny as fuck, roaming around Space fucking every man that will have them and of course they did an entire episode on it. When Star Trek tried a female captain (Captain Janeway) of the USS Voyager the show was met with angry derision from male geeks and there are pages and pages online of men yelling about it. Some of them come right out and admit they hate her while others have endless lists of ‘reasons.’

Lwaxana Troi, Deanna’s mother, wandering around the Enterprise looking for men to fuck during her ‘Phase’

There is a distinct message repeated often on the show that Earth eventually abandoned misogyny and sexism, racism and classicism, that Earth was failing and had to evolve. When will men realize there is no quick method, no cheat to the fundamental principle that women are worthy of dignity and respect? It’s not that we’re the same as men, because we’re clearly not. And I’m not arguing for being treated ‘equally’ because that means having to learn dishonesty and play by men’s distorted concepts and philosophy. I’m talking about liberation from men’s wonky systems entirely.

Why do Manospherians/Gamergaters love Star Trek so much while despising every principle the show stands for? Ah yes, it’s a question for true philosophers to understand why men value and accept a social justice position, as long as they don’t have to actually live it. I’m afraid until then, there’s no country for creeps.

Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation all episodes here for free.

Note: I do not consider myself a Trekkie or a fan of this show.