The Ick Needs a Re-Brand. I'm About to Do It.

Image credit Creative Commons

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The first thing I would like to change is its name.

The Ick shall henceforth be known as The ICK, all caps, in which the acronym represents “Intensely Consequential Knowledge.”

Intensely Consequential Knowledge

Because that’s what it is. It’s not women “being picky” or frivolous or capricious or indecisive or flippant about men; it’s women listening to the intuition deep in our bones, receiving the mysterious reptilian knowledge embedded in all of us by some ancient goddess, tucked silently into our psyches and our skin, an amulet of unnamable genius.

And I am tired of people discounting it on Instagram.

A Burned Haystack community member described it thusly: “The ick is primal self-defense. Before we had language we had the ick. There’s probably an ancient deity called “the ick” that is honored regularly for reminding us to honor our instincts.”

Another said, simply, “Men lie, but our bodies don’t.”

Contrary to whatever Incels on Reddit are wailing about, I am not hearing women claim that they got the ick because a man wore the wrong color shoes or failed to exceed 6’ in height.

Let’s look at a more representative and realistic example, one submitted by a Burned Haystack community member who had just wrapped Date #1 with this guy, with plans for a second on the horizon. She shared that he had made two comments that “definitely gave me the Ick in a big way,” but said that she discounted them because he was cute and they had many shared interests.

Here are the comments (the first is in response to something she said about an exercise bike):

She then continued to say that he had made

“no mention of anything sexual on our date except for him joking about how he had an orgasm drinking some sugary soda he loves (I know, eww!). I’m still feeling uncomfortable and just not loving that these exchanges happened!

PS: His favorite comedian is Joe Rogan. He doesn’t believe in taking medicine. He likes the carnivore diet. All things I found out on date 1 that are further making me question date 2. We have a lot in common on the surface but I feel like these are red flags too!”

These are HUGE red flags 🚩🚩🚩. But we can all see what’s happening here because most of us have done it ourselves—ignored the red flags because there were other good things, because we’re constantly being told that we’re too picky, too demanding, too prudish, too analytical, that we’re

OvErThINkiNG tHiNGs 🙄

If you have fallen for stuff like this, as I have, please accept this article as formal evidence that you have been fed a lot of BULLSHIT about all of this and you have been encouraged to willfully disregard an innate brilliance that is your birthright.

Please reclaim it.

The Ick is Intensely Consequential Knowledge because it kicks in when something is genuinely dangerous to you. Let’s take just this guy above:

• A man who sexually aggresses you is dangerous (this is “sexual non sequitur pattern,” with the exercise bike and the “orgasm soda” 🙄).

• A man who feels comfortable directing a woman he doesn’t know and hasn’t even met what to wear is dangerous. This reveals that he believes what he wants for her body is more important than any decision she might make for her body. This belief is the foundation of rape culture.

• A man who listens to manosphere podcasters is dangerous to you (and everyone).

• A man who is unable to parse out evidence-based truth from red-pilled nonsense is dangerous to you (and everyone).

Conclusion: She wasn’t just being silly. This guy is a bad guy, and she knew it in her gut. Her Intensely Consequential Knowledge kicked in because this kind of information is intensely consequential data that women need to remain healthy and safe. It repels us from men like this so that we can partner with safe men, men who do not trigger The ICK.

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Please stay tuned for Part Two of my two-part series on The ICK, in which we will discuss its etymological and linguistic roots and examine why it has been so misrepresented, so easily-recruited to gaslight women, and so effectively-weaponized in cultural discourses.

In the meantime, please use the comments on this article to share stories of your own intensely consequential knowledge—times you’ve ignored it, times you heeded it, and whatever else you feel moved to share. 🧡