You know what ‘the ick’ is, right? A feeling you get for someone based off a silly/cringe/weird thing they did or said or are, which torpedoes your burgeoning attraction for them. Little moments of disgust which, once noticed, mean you can no longer fancy that person. It is often understood that ‘the ick’ is both irrational and unavoidable. About a month ago (sorry I’m slow) Stefano Hatfield published an opinion piece in the I Paper about how terrible ‘the ick’ is as a concept, so it feels like a good time to dust off my rant about why I hate this phrase so very much.
Broadly, Hatfield’s argument against ‘the ick’ is that it’s predominantly weaponised by women against men, and in a world where men have so many challenges on their mental health it’s immoral to hand them another one. I agree broadly with the point, but I don’t actually think ‘the ick’ is as gendered as Hatfield claims. Certainly in my life, I’ve heard/read it used by people across the gender spectrum. But that’s not wildly important, because my argument against ‘the ick’ works regardless of gender.
The phrase ‘the ick’ gives me the ick purely because it is just an excuse for shaming. Let me explain.
What gives people ‘the ick’?
People often admit to feeling ‘the ick’ over things which their crush cannot help, or which are demonstrably just silly or harmless. For example:
- they breathed too loudly
- they carried a shoulder bag
- they danced awkwardly
- etc.
Someone on BlueSky told me that they’ve heard ‘the ick’ used by some to discuss things that aren’t shamey, but outright red flags:
- they shouted at a waiter
- they won’t introduce you to their friends
- they drive badly when they’re angry
- etc.
I’m going to leave these aside for now – I think they’re misapplications of the phrase ‘the ick’ and we should call them what they are (red flags, warning signs, reasons to run a fucking mile).
But the first examples are ‘icks’ in the sense I’m talking about, and the sense that Hatfield was discussing in his piece.
What does it mean to get ‘the ick’?
The phrase itself implies a certain level of knowing humility on the part of the person who feels it. Admitting to getting ‘the ick’ usually means admitting that you shouldn’t write someone off as a dating prospect based purely on this one thing. At the same time, ultimately ‘the ick’ is presented as something over which you have no control – getting ‘the ick’ is something that happens to you, like the weather or bad luck – so you can’t really be judged for feeling and acting upon it. And that’s why it boils my piss.
Because let’s be real: when we talk about ‘the ick’ what we’re really discussing is shame. When you say ‘the way this person breathed gave me the ick’ you are saying ‘the way this person breathes disgusts me, it sits outside the norm of what I expect.’ You are not necessarily directly telling them that they should be ashamed of it – as I say, ‘the ick’ implies a level of knowing humility. But the fact that you raised it in the first place does carry heavy notes of ‘therefore you should stop doing this.’ Stop. Be ashamed. Be different. What you are doing is Not Normal.
Shame as a social tool
I talk a lot about shame on this blog, and wanting to banish it from the bedroom. In my dream world, people will never be shamed for things they did not have an active choice in: their sexuality, mental health conditions, body type, way of breathing or dancing or sitting or just plain existing in this world. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon shame altogether – if there’s one thing centuries of sex shaming has taught us it’s that shame is a powerful social tool. Enough shame, applied in the right way, can help to change behaviour.
One of the reasons I spent so much of my life shaving my armpits – despite the agony of ingrowing hairs rubbing against the tight elastic of my bra – is that I had been taught to be disgusted by my own pit hair. I spent the best part of 20 years diligently scraping all the hair from under my arms. Sometimes from between my legs. More than once I paid a stranger to pour hot wax on some of my most sensitive areas then yank the hair out by the root. You know why I did that? Shame! I had been shamed, or seen other women being shamed, for not removing their hair, so in order to avoid that same fate I pre-emptively got rid of as much of mine as possible, even though it caused me agony and dermal cysts. This is the bad type of shame, and even if it is dressed up in a cute phrase (people had definitely used the equivalent of ‘the ick’ on me, telling me ‘it’s just not really my preference, to be honest. I prefer it when you’re shaved’) your personal issue with body hair is still not an acceptable thing to dump into someone else’s lap.
Shame when applied correctly can produce good changes, though. When we are trying to change attitudes and behaviour, shame is a powerful weapon for good. If you stand up to your homophobic/sexist/racist colleague when they make a bigoted comment, telling them ‘that is not acceptable and I won’t laugh along with it’? That’s you using shame as a social tool. You’re saying ‘I don’t agree with this behaviour and I am willing to shame you if I see/hear you doing it.’
One of the golden rules when it comes to slinging insults at your enemies, I think, is to consider first whether that person made a moral choice to be this way. It’s important to focus your ire on their choices rather than their existence as a person: the things they’ve actually done wrong. So when we slag off the venal, dangerous, white-supremacist Donald Trump, we focus on those things – the choices – rather than things like his weight and general appearance. He doesn’t choose to look the way he does, and even if he did his physical appearance isn’t harming anyone else, but he chose to be a Nazi and we should shame him for that.
‘The ick’ says more about you than them
So far I haven’t seen or heard ‘the ick’ applied in any way that gives me useful information about the subject, only the speaker. Because how and when somebody applies shame can be a useful benchmark of their morals in general. ‘The ick’ tells me that the speaker felt a sense of disgust about something, they acknowledge it might not be an appropriate target of shame, but then they… dispense shame anyway.
In his article, Hatfield opines that ‘the ick’ is used more by women about men than vice versa, and honestly he might be right – I’ve not done any in-depth studies. Though I did take huge issue with his assertion that:
“Of course, men get the ick too. But these rarely carry the same viral weight, nor do they seem to hold the same power to humiliate and undermine confidence.”
LOL sure. OK. Men’s comments don’t hold the same power to humiliate. Tell that to every single version of me that’s existed since I was a teenager, living in the constant shadow of men’s vocally (and sometimes cruelly) expressed ‘preferences’ that I look or act a certain way lest – horror of horrors – they stop wanting to fuck me.
What’s more, if we’re talking gender and ‘the ick’ I’d say it’s more important to point out how often people’s ‘icks’ are things that seemingly reinforce gendered behaviour or expectations. How many of the ‘ick’s that women get about men are subtle (or not-so-subtle) attempts to punish them for displaying behaviours that aren’t traditionally masculine? A man carried a bag – eww! Gross! That’s what women do! And conversely, how often are the ‘ick’s that people have about women actually punishment for behaviour that’s considered manly – or ‘unladylike‘?
But fundamentally the concept of ‘the ick’ is bullshit regardless of gender. You’re allowed to go off someone for any reason, and say ‘no’ to them for any reason, but if you’re shouting about the reason and using the term ‘ick’ I think it’s pretty clear that you’re dispensing at least some shame, for something that is almost certainly morally neutral.
The same goes for terms like ‘preference’. Which I’m thinking about more these days as I dive back into dating. Of course you’re allowed to have a preference when it comes to who you fuck – if a guy has a preference for women who are shorter than me, I’d rather not show up in his matches thanks very much. And honestly, even if your preferences are fatphobic or transphobic or racist, I don’t get to tell you that you should have different ones. No one gets to dictate that, not even someone as consistently correct and brilliant and sexy as me. But the second you speak your ‘preferences’ aloud, they cease to become private and personal, they now have weight in the world and the power to assign shame. And I absolutely can and will judge you based on how you apply shame, because that is a moral choice. It is only by your moral choices that I can judge who you are.
Telling someone you’d ‘prefer’ them to shave their armpits is, to my mind, the same as saying someone’s armpit hair gave you ‘the ick.’ Telling a man you ‘prefer’ him not to wear a shoulder bag or dance in an exuberant manner is, likewise, similar to saying that his exuberant dancing or man-bag gave you ‘the ick.’ Telling us you ‘prefer’ your men tall or that short guys give you ‘the ick’ gives us very little info about the men in question, but it says something important and noteworthy about you.
‘The ick’ is just shame in new clothes. Take it off.