Creepometer

A female reader explains why women react so negatively to Gammas

Every time you’ve posted something about Neil Gaiman, I’ve wanted to say exactly what you said here : This is why women react to Gammas as if they were toxic and radioactive.

In a previous post, Gaiman’s words about the wolf made me want to throw up, so finally I will say what’s on my mind. In our guts, woman have a creepometer. Mine was maxed out. Creepometer pegged. Let me elaborate on this a bit. 

Consider that finding a mate is a modified hunt. We (women) look for tells that the man has good, honorable intentions. This is articulated as: the man make us feel safe. We are smaller and weaker. The stakes of being hunted are high for us. We can end up pregnant and alone, raped, beaten or dead. We look for the good hunter to marry and keep our eyes open for the bad hunter, really pretty much our whole lives. 

Women are also wired to raise babies, so we are fine tuned for reception and interpretation of non-verbal queues. Empathy becomes our greatest defense. When a person has evil thoughts but wears a mask of goodness and spouts what you want to hear, there will be time delays, mismatches, micro expressions, heart rate, breathing, mirror neurons - stuff you can not fake that we pick up on. This mis-match causes the creepy feeling. 

IMO the reason why most women either respond to gammas as radioactive or reject them at an 11, is because the creep sensation they get triggers fight, flight or freeze. Fight is the hard rejection, flight is to run and avoid. 

Consider that most women have trouble saying “no” directly. There are courses and specific counseling for women on how to do that because it is contrary to how we are. Yet when it comes to gammas, saying “no" with a flame thrower is not unusual, because it’s necessary. The rejection has to be brutal, or the gamma delusion projection machine goes into over drive to find a way to interpret the rejection as an invitation. 

Let me explain freeze. When you posted my woman’s perspective on gammas, there was pushback in the comments because I had no “empathy” but I understood what is going on perfectly well. Empathy is the origin of the creepy warning feeling we get. I believe the correct word the gamma was searching for was sympathy or mercy (i.e., weakness). Weakness for a gamma is the opening to force what is not freely given. To freeze, to falter in mental fortitude, or to be gaslit into overriding one’s creep alarm, is an opening. It’s obviously the worst thing you can do. It’s how you find yourself in a tub cuddle situation. It’s how the gamma manipulates. "Wow, I thought you were nice, but for a girl you’re mean. You have no empathy. Look how hurt I am. Prove to me I’m wrong…" 

If the situation above were a face-to-face encounter, a likely scenario would be the gamma coming in for a hug. If you freeze, you will get an uncomfortable, overly long hug, like Tori Amos in that photo where Neil Gaiman is leaning in and pointing, that’s the boundary crossing. That’s the power move to see how far the gamma can force things. There may be copping a feel in there too, and because you didn’t resist, you are now being groomed for a tub cuddle. If you duck and flee instead, you are in for the long game, like Tori Amos. Some day, life will knock you down and the gamma will be there to try to take advantage. However; if you fight, you win. The gamma moves on to easier prey. There will be a flounce. He may hate you forever, but most of the time that will have absolutely no impact on your life. That is also why the gamma as situational Alpha is so dangerous. Because there can be a significant impact, the response gets shifted towards freeze or flee. 

Neil Gaiman crosses the boundary.

Here is another illustration of how it works from Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth Bennet’s rejection of Mr. Collins proposal. First he shows up because he thinks he has these poor women over a barrel; they have no dowries and he’s to inherit the estate upon the death of the girls’ father. The message: one of you take one for the team and marry me and I won’t throw you all out when Dad dies - predator indeed. He picks the most beautiful sister first, then settles for the second most beautiful because first pick is spoken for. He gets the mother to act as his flying monkey. He ignores Elizabeth's body language and lack of attention. When she tries to run away from the proposal and indicates her unreceptiveness with body language he chalks that up to “modesty”. He promises not to reproach her on her paltry dowry, once they are married and doesn’t even consider she should even answer his ask. Then he continues to pressure Elizabeth after her restrained rejection of his proposal, with the reality that she probably will never again receive a marriage proposal and will wind up poor and sorry. Then he repairs his delusion bubble by explaining her rejection away as intended to increase his love by suspense as the usual practice of elegant females. While he’s no rapist, the entire interaction is creepy because it is a sexual situation in which he’s using all his powers of manipulation, elevated rank leverage and passive aggression to force what is not freely given. Eventually he understands the rejection, and flounces and is in high dudgeon, followed by schadenfreude during the fallen sister incident. There’s an underlying anger to the entire encounter. A toxic, spiteful, vengefulness beginning to end. Same with the Gaiman encounters. There’s a cycle of revenge and epicaricacy going on, enabled by the situational Alpha status. 

Mr. Collins seizes the moment and pounces.

The best time to nip this in the bud is with a strong verbal rejection at the first encounter before it accelerates or becomes physical. One can still fight the forced kiss, but we are weaker and at that point you are in deep trouble. This may not be a comfortable answer for some women, and perhaps a lot of women, when a situational alpha is involved, but please understand: it is the least uncomfortable answer. 

Frankly, and particularly considering your statement I quoted, I am surprised there hasn’t been a Not All Gammas response from the gammas. Honestly considering the spectrum of toxicity and toxic consequences, the reality is that for most women, it doesn’t matter. To Gamma is enough. Would you want to be persistently coerced to give what you don’t want to give? Would you want to be involved with a rage monster that doesn’t see you, but interprets how you are, how you feel, as self serving projection of his own mind? Would you want to risk the rage eruption when that delusion bursts? You don’t have to be involved with a gamma to pick up on this. It’s obvious and easily foreseeable. Hence the fight or flight instinctive reaction most women have. This is why for most, Gammas are a no go. 

A Gamma in a situational Alpha role seldom ends well.