Commenting Note: This post is not about how you are unable to get a date and you are sad about that. I sympathize with people who cannot get a date! Really, I do! You are welcome to fill up my inbox or askbox with all of the tragic tales of your inability to find a romantic partner! But if you try to do it in this thread I will delete your comment.
Someday this article will go down in history as the point at which “Nice Guy ™” ceased to mean anything.
I mean, seriously, what do guys who sexually harass you on street corners, your abusive ex, and Hugo Schwyzer Robert Jensen douchey male feminists have in common? Other than being men, interacting romantically/sexually with women, who think that they’re nice people while actually being assholes? I know Nice Guy ™ is confusingly named, but it doesn’t mean that, it has a very specific meaning, it means “men who feel entitled to sex with their female friends because they are nice.” Also, no one wakes up in the morning saying “today I’m going to be a misogynist pig because I enjoy hurting women.” They say “I know! I’m going to brighten some woman’s day by yelling at her to ‘smile’!”
But I’m not actually ranting about the continued misuse of the word “Nice Guy ™.” (That’s what Twitter’s for.) I want to look at this particular item.
The Aspirational Fuck Buddy
It’s just a sex thing and you’re not ready for a relationship. You’ve told him this. But he won’t listen. He doesn’t understand rule number one of taking your pants off is that you can’t fuck your way into a relationship.
Likes: Making you soup when you’re sick.
Dislikes: The fact that you are not his girlfriend and have told him that you should stop sleeping together.
Pop culture muses: The dude from 500 Days of Summer
Okay, maybe I’m missing something… but how the hell is that an example of misogyny? Look, you can genderswap it:
The Fucking Clingy Bitch
It’s just a sex thing and you’re playing the field. You’ve told her this. But she won’t listen. He doesn’t understand rule number one of taking your pants off is that you can’t fuck your way into a relationship.
Likes: Making you soup when you’re sick.
Dislikes: The fact that you are not her boyfriend and have told her that you should stop sleeping together.
Pop culture muses: Bunny boilers.*
See? Now it’s an item in an AskMen.com article.
People of all genders have casual sex with people and fall hopelessly in love with them or have casual sex expecting that this will mysteriously lead to A Relationship. It’s not a girl thing or a guy thing, it’s a people thing.
Which is not to say that it isn’t a gendered phenomenon. For one thing, the girl version does some kind of weird pseudofeminist “he’s in love with me! That misogynist!” thing, while the guy version is blatantly misogynistic.
I also think the whole business is rooted in some deeply toxic assumptions about relationships and sexuality. For one thing, it is incredibly fucked to expect that other people have to date you because you have a crush on them and are non-objectionable. It continues to be fucked if you’ve had sex with that person.
On the other hand, sex produces emotions in lots of people, including feelings of closeness and intimacy. Friendships (even casual friendships) often result in unintended crushes. I have no idea why someone would think “I’m going to have a friendship, and add an activity that results in a lot of people having romantic feelings for people they do it with, and this will mysteriously reduce the chance that someone will end up with romantic feelings.”
There’s this bizarre idea floating around that romantic feelings are a thing under one’s volitional control, and that if other people have feelings you do not like it is their fault somehow. (See also: poly people who open their relationship on the condition that you not fall for anyone else.) But the vast majority of people cannot stop themselves from having crushes when they have them. The label “casual sex” is not a magic salve that makes them able to.
Now, if you were sensible human beings, you would handle an unexpected unrequited crush like this:
Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Well, in that case, I will have to stop having casual sex with you, because that would just make me sad that we’re not dating.
Crushee: Cool!
OR
Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Okay. I’d like to still have casual sex with you then.
Crushee: Unfortunately, I don’t feel comfortable having casual sex with someone who has a crush on me.
Crusher: No worries.
OR
Crusher: I have a crush on you!
Crushee: That’s awkward, I don’t have a crush on you.
Crusher: Okay, I’d like to still have casual sex with you then.
Crushee: Neat! I’m free on Wednesday.
This is one of those multiple-choice type situations.
But those models are all based on the assumption that “I don’t want to date you” is sufficient reason not to date someone. Unfortunately, a lot of people are under the impression that you’re not allowed to not date people unless they’re Bad People. If you refuse somebody, then you’re a horrible person grinding their beautiful romantic heart under your heel– unless, of course, they’re an entitled misogynist or a psycho clingy bitch, in which case they’re Bad People and you’re allowed. (This is actually the flip side of the “if I have a crush on you you have to date me!” assumption.)
To sum up:
- People do not have to date you because you have a crush on them.
- Most people can’t control whether they have a crush on someone.
- Not wanting to date someone is a perfectly good reason not to date them.
*I have BPD, I’m allowed to make bunny boiler jokes.
Thing of Things 
I’m unfortunately missing the context, and the archive.org link only says: “Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.”
LikeLike
If you copy the link and cut out the archive.org part, you’re back at the original source. (As long as that hasn’t been taken down as well.)
Here is the article: http://jezebel.com/5838994/a-field-guide-to-nice-guys
LikeLike
If you don’t want to go to Jezebel: http://unvis.it/jezebel.com/5838994/a-field-guide-to-nice-guys.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Cool, cause this shit is WAYBACK….. like 1950’s wayback.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This seems like a good time to link to http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2015/01/philosophical-advice-about-the-friend-zone/, which, despite having been published only three days ago, is already the best piece of writing about the Friend Zone that I have ever read.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In the “humanizing the friend-zoned guys” section, he makes it sound like he agrees with the notion that wanting sex from someone is inherently objectifying, when he makes the whole big deal about how the nice guys probably want romance. Romantic love can be pretty objectifying, and wanting sex can be done respectfully; sex vs. romance is not the important line here. A lot of the rest of it is good, though.
LikeLiked by 5 people
True, it’s not the case that one is objectifying if and only if one wants sex, but there’s a general correlation and I still think the sex vs. romance thing is an important distinction. Oftentimes these Jezebel-type articles, for all their purported progressiveness in regard to gender stereotypes, perpetuate the myth that men are generally only out to get sex. Interestingly, this is not true in the case of the one Ozy posted.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m skeptical of the strength of the correlation, even. But I will agree that the gender stereotype that men only want sex and don’t want romance is also offensive and inaccurate, I just don’t think the best way to criticize it includes endorsing an attitude of negativity toward wanting sex.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Thanks for the link!
I must admit, seeing an angry rant motivated by unrequited love has always led me to conclude uncharitable things about the ranter or his feelings.
But, well, I simply can’t imagine feeling so angry and saying horrible things about someone I like, let alone “love”. And since I don’t consider myself unusually saintly, I thought the angry bitter guy is either unusually self-centered or simply not nice after all.
I agree with Protagoras — the second formulation is crude, but the core idea is the same. And if all of them blamed “the universe” for failing to deliver their reward, there would be fewer anti-Nice-Guy rants on the internet.
Also, the author’s explanation of “chemistry” as something that you obviously “have” or “don’t have” with someone is a bit off. I think some well-meaning guys suppress all outward signs of attraction, effectively preventing the development of mutual feelings.
And that’s another reason why the negative view of male sexuality should be kept out of mainstream feminism.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wait a minute…
– idealization / intense romantic feelings for someone
– excessive efforts to be the perfect friend / lover
– high sensitivity to rejection
– devaluation of the previously idealized person
– intense negative feelings
– angry outbursts
– self-image depends on romantic success
[Sudden Clarity Clarence]
Are anti-Nice-Guy rants essentially anti-borderline-people rants?
LikeLiked by 7 people
>And if all of them blamed “the universe” for failing to deliver their reward, there would be fewer anti-Nice-Guy rants on the internet.
Fewer is not, of course, zero.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Nita — I doubt most “Nice Guys” are BPD. I spent some time in that space. (I guess I was a “Nice Girl” or something. Whatever. Trans life histories are complicated.) Anyway, I’m not BPD.
“Fucking bitches only date bad boys,” is a rant heard ’round the Internet.
LikeLike
@Nita: There are some points of similarity, but I think there are several problems with viewing it as the same core idea. One is, of course, replacing “a romantic relationship” with “sex.” Another, related but distinct, is that “I am owed sex” suggests that this outcome is something beneficial to the “NIce Guy” and neutral or negative for the woman. But in a lot of cases, I think that a big part of the resentment comes precisely from the idea that a romantic relationship would be good for both parties, and why is she turning down happiness for both of them? Whether that’s accurate or not, it’s a very different attitude, IMO. Finally, while it might still be a bit problematic, there is a real difference in attitude (even laying aside the “the universe” bit) between “if I am nice to this girl, she ought to be interested in dating and fucking me” and “if I am nice to a whole crapton of girls, one of them ought to be interested in dating and fucking me.”
Also . . . But, well, I simply can’t imagine feeling so angry and saying horrible things about someone I like, let alone “love”.
Do you not vent? Because my experience is that it’s perfectly normal to respond to loving someone and having them seriously hurt you (maliciously or otherwise) by finding a good friend and going “Agh, this fucking woman, what the fuck is wrong with her!? I do everything for her, and this is how she fucking repays me. She is such a fucking moron, god!”* and so on and so forth, for a period of time that is proportionate to the amount of steam one needs to blow off, and then going back to one’s ordinary life. So I don’t see someone ranting like that now and again as indicative of anything more than their being human. Now, if they’re talking like that all the time, that’s a very different matter—something’s clearly wrong, whether it’s with their attitude, (actual or potential) their partner[‘s/s’] behavior, or both.
*Altering pronouns as necessary.
LikeLike
Yep, I’m pretty sure I’m an example of that.
LikeLike
@osberend
So, sex with a nice guy is “neutral or negative” for a woman, while a relationship with one is “good” for her? That’s exactly the unhealthy attitude Protagoras criticized — “sex bad, romance good”.
Secondly, the idea of me being given to someone by “the universe” as their prize for good behaviour just doesn’t seem respectful of my personhood, and love without respect seems like the kind of “love” one should run away from.
And thirdly, as a not a very romantic person, I struggle to see a huge difference between close friendship + sex and a romantic relationship. Therefore, to some of us asking for a shift from “close friends” to “bf/gf” looks a lot like asking for sex.
But that’s not how duty works. Either an individual has a duty to do something or they don’t.
If someone I know non-maliciously hurts me, I might get irrationally angry, but I won’t talk shit about them. The things I say represent my conscious thoughts, and I can’t consciously blame them for non-intended harm.
LikeLike
@Nita – I don’t think it’s about women’s duty, but men’s “strategy” or “advertising” (or some better term). “I believe my company’s widgets are the best, and we’ve spent a lot of effort placing honest ads showing the positive features of our widgets, but we still have no sales. Why is nobody willing to even give us a try? Meanwhile, Brand X makes shitty widgets and uses deceptive advertising and sales tactics, and they have a small but nonzero market share. Surely at least some dissatisfied Brand X customer would see our ads and place an order.”
It’s not “my nice features entitle me to sleep with this particular woman”, it’s “my nice features are known, yet nobody seems willing to even give me a chance”.
LikeLike
@MCA
The thing is, I’m absolutely 100% sympathetic to sad, frustrated nice guys. They’re experiencing a legitimate problem, and there are actually some things other people and our culture as a whole could (and should) do to improve the situation.
It’s only the angry, hateful “nice” guys I don’t understand.
LikeLike
@Nita – I think it’s just frustration, “sour grapes”, and some aspect of how the person handles defeat (“sore loser”). Maybe also whether they default to blaming themselves or others. The analogy that comes to mind is the bitter, jaded artist who has convinced themselves that all the critics and buyers are morons who can’t appreciate true genius.
LikeLike
@Nita: So, sex with a nice guy is “neutral or negative” for a woman, while a relationship with one is “good” for her? That’s exactly the unhealthy attitude Protagoras criticized — “sex bad, romance good”.
Ack, no. What I was trying to say was this:
If a “Nice Guy’s” attitude is framed as “she owes me sex,” that suggests (although it does not strictly logically imply) that sex is neutral or bad for the woman he’s referring to, but she should give it to him anyway, because she owes him. The same is true if it’s “she owes me a relationship.” In contrast, I think that a lot of Nice Guys believe that if one of their romantic and/or sexual interests would give them a chance, the outcome would be beneficial for both. So the framing in terms of “she owes me” is misleading.
A separate problem is that framing things entirely in terms of sex is misleading, insofar as many Nice Guys are interested in a romantic relationship in addition to (or, more rarely, in place of) sex.
I am not, by most standards, a terribly romantic person either. But I do feel that there is a difference between a close friendship + sex, and dating, at least as I view the latter. Part of it is a difference of degree: Generally, in modern Western civilization*, the level of emotional intimacy that is characteristic of a committed romantic relationship exceeds that which is characteristic of even a close friendship by a large margin. The same is true—and to me, this is probably the greatest difference—of loyalty: one owes a sizeable debt of loyalty to one’s friends, but a much greater one (all else being equal**) to one’s boyfriend or girlfriend—let alone to one’s spouse. And that last leads to another great difference, which is that romance tends naturally toward marriage (which is not to say that it will universally, or even all that frequently get there), and friendship does not.
Secondly, the idea of me being given to someone by “the universe” as their prize for good behaviour just doesn’t seem respectful of my personhood, and love without respect seems like the kind of “love” one should run away from.
That . . . seems like a really bizarre parsing of what I said. Let me try to lay out a more explicit sketch of the (implicit—very few people, I think, hold these views consciously, at least in this form) attitude I’m thinking of:
Is that treating women as prizes for good men? I don’t think so, or at least not any more than it’s treating good men as prizes for women with sense. If the universe gives you to a man as his prize, and simultaneously gives him to you as yours, is that somehow a bad thing, or somehow disrespectful of your personhood?
Mind you, I’m not saying this is a realistic attitude about how relationships work in our society. But I don’t think it’s a sexist attitude, or necessarily even one that marks a man as a poor romantic prospect.
But that’s not how duty works. Either an individual has a duty to do something or they don’t.
There’s no such thing as society (or reified demographic groups), eh? Isn’t that supposed to be my line?
But seriously, you’re totally right, that’s not how duty works at all. Which is why reading that complaint as being about women failing in their duty is (often) missing the point.
Does some company have a duty to give Dan a better j? If not, does that make him an entitled whiner, or a guy to avoid?
If someone I know non-maliciously hurts me, I might get irrationally angry, but I won’t talk shit about them. The things I say represent my conscious thoughts, and I can’t consciously blame them for non-intended harm.
What if they’re negligent? Or irrational, even though the right choice is staring them in the face? Or just plain stupid. You wouldn’t alieve (even ambivalently) that they were to blame, and feel the need to voice that alief to someone, perhaps someone who doesn’t know and won’t know the person who hurt you, just to get it out of your system?
I don’t think that someone being angry and bitter (especially anonymously, on the internet) means that they’re not fundamentally just sad and frustrated. If they’re angry and bitter all the time, that’s one thing. But a lot of the “laugh at this asshole ‘Nice Guy'” (not all of it) stuff seems to be targeted at men who wrote something (that was highly unlikely to ever be read by anyone who would recognize herself in it) in a moment of angry pain. That’s significantly more fucked up, in my view, then writing something like “apparently all the women in my life are vain and masochistic bitches”*** while feeling shitty about the world.
*This was not always true, as one can see vividly by reading Montaigne, which, really, everyone should anyway.
**Something obvious that may not be equal is total duration of the relationship, but that’s a moot point when considering the prospect of a particular friendship turning romantic.
***The gods know, there’s plenty of the het-female analogue to that out there as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ugh… there’s some good stuff in here, but there’s also some pretty awful stuff.
Good things:
1. A very good description of what it looks like from the inside and why it’s not the awful things feminists portray it as. Things like how we conclude that displaying any sexual interest is objectifying, etc. (Apparently that part isn’t obvious to a lot of people!)
2. It mentions quite a bit how feminist restrictions and traditional restrictions often coincide and reinforce each other. This is something Scott and Scott really kind of neglected, IMO, focusing solely on the feminist part. But part of the problem is that there’s quite a bit of feminism out there that, rather than tearing down these traditionalist ideas like it’s supposed to, instead piggybacks on and reinforces them.
Bad things:
3. I’m kind of with Nita here — while I’m all for getting more people to understand the plight of scrupulous paralyzed feminist guys, I’m not so inclined to defend those who lash out in the ways described here. I mean, it’s kind of understandable, and I think it’s good that this makes it understandable to more people, but still…
4. More generally, I don’t like how much he endorses the idea of “Oh, well, a person is rejected romantically, of course they’re going to lash out and say terrible things.” Plenty of us manage not to!
Awful things:
5. His recommendation #5. No, no, no. I think we can at least say Ozy would strongly disapprove! I think I’ll just skip going on about this.
Ambiguous things:
6. His assertion that romantic love is a totally separate thing from friendship. My conclusion after listening to people talk about this is… it varies?
LikeLike
“Romance as different to friendship”… classic go-to is REO Speedwagon Can’t Fight This Feeling – “what started out as friendship has grown stronger / I only wish I had the strength to let it show…”
LikeLike
This is an excellent piece! There is, however, a pronoun in the gender swapped quote that you forgot to change.
LikeLiked by 3 people
This is a distinction without being a difference. Pseudofeminism is the language through which college-educated people practice hating men.
LikeLiked by 7 people
So, I promise this won’t violate the commenting note. Speaking from experience, the hardest thing to accept about the “just don’t want to date you” response is that it’s so arbitrary. For most people, though, that’s no big deal – they can find 20 other people to date in a few months. But when, for whatever reason, you’re only compatible with a small segment of the population, that rejection is devastating.
I analogize it to poker, because there are controlable aspects that influence the outcome (traditionally attractive, good at reading social signals, frequent interactions with datable people), but also random aspects. If you have plenty of chips when you sit down, a folding on a bad hand here and there is no big deal, but when you’ve only got enough for a few games, you become reluctant to fold, and make irrational decisions, trying to bluff and going all in on a pair of 3’s.
I thInk that’s why this sort of “Nice Guy” stuff gets associated with nerds – for various reasons, compatible people are just plain rarer for us, and so it becomes hard to accept when the cards don’t come in our favor. It’s harder to accept that you need to fold when you worry you’ll only get a few more hands. So you do stupid, irrational things out of sheer desperation.
I know I can’t speak for all nerds of all generations, only from my lived experiences, but I think, trying to dispassionately analyze things, that a lot of the fucked up social dynamics I’ve encountered in this topic, and the total lack of understandingand sympathy across sides, comes down to the stochastic aspects of relationship availability.
I almost think of it ecologically (I love analogies). Organisms deal with patchy vs even resources will adopt dramatically different strategies: the hummingbird can’t understand why the robin can so easily abandon a worm in the face of a crow, while the robin can’t understand why the hummingbird spends so much time and energy defending his flowerbush against all comers. If you won’t get another shot, or have no idea when that next shot will be, you go all in.
Obviously, none of this excuses any sort of douchbaggery, but i do think it could explain certain common behaviours and sentiments.
LikeLiked by 6 people
This sounds plausible. It also seems to be something that teenagers disproportionately do, and while some of that may have to do with having less life experience and thus unrealistic expectations about how relationships generally work, I think it’s probably also related to the fact that as a high school kid, your social circle is often pretty severely limited and there might just not be that many people that you’re interested in romantically.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed, though it’s crucial to note that not everyone’s social circle expands much, namely introverts. Or that expansion could be in areas where the gender the person doesn’t desire is numerically predominant.
LikeLike
There’s also something to be said for nerds approaching poker as a system to be solved – obsessing over the probabilities and scraps of deterministic information despite common knowledge that the game is best played by reading the other players. It’s not solely a limited resource forcing function, it’s also a problem of perspective.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed, and I think that’s why many nerds get frustrated and becomes despondent or bitter – the only route of a relationship is via a game which we get few chances to enter and includes a large component we’re terrible at (either due to non-neurotypical status or just lack of experience) and another large component that’s dumb luck. It becomes a vicious cycle – few chances mean less experience and less chances to improve the parts we’re bad at, so while everyone else becomes confident in their ability to detect a bluff, we have to resort to either counting cards or giving up.
LikeLiked by 3 people
To break from the analogy a bit, this is a case where I think the “common knowledge” is wrong. The consensus among professional poker players who I’ve spoken to or heard discuss the subject is that successful poker playing is much more about mathematically sound play than reading cues, and that conventional wisdom strongly overestimates the role of reading other players in high level play.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well, I feel incompetent.
That’s exactly what isn’t happening. The crushee doesn’t return crushers feelings and wants to stop having sex with crusher, and crusher doesn’t accept that. In Jezebel’s example, crusher is being unreasonable.
Whatever faults that article has, I liked the ending:
The Dejected Unknown Piner
You have no idea who he is, but he’s made up this whole story in his head about how he’s just a sad shy Nice Guy that you can’t even see because you’re SO BLIND to anyone who isn’t a football player etc etc etc. By the way, you’re adults, so there are no football players involved here.
Likes: Reddit. MEAN BUT TRUE.
Dislikes: Football players, talking to girls
Pop culture muses: Taylor Swift. Did I just blow your mind? Women can be Nice Guys, too.
Pretty much every Taylor Swift song is Problematic, but for a different reason. I always assumed she was doing it deliberately.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I do like Blank Space. I’m sure there is some rationalization for why it’s horrible, but frank descriptions of shitty behaviour without any attempt to excuse it coming from Swift was so unexpected that I like it anyways.
LikeLike
I don’t like Taylor Swift, but I do like Kate Nash – does Jezebel hate her too?
LikeLike
I think one could construct a reasonable steel-man of the typical Nice Guy’s complaint that goes like this. I do not fully endorse the following steel-man:
1. The typical human being like people who are kind and nice and dislikes people who are mean and cruel.
2. Many women within the “nice guy’s” social circle seem more likely to date mean and cruel people than kind and nice people.
3. In theory it is possible that these women simply like mean and cruel people. But since the typical human likes nice and kind people, a much more logical explanation is that these women are behaving irrationally, and are somehow failing to actualize their true values.
4. This theory is backed up by the fact that many women who date “bad boys” seem deluded about the true nature of the people they are dating, (for instance they say that they can “change him”).
5. Nice Guys should lament the fact that women are behaving irrationally, since their irrational behavior harms not only them, but the nicer men they would be dating if they were better at achieving their values.
Now, obviously this steel-man is kind of insulting since it presumes lots of women are irrational. But humans in general are irrational in lots of ways, it doesn’t seem that far off to think mate choice is one of them. Besides, men make many irrational mate choices too. I think the lament of the Nice Guy is analogous to the lament of the Physically Unattractive Women with a Good Personality, who cannot get dates because of competition with Unpleasant But Attractive Women.
What is really flawed about it is number 5, people do not respond well to being told they are irrational. People complaining is also frowned upon, especially men (I suspect this one reason is why the complaints of the Physically Unattractive Women with a Good Personality is generally met with calls for men to change their standards of beauty, while the Nice Guys’ complaints are met with anger). So complaining about being a Nice Guy is an ineffective strategy.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Preference is irrational by its very nature. Teĺling someone her preferences are irrational is therefore always a nonstarter, and I suspect women’s accurate perception that that’s what Nice Guys are doing drives the annoyance in articles like this one.
The simplest explanation is not that women like assholes — who does? — it’s that women are willing to put up with a certain amount of asshole behavior in exchange for dating a guy who is not a milksop. IOW, niceness is good in a partner, but not paramount. Since I feel largely the same myself, I don’t feel I am in a position to judge.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Preferences can be instrumental, in which case they can be coherently criticized as irrational if they fail to satisfy some ultimate preference. This is what the “failing to actualize their true values” means.
Instrument preferences are by nature somewhat easier to revise, on a metapreferential level.
LikeLiked by 4 people
True, but is mate preference really instrumental? It appears instrumental in the forward view — we all have some idea of what kind of relationship outcome we want — but (speaking for myself) in the rear view it’s apparent we choose partners based on far less mediate feelings.
If things don’t turn out well, then we “made a mistake”, but the mistake seems to be more like “Oops, I ate an entire bag of potato chips” than “Oops, I chose the wrong route to work this morning”. The role of the Nice Guy in this analogy is the person who suggests we stop eating potato chips; while he might have a point, it’s unlikely to be effective or well-taken. Besides, he’s selling apples, which produces some natural suspicion.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@stillnotking
Your potato chips analogy is pretty close what I was trying to convey. The only difference is that generally overeating is caused by poor impulse control, despite full awareness of the consequences of overeating.
This is sometimes the case in relationships, there are certainly people who know their SO is bad for them but lack the impulse control to stay away from them. But there are other people who have actively deluded themselves into believing their SO is absolutely terrific. I suppose they’d be analogous to someone who ate all the potato chips because they thought weight gain was genetic or something and eating chips wouldn’t affect it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Physically Unattractive Women with a Good Personality”
Yeah… this meme. There are a not insignificant number of physically unattractive women who assume that their unattractiveness is prima facie evidence of a good personality. These people don’t see the disconnect between their self image and their tendency to engage with hostility, mock without any trace of empathy, demand without consideration, etc.
I wish I could track down a particular image, which sums up the type perfectly; quotes in the same passage “I have a good personality” and “I wish the pretty girls around me would die or be disfigured so that I could get attention”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sure there are women like this. However, there is also a large amount of women who genuinely have trouble finding a decent relationship because of their appearance. And I think they’re fairly analogous to Nice Guys. Both groups have their share of people who are really assholes, but both groups also have a ton of sincerely good people.
Mainstream feminism seems much more likely to listen to the plight of women than men, however. There are all sorts of campaigns to encourage men to be less shallow about the appearance of the women they date. We already know how mainstream feminists respond to Nice Guys, however.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Not discounting the fact that there are genuinely nice people among the ranks. I’m not even claiming that they aren’t the majority – though you’d never know it from looking online, so I won’t claim that they are either.
The difference in attitude when approaching these women as opposed to the equivalent men is what really gets to me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I laid out my own offered steelman below. I’d put it like this.
1. I am dissappointed that So and so won’t go out with me.
2. I am totally smitten with Sas,
3. I honestly (ed: but probably mistakenly) believe I could make Sas happy.
Therefore, I am disappointed, rejected and frustrated.
Compare if I have a great idea how to move our company in a new direction, but some buzzword spouting jerk gets the promotion instead and runs the company into the ground, then management hires a DIFFERENT buzzword spouting jerk to replace the first one. I totally agree that the owners have the right to hire anyone they want, and I am not entitled to the promotion, but I honestly (and again, probably mistakenly) believe the company would love my work if they gave me a chance, and I am disappointed, rejected, and frustrated by not getting it.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I think the problem is this: the men very much overestimate #2 and #3. Speaking for myself, I’ve certainly known women who have made bad choices about men, but I know many more who dated *really cool, outgoing, good looking, fun, effective* men. These men are open about what they want. They have strong personalities. But they are decent and kind.
They are not *assholes*.
The shy guy in the corner, the one who never asked her out, and then ends up saying that she is a “bitch” and that her cool boyfriend is an “asshole” — he’s the actual asshole.
Which, this is the Nice Guy narrative in a nutshell.
(The problem is, a guy is allowed to be sad for being in the “friendzone.” Too much of this discourse assumes that *all* men who complain of the friendzone are ipso facto the same guys who hate women and their boyfriends. This is not the case.)
LikeLike
(Prior, longer reply got lost).
@veronica_d – I think the problem is that #2 and #3 aren’t aptly phrased. Most quasi-Nice Guys I’ve known (the redeemable ones) view it in aggregate – i.e. there are plenty of certifiable assholes out there who keep getting dates while they don’t, so clearly there’s some sort of “market failure”, some sort of irrationality or blind spot that leads to perceived deviation from the logical results.
I think this post explains it well: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
Plus, I have to be honest, your “nice guy in the corner” strikes me as, if not strawman, at least uncharitable. I don’t dispute that such people could exist, but IME, they’re a tiny minority – most of the dejected “quasi-nice-guys” I know don’t simply spite and scorn any guy with better success than they have, but rather simply lament the unfairness of their lonely existence.
LikeLiked by 4 people
In fact, I’ve seen it explicitly stated that talking about the friendzone means that you think that friendship with a woman has no value unless she’s having sex with you. By multiple people. Which is bullshit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, I don’t know how common the asshole in the corner is, but it’s definitely part of the zeitgeist, which is to say, Eliot Rogers had few original ideas. He got that shit from the Redpill and the incel spaces and so on. It’s “a thing.” Likewise what osberend says is on target. I recall when I was young, this mantra was repeated by boys on the playground: “Find her, feel her, fuck her, forget her.”
Remember that? The boys used to chant it.
“Screw the friendzone. Man up and bag an HB10!”
This shit is *not* rare.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@veronica_d – But I think it’s crucial to distinguish between the general toxic culture of the patriarchy and the specific prevalence of varying sub-types of “nice guys”. IME, the sentiments you quoted are almost exclusively said by the opposite-of-nice-guys (e.g. frat boys, club scene folks, etc.) and those desperately attempting to pretend they have that status. Not that Nice Guys (particularly the Bad Ones) don’t have toxic sexist views, but that they’re unlikely to be expressed in those terms. Those are the boasts of the successful, not the seething resentment of the rejected.
Essentially, I’m saying that you shouldn’t extrapolate from the fringe to the whole, and that the venomous misogyny of a few is unrepresentative of the whole.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Actually I think you are precisely wrong. The Redpill emerged from geek culture, and yes it *gestures toward* frat boy culture, but it is a product of resentful “Nice Guys.”
Hint: the actual frat boys do not complain that women only like bad boys or that they “ride the alpha-cock carousel” or “alpha fucks, beta bucks” or the sad states of “gammas.” The actual alpha-jocks do not analyze this; instead they just live it. It is the nerd on the outside who is obsessed with analyzing the choices of women. Likewise it is nerd self-hatred that generates the beta-gamma distinction.
While I agree it is a small number fully occupy the ideologies of this space, the ideas play out more broadly.
LikeLike
I agree the “redpill” is a product of geek culture. Also I think the “redpill” movement is really, really sexist. If you read their reddit they have a “required reading” section on the sidebar. On the list is “Women, the most responsible teenager in the house.” This article is not titled hyperbolically. The essay really argues women should not be treated like adults. I also note some redpill commentators regularly argue that “most responsible teenager” is giving women too much credit.
I am not exageratting or misinterpreting the views of the Redpill. You can go to the reddit and check this for yourself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@veronica_d – Ah, see, I’ve never even seen Redpill before I googled it just now – I’ve been out of the dating pool for about 12 years, so I’m largely speaking from in-person knowledge of friends and myself during that period. Still, I find it hard to believe things have changed that much that quickly, rather than just signal-boosting the worst assholes.
That it emerged from geek culture, or broadcasts out into it is still insufficient to tar all nerds with the same brush – after all, Fred Phelps is the product of Christianity and broadcasts into it, but is hardly representative.
Essentially, I’m saying that “Nice guys” are a continuum, and the distribution is not, IME, weighted towards the bad end, but rather in the opposite direction. Lumping them together in a monolithic group, then ascribing motives and attitudes based on the worst is uncharitable at best.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I never said that the asshole-ish “Nice Guys” were a majority. I just say they exist and are sufficiently vocal that you will encounter them in the nerd ideosphere. Furthermore, I think these ideas are sufficiently tempting to many frustrated young men that we should engage with them. This shines a bright light on how toxic this stuff is. Moreover, it provides nerdy men and women with an open discourse about dating that is better than the unexamined resentment of the “romanceless” and the bitter snark of the Jezebels.
LikeLike
@veronica_d – Agreed, and my bad if I misinterpreted your posts.
LikeLike
#3 can be steel-manned even further: many women, especially on dating websites, explicitly verbalize their dissatisfaction with not being treated like a person rather than a sex object, and wish to have a date with good personality. Furthermore, may would verbalize the concern – totally valid, as far as I can tell, even from my own experience of men messaging me, despite my clearly stating that I look for women – that most messages they get are sexual on the level of catcalls, and have bad grammar on the level of teenage texting. Thus, it is really easy to conclude: “hey, I’m doing better than most people, according to the stated preferences – why don’t I have a date then?”
There are explanations of why this may happen that are charitable to both parties, but not everyone may come up with them, and not everyone may keep believing in them in the moment of being frustrated.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope we can say soon that incessant dogpiling articles about the ‘Nice Guy’ have jumped the shark. They are now mostly snarky hit-pieces about how Nice Guys are literally the worst type of guy out there. It was a necessary conversation to have in our culture, but it has gone from ‘hey Nice Guy, here’s how your behaviour is impeding your chances at romance and here’s how you can improve’ to ‘Nice Guys are just so awful and gross’ in a non-constructive way.
LikeLiked by 4 people
“See? Now it’s an item in an AskMen.com article.
People of all genders have casual sex with people and fall hopelessly in love with them or have casual sex expecting that this will mysteriously lead to A Relationship. It’s not a girl thing or a guy thing, it’s a people thing.
Which is not to say that it isn’t a gendered phenomenon. For one thing, the girl version does some kind of weird pseudofeminist “he’s in love with me! That misogynist!” thing, while the guy version is blatantly misogynistic.”
Ozy, this is why people keep mistaking you for an anti-SJ person. You have the exact same complaints, you just label yourself as on the opposite side.
I mean, I do the same thing. The “other side” are often good at identifying flaws, and that doesn’t mean the ideal is flawed, or the tools.
Still, you always seem puzzled by peoples reactions, so: data.
LikeLiked by 4 people
As usual, Ozy, I totally agree, and now am going to create a tangent and quibble with it.
1. “Entitled” is one of those wierd binary words, where if you feel entitled, then you are wrong. If we used “disappointed” or “sad,” the situation would sound more complex.
Nice guy/girl: I am head over heels smitten with so and so, but if I lay it out that strong, they will surely run, so I’ll pay attention to them/have sex with them/etc., and hope that things develop.
So and so: I am aware that there’s a good chance that Ng/g has a crush on me, but he/she hasn’t said so, and it’s going to sound jerky of me to call it out, so I’ll act like there’s no crush.
Ng/g: I feel very sad and rejected that Sas doesn’t go for me, when I honestly believe I could make her/him happy. I’ll keep orbiting in case things change.
Socal Justice Warrior: You entitled piece of crap! How dare you think that just because So and so acted friendly towards you/had sex with you, he/she owes you sex/a relationship?
Ng/g: Who was talking about “owes”? I said I’m sad and I believe (ed: mistakenly but sincerely) that I could make Sas happy.
SJW: It’s worst than I thought – you’re blind to your entitlement.
2. True story – I’m probably more of a nice guy than an “object” of affection, except recently. My previous relationship was explicitly casual – I left my online dating profiles up, told the person that I wasn’t interested in a relationship, and was casualt with her for several months. When I broke things off, she was very sad.
It never would occur to me to be mad at her that she thought she was “entitled” to a relationship. She was disappointed that I didn’t want a relationship, and had been hoping one would develop. That’s fair.
I suppose in a more rational world, she would say “I’m happy to have sex with you, but I am hoping for a more involved relationship, so I hope you keep me in mind if you start thinking you would like to explore such a relationship” and I would say “I find you very attractive, but if I have a more involved relationship, it probably won’t be with you.” If the rationalists can pull that off, then you guys are superior to the rest of us in that regard.
LikeLiked by 5 people
I do think there’s a huge amount of paranoia expressed in the word “entitlement”, especially when applied to sexuality. As a man, I have never felt entitled to sex or love, although I have surely been disappointed not to get them; as you point out, those are very different emotions. I’m disappointed when I don’t win the lottery, too. (Turns out you have to buy a ticket or something.)
I think feminists are conflating this with old-school “she has to sleep with you if you bought her dinner” thinking, which really does qualify as “entitlement”, but seems to be pretty rare these days.
Even being bitter about unrequited love isn’t “entitlement”. Bitterness is a normal reaction to disappointment. It doesn’t make you a bad or entitled person, unless you cling to it or express it in harmful ways.
LikeLiked by 6 people
I think that part of this potentially has to do with overactive pattern-matching.
Without going into too much detail, there have been several times in my life where I or someone I was close to turned someone down romantically, only to have them react really badly–e.g. stalking behavior, getting mutual friends to harass them or ostracize them if they didn’t reconsider dating them, outright sexual harassment, etc. This doesn’t happen very often (or hasn’t to me), but even a couple times can be enough to make people really nervous. I know that when I first got to college, there were a couple of (I now think) totally innocent rejected-person behaviors that made me freak the fuck out, because I was trained to read them as “this person is going to escalate to stalking.” When the people involved didn’t escalate to stalking, I calmed down a lot, but it took me a while.
But that sort of thing, combined with the pattern Ozy identifies where people often feel deeply guilty about rejecting someone and try to come up with reasons the other person is actually in the wrong to relieve their guilt makes for a lot of volatile anger at people who are really just genuinely sad that their crushes don’t like them.
So, yeah, paranoia is probably the right word.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Thanks Bem.
Now that I’ve had a day to think about it, there definitely are lots of angry guys on Reddit or Youtube comment threads or similar hives of scum and villainy, and I’m sure there are lots of bitter and lonely guys who end up resenting all women. And there are lots of “nice guys” who are just lonely, rejected, sad guys who haven’t figured out how to meet and approach compatible partners.
Maybe what we need is some kind of rationalist answer to the pickup artist movement – a good wiki that tells young people some good advice about how to identify and approach potential partners.
LikeLike
Personally, I think “rationalist” dating advice would be a total mess, for all kinds of reasons I maybe don’t want to explain because I can’t do so nicely. But still.
Has anyone here looked at Mark Manson’s book, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty? Someone mentioned it on SCC recently and (out of sheer curiosity) I read it. I think it’s pretty good. There are a couple bits I don’t like, from a feminist perspective. But on the whole it seems like a really healthy approach, at least for those men who want gender-normative, heteronormative dating, which is what most men and women seem to want.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A somewhat toxoplasmic observation: It both is often perfectly reasonable, and makes the more aggro sort of SJW hilariously angry, to say, “Yes, I am entitled. I am entitled to [whatever one deserves, that one is being called “entitled” (as a pejorative) for stating that one deserves], thank for you acknowledging that.”
A similar response pattern to being called “elitist” provides similarly amusing results. Actually, in general, responding to “you’re X!” with some form of “yes, yes I am, and I’m right, too” is pretty amusing.
LikeLike
I’d like to question the idea that you should base your romantic choices purely on how attractive and compatible you find a person, and not at all on whether or not the other person is a Good and Virtuous person or not. By Good and Virtuous I mean displays traits that are considered virtuous such as empathy, conscientiousness, self-awareness, compassion, etc.
Obviously you shouldn’t date someone you’re totally incompatible with just because they are a Good and Virtuous person. But I feel like in a situation like this:
1. You are attracted to multiple people
2. One them is not quite as attractive as the others, but is also more Good and Virtuous than the others
3. You think the other, more attractive people won’t have that hard a time finding someone else if you don’t date them.
4. But the Most Good and Virtuous Person will.
5. Maybe you should get some kind of Bonus Morality Points for choosing the Most Good and Virtuous person. The same kind you get when you donate money to charity. I’m not sure if they’d be Consequentialist Points or Virtue Ethics Points.
Of course, my intuitions on this matter are confounded by the fact that there are many pragmatic reasons to choose a Good and Virtuous person (they’re less likely to hurt you), and the fact that I find virtuous people to be attractive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
you might have bad luck with the virtue argument because ozy’s a utilitarian, as are most of us here. to utilitarians, attractiveness kind of is a virtue: naturally having/cultivating qualities that make other people sexually & romantically happy, is adding utilons to the world. and the only morality points are people-get-their-preference points.
LikeLike
My case is actually better from a pure utilitarian perspective:
1. Imagine you have a choice between one person (Alice) whom dating will give you X utilons, and another person (Bob) who will give you X+10 utilons, on account of him being more attractive.
2. You believe that if you do not date Bob he will find another person whom dating will give him X utilons. Dating you would have also given him X utilons.
3. You believe that dating Alice will give her X utilons. If you do not date her, she will have trouble finding someone, and will only get 0.5X utilons for her efforts.
Obviously, the utilitarian choice is to pick Alice, even though you find Bob more attractive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think that in principle they’re Consequentialist Points if you’re doing it for the reasons you outlined in your response to chamomile geode, and Virtue Ethics Points if you consider it virtuous to recognize, value, and reward virtue, and are acting on and/or seeking to cultivate that form of virtue.
The difference is largely in this case, but could be practical if the person who is more attractive to you (but less virtuous) is not more attractive to most people, because you have unusual aesthetic tastes. In that case, you would get Consequentialist Points for choosing the more attractive-to-you person, but Virtue Ethics Points for choosing the more virtuous person.
LikeLike
I do think you could make a case that there is a very common form of male entitlement that feminists of the Jezebel sort are likely to run into: a feeling of being entitled not to be insulted, imputed with evil motives, etc. Many men just react badly when people accuse them of wanting to rape women, not recognizing women’s humanity, etc. They get defensive, start arguing against it, refuse to accept that the accusations are valid, etc.
Now, you could make the case that men’s sense of entitlement in this case is, in fact, justified: i.e., something men really are entitled to, rather than a false/inflated sense of entitlement. However, let’s leave the validity or invalidity of this particular type of entitlement to the side for now.
If male displays of the aforementioned variety of entitlement are, effectively, provoked by feminists implying things about them that they don’t like, you could effectively develop a vicious cycle in which the sorts of men feminists are likely to accuse are the ones who reactively demonstrate entitlement (although a broader section of men might hold such entitled attitudes latently, without displaying them since they aren’t accused).
For example, if we have the case of a “romantically/sexually frustrated guy…”
Guy: I like this girl, and she doesn’t like me. I’m sad.
Jezebel Feminist: (Oh no, another entitled man) You need to understand that she’s a human being with her own desires and motives, she doesn’t owe you anything, and you can’t objectify her and treat her as a vending machine you put attention into and get sex out of.
Guy: (Whoa! I’m under attack! I’m entitled to defend myself!) I resent your implication that I don’t understand that she’s human, or that I think she owes me something, or that I regard her as an object. Those implications are false and you shouldn’t make them.
Jezebel Feminist: (Defensive reaction — entitled male confirmed) And I suppose the fact that you react defensively and refuse to listen when women try to tell you things — right here, right now, in my direct experience of talking to you — is totally unrelated to the way you treat this woman you like? Am I supposed to believe that you only act defensive and refuse to listen around me, but you treat this other woman you like like a human being and respect the validity of her experiences?
In some ways, though, you could claim that the “romantically/sexually frustrated guy” is, in this case, partially a coincidence in terms of both his displays of male entitlement and in the feminist claims against them.
One could imagine, for instance, that if another bunch of men who latently held the defensive entitled attitudes of many romantically/sexually frustrated men were accused of similar things, they would have a similar defensive reaction, which would cycle back into feeding perceptions about them as defensive, entitled, refusing to accept the validity of women’s experiences, etc. If, for instance, fans of Japanese surrealist literature got a reputation for having lots of male entitlement, then feminists might be inclined to wonder if they like Kobo Abe because of some sort of problematic gender dynamics in his literature. If Japanese surrealism fans then got angrily defensive, then this might to some degree confirm said views of them.
On the other hand, if either the Jezebel feminist types didn’t accuse the Japanese surrealism fans of being entitled/misogynistic, or the Japanese surrealism fans never displayed a defensive, denying attitude, perhaps the cycle would never get off the ground.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Of course, the guy in this scenario is being entirely reasonable, while the Jezebel feminist is being a douche.
Incidentally, the correct final response for the guy is “I am treating you like a human being—a stupid and vicious one. Which you are.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
A good post, but I disapprove of the idea that one solution would be for people attacked not to deny the accusations. As osberend notes, the defensive reaction is perfectly warranted, and it’s the Jezebel douche’s apparent entitlement to never being contradicted, combined with their prejudice – which would only be reinforced by the target ‘accepting’ libel for the sake of peace – that is a problem.
LikeLiked by 2 people
JME, I would characterize it as a feeling of being entitled to express one’s opinion as part of a conversation, not entitled not to be insulted. Yes, the guy in your hypo feels insulted, but what he’s trying to do is correct the record. I guess you could formulate that as “entitled to feel insulted at experiencing things that one believes are perjorative and false” but isn’t everyone entitled to that?
LikeLike
“I do think you could make a case that there is a very common form of male entitlement that feminists of the Jezebel sort are likely to run into: a feeling of being entitled not to be insulted, imputed with evil motives, etc.”
That’s the opposite of what you would expect to find in a culture where the Women Are Wonderful effect is a cultural norm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%9CWomen_are_wonderful%E2%80%9D_effect
this plays out as a cultural norm when women are accused of rape, especially of child rape (since they are almost never accused or prosecuted for raping men.) and the effect is so intense that even in cases of child abuse the cultural reflex action is to find some way, any way to exculpate the mother.
“Many men just react badly when people accuse them of wanting to rape women, not recognizing women’s humanity, etc. They get defensive, start arguing against it, refuse to accept that the accusations are valid, etc.”
This is a Kafka Trap. Have you considered that their objections might arise in reaction to false accusations of these things? “Wanting to rape women”? that’s a pretty heinous accusation and without proof it is not only NOT valid, it is a blood libel, especially given historical attitudes around rape.
By way of comparison, see what happens when you accuse women of “wanting to rape men” – of not respecting personal boundaries in bars, of gay-shaming men into sex, and the like. What’s the reaction like then? You either get blank incomprehension or incredulity about F>M rape or deflections about how men should be glad to have sex with anyone who comes by and they’re misogynists if they don’t see that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m pretty sure JME indicated that they believe men really are entitled to not be insulted, and was just not addressing whether they were or not for the sake of the argument.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“I’m pretty sure JME indicated that they believe men really are entitled to not be insulted,”
I agree with you. I am quite sure they believe that. My point is that it is baseless guesswork not supported by much of anything but mind reading. The culture is pretty harsh on men who expect not to be insulted. There are pretty derogatory epithets for men that fragile.
LikeLike
Thank you, that was extremely well said. (For that matter, as were the other posts in the last couple of days, thank you!)
“bizarre idea floating around that romantic feelings are a thing under one’s volitional control”
I think I want a better word for saying “an idea driven by convenience rather than rational thought”, or similar, without having to do fake-surprise to indicate how false I think it is. I don’t think it’s surprising that when someone does something that makes someone else uncomfortable like crushing on them, they respond with “agh, no, makes me uncomfortable, don’t do that”, even though if you thought about it more, you might decide “Thank you, but I don’t feel the same way, please stop nurturing the crush and don’t involve me in it, and seek out alternative possibly-reciprocated crushes instead” is a response more likely to be practical.
LikeLike