OK, so basically, I’m low key fascinated by human expressions and body language. if I wasn’t going into medicine, that would be what I studied. I love watching conversations that I can’t hear and trying to ascertain what the context is - whether it’s friendly, or romantic or what have you. it works really well to pass the time on trains, but I digress. so, this kind of thing made me think about just another example of how blatantly ridiculous some men are.
one of the universal signals that animals exhibit (mostly mammals due to the design of our mouths) is what we can call a snarl. it’s the motion of pulling the upper lip back, exposing teeth - particularly canines in species with larger canines. you see this across the board; dogs, cats, chimpanzees, etc. it’s meant to indicate that the animal in question is not pleased, and to intimidate the other animal. it’s why if you see a dog snarl, generally you back away. you see it in footage of chimpanzees looking to establish dominance.
now, as a general rule, humans don’t snarl - I say that because we don’t make the same gesture with the explicit intent to show teeth, since our canines are hardly bigger than the rest of our teeth. however, the same motion of pulling an upper lip upwards, utilizes the same kind of muscles that we use when showing the micro expression known as contempt or disgust. so even if we aren’t actively bearing our teeth, most of the time, we’re capable (though we don’t actively realize it) of determining that someone who looks at us with that expression, doesn’t really want to be interacting with us.
these expressions are things we learned as we get older and interact with more of our own species. without ever being actively taught, we understand what most expressions mean. this isn’t the case for some individuals suffering from autism, like my brother. he has to actively be shown what expressions mean what and repeat the process. my use of that is to explain how as a whole, this understanding of basic expressions and their meanings is inherent.
now, the other night I went out to get some drinks with some friends. we were walking back to the bus station and some guy reached out to grab my arm and try to get me to talk to him. out of instinct, I turned around and without even thinking, actively snarled at him. I don’t like being touched by strangers as a general rule, especially when it’s dark and the middle of the night. so, not only did I display contempt, but I recreated the most primal expression of anger and desire to commit violence towards this man. do you know what he did? he laughed and told me that it was cute. like, fuck that man so fucking hard.
despite everything we know about animal behavior, this man wrote off my reaction to him because it fit his personal agenda about how he wanted the night to go. if he reached out to pet a dog and it snarled at him, I’m willing to bet that he’d take his hand back, but if I do it, then clearly I’m just trying to be cute, right? just another time where some man has rewritten this whole script in his head when it comes to interacting with women, because he wants it to fit this narrative that he’s created in his head, where she can’t possibly be genuinely upset with his actions, she’s just trying to be cute, right?
