People use the term “the ick” in dating contexts to describe something that puts them off someone else, usually quite quickly and irreversibly. It might be tempting to see icks as flippant and unreasonable, but one intimacy and relationships expert says women “should listen to their icks.”
British journalist and author Louise Perry spoke to The Diary of a CEO podcast last week to discuss the role casual intimacy, one-night stands and male motivations – in the world of dating and interpersonal relationships – play in contemporary society.
Evolutionarily speaking, ‘fear is a gift’
During their conversation, Perry introduces a book by Gavin de Becker called The Gift Of Fear. Paraphrasing its title and central message, she says plainly that in certain contexts, “fear is a gift.”
“Our bodies are often sensitive to cues that we might miss consciously,” she says.
This could be something as simple as a man having cardboard boxes stacked behind him in his dating profile picture – this is one example she mentions. Or it could be something more sinister, like a stranger’s pushy insistence that he help a woman take her grocery bags up to her apartment.
“You should listen to your instincts,” Perry says. Instincts have evolved over thousands of generations to be “highly attuned”. We are, after all, “descended from people who listened to their instincts.”
But conscious biases can sometimes cloud your vision. The social pressures to be polite, to not offend, and to fit in, can cause people to act against their instincts – and against their interests. Perry insists that our unconscious brains “know” things. They’re “actually very wise,” she says, and should be heeded.
‘We’ve evolved some very good systems to protect ourselves’
Louise Perry also talks about research that measures women’s intuition when it comes to safety on city streets.
“If you show women a map of their local area,” she says, “and ask them to say which streets they would not want to walk down late at night, and they highlight those streets, they map on perfectly to actual rates of crime.”
Without information relating to local police statistics and actual crime rates, she says, women are able to intuit which parts of an urban environment are the least safe. And more so than men, according to Perry.
In colloquial terms, “it’s just vibes.” And “those vibes are actually really accurate. Surprisingly so.”
“We’ve evolved some very good systems to try and protect ourselves against [the threat of violence from men],” she says.
All of which backs up her argument that women – and people of other genders, but the emphasis of her research is on the threats women face in everyday life – should “listen to their icks.” They’re not as silly or unreasonable as they might seem.
Who is Louise Perry?
Louise Perry is a British journalist, author and podcast host. She writes for the Daily Mail and New Statesman; co-founded non-partisan feminist think tank The Other Half; and co-runs the charity We Can’t Consent To This.
We Can’t Consent To This is a campaign aiming to raise awareness around the issue of violence committed during intercourse.
Fiona Mackenzie founded it in 2018 in response to a trial decision in the murder of Natalie Connolly.
According to a 2020 report in local news outlet The Kidderminster Shuttle, Connolly’s ex-partner, who received a sentence of 3 years and 8 months for the charge of “manslaughter by gross negligence,” was due to be set free after serving less than 2 years. His defense reportedly rested on a “rough sex” plea. This particular legal defense has since been outlawed.
Perry completed a bachelor’s degree in anthropology at University of London’s SOAS.
